a) Match the words/ expressions in bold in the text to the ones below: • was very surprised • what's wrong picked • unthankful • as always 1 Who are the main characters? 2 Where does the excerpt take place? 3 What happens in the story? 4 Which characters are in conflict? 5 Is there a monologue or a dialogue in the excerpt?

A very small man came shyly into the room. He stood before me looking very uncomfortable. 
"My name", he said, "is Forester. C. S. Forester." I nearly fell out of my chair. "Are you joking?" I said. 
"No," he said, smiling. "That is me." 
And it was. It was the great writer himself, the inventor of Captain Hornblower and the best teller of tales about the sea. 
"Look," he said. "I am too old for the war. The only things I can do to helps is to write things about Britain for the American papers and magazines. A magazine called The Saturday Evening Post will publish any story I write. I have contract with them.And I have come to you because I thing you might have a good story to tell about flying." 
"What do you want me to do?" I asked. 
"Come and have lunch with me," he said. "And while we are eating, you can tell me about your most exciting adventures and I all write it up for The Saturday Evening Post." 
I was thrilled. I had read all the Hornblowers and just about everything else he had written. I had, and still have, a great love for books about the sea. And now here I was about to have lunch with somebody who, to my mind, was terrific. He took me to a small French restaurant near the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. I tried to tell him about the most exiting or dangerous things thats happened to me when I was flying fighter planes. While we tried to eat our lunch, I was truing to talk and Forester was trying to take notes. Things were not going well. More than, I have never been much good at telling stories aloud. 
"Look," I said. "If you like I all try to write down on paper what happened and send it to you. Would not that be easier? I could do it tonight." 
That, though I did not know it at the time, was the moment that changed my life. 
"A splendid idea," Forester said. "Then I can put this silly notebook away and we can enjoy our lunch." He gave me an address where I could send the story, and then we forgot all about it and finished our lunch. 
That night I sat down and wrote my story. I started at about seven o,clock and finished at midnight. The story seemed to be telling itself. Just for fun, when it was finished, I gave it a title. I called it A Piece of Cake. The next day I sent it off to Mr Forester. Two weeks later, I received a reply from the great man. It said:Well! I thought. Nine hundred dollars! And They are going to published it! 
The next story I wrote was fiction. Mr Matson sold that one, too. Then I wrote eleven short stories. All were sold to American magazines, and later they were published in a little book called Over to You.

Some years have already passed but I still remember my first day at school. How happy and proud I was when my parents told me that I’m going to school, I felt like I was a grown-up person then. I wasn’t nervous, but excited. My first day at school was quite interesting for me, it was full of discoveries. 
I woke up early in the morning, my mother put a nice suit on me, gave me a lunch box with sandwiches and we went to school with my whole family: me, my mother, father and my younger sister. While we were approaching the big building with a lot of people around I felt a little nervous – I didn’t know anyone there. Everyone was looking so nice: boys were wearing suits and girls were all in dresses and skirts. Every pupil had a bunch of flowers to give it to their first teacher. 
After some minutes we entered the school and walked along the corridor, and then we entered the classroom with about 25 people inside. I took a seat at the desk and my parents and the parents of other pupils were standing along the wall looking at us with pride and taking pictures. Then I heard a loud noise – our first bell. A tall woman with fair hair was standing in front of us, she asked us to stand up and then when everyone was quite she let us sit on the chairs. She was smiling and looked quite kind. She told us about herself and our plans for the year. Then we walked around the school and she showed us the classrooms, canteen, laboratory and playground outside. 
I have very good memories about my first day at school and I think I will remember it forever.