2025 Практикум ЕГЭ по английскому языку. Раздел «Говорение». Задание № 39 (1)

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1.5 minutes to read it. Here is some advice about good manners and etiquette when eating food. If you are invited to dinner and you cannot eat a certain type of food, tell your host several days before the dinner party. If you are a guest, it is polite to wait until your host starts eating or when your host shows you in some way that you can start eating without waiting for him or her. Mind that is good manners to chew and swallow the food that is in your mouth and only then should you take a drink. Remember to show your appreciation of the food from time to time. It is a popular mistake that chicken can be eaten with your fingers. In fact, a piece of chicken or a slice of pizza can be eaten with your fingers if you are at a barbecue or in an informal company. Otherwise always use a knife and a fork. It is useful to note that when eating bread rolls, break off a piece of bread and only then use the knife for buttering the bread. If you are using the knife, do not lick or put your knife in your mouth even though there is something delicious on the blade. You will certainly not put your elbows on the table and you will never reach for food over somebody’s plate. Always ask for something you need to be passed over to you. And, you had better not talk with food in your mouth to tell others something interesting.

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1.5 minutes to read it. Spencer was an engineer, philosopher and psychologist, who in his day was as famous as Darwin. He first coined the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’. Darwin paid him the compliment of using it himself. Herbert was the eldest of nine children, all the rest of whom died in infancy. Trained as a civil engineer, he became a philosopher, psychologist, sociologist, economist and inventor. He sold more than a million books in his lifetime and was the first to apply evolutionary theory to psychology, philosophy and the study of society. He also invented the paperclip. The device was called Spencer’s Binding Pin and was produced on a modified hook-and-eye machine. It did well in its first year, but demand dried up. During the Second World War, paperclips were an emotive symbol of Norwegian resistance to the German occupation. A giant paperclip was later erected in Oslo.

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1.5 minutes to read it. A female chimp has learned how to use the Arabic numerals, 1 to 9, to memorise the order of five numbers. She, unlike males, was able to remember the sequence of at least five numbers. This is the same or even more than pre-school children can do. It comes as no surprise to scientists who discover something else that chimpanzees can do every year, bringing them closer to us. People can normally remember a sevendigit number at first sight. This is our brain’s “magic number”. A chimp’s brain is only half the size of ours. Yet, they remember five digits. In an experiment, a chimp was shown five numbers on a computer screen. Her task was then to touch each number in the correct order. In order to perform the task successfully, she had to memorise all the numbers. And she did. She got the fourth number correct 90 % of the time, and the fifth number correct 65 % of the time.

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1.5 minutes to read it. There is an established stereotype among foreigners that Russia is a country of eternal frost and snow-covered streets. This is all because for many years foreigners have been frightened by the phrase "Russian winter". But it's not all that simple, Russia is a vast country and the weather in different areas can be completely different. Russia consists of several continental zones. For example, in the north winters are long and harsh, in some places there is lots of snow and temperatures fall below -40 degrees Celsius . These winters are normal, not only in the northern regions of the country but even in the Far East. Summers in these areas don't even see three warm months out of the year. The closer you get to the south the warmer the Russian climate gets. In the central part of the country summer becomes warm, even hot, which makes it possible for a good harvest of grain, fruit and vegetables. Winters here are not extremely cold and the average winter temperature does not fall below -15 degrees Celsius. By the way, in Russia the real warmth does not start until the middle of April. And only at the end of May does everything start to bloom and people go without their warm clothing.

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1.5 minutes to read it. Cheating in tests is becoming more sophisticated. These cases are referred to as exam-room cheating. The statistical findings show that between 3-5% of exam candidates are likely to be cheating with almost none of these pupils being caught. A recent trend has been for more friends, helping their peers to see questions in advance. This has been prompted by increasingly high demands on the learners to perform well. If the supervision in exam rooms becomes lax, cheating is always on the rise. Cheating appears to be a global phenomenon with little cultural variation. Originally it was thought that cheating was more typical for the so called “face-saving” cultures where the observable behaviour is not the same as unobserved actions. Wherever the stakes are high and there is an advantage and an opportunity to cheat, it seems to happen everywhere. Highly industrialised and poor nations think alike.

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1.5 minutes to read it. Some paintings found in different caves around the world are recognized as the work of Stone Age artists. But what was the purpose of the paintings? Why were they hidden in a dark room where there is no evidence that cave people lived? No one really knows, but there is one theory that makes great sense. It is called the theory of Sympathetic Magic. According to this, the cave people believed that if they could make a likeness of an animal, they could put a spell over it. This spell would give the tribe power over the live animal. Stone Age existence depended on killing animals – for food, clothing, and even weapons and tools. The animals were large and fierce; the cave people had only the most simple weapons. Hunters had to be brave and fearless. They needed more than a spear or club; they needed all the magic they could get. The magic could help the hunters catch the animals.

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1.5 minutes to read it. Islands that appear and disappear are certainly part of the world's legends. But in 1963, with the aid of cameras and scientific observers, some of those legends were given a solid basis of fact. For example, on November 13, 1963, a kind of miracle occured. An island was born. On that day a fishing boat sailed into waters that were boiling and rolling and foul with a strong smell. The world still had a hard time believing the miracle that was to occur. It was the first time that scientists were to witness the unexpected birth of an underwater island. First the engineer, then the captain, and at last the cook were aware of awful smell and the peculiar roll of the sea. But it was the cook who first noticed the smoke. He thought there was a ship in trouble somewhere on the seas.

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1.5 minutes to read it. Human evolution is a lengthy process of change by which people originated from their apelike ancestors. The traits that we today recognize as human evolved over a period of approximately six million years. One of the earliest human traits was the ability to walk on two legs. This ability evolved some four million years ago. A large and complex brain, the ability to use tools and the capacity for language have developed more recently. Some studies lead us to believe that humans have some relationship to another group of primate species, the apes. Scientists say that humans and the great apes of Africa — chimpanzees and gorillas — share a common ancestor who lived between 8 and 6 million years ago. However, researchers do not all agree about how these species are related to the modern human. Genetic research into this relationship has produced some controversial results and more discoveries, perhaps sensational ones, are to be expected.

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1.5 minutes to read it. Many parents do not like their children to play video games. One reason is that it is a waste of time. Instead of playing games, they could be spending their time wisely, doing homework, exercising, or cleaning the house. Another reason is that many games are destructive and violent, causing children to behave badly and aggressively in the real world. Finally, video games are often addictive and thus discourage children from having other hobbies and interests. All of these are good reasons to dislike video games. Nevertheless, there are some good reasons to allow children to play them. For one thing, not all video games are mindless time-wasters. Nowadays, there is much more variety and lots of games to choose from that are educational and instructive. Parents simply need to spend more time paying attention to the kinds of games children play and encourage them to choose games that develop their minds.

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1.5 minutes to read it. Many of our superstitions came to us from very ancient sources. The idea that one should knock on wood for good luck, for example, is a 4,000-year-old custom that began with some Native American tribes of North America. Noticing that the oak was struck often by lightning, members of the tribe thought that it must be the dwelling place of a sky god. They also thought that boasting of a future personal deed was bad luck and meant the thing would never happen. Knocking on an oak tree was a way of contacting the sky god and being forgiven for boasting. Another interesting superstition is that it is bad luck to open an umbrella indoors. In eighteenth-century England, umbrellas had stiff springs and very strong metal spokes. Opening one indoors could indeed cause an accident. It could injure someone or break a fragile object. This superstition came about for practical reasons.