Biletul nr. 9 - 2005

Limba Engleza 1-2 ore/saptamana

SUBIECTUL I

Read the text below, identify the main ideas and comment on them:

The first homesteaders* often quarreled with cattlemen. The different ways in which the two groups used the land made trouble between them almost certain. Cattle ranchers and cowboys complained that homesteaders were blocking the cattle trails and said that their ploughed fields were a waste of good grazing land. Homesteaders became angry when their crops were eaten or trampled upon by the ranchers' cattle. They began to build barbed wire fences around their land to stop this. This made the cattlemen even more angry, especially if the land that was fenced off included a stream that their cattle depended upon for drinking water. One cowboy put the cattleman's point of view in these words:
"Those jayhawkers [thieves] would take up a claim right where the herds watered and charge us for water. They would plant a crop alongside the trail and plow a furrow around it for a fence, and then when the cattle got into their wheat or their garden patch, they would come out cussing [cursing] and waving a short gun and yelling for damages. And the cattle had been coming through there when they were still growing pumpinks in Illinois."
In some places people were killed in "range wars" as both cattlemen and homesteaders used guns to protect their interests. It took years for the two groups to learn to live peacefully side by side.

(The Illustrated History of the USA)

*people setting on land for a period of time as a way of getting ownership of it

SUBIECTUL II

Speak about something you would have liked to do but have never had the time, the money or the chance to do it.

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