Задание 26. ЕГЭ-2016 - Задание 26: все задания

(1) The story of the Sugababes starts with two self-confident eight-year-old friends from London who (A)________ a hatred of maths but loved singing along to the radio. (2) Mutya and Keisha then met Siobhan who joined their “gang”. (3) They (B)________ writing and singing and at fourteen the group (C)________ their first record deal. (4) Just two years later, when their classmates were studying for their exams, the girls (D)________ their first album, the incredibly cool One Touch.

(5) But it wasn’t as easy as it (E)________. (6) The album didn’t get publicity and Siobhan decided to leave the group. (7) Keisha and Mutya advertised for another girl but did not want to mention the group name. (8) “We wanted someone who could sing and had her own ideas,” they said. (9) That was Heidi. (10) Heidi used to be in the girlband Atomic Kitten but she left because she never quite (F)________ in.

(11) Heidi was desperate to sing live in concerts and do her own writing — and she soon realised that she would never be able to do this in a “manufactured” band. (12) Her love of urban music made her the perfect Sugababe. (13) The three became friends as soon as they met and (G)________ to write and record the huge Angels with Dirty Faces album.

Scientists (A)________ that the youngest language in the world is Afrikaans, spoken by South Africans. Dutch and German Protestants avoided persecution from the Roman Catholic Church in the 17th and 18th centuries to (B)________ in the Dutch colony of the Cape of Good Hope on the southern point of Africa.

By the early 20th century Afrikaans had developed from Dutch, German and other influences into a(n) (C)________ independent language with its own dictionaries. It is the third most spoken language in South Africa (Zulu being the most spoken, the Zulu people being the largest ethnic group there). New languages develop as different cultures meet and (D)________.

For instance, about 700 different languages are spoken in London. In some suburbs of big cities (E)________ London and New York, English is now a second language. The same is happening — or has taken place — in cities such as Los Angeles, Miami and Singapore. Already the Internet and mobile phone texting are influencing the development of languages as people communicate (F)________ across cultural and regional borders.

The smallest country in the world is the Vatican. It also is the only country where Latin is the official language. Somalia is the only country in the world where all the (G)________ speak one language, Somali.

Many of us built paper planes to (A)________ around the classroom, but a team of British enthusiasts had more ambitious plans — to send a paper plane towards the edge of space. Last week, the aircraft, built from paper and paper straws, and with a three-foot wingspan, was launched from a site in Spain. A helium balloon (B)________ it to an altitude of 90,00ft (17 miles) — not, admittedly, very (C)________ to outer space (which is considered to begin around 50 miles above the Earth’s surface), but higher than a jumbo jet would normally fly (39,000ft). The balloon then (D)________, allowing the plane to glide gently back to Earth.

Along the way, it took pictures (E)________ a miniature camera before landing 100 miles from the launch site, whole but for a tear in its wing.

The project was masterminded by Steve Darnels, John Oates and Lester Haines, who said they (F)________ with the idea after being (G)________ by a project last year to send a lump of cheese into space. They had done it, they said, for a “laugh”.

Most pubs in Bermuda have two TVs, one for cricket and one for baseball. In recent decades, American cultural (A)________ over this little archipelago in the western Atlantic has been strong, but it remains a British Overseas Territory — the oldest of all.

Bermuda is oldfashioned, democratic and very friendly — (B)________ the eye of any stranger in the street and they’ll smile and say hello.

The island was known (C)________ the Spanish but still uninhabited in 1609, when Sir George Somers ran aground on a sandbank in a storm and claimed it for the Crown. The “pretty” town of St George’s, which he founded, is the oldest English community in the New World.

Pink is the island’s “defining colour”. It’s a popular shade for the neatly pressed Bermuda shorts (D)________ by some locals (usually with a jacket and a tie).

Many of the island’s bungalows are pink, its buses are pink — and so are its beaches, (E)________ to grains of coral in the sand.

(F)________ Bermuda’s other natural wonders are Crystal Cave — a cavern complex with stalagmites and stalactites — and its rich bird’s life: like Prospero’s isle, “full of noises, sounds and sweet airs”, Bermuda “thrums to the sound of birdsong (G)________ dawn and twilight”.

Our high school years are the defining times in our lives that shape who we are, where we are going, and what we are going to do. Aside from this, they (A) ________ us to build strong friendships with people. We get to see which people are going to be there for the (B) ________ of our lives and those who will just disappear over the years.

A friend is someone who is there for you, through it all. Through the pressure, and drama, they are the one constant thing in your life that never fades away. I have realized at the (C) ________ of sixteen that friends are not something you should take lightly, if we have found even just a (D) ________ we are blessed.

They are the people that we sing our lungs out in the car shouting "Glamorous", the people we cry to, and most importantly the people who will always have a shoulder to (E) ________ on.

It is essential to evaluate your (F) ________ with your friends. You can see if they are the people you can go to with anything or if they are just another face in the (G) ________ when you have a serious issue going on.

Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth in 1812 and died in London in 1870. He is buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. Dickens spent (A) ________ his life in London and often used to walk (B) ________ ten and twenty miles all over the city when he was (C) ________ to sleep and was thinking about the plot of a new novel. (D) ________ walking, he used to observe the sights, sounds and smells of London in order to write about them. (E) ________ the Industrial Revolution Britain, and especially London grew very quickly.

Why are Levi Denims Called “Jeans”?

In (F) ________, when Levi Strauss ran out of tent canvas for the pants he was selling to California gold miners, he imported a tough material from Nomes in France called serge de Nomes. Americanized, de Nomes became “denim”. The word “jeans” is from the French word for Genoa, (G) ________ the tough cloth was invented. Jeans became popular with teenagers after James Dean wore them in the movie Rebel without a Cause.

It is not just humans, chimpanzees and gorillas that don't have tails. Other apes (A)________ orang-utans, bonobos and gibbons do not have them (B)________.

Basically, tails are (C)________ to provide balance for animals, particularly those that might live (D)________ trees. A tail counterbalances the weight of the head at the front of the body. (E)________ humans became more upright and some apes started to use arms for more than just (F)________, the need for a tail for balancing became smaller, so over time and through evolution, it faded out.

(G)________, we do have the remains of a tail – the bottom three or four vertebrae of the human spine are fused together to form the tailbone (coccyx).

This still has a use, anchoring muscles such as the one of your bottom, and it still really hurts if you fall on it.

Ben Alexander always struggled to (A)________ in. Teased at school, he (B)________ to the internet, where he found a whole new world of friends. Subscribing (C)________ the hugely popular online game World of Warcraft, he (D)________ 12 million other people — including the actor Vin Diesel, the presenter Jonathan Ross and his wife Jane Goldman — in a quest reminiscent of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

In the game, players create avatars in whose guise they spend hours with other players fighting battles. “There’s lots of working together,” says Alexander. “That’s what made it so attractive, because the social thing was something I always had trouble with. It was a lot easier to socialize and make friends online than it was in real life."

The 19-year-old’s interest in the game soon developed into an obsession. He began (E)________ his biology lectures at university and spending up to 17 hours a day online. Eventually he had depression diagnosed and was (F)________ medication. He was also treated (G)________ internet addiction.

Alexander admits that he needed help: “I don’t think I would have been able to get out of it myself.”

Many believe that the story first began in America in 1877, when two friends were (A)________ over whether a horse ever had all four feet or hooves off the ground when it galloped. To settle the bet, a photographer was asked to photograph a horse galloping and the bet was settled because you could see that all the hooves were off the ground in some of the photos. What was even more interesting was that if the photos were shown in quick succession the horse looked (B)________ it was running — in other words ‘moving pictures’. The person who became interested in (C)________ the moving pictures to its next step was the famous American inventor Thomas Edison. Actually, he didn’t do the work himself but rather asked a young Scotsman in his employ to design a system, which he did. Now this young fellow was clever because the first thing he did was study other systems primitive as they were — of moving pictures and then put all the existing technologies together to make the first entire motion picture system. He designed a camera, a projection device and the film. The system was first shown in New York in 1894 and was really very popular. Apparently people lined up around the block to see the wonderful new invention. There were, however, a couple of problems with the system. The camera weighed over 200 kilograms and only one person at a time could see the film. Well now, news of the new system in America (D)________ fast and a number of rival European systems started to appear once people had heard about it. The single problem with all the systems was that they couldn’t really (E)________ the film onto a screen — you know, so more than one person could see it. Then in 1895, three systems were developed, more or less at the same time and independently of each other. I guess the most famous of these was (F)________ the Lumiere Brothers from France, and they called their system the cinematograph which of course is where the word cinema comes from. Well now, once the problem of projection had been solved, the next (G)________ for the inventors was to make the films longer and more interesting. A continuing problem at the time was that the films had a tendency to break when they were being played — a problem which was caused by the tension between the two wheels, or ‘reels’ as they are called, which hold the film.