Задание

Write the answers

Прочитай текст и выполни задания. В каждом задании запиши в поле ответа цифру 1, 2, 3 или 4, соответствующую выбранному тобой варианту ответа.

Strategies and useful tips

Recommended time—15 min (not more).

Read the text carefully—you may need to read it, or parts of it, twice.

Look at the first question.

Look back to the text and find/highlight the part which the question refers to.

If you have time, think how this information might be rephrased (or how you would answer the question in your own words).

Look at the choices, and either choose the answer that you think is right or eliminate the ones you know are wrong.

Check against the text.

The Queen's Gambit

The incredible story of Walter Tavis about a girl chess player from an orphanage revealed the secret side of the life of prodigies and answered an important question: how do they live? Are they happy?

Of course, the heroine's life cannot be called happy, and her talent is to some extent an accident that could be buried in herself forever. She became an orphan very early and ended up in an orphanage where children at that time were given various tranquilisers to measure their activity. Children used them as drugs. They were calm, but addicted to pills. Then there will be many more addictions in the heroine's life. Fortunately, chess was not an addiction, it was liberation.

Playing chess in the janitor's room, the girl lost at first. But after some time, she began to checkmate the janitor, a chess fan and a local grandmaster. He also later helped her get out of town and become a world celebrity. The essence of the story is not that you need to reach out to your talent and develop it. That's for sure. This story is about how childhood traumas affect the rest of life, how personality is shaped.

In adult years, the girl has an addiction to alcohol and this seriously shakes her health. She faces a choice: chess and a sober head, or alcohol and oblivion. The dislike of the father, the sudden death of the mother, like a yoke squeezes the neck of the heroine. Strangles her. At such moments, the author sends her faithful friends and hopes to find love.

History is full of descriptions of chess games. The very game of chess from the outside seems like some kind of endless thought process. Boring and monotonous. But in reality, you need to have a good imagination to predict the course of the game, the further movements of the opponent, the appearance of the chessboard at each turn. And the main character did it. Prodigies almost never revel in their gift, for many they are a real curse. Some are more likely to live with it, using their talent to the fullest. Others bury it and become ordinary people, with their own worries and affairs. The choice that the heroine makes is the most correct in her case. But not universal for everyone.

1. The main character of the book by Voltaire Tavis is an...

employee of a children's shelter.

chess prodigy.

teacher of chess.

master of chess creation.

Ответ: .

2. At the shelter, children were given tranquilisers so that...

they all had mental illnesses.

they study well.

they were calm.

they have an addiction.

Ответ: .

3. The girl started playing chess after she...

saw the game of the shelter cleaner.

went to school at the orphanage.

saw the game on TV.

heard about the game on the radio.

Ответ: .

4. In addition to the pill addiction, the main character began to have an addiction to...

poker games.

drugs.

alcohol.

computer games.

Ответ: .

5. For the first time there was a choice at stake when...

she was taken from the shelter.

she got into rehab.

she lost a game of chess.

her health failed.

Ответ: .

6. On the example of the heroine, the reader sees the origins of adult problems in...

addictions.

childhood traumas.

constant lack of money.

lack of self-control.

Ответ: .

7. According to the text for a child prodigy, the choice is as follows...

bury the talent.

develop talent.

decide to bury or develop talent.

let everything take its course.

Ответ: .