Questões de Concurso Comentadas sobre verbos frasais | phrasal verbs em inglês

While at home in Ireland my poor mother wept bitter tears at the thought of her daughter with the university education serving hamburgers to pop stars.

I had been working there about six months the night I met James. It was a Friday night, which was traditionally the night the OJs frequented our restaurant. “OJ” standing, of course, for Office Jerks.

At five o’clock every Friday, like graves disgorging their dead, offices all over the center of London liberated their staffs for the weekend so that hordes of pale, cheapsuited clerks descended on us.

It was de rigueur for us waitresses to stand around sneering disdainfully at the besuited clientele, shaking our heads in disbelieving pity at the attire, hairstyles, etc., of the poor customers.

On the night in question, James and three of his colleagues sat in my section and I attended to their needs in my normal irresponsible and slapdash fashion. I paid them almost no attention whatsoever, barely listened to them as I took their order and certainly made no eye contact with them. If I had I might have noticed that one of them (yes, James, of course) was very handsome, in a black-haired, green-eyed, five-foottenish kind of way. I should have looked beyond the suit and seen the soul of the man.

Oh, shallowness, thy name is Clare.

But I wanted to be out back with the other waitresses, drinking beer and smoking and talking about sex. Customers were an unwelcome interference.

“Can I have my stake very rare?” asked one of the men.

“Um,” I said vaguely. I was even more uninterested than usual because I had noticed a book on the table. It was a really good book, one that I had read myself.

I loved books. And I loved reading. And I loved men who read. I loved a man who knew his existentialism from his magi-realism.And I had spent the last six months working with people who could just about manage to read Stage magazine (laboriously mouthing the words silently as they did so). I suddenly realized, with a pang, how much I missed the odd bit of intelligent conversation.

Suddenly the people at this table stopped being mere irritants and took on some sort of identity for me.

“Who owns this book?” I asked abruptly, interrupting the order placing.

The table of four men were startled. I had spoken to them! I had treated them almost as if they were human!

“I do,” said James, and as my blue eyes met his green eyes across his mango daiquiri, that was it, the silvery magic dust was sprinkled on us. In that instant something wonderful happened. From the moment we really looked at each other, we both knew we had met someone special.

I maintained that we fell in love immediately.

He maintained nothing of the sort, and said that I was a romantic fool. He claimed it took at least thirty seconds longer for him to fall in love with me.

First of all he had to establish that I had read the book in question also. Because he thought that I must be some kind of not-so-bright model or singer if I was working there. You know, the same way that I had written him off as some kind of subhuman clerk. Served me right.

KEYES, Marian. Watermelon. New York: Perennial, HarperCollins, 2002 (Edited).

Read the text and mark the CORRECT alternative form question:

Windsurfing around Britain

   Kevin Cookston, a 23-year-old engineering student, has been keen on windsurfing for many years. Recently, he set a new record for travelling all the way round the coast of Great Britain on a windsurf board.

   'I don‟t really know why I did it,‟ says Kevin, ‟just for the fun of it, I suppose. It was there to be done, that was all.‟ Despite lacking both the obsessive ambition and the funds that normally go with attempts to break records, Kevin made the journey in eight weeks and six days, knocking one week off the previous record set in 1984.

   Leaving from Exmouth in the south-west of England, Kevin travelled up the west coast of England and Wales, before going round the top of Scotland and then coming back down the other side. The journey officially covered 2.896 kilometres, although given the changes of direction to find the right wind paths, the actual distance Kevin travelled is probably closer to 4.000 km.

    Kevin fitted his fitness training in around his final year university examinations. ‟I didn‟t have that much time to prepare,‟ he explains. ‟But I went running often and supplemented that with trips to the gym to do weight training. I found I got a lot better during the trip itself actually. At the start, I was tired and needed a rest after four hours, but by the end I found I could do ten hours in a row no trouble.‟

   Kevin had a budget of £7.000 to cover the whole expedition. The previous record had been set with a budget twice that size, while a recent unsuccessful attempt had cost £40.000. Budgets have to meet the cost of fuel, food and accommodation for the support team, as well as the windsurfer's own equipment and expenses.

   Previous contenders had been accompanied by a boat on which they slept at night, as well as a fleet of vehicles on land to carry their supplies. Kevin made do with an inflatable rubber boat and an old van manned by four friends who followed his progress. Overnight arrangements had to be found along the way. Apart from the odd occasion when they enjoyed the hospitality of friends, the team made use of the camping equipment carried in the van, and slept on the beach.

   When asked if his athlete‟s diet was a closely kept secret, Kevin replied that he ate a lot of pasta and added the odd tin of tuna to keep up his energy. ‟Basically, we had anything that was on special offer in the nearest supermarket, he confided.

  Such a prolongued period of gruelling windsurfing made relaxation important however, and for this, Kevin favoured the pub method. This also provided social opportunities.“The people we met were really encouraging he recalls“. 'They thought what we were doing was really great. It was hard work, but we had a lot of fun along the way“. 

   Kevin has been windsurfing since he was thirteen years old and he is also a highly-ranked competitor at national level. ‟I don‟t know where I‟m ranked now,‟ he says, `because I‟ve missed a lot of important competitions this year. But what I did has more than made up for that and I‟ll be doing my best to be up there amongst the winners once I get back into the competitive sport next season‟. Given his unique achievement this year, Kevin seems well-placed to take on the world‟s top windsurfers. 

Fonte: First Certificate Practice Tests Plus 1, pg 116 Kenny/ Luque-Mortimer, Ed. Longman