Reading Comprehension
l.l Sir Mohamed Farah - British sporting hero
BY MOYA IRVINE
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OLYMPIC MEDALLIST Mo Farah has been awarded a knighthood for his services
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to athletics. The long-distance runner who came to Britain as a child from war-torn
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Somalia can now call himself Sir Mohamed. [...]
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When he started junior school, Mo knew hardly any English. Even as a
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teenager, his English was poor and he was not very good at school. However, his
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PE teacher, Alan Watkinson, realised that the boy had a talent for running, and got
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him to concentrate on the sport. Watkinson told Mo that one day, he could run for
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Britain.
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Mo’s career took off quickly. In 2001, he won the European junior 5,000m
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title. [...] The young athlete had help from other people, too. The British marathon
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runner, Paula Radcliffe, paid for driving lessons so he could get to his training
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sessions. David Bedford, a former long distance runner, also helped. [...] And it
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was Bedford who introduced Mo to Alberto Salazar, the American coach who
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helped to make him one of the best long-distance runners the world has ever seen.
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In order to train with Salazar, Mo moved with his wife Tania (whom he had
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married in 2003) and his daughter to Portland, Oregon in 2011. That year he won
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the 5,000m in the world athletics championships and came second in the 10,000m.
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His success continued at the London Olympics in 2012, where he won both
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the 5,000m and the 10,000m. Mo dedicated his medals to his twin daughters who
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were born that year.
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Four years later in Brazil, Mo again won Olympic gold in both events. He was
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now a British sporting hero. lt wasn’t just the medals that made him popular, it was
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his personality, the way he beamed when he crossed the finish line, and his famous
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Mo-Bot gesture – he puts his hands on his head to make the letter M after a race.
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At the end of summer 2017, Mo decided to give up track running and
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concentrate on marathons. He has also moved back to the UK and changed his
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trainer. There have been allegations that Salazar used doping, but the coach
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denies this. Mo has insisted that he is a “clean athlete” and that his return to the
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UK had nothing to do with the allegations.
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Getting a knighthood was one of the high points of his career. Mo reported
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that at the ceremony, the Queen said he had been “going too long” and asked if
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he had retired. He told her that he was going to run marathons now, and according
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to Mo, she said that was “marvellous”.
(shortend from: READ ON, January, p.4)
Answer the questions in the table below. You do not need to write complete sentences .
| Why was school difficult for Mohamed Farah? |
|
| What did one of Mohamed Farah's teachers encourage him to do? |
|
| How did people support Mohamed Farah? (Name one.) |
|
| What did Mohamed Farah achieve in 2012 and 2016? | |
| What is Mohamed Farah's signature pose after a competition? | |
| What crime has Alberto Salazar been accused of? | |
| What was Mohamed Farah's next athletic goal in 2017? | |
7 BE
I.2 Five women heroes who changed the world
Match the paragraphs (1 – 5) with the headings (A – G).There are two more headings than you need.
| 1. | Diana Spencer married Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, on July 29, 1981. Though they divorced in 1996, Diana is remembered as the “People’s Princess” because of her global popularity and humanitarian efforts. |
| 2. | Mildred Ella “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias was an American athlete. She was successful in golf, basketball, baseball as well as track and field. In the 1932 Summer Olympics, she earned two gold medals in track and field and won ten major golf championships. |
| 3. | Anne Frank wasn’t able to hide without help. Hermine “Miep” Santruschitz Gies is the woman who helped to protect Anne and her family from the Nazis for over two years during World War II. She is also the woman responsible for saving Anne’s diary after the Franks were arrested. |
| 4. | Legend has it that Abraham Lincoln greeted Harriet Beecher Stowe at the White House by saying, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war,” in reference to the Civil War. This is due to her best-selling novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” that helped popularise the anti-slavery movement. |
| 5. | Florence Nightingale, also called the “Lady with the Lamp”, was a pioneer in the field of nursing. She had a massive impact on the 19th and 20th century policies surrounding proper health care; her writings inspired worldwide health care reform. She and her team of nurses drastically improved the unsanitary conditions at a British hospital, sparing countless lives. |
A
A noble idol
B
A brave guardian
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A gifted competitor
D
A fighter for hygiene
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An innovative engineer
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A voice for vegetarian lifestyle
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A lifterary promoter of equal rights
| Paragraph | Heading |
| 1 | |
| 2 | |
| 3 | |
| 4 | |
| 5 |
5 BE
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l.l Sir Mohamed Farah - British sporting hero
| Why was school difficult for Mohamed Farah? |
one answer only:
|
| What did one of Mohamed Farah's teachers encourage him to do? |
one answer only:
|
| How did people support Mohamed Farah? (Name one.) |
one answer only:
|
| What did Mohamed Farah achieve in 2012 and 2012? |
(in both events/5,000m/10,000m) |
| What is Mohamed Farah's signature pose after a competition? | one answer only:
|
| What crime has Alberto Salazar been accused of? |
|
| What was Mohamed Farah's next athletic goal in 2017? | one answer only:
|
7 BE
I.2 Five women heroes who changed the world
| Paragraph | Heading |
| 1 | A |
| 2 | C |
| 3 | B |
| 4 | G |
| 5 | D |
5 BE