An intermediate level English resource.
Britain - a nation of cat-lovers !
NEW AUDIO. ►: Click to open/close audio playerEveryone
knows that Britain
is a nation of animal-lovers ! But this story about an old lady who
lived alone in a house near Birmingham shows how strongly some people
can love their animal companions !
A missing words text !
Twenty-two
words have been left out of this article. You can find
them in the word list
below. Complete the article as it
should be, by putting back the right words in the right places. To get
you started, the first letter is given for the first two missing words.
Here are the words that you will need to put back into the article ! They are in alphabetical order. To make you think a bit more about the words, fhis list contains twenty-five words, so three of these will not be needed!
Interactive exercise:
this exercise is interactive:
you can select any word from the box above, and slide it over into one
of the text boxes .Here are the words that you will need to put back into the article ! They are in alphabetical order. To make you think a bit more about the words, fhis list contains twenty-five words, so three of these will not be needed!
An lady died
recently has left her house near Birmingham to the twenty-five
who were her main
during the final years of her .
Under English law, a person who dies can their possessions to anybody they choose; but did “” include animals? Lawyers who at the old lady’s will could not find answer to this question, so they had to decide to do.
After lots of legal argument and , they finally decided that the 25 cats can indeed inherit the , and continue to live there, as the old lady had requested in her will.
So the has been given over to the cats, and is now managed by an animal charity, as a for cats. Every day, volunteers come in to and water the cats, and clean the house. When any cat dies, it is replaced by lost cat, so that there are 25 cats in residence! The neighbours are quite with the arrangement. They remember the old kindly, and are happy that her have been respected. “After all,” said Jennie B, who lives door, “They don’t have too late night parties!”
Missing words - answers.
The full text, with the correct answers, can be found in the answers section of A Background to English, the new paperback "best of" B1-B2 intermediate texts from Linguapress.
As well as answers, this collection of 27 texts includes some texts not available online, and access to more audio recordings.
WORD GUIDE
law: the legal system, the rules of the country - lawyer: a person who is an expert in the law - will: testament, a document in which a person says how their possessions are distributed when they die - inherit : become the owner of - request: ask - charity: an association of volunteers -
For teachers:
This article / exercise should not be difficult for intermediate students. Filling in the missing words involves a mixture of skills - logic, vocabulary and grammar depending on the case.Grammar point: "cats who". The relative pronoun who, generally reserved for humans, can be used for animals too when these are assimilated to humans, or have a human function, such as companionship, as in this article.
Grammar point: the passive. Pay attention to the several examples of simple passive structures in the final paragraph of this article.
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