Form 9. Reading. Variant 1. The Second Term.

Read the texts. Match the statements (A—E) with the passages (1—5). (Write letter).

A) Other environmentalists don’t want to be associated with the activity of

this organisation.

B) The task of this organisation is to help to connect people and nature.

C) The founder of this organisation was a creator of animated films.

D) This society is one of the main environmental organisations.

E) Its aim is to guarantee a healthy environment for all life on the Earth.

  1) The activity of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is focused on saving wildlife and wild places and to ensure a healthy environment for all life on the Earth.

  2) The Earth Liberation Front (ELF) is an environmental group well known for its «extreme» actions, that’s why anonymous and independent. They have no office or press contacts and many environmentalists prefer to distance themselves from it.

  3) The National Wildlife Federation is aimed at preserving wild animals within the United States. The organisation was actually set up by a cartoonist named Jay Darling in 1936 with the support of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

  4) Dedicated to saving wildlife, the Wildlife Conservation Society is focused on connecting humans with wildlife as it can lead to the preservation of endangered species.

  5) The National Geographic Society (Nat Geo) is one of the largest, most well-funded and most important world environmental organisations. The society bases its activity on scientific research, and tries to increase general interest towards such problems as conservation, prevention of wasteful use of resources, saving endangered species, etc.

Complete the text with the words from the box and remember.

It’s true that many             (1) researches remain off the public attention. There are those studies that represent            (2) and discoveries that «cannot or should not be reproduced». Every year these inventions are awarded the Ig Nobel Prize.

The Ig Nobel Prize is a parody of the Nobel Prize and is given out in late September or early October each year for ten unusual scientific discoveries. The Ig Nobel Prizes honour achievements that make people laugh, and then think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the originality, honour the imagination and raisep eople’s interest in science,           (3) and technology.

The prizes are presented to the winners by actual Nobel laureates. One person, Sir Andre Geim, has actually won both an Ig Nobel Prize (in 2000) and a real Nobel Prize (in 2010). He won the Ig Nobel Prize for an             (4) where he and another scientist successfully levitated a frog using magnets.

Some other examples of work that resulted in people winning Ig Nobel Prizes are: for the discovery that cows who are given names          (5)more milk than cows that don’t have names; for the invention of Clocky — an alarm clock on wheels that hides making you get out of bed, find it and turn it off; for the research why woodpeckers don’t get headaches.

The Ig Nobels may be silly, but that’s the point — not all the science has to be serious. To paraphrase the Ig Nobel’s motto, if something makes someone laugh,

it doesn’t mean it won’t also make them think about important things that      

(6) in the world.

Write answers to the questions for the text of task 2.

1) What is the Ig Nobel Prize?

Write answers to the questions for the text of task 2.

2) When is it given?

Write answers to the questions for the text of task 2.

3) What achievements does it honour?