1. Read the following text carefully. Mark’s story My name’s Mark. I guess I started using drugs to fit in. My family moved around a lot. From the time I was in the 2nd grade, we moved pretty much every three or four years. Every time I settled down and made some friends, we picked up and moved again. My family is well-off – we live in a nice neighborhood, in a nice house. But we’ve always had a lot of problems. We didn’t know how to communicate. My parents would fight constantly, and I would fight with my sister. Our family was always messed up, but nobody admitted it. My mom had this image to project of a perfect family. But she would scream and shout at us when nobody was watching. I started drinking in the 9th grade. I had gone with a girl for about a year, and I guess I was in love with her. When she left me, I didn’t really have anybody. She was my only friend. So I just started drinking. I think it was just something to do. Then I met another kid and we became really close friends. I didn’t drink a lot then, because he didn’t. We played basketball all the time. And then at the end of the 9th grade he moved out to California. I didn’t have anything to do. I didn’t fit in. And then I met these kids who used drugs, and they immediately accepted me. We didn’t really have anything in common except drugs, and I didn’t even like them that much. I started using pot. To pay for my drugs, I stole money from my mom and dad. I would steal stuff from the house and sell it, and I would buy pot and get high. I sold watches. I sold Christmas presents. I started selling drugs – I just sold them to smoke for free. I went to basketball practice high all the time. I laughed at everybody and did whatever I wanted. I got kicked off of the team very quickly. I tried acid one New Year’s and that became a regular thing for me. I was also using cocaine and inhalants. My parents discovered it one day and said, “This has gone too far. You have to go into therapy.” I think they already knew I was using drugs but they didn’t want to do anything. To them we were a perfect family and this just couldn’t happen. My mom is a teacher and everybody knows her in our community, and my dad is the director of a big corporation. My parents forced me into therapy. I went there three times a week. But I didn’t want to do it. I thought I could stop when I wanted, but I just didn’t want to. I went high to group therapy. My therapist said, “You will have to go to rehab. You are addicted.” I didn’t really believe it, but I was afraid of losing my friends. So I stopped smoking pot, but I was still drinking and using acid, because I believed they wouldn’t show up in the urine tests. During the whole time I was lying to people, to my parents, to the therapist, and to myself…” in Scholastic Choices, October 1996 (adapted)
2. Complete the following reading scheme.
6
1 ______________________________ 2 ______________________________ 7 6
10 2
3
3 ______________________________ 4 ______________________________ 5 ______________________________
1
6 ______________________________ 5 9 6
4
7 ______________________________ 8 6
8 ______________________________ 9 ______________________________ 10 ______________________________
3. Say if the following statements about the text are TRUE or FALSE. Justify with a quotation from the text. 3.1 Mark’s parents do not have a lot of economic problems. 3.2 Mark started drinking because of peer pressure. 3.3 When he was practising basketball, he never took any drugs. 3.4 Mark went into therapy because he admitted he needed help. 4.
Answer these questions about the text. 4.1 What was Mark’s first addiction? Why did it start? 4.2 Why did Mark join a new group of teenagers? 4.3 How did he get the money to buy drugs? 4.4 Comment on his family’s reaction to his addiction.
5. Say what the following words (underlined in the text) refer to: 5.1 my 5.4 we 5.2 she 5.5 who 5.3 her 5.6 it 6. Find synonyms in the text for the following definitions. 6.1 in a good position, especially financially 6.2 left his old home 6.3 marijuana 6.4 under the influence of drugs 6.5 dismissed 6.6 a medical treatment designed to cure the dependency on drugs
5.7 them 5.8 they 5.9 it