Inference MCQs: the expression-in-context item and the two character adjectives

Reading comprehension. Read the text, then answer the question. The underlined expressions are printed in bold.

1. For eleven years, Karim Ben Ammar managed a bank branch in the centre of Tunis. He left home at seven, came back after nine and answered emails on Sundays. "I was burning the candle at both ends," he says, "and I did not even notice it until my doctor did."

2. At forty, after a long illness, he resigned. His colleagues thought he had lost his mind. Karim moved into his late grandfather's house in the medina, where he found, wrapped in an old blanket, the oud his grandfather had built in 1962. He took it to one of the last oud makers in the neighbourhood, a man in his seventies, and asked him to pass on his craft.

3. Today, Karim makes about twelve instruments a year in a small room that smells of walnut and glue. Each one takes more than two hundred hours of work and sells for less than a month of his old salary. "Each oud is a labour of love," he explains. "If I counted my hours, I would stop tomorrow."

4. Karim could make more instruments by buying ready-made parts, but he refuses to cut corners. He chooses every piece of wood himself and leaves the body of each oud to dry for a full year before he varnishes it. Last spring, a well-known Tunisian musician played one of his instruments on stage. "When I heard it, I knew those two hundred hours were worth it," Karim says.

Practice text written in the style of the adapted press articles of the bac papers.

What do the underlined expressions mean? Tick (✓) the most appropriate option. (3 marks)

A. “burning the candle at both ends” (paragraph 1) nearly means:

a. wasting electricity at home ☐

b. working too hard and resting too little ☐

c. spending money carelessly ☐

B. “a labour of love” (paragraph 3) nearly means:

a. a romantic present ☐

b. a task he is forced to do ☐

c. work done for passion rather than for money ☐

C. “refuses to cut corners” (paragraph 4) nearly means: he refuses to

a. make his instruments smaller ☐

b. do the work quickly and badly to save time or money ☐

c. change the traditional shape of the oud ☐

Reading comprehension. Read the text, then answer the question. The underlined expressions are printed in bold.

1. Nour Jlassi was sixteen when she lifted a barbell for the first time, in a small club in Kasserine with no heating and one set of weights for twenty athletes. Four years later, she won the African junior title in the 64-kilogram category.

2. Then, in 2022, she injured her back during training. Doctors told her she would need at least a year to lift again, and some said she should stop for good. Many athletes would have thrown in the towel. Nour spent eight months doing painful exercises in a swimming pool, three hours a day, before she was allowed to touch a barbell again.

3. She came back stronger. Last year she lifted 105 kilograms, the best result of her career, and she now coaches the girls of her old club on Sunday mornings. "I set the bar high for them," she says with a smile. "I ask them to be on time, to train properly and to finish their studies. A medal is not enough."

Practice text written in the style of the adapted press articles of the bac papers.

Tick (✓) the right alternative. (2 marks)

A. “thrown in the towel” (paragraph 2) nearly means:

a. stopped trying ☐

b. lost a competition ☐

c. gone to the swimming pool ☐

B. “set the bar high” (paragraph 3) nearly means:

a. put heavy weights on the barbell ☐

b. demand a lot from someone ☐

c. raise the price of training ☐

Reading comprehension. Read the text, then answer the question.

1. For three years, the lift of Building C in the Aïn Mariem district of Bizerte did not work. The fourteen families on the upper floors complained to the owner again and again, and they grew angry each time he promised a repair that never came. Mrs Hlima, who is eighty-two and lives on the ninth floor, did not leave her flat for eleven months.

2. Last winter, Yasmine Ferchichi, a seventeen-year-old girl from the fifth floor, decided to act. She baked cakes every weekend and sold them at the Saturday market, organised a football tournament for the children of the district and asked every shop in the street for a small donation. In seven months she raised 9,400 dinars, enough to pay a company to repair the lift.

3. On the morning the lift worked again, the residents gathered in the entrance hall. Some of the older neighbours had tears in their eyes when the doors opened; others kept asking how a teenager had managed what the owner had refused to do for three years. Mrs Hlima was the first to ride down to the ground floor. "I have not seen the sea for a year," she said, holding Yasmine's hand.

Practice text written in the style of the adapted press articles of the bac papers.

Focus on paragraph 3 and circle the two adjectives that best describe the residents' reaction to the repaired lift. (2 marks)

indifferent – astonished – angry – moved

Reading comprehension. Read the text, then answer the question.

1. When Salma Riahi, then twenty-one, applied for a job at a car repair garage in Sousse, the owner laughed. "Women don't repair engines," he told her. Five other garages turned her down in the same month.

2. For a few weeks she stayed at home, angry and discouraged. Then she found an old mechanic, Am Béchir, who agreed to let her watch him work if she swept the floor every evening. For two years she swept, watched, asked questions and, little by little, repaired her first gearboxes. At night she read the repair manuals of every car model she could find.

3. Today, at thirty, Salma runs her own garage with three employees. Her customers are men and women, taxi drivers and families. When young women ask her for advice, she always gives the same answer: "Nobody will open the door for you. Knock again the next day."

Practice text written in the style of the adapted press articles of the bac papers.

Circle one adjective that best describes Salma. (1 mark)

Salma is (frustrated – determined – careless)