B1 Reading Comprehension

Mother Teresa grew up in Skopje, Macedonia. Her parents

were the shopkeepers and she led a comfortable life. However, the

she often read books with stories about missionaries in India,

which she has found very interesting. She wanted to be a

missionary for herself, so, when she was still a teenager, she

became a nun and went to Calcutta.

There she taught them girls from rich families in a convent

school. Although she never did saw them, Mother Teresa

knew that the school was very near at some of the worst

slums. One night she heard an “inner voice” which told her

to stop her work much as a teacher and help the poor instead.

So, while she left the convent and began to live among the poor

in the slums. She walked barefoot and wore a white sari, yet

just as they did. She asked for help and was not being

disappointed. Many people sent money and presents.

The city let her to have an old house, and she began her work with

twelve other nuns. The people who came to her were every

usually very ill, or even dying, but she also looked after babies

who then had been left in the streets. In 1979, Mother Teresa

was awarded herself the Nobel Prize. She died in 1997.

Orcas, are also called killer whales, are the largest

members of the dolphin family. In contrast to their name,

orcas are mostly harmless to human beings. Then

there are no old records of orcas ever attacking humans.

Orcas are very sociable animals that live in groups

or pods and find them food together. You can rarely

see an orca which travelling around individually.

Although the total number of orcas worldwide is not

unknown, there are have thought to be about 100,000

orcas in the world's oceans today. There has been a ban

on still hunting orcas since the beginning of the 1980s

but many marine scientists believe if their population

is decreasing because of human activities like

overfishing and oil spills are reducing their food supplies.

Some orcas have been captured and taken to such

aquariums and the theme parks all over the world.

The most famous of them whales, Keiko, was the star

of the movie Free Willy in 1993.

The orca was freed off the coast of Iceland and swam across to Norway.

However, he was not been able to adapt fully to life in

the wild and died in 2003.