Intensive Reading Material

Read this text carefully.

 SLEEP

After a hectic day of work and play, the body needs to rest. Sleep is necessary for good health. During this time, the body recovers from the activities of the previous day. The rest that you get while sleeping enables your body to prepare itself for the next day.

There are four levels of sleep, each being a little deeper than the one before. As you sleep, your muscles relax little by little. Your heart beats more slowly, and your brain slows down accordingly. After you reach the fourth level your body shifts back and forth from one level of to the other.

Although your mind goes down slowly, from time to time you will dream. Scientists who study sleep state that when dreaming occurs, your eyeballs begin to move more quickly although your eyelids are closed. This stage of sleep is called REM, which stands for rapid eye movement.

If you have trouble falling asleep, some people recommended breathing very slowly and very deeply. Other people generally believe that drinking warm milk will help make you drowsy. There is also an old suggestion that counting sheep will put you to sleep.

(Intermediate Reading Practice/Keith S. Folse)

TRUE LOVE

            My name is Joe. That is why my colleague, Milton Davidson, calls me. He is a programmer and I am a computer. I am part of the Multivac Complex and connected with other parts all over the world. I know everything. Almost everything.

            I am Milton’s private computer. His Joe. He understands more about computers than anyone in the world, and I am his experimental model. He has made me speak better than any other computer can.

            “It’s just a matter of matching sounds to symbols, Joe,” he told me. “That’s why it works in the human brain even though we still don’t know what symbols there are in the brain. I know the symbols in yours, and I can match them to words one to one,” so I talk I don’t think I talk as well as I think, but Milton says I talk very well. Milton has never married, though he is nearly 40 years old. He has never found the right woman, he told me. One day he said, “I’ll find her yet, Joe”. I am going to find the best. I am going to have true love and you’re going to help me. I’m tired of improving you in order to solve the problems of the world. Solve my problem, find me true love.

            I said, “What is true love?”

            “Never mind. That is abstract. Just find me the ideal girl. You are connected to the Multivac Complex so you can reach the data banks of every human being in the world. We’ll eliminate them all by groups and classes until we’re left with only one person. The perfect person. She will be for me.

            I said, “I am ready”.

            He said, “Eliminate all men first”.

            It was easy. His word activated symbols in molecular valves. I could reach out to make contact with the accumulated data on every human being in the world. At his words, I withdrew from 3,784,982,874 men. I kept contact with 3,786,112,090 women.

            He said, “Eliminate all younger than 25, all older than 25, all older than 40. Then eliminate all with IQ under 120; all with a height under 150 centimeters and over 175 centimeters.”

            He gave me exact measurement; he eliminated women with living children; he eliminated women with various genetic characteristics. “I am not sure about eye color.” He said. Let that so far a while. But no red hair. I don’t like red hair.

(Adapted from "Road to Reading": Washington DC, 1987, pp. 163-164)