Directions: You are expected to study this section in class. Don’t preview.

Word Pretest

For each italicized word or expression, choose the best meaning below.

1. The rocket blasted off at Cape Kennedy at 8:00 a.m. this morning.
A. put off              B. blew out
C. broke up            D. took off
2. Jean is ingenious; she will come up with a way to do this work.
A. thoughtful         B. frank
C. clever              D. optimistic
3. Your experience parallels my own.
A. differs from         B. corresponds with
C. is contrary to        D. is related to
4. Their mission was to irrigate the desert.
A. end                B. achievement
C. task                D. dream
5. They charted the sea area between Britain and France.
A. made a plan of      B. made a record of
C. made a mark of      D. made a map of
6. Life in this small country village used to be well-known for its tranquillity.
A. peacefulness         B. noisiness
C. excitement          C. safety
7. The spaceship splashed down in the Pacific..
A. struck              B. landed
C. exploded           D. split

Text A
Jules Verne's Trip to the Moon

The blast-off from Florida was almost ideal. The spacecraft was headed for a date with the moon! Inside, three brave men got up from their couches. One of the men brought out a bottle of wine, and they all gave a toast to the earth and the moon.         As you may have guessed, what you have just read never really happened. Yes, the report describes a trip to the moon. But it comes from a fantasy published in 1865.   The story, From the Earth to the Moon, came from the ingenious mind of Jules Verne, the French father of science fiction.
For thousands of years people have been fascinated by the moon. Throughout    history many writers from different countries had written about imaginary moon  voyages. Verne was one of those writers, but Verne's moon trip story was the first    attempt to reach the moon by truly scientific means in modern fiction. Different from the moon travel fantasies before it, Verne's story contains some descriptions that amazingly parallel twentieth-century actual moon flights although the idea of man's really going on a trip seemed impossible when Verne wrote his story. In many cases, From the Earth to the Moon is almost a reportorial account of the historic event more than 100 years later -- the Apollo 11 flight of 1969.
Verne believed that man would one day reach the moon. He also believed that the first man to do so would be an American. In Verne's story, the spacecraft carded  three moon travelers: Impey Barbicane, Captain Nicholl, and Michel Ardan. The Apollo 11 spacecraft carded three men also. You probably remember their names --    Neil Armstrong, "Buzz" Aldrin and Mike Collins.
The size of Verne's craft and the real one were very much alike. Verne's ship    was 15 feet high and 9 feet across. The Apollo 11 command ship was just a bit smaller -- 10 feet, 7 inches high and 12 feet, 10 inches across.
Veme had his spaceship blast off from Florida, only about 140 miles west of    Cape Kennedy where the three-man Apollo 11 spacecraft was launched! And in    Verne's story, Texas fought hard for honor of having the blast-off there. As you know,   Texas was the home of Mission Control.
At first, the speed of Verne's craft was 36,000 feet per second. Apollo l l's speed, after the firing of its third-stage engine, was 35,553 feet per second!
Verne gave his ship 97 hours, 13 minutes, 20 seconds to reach the moon. Apollo's time was 103 hours, 30 minutes. Verne's spaceship circled the moon several times, and often it was at the exact height flown by the Apollo command ship.
The men in both ships studied the moon's surface from above. The Verne men  even charted the Sea of Tranquillity. And the Sea of Tranquillity is the place where    Neil Armstrong took his "one small step" 104 years later. Even the endings of the trip were very much alike. In both cases the spaceship splashed down on return in the Pacific Ocean. And the men in the spaceship were picked up by an American ship!
How could Jules Verne make up a story that came so close to the real thing? He had no magic power; he could not know what would happen 104 years later. But he    did know a great deal about the laws of science, so he wrote an adventure story based on them. The plans for the flight of Apollo 11 were based on these same laws.
Of course, there were some differences between Verne's flight and the flight of Apollo 11.
How did Verne's spacecraft get up into the air? The power came from, instead of a rocket, a 900-foot cannon drilled vertically into the soil and loaded with 400,000 pounds of guncotton. What was life like inside the spacecraft ? The three men cooked meals with gas. And they had eight extra passengers -- two dogs and six chickens. In addition, the men had cuttings from some grape vines, which they hoped to plant on the moon.
But the surprising thing is the number of ways the flights were alike. Here is one more. Do you remember the name of the Apollo 11 command ship that Mike Collins piloted? It was Columbia. Jules Verne had given his spacecraft a name 104 years earlier. He called it Columbiad!
Total words: 730
Total reading time: minutes   seconds            
             
The text is based on New Reading Skill Builder by Sinclair and Sparks. New York: Reader's Digest Services, Inc., 1971.

◆ Reading Skill   Recognizing the Pattern of Details
Read the following passage carefully, and identify the organizational pattern(s) with the help of the signal words or phrases.

The size of Verne's craft and the real one were very much alike. Verne's ship was 15 feet high and 9 feet across. The Apollo 11 command ship was just a bit smaller -- 10 feet, 7 inches high and 12 feet, 10 inches across.
Verne had his spaceship blast off from Florida, only about 140 miles west of Cape Kennedy where the three-man Apollo 11 spacecraft was launched! And in Verne's story, Texas fought hard for honor of having the blast-off there. As you know, Texas was the home of Mission Control.
Pattern(s):

◆Reading Comprehension
Circle the letter of the best answer.

1. When did From the Earth to the Moon appear?         .
A. In the 17th century
B. In the 18th century
C. In the 19th century
2. Where did Jules Verne come from?                    .
A. America
B. France
C. Britain
3. Verne's moon story differed from the moon fantasies before it in that             .
A. he based his fantasy story on a dream
B. his moon trip was accomplished by truly scientific means
C. his characters tried to reach the moon by a rocket
4. Who did Verne believe to be the first to reach the moon?         .
A. An American.
B. A Frenchman.
C. An Englishman.
5. When was the Apollo 11 launched?
A. 1865.
B. 1869.
C. 1969.
6. The Apollo 11 spacecraft was launched from             .
A. Florida
B. Cape Kennedy
C. the Pacific Ocean
7. Which of the following statements about both the Verne's and the Apollo 11   spaceships is not true?
A. The sizes of the two spaceships were similar to each other.
B. The names of the Verne's spaceship and that of Apollo 1 l's command ship were almost the same except for a letter.
C. The power for the take-off of the two spaceships came from two rockets.
8. In both cases, the spaceship
A. remained on the moon
B. returned to where it was launched
C. splashed down in the Pacific Ocean

◆Vocabulary Building
Word Match
Match the following words with their definitions within each group of five.

couch             give out
extraterrestrial     all those who man a ship or aircraft
emit              send off quickly to a destination
dispatch          sofa
crew             living in regions outside earth and its atmosphere
random           an imitation or substitute for the real thing
crisp             lacking definite order
dummy          a space from which all air has been taken away
vacuum           a boxlike container
carton            hard and dry; easily broken
sip              appealing to the appetite
appetizing         make (sb.) feel stronger or more energetic
refresh           search by feeling
faucet            device that regulates the flow of liquid from a pipe
fumble          drink little by little
captivate        feeling or expressing anger or scorn, esp. at unjust treatment
directory         capture the attention of
indignant         a book or list of names, usu. arranged in alphabetical order
cutting           a false belief
delusion         small shoot or other pan cut from a plant and used to grow a                      new plant

②Semantic Variations:
For each italicized word, decide which semantic variation best expresses the meaning of the author. Circle the letter of the best answer.

1. head (A: 1)
A. top of anything
B. chief, leader
C. to move in a certain direction
2. toast (A: 3)
A. sliced bread browned by heat
B. to warm thoroughly
C. act of drinking in honor of someone or something
3.flight (A: 13)
A. the act of running away
B. series of steps
C. a journey through space
4. craft (A: 22)
A. cunning
B. special skill
C. spaceship
5. monitor (B: 2)
A. to observe or record
B. a TV set used for viewing or checking
C. a student selected for special duties
6. seal (B: 36)
A. a sea animal
B. to enclose
C. a stamp

③ Stems
Study the following stems and their meanings. List some more examples in the space provided.

terrain:          1.           2.           3.           4:                          
scrib/scrip : 1.           2.           3.           4:                      

Read each of the following sentences, and write down the meaning of the italicized word in the space provided.

1. The doctor prescribed some pills for my headache.
Prescribed:

2. The old lady was robbed of her handbag, but she could not give a description of the robber.
Description:

3. Before the general offensive, the commander-in-chief had made a detailed study of the terrain.
Terrain:

4. The old man subscribed to three kinds of newspaper.
subscribe:

5. They defeated the enemy forces on their own home territory and successfully    safeguarded their country's territorial integrity.
territory:

6. Does extraterrestrial life exist?
extraterrestrial:

④Antonyms
Circle the one word in each of the following groups that is the antonym of the other three.
1. vanish          disappear     appear        fade
2. reluctant        unwilling     hesitant       ready
3. expose          disclose      show         cover
4. clumsy          incompetent   skillful       awkward
5. deliberate       careless       intentional    purposeful

◆Cloze
Fill in each blank with a word given below. Change the form of the word if necessary.
prefer        focusing      categorize    works
wonders      convey       plot         psychologically
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) is usually regarded as the first true work of science fiction, followed by the           of Jules Verne. Science fiction is speculative writing, usually         on life in the future, either on Earth or on some other planet. When the setting is the present, the           depends upon some presumably advanced science or technology. Different from fantastic elements in fairy tale, in science fiction, magic is replaced by technological wonders. Much of science fiction is devoted to dramatizing the           of technology although science fiction is usually not especially scientific.
Some works we          as science fiction may be better termed space fiction. This is the term          by Sylvia Engdahl, whose Enchantress from the Stars and other works are set in the future and on distant planets. Engdahl treats her futuristic setting as simply the framework through which she           her sense of the development of human civilization, socially and          rather than scientifically and technologically.