Раздел 2. (задания по чтению)

Прочитайте текст. Определите, какие из приведенных утверждений 10-17 соответствуют содержанию текста (1 - TRUE), какие не соответствуют (2 - FALSE) и о чем в тексте не сказано, то есть на основании текста нельзя дать ни положительного, ни отрицательного ответа (3 - NOT STATED). В поле ответа запишите одну цифру, которая соответствует номеру правильного ответа.

The Female Gondolier

А 35-year-old German woman has given up her eight-year battle to enter one of the most exclusive all-male cliques in the world and become Venice’s first female gondolier.

Alexandra Hai, from Hamburg, did not pass the basic gondoliering exam for the third time at the weekend, failing to impress a six-person panel. “I gave it my best shot but it’s no good. Venice’s first female gondolier isn’t going to be me,” she said, abandoning a dream that she had nurtured since moving to the city a decade ago.

Frau Hai works on Venice’s water buses and has spent years practising gondoliering. Gondoliers must steer and row with a single oar from the stem. This requires strength and years of training. For her exam Frau Hai was asked to steer a gondola about 800 metres up and down the narrow Rio del Vin. She bumped into another gondola during a previous attempt to pass the 20- minute test and admitted her performance this time was not faultless. “There was a bit, under the Ponte dei Greci bridge, when we met a police launch coming the other way and there I didn’t manage to hold the boat quite right”, she said. Nevertheless, she believed that she had performed well enough to pass and suggested that she may have been the victim of a desire to keep a foreign woman out of a close-knit masculine world. She noted that she had to take the test in the area that she did not know well. “It was always clear that to pass the test I was going to need an absolutely perfect performance, but they always manage to make things difficult for me,” she said. In 1996, after her first attempt, Frau Hai won an appeal on the grounds that there were no women in the examining commission.

Franco Vianello Moro, head of Venice’s gondola authority said,” Sexism had nothing to do with it. The two women on the commission, both rowing experts, agreed with the judgement that the candidate lacked the necessary ability in a gondola. He said that the strict tests and the limit of 425 on the number of gondoliers were needed to safeguard a unique tradition.

10.There are now several female gondoliers in Venice.

1) True 2) False 3) Not stated

11.Alexandra will keep on taking the test until she passes it.

1) True 2) False 3) Not stated

12.Alexandra has lived in Venice for the past ten years.

1) True 2) False 3) Not stated

13.In one of her tests Alexandra fell down.

1) True 2) False 3) Not stated

14.The driving test lasts about an hour.

1) True 2) False 3) Not stated

15.The gondola authority admits they are very strict.

1) True 2) False 3) Not stated

16.The gondola authority consists of men only.

1) True 2) False 3) Not stated

17.It is not easy for anybody to be a gondolier.

1) True 2) False 3) Not stated

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