Final test, 2004 (Okruzno takmicenje 2004)

READING COMPREHENSION TEST

A fiction writer is a person who invents stories.

Charles Dickens found it easy. At the age of twenty-four, he simply sat down and wrote Pickwick Papers, which became an immediate best-seller. But Dickens was a genius, and geniuses are different from the rest of us.

In this century (it was not always so in the last one), just about every single writer who has finally become successful in the world of fiction has started out in some other job - a schoolteacher, perhaps, or a doctor or a journalist or a lawyer. (Alice in Wonderland was written by a mathematician, and The Wind in the Willows by a civil servant.) The first attempts at writing have therefore always had to be done in spare time, usually at night.

The reason for this is obvious. 'When you are adult, it is necessary to earn living. To earn a living, you must get a job. You must if possible get a job that guarantees you so much money a week. But however much you may want to take up fiction writing as a career, it would be pointless to go along to a publisher and say, "I want a job as a fiction writer." If you did that, he would tell you to buzz off and write the book first. And even if you brought a finished book to him and he liked it well enough to publish it, he still wouldn't give you a job. He would give you an advance of perhaps five hundred pounds, which he would get back again later by deducting it from your royalties. (A royalty, by the way, is the money that a writer gets from the publisher for each copy of his book that is sold. The average royalty a writer gets is ten per cent of the price of the book itself in the book shop. Thus, for a book selling at four pounds, the writer would get forty pence. For a paperback selling at fifty pence, he would get five pence.)

It is very common for a hopeful fiction writer to spend two years of his spare time writing a book which no publisher will publish. For that he gets nothing at all except a sense of frustration.      

If he is fortunate enough to have a book accepted by a publisher, the odds are that as a first novel it will in the end sell only about three thousand copies. That will earn him maybe a thousand pounds. Most novels take at least one year to write, and one thousand pounds a year is not enough to live on these days. So you can see why a budding fiction writer invariably has to start out in another job first of all. If he doesn't, he will almost certainly starve.

(Taken from "Lucky Break" by Roald Dahl)

 CHOOSE THE MOST APPROPRIATE OPTION

I Choose the correct option:                                                                         

1. I prefer swimming __________ skiing.

of             from             to                  than

2. As soon as she heard the question she _________ her hand.

rose           has risen     rise                raised

3. Please, help ___________ to the biscuits! I know you all like them.

you          yourself       yourselves      yours

4. The charity was raised to help ________ poor in the town.

a              Ø                an                  the

5. She has_____ chicken for dinner.

some       any              a                   the

6 . _______   you love that kind of music or you hate it.

Or            Either          Nor                Neither

7. She has just ________ the table waiting for the guests to arrive.

 lain            laid               lied               lay

8. There are ____________ theatres than cinemas in the city.

few           less             fewer            little

II Report the following dialogue:                                                                              

Tim: "Why do you need mine?"

Emily:  Do you always ask such silly questions? Mine is out of order."

Emily tells Tim    .

Tim wants to know  .

Emily asks  .

and then she says  .

III Complete the text with the correct form/tense of the verbs given below: