Банк олимпиадных заданий для самостоятельной подготовки учащихся - Английский язык
олимпиадные задания на тему

Listening

You will hear a student called Josh Brady talking about visiting South Africa as part of his university course in botany. For questions 1-7, complete the sentences with a word or short phrase.

TRIP TO SOUTH AFRICA

As well as his research project, Josh planned to write a (1) ……………for a website while he was in Africa.

Josh’s group planned to check out a particular region after a (2) ………………that had occurred there.

Josh was surprised to see (3) ……………………being grown in the first area they visited.

Josh describes the vehicle they travelled in as a (4) …………………………when they went in search of specimens.

Josh uses the word (5) …………………………to give us an idea of the shape of the leaves he found.

Josh was particularly impressed by one type of flower which was (6) …………… in colour.

Josh uses the word (7) ……………………… to convey his feelings about an area of vegetation he studied.

Josh really appreciated the view he got from the (8) …………………  of his accommodation.

Reading

You are going to read a magazine article in which five career consultants give advice about starting a career. For questions 9-18, choose from the consultants (A – E). The consultants may be chosen more than once.

Starting out on your career

Are you a graduate trying to plan out the best career path for yourself?  We’ve asked five careers consultants to give some tips on how to go about it.

Consultant A

A university degree is no guarantee of a job, and job hunting in itself requires a whole set of skills.  If you find you are not getting past the first interview, ask yourself what is happening. Is it a failure to communicate or are there some skills you lack?  Once you see patterns emerging it will help you decide whether the gaps you have identified can be filled relatively easily. If you cannot work out what the mismatch is, get back to the selection panel with more probing questions, and find out what you need to do to bring yourself up to the level of qualification that would make you more attractive to them: but be careful to make this sound like a genuine request rather than a challenge or complaint.  

Consultant B  

Do not be too dispirited if you are turned down for a job, but think about the reasons the employers give.  They often say it is because others are ‘better qualified’, but they use the term loosely.  Those who made the second interview might have been studying the same subject as you and be of similar ability level, but they had something which made them a closer match to the selector’s ideal. That could be experience gained through projects or vacation work, or it might be that they were better at communicating what they could offer. Do not take the comments at face value: think back to the interviews that generated them and make a list of where you think the shortfall in your performance lies.  With this sort of analytical approach you will eventually get your foot in the door.

Consultant C  

Deciding how long you should stay in your first job is a tough call. Stay too long and future employers may question your drive and ambition. Of course, it depends where you are aiming. There can be advantages in moving sideways rather than up, if you want to gain real depth of knowledge. If you are a graduate, spending five or six years in the same job is not too long provided that you take full advantage of the experience. However, do not use this as an excuse for apathy. Graduates sometimes fail to take ownership of their careers and take the initiative. It is up to you to make the most of what’s available within a company, and to monitor your progress in case you need to move on. This applies particularly if you are still not sure where your career path lies.  

Consultant D  

It is helpful to think through what kind of experience you need to get your dream job and it is not a problem to move around to a certain extent. But in the early stages of your career you need a definite strategy for reaching your goal, so think about that carefully before deciding to move on from your first job. You must cultivate patience to master any role. There is no guarantee that you will get adequate training, and research has shown that if you do not receive proper help in a new role, it can take 18 months to master it.  

Consultant E  

A prospective employer does not want to see that you have changed jobs every six months with no thread running between them. You need to be able to demonstrate the quality of your experience to a future employer, and too many moves too quickly can be a bad thing. In any company it takes three to six months for a new employee to get up to speed with the structure and the culture of the company. From the company’s perspective, they will not receive any return on the investment in your salary until you have been there for 18 months.

This is when they begin to get most value from you – you are still fired up and enthusiastic. If you leave after six months it has not been a good investment – and may make other employers wary.

The title of the story is “The History of Dieting”. Paragraphs B-H are in the wrong order. Decide on the correct order for the paragraphs, and write the letters next to the numbers 19-25. The first and the last paragraphs are correct.

1. A

1. I

1. The word ‘diet’ originally meant ‘things that people usually eat’, but these days, we use the word to mean an eating pattern or programme designed to change something.
2. But it has taken a long time to find out exactly what these are. Sea travel led to some increase in understanding. When it became possible to build ships that could go on long voyages, sailors started to spend many months at sea. They also started getting a strange disease called ‘scurvy’. Eventually, it became clear that they needed fruit or vegetables to survive. Today, we know that vitamin C is the reason.
3. But when did it all start? There’s a story that in 1087, William the Conqueror, King of England, had become so fat that he could no longer ride his horse. He stayed in bed and drank alcohol instead of eating food to try and lose weight.
4. Although the discovery helped their lives, there was much more that wasn’t known. Nobody knew, for example, why some people got fat and others didn’t, or what to do about it.
5. Now, it may or may not have worked for him, but we can’t really recommend it as an approach for most people. What’s important is the kinds of food you eat, because different foods contain different things our bodies need.
6. However, despite all these, we usually say ‘diet’ about losing weight. This is certainly the area where the money gets spent.
7. We could be talking about any one of many different kinds. There are diets for avoiding certain chemicals, like salt, and there are diets to increase amounts of certain things, like potassium. There are even diets to help people to put on weight.
8. Then, in the 1890s, a chemist called Wilbur Arwater began investigating how foods consisted of protein, fats, and carbohydrates. He found that he could measure the heat value of these by burning them and called a unit of this heating a ‘calorie’.
9. This measurement he created can be seen as the start of modern food science and dieting. Since then, knowledge has come quickly – some people say too quickly!

Use of English

There are 10 unnecessary words in the text below. If the line is OK, put “ok“

26. Many everyday objects are being given their names for
27. a reason. The Biro (a ballpoint pen) was invented by
28. Georg and Josef Biro, so that it was named after them.
29. The sandwich, on the other hand, it was named after the
30. 4th Earl of Sandwich in 1762. Despite of the fact that the
31. idea of eating slices of meat between slices of bread was
32. not a new one, the Earl of Sandwich made it popular. He
33. would ask to be served this dish at his card table so that
34. he could play all the day. Morse code (the use of long
35. and short sounds to send the messages along a wire) was
36. been invented y Samuel Morse in 1844 and Bermuda
37. shorts were so named because they at first became popular
38. in Bermuda. So, next time you will use an everyday
39. object, why not to stop and think about where its name
40. came from? You might be surprised!

Choose the number for each sentence to make it correct. Some numbers are extra and some numbers can be used several times.

0   1    2    5   6   7   9   10   11   12   19   88

41. Mary talks about work all the time. He has a ___-track mind.
42. I’ve been playing the old ___ since I was a little boy.
43. Steve used to have a ___-to-five. Now he’s a consultant with flexible hours.
44. A stitch in time saved ___; and now that she was going to live in the country there was a chance for her to turn over a new leaf!
45. I’m not complaining. Everything is sevens and ___.
46. Harry could put ___ and ___ together quicker than most men

People use different repeating words to describe some notions.  Put the number of the appropriate variant to finish the situations below.  Three constructions are extra.

(1) arm-in-arm (2) door-to-door  (3) heart-to-heart  (4) toe-to-toe (5) eye-to-eye

(6) hand in hand  (7) head-to-head (8) finger-to-finger  (9) hand-to-hand

47. After  the  crime,  the  police  went  ___  interviewing  everyone  in  the neighborhood.
48. Mark and I have been successful partners for ten years because we see ___ on everything.
49. The  actors  and  writers  worked  ___  to  create  a  brilliant  theatrical production.
50. Meg and Angela went ___  the whole day over which one of  them was going to name their new dog.
51. Chris and I finally had a ___ talk about all our differences.
52. When Joe and Bob argue, they go ___ for hours.

53. What is the longest river of The UK?

a.  the Severn

b.  the  Avon

c.  the Thames

d.  the Clyde

54. The Great Fire happened in …

a. 1736

b. 1666

c. 1814

d. 1665

55. Which Street in London is called “newspaper street”?

a.  Oxford Street

b.  Fleet Street

c.  Downing Street

d.  Regent Street

56. Match parts of the UK with their Patron Saints (ответ запиши в виде цепочки букв и цифр)

57. Not all hours in our life are happy. What is a Happy Hour? (write the answer using your own ideas)
58. A Honey Do List is not a recipe for making honey. What is it then? (write the answer using your own ideas)
59. What is the national Scottish musical instrument?
60. Which of these capitals is the capital of an independent state: Edinburgh, Belfast, Dublin or Cardiff?

Writing

Write a report about the work of your school canteen. Write 100-140 words. Use the paragraph plan to organize your ideas. Plan what you`re going to write in the four paragraphs:

Paragraph 1 – opening

Paragraph 2 – introduction.

Paragraph 3 – positive things

Paragraph 4 – negative things

Paragraph 5 – conclusion

Don’t forget to check the review for mistakes (grammar, punctuation and spelling).

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