Es11

A - The origins of a thief
B - The "Count" and the bank manager
C - A plan in Paris
D - Explaining the details
E - He does it again
F - Caught at last

 

 Es12
Nouns: alias, forger, con
Adjectives: controversial
Verbs: hand over, flee

 

 Es13

1. An alias is a false identity.
2. A con is when someone believes a criminal's lies and give him the money.
3. A person who makes realistic copies of money, documents, etc. is a forger.
4. When something causes arguments, we say it's controversial.
5. To flee is to escape quickly, especially when you are in danger
6. To hand over something is to give it to another person.

Es14
When you come across new words in a text:

1. Don't panic - often you don't need them to understand the main ideas of the text
2. Decide what part of speech they are
3. Guess their meaning by looking carefully at the context.

Es15

1. People still talk about Victor today because he committed some fascinating crimes.
2. Victor thought of his plan to sell the Eiffel tower while he was reading a newspaper in Paris.
3. The French businessmen thought Victor worked for the French Post Office.
4. Victor's victim, Poisson, didn't go to the police because he didn't want anyone to know how stupid he had been.
5. Victor sold the Eiffel Tower a second time because it had worked perfectly the first time.
6. The police had arrested Victor many times before 1935.

Es16
A: I think Victor Lustig was a bad criminal and should be condemned.
B: I don't agree. The people he conned were greedy.
A: However, Victor Lustig has to be condemned because his behaviour is improper toward the honest workers.
B: Planning fascinating crimes requires cleverness.
A: But it is an evil activity, and evil activities are negative at any rate, even if they are creative or intelligent. Victor Lustig is a wicked criminal and has to be punished as soon as possible.
B: The people he conned were also gullible and clumsy. If they had been more careful and sensible, they wouldn't have been conned.
A: It is no excuse. Lustig acted against law and so he has to be condemned.

 

Es13
Thomas Alva Edison invented the phonograph. B
Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa. A
Agatha Christie wrote crime novels. C
Albert Einstein proposed the theory of relativity. D

 

Es14

1. If Edison hadn't invented the phonograph, the music industry would have developed in a very different way.
2. They wouldn't have made a lot of films like Murder on the Orient Express if Agatha Christie hadn't written novels.
3. If Leonardo da Vinci hadn't been a famous painter, Dan Brown wouldn't have written The da Vinci code.
4. Einstein wouldn't have won the Nobel prize for physics in 1921 if he hadn't purposed the theory of relativity.

Es15
d) People who became successful after they finished school.

 

Es16

d) What some talented people had in common.

 

Es17

1. The children in paragraph 1 had difficult time at school.
2. Some famous writers, composers and inventors had similar problems when they were children.
3. People with dyslexia were probably born with the disability.
4. Agatha Christie started writing because she wanted to show her sister that she could write.
5. The people mentioned in the last paragraph are well-known people who had problems with reading and writing.

Es18

Strategy	What do you do?
Skimming to understand the general idea of a text.	Look at the title, the photos, the introduction and the final paragraph.
Finding the main idea of a paragraph.	Read the first sentence which often summarises the main point. Look for the key words.
Scanning to find specific information.	Underline the key words in the questions, find synonyms and similar expression in the text and read carefully around the key words.