Part I. Reading
Task 1. Read the following text. Five sentences have been removed from the text. Match the
sentences A-F to the gaps 1-5 and write the correct letter on the answer sheet. There’s one extra
sentences that you do not need to use.
A. The good news is that there is going to be a big park all around it.
B. It’s parked at the entrance to your apartment on the 77
th
floor.
C. Only the enormous central cylinder will be built at the site.
D. Each of these luxury apartments will be massive.
E. This will make it the first skyscraper in history to produce its own electricity.
F. This won’t be the world’s tallest skyscraper, but it will be the most amazing.
The World’s Coolest Skyscraper
Humans have built incredible structures, including the Great Wall of China and the Pyramids of Egypt.
But there’s one thing that even the world’s most amazing structures can’t do: alter their shapes. Well,
that is soon going to change.
Someday, it is possible that you will be living in a shape-shifting skyscraper that never stays still. The
first of these buildings, which are called Dynamic Towers, will be in Dubai, a city in the United Arab
Emirates in the Middle East. (1) ______ Each floor will be constantly moving, rotating on its own and at
different speeds – like an 80-storey Rubik’s Cube that invisible hands are always twisting. ‘These
buildings will never look the same’, according to David Fisher, the architect behind the idea.
This may sound like fantasy, but within a few years the Dynamic Tower will have become a reality,
and it will be built in a unique way. Skyscrapers are usually built one floor at a time – from the bottom
up. But not the Dynamic Tower: it will be the world’s first skyscraper to be built in a factory. (2) ___
This will weigh about half a million kilos, and it will contain water pipes and lifts. While they are
building the cylinder, each floor will be made in segments at a factory. These will arrive at the
construction site ready to be added to the central cylinder, and even the furniture will be inside. A
machine will lift the segments up the sides of the building and attach them to the cylinder from the top
down, making construction safer, faster and less expensive.
The first 35 floors will consist of offices and a luxury hotel. Floors 36 to 70 will have numerous
apartments, but each of the top ten floors in the 80-storey tower will be a single apartment. While theThe Third English Language Contest for School children, 2014 - 2015
Form: 9 Page 2
architect will control the movement of most of the floors, anyone who pays around $36 million for one
of the top ten apartments will be able to move it however they like. (3)____ They will have more space
inside than five average houses put together.
The Dynamic Tower will get all its power from environmentally-friendly sources. Wind will provide
the energy for the towers motion. (4) ____ To generate electricity, the Dubai skyscraper will have
windmill blades placed horizontally between each floor of the building. There will be 79 of these wind
turbines. In addition, the roofs of each of the floors will have solar panels to capture the sun’s energy.
Combined, these two sources will generate enough electricity to power the whole tower – and several
nearby skyscrapers as well.
So what will life as a resident of a Dynamic Tower be like? Well, imagine you’re in your kitchen eating
breakfast more than 400 metres above the ground and you decide you want a different view. ‘Ocean
view’, you call out. A voice-activated control system begins to rotate your luxury apartment. After
breakfast, you go for a quick swim before school. You dive into the indoor pool right next to your
bedroom. Then you and your mum get into the family car. (5) ____ She drives it into a huge lift, which
takes you down to the ground floor. Off you go!