Reading comprehension.

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Devoir / 1ère A/ T3                                                                                                      M. Bleu

PART ONE: READING COMPREHENSION

Read the text bellow and do all the activities that follow.

Maria Emelina Cerrato, a shoemaker and the mother of three children, couldn’t obtain a normal bank loan to make her business successful. She learned her craft from her brother-in-law in a small town in Honduras. When she decided to start her own business in 1985, he lent her equipment and she started producing one dozen pairs of shoes a day, with sales totaling 240 lempira (about 120 dollars). Yet her net profit was only 55 lempira (about 27.50 dollars) - barely enough to provide food, education and minimum comfort for her family. Most of her gross profit went to go-betweens and a loan shark, from whom she borrowed the money for supplies and to whom she had to pay interest at the rate of 10 per cent a day.

Cerrato was convinced that if she could borrow money at a normal rate of interest and sell directly to consumers, she could do much better. But the traditional banks of Honduras would not even consider extending credit to her.

Maria Cerrato’s story is like those of women in many countries throughout the world. Traditional bankers see people like her as a bad risk. In the view of their loan officials, it is a waste of time and money even to consider making a loan to undereducated woman who has difficulty filling in a simple application form for a loan and who may not even know her date of birth.

This problem was noticed by Michaela Walsh, a senior official in a New York City bank in the midst 1970s. She saw, too, that women did 65 per cent of the world’s work, yet earned only 10 per cent of the income and owned less than 1 per cent of the world’s assets.

Say if each of the following statements is True or False and give the line(s) to justify your answer.

1. Maria Emelina Cearrato was a water-seller.
2. Maria Emelina has got three children.
3. She started her own business in 1985.
4. Loan officials refuse to give loans to women because they are undereducated.
5. 65 per cent of world’s work is done by men.

PART TWO:  LANGUAGE IN USE

1. Match each expression with its synonym or meaning.

EXPREESIONS                       MEANINGS OR SYNONYMS

1. To eradicate                                  a- widespread outbreak of a disease
2. An epidemic                                  b- a health center
3. A measure                                      c- to wipe out (get rid of completely)
4. A clinic                                             d- information in the form of figures
5. Statistics                                          e- a step or action

1. Complete these sentences with an illness or a person

(1………) may be immune to a disease.

(2………) may be resistant to a drug.

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