Read the text and questions below. For each question, mark the correct letter A, B, C or D.
Notting Hill Carnival takes place in London every August bank holiday. It is the most colourful and largest street event in the UK. The festival celebrates the traditions of the Afro-Caribbean community, who emigrated to England from the West Indies in the 1950s. They brought the Caribbean idea of the carnival with colourful costumes, processions, steel bands, and street dancing. Preparations for the carnival start many months in advance. Costumes need to be made and floats built, ready for the carnival street procession. Steel bands practise traditional Caribbean music on instruments built from used oil barrels. Just before the festival, the streets are decorated with yellow, green, and red streamers, and amplifying devices are set in place, to carry the rhythmic sounds over the roar of the London traffic. The carnival is celebrated for more than three days and is full of music and colour. Processions of steel and brass bands, floats, and dancers in colourful costumes make their way through the narrow London streets, watched by tens of thousands of people. The streets are lined with stalls selling tropical fruits, such as fresh mangoes, watermelons, and pineapple. Everyone dances - young and old, black and white - and even the policemen on duty take part in the fun. For these three days in August, a little Caribbean magic touches the streets of London.
1) What is the writer's main aim in writing the text?
A) to encourage people to celebrate the traditions of black people
B) to talk about problems with the Afro-Caribbean community
C) to recommend people spend more time outdoors
D) to understand and describe the Notting Hill Carnival
2) According to the passage, Notting Hill Carnival ...
A) takes place every Bank Holiday
B) is held annually in August
C) is organized by the Bank of England
D) is held at the beginning of August
3) During the Notting Hill Carnival,
A) the participants in the carnival decorate the streets with colourful streamers
B) preparations start early in the morning
C) music and colour fill the streets of London
D) traffic is banned from the main shopping streets
4) The writer claims that
A) this carnival has been organized since at least the 1950s
B) tens of thousands of people take part in the preparations for the carnival
C) dancers in the carnival wear special clothes
D) the dancers in the carnival are from the black community
5) Although the carnival is a celebration of the traditions of black British ...
A) everyone seems to participate in it
B) only Caribbean people take part in it
C) it is gaining in popularity among the white in recent years
D) people from all over the world come to watch it
