Advanced Level >> Grammar Worksheets >> Gap fill exercise based on an article about a very polluted town called Most. Each space must be filled with either a definite or indefinite article - or nothing.
Article Gap Fill: The Town of Most
Advanced
Read this short article about the Czech town of Most. For each space, decide which article, if any, should be used.
The moment you arrive in Most you're hit by the smog. You can feel it in the back of your throat and taste the/0 sulphur in the air.
On the edge of town lies a huge industrial complex...a vast mill of smokestacks and cooling towers, it's one of the sources of the smog. Most itself hasn't changed much since the end of Communism. There are a few more shops with a few more goods for sale. But there's still a bleak, lifeless feel to the place. The industrial workers are housed in rows of identical apartment blocks and do their shopping in the colourless, concrete town centre.
The surrounding countryside has, over the years, been transformed into a scarred landscape of huge open-cast mines. From them comes lignite, the brown coal which is the main source of cheap fuel here...as well as the cause of much of the pollution. When burnt it gives off thick sulphur fumes.
The price of industrial growth here has been great...and the people of Most are still living with its consequences. In the children's ward of the local hospital, Dr. Jiri Biolek, deals with the effects of the pollution on the city's young. Sitting in his spartan office, he remembers the day back in the autumn of 1981 when the pollution was so bad that all the leaves fell off the trees overnight. A few days later there was an outbreak of pneumonia in the town. The "authorities of the time", as Dr. Biolek calls them, told the hospital to say the illnesses had been caused by a virus.
Credit: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/38854.stm
