Reading Comprehension (2)
Level: Intermediate
Worksheet
Give me a Big Mac, but hold the beef
Before reading
1 Look at the headline. Answer the questions below.
a What do you think the article is about?
2 Match the definitions from A to the definitions from B.
A
B
a. a place where animals are killed for meat
1.( ) curious (adjective)
b. to attract someone and make him or her go to
2.( ) inedible (adjective)
a particular place
c. something that is completely unacceptable
3.( ) to lure someone
a
no-no
(informal)
d. far away from other places
4.( )
e. unusual and interesting
5.( ) to offend someone
f. to respect and admire something a lot
6.( ) a slaughterhouse
g. to make someone unhappy or angry
7.( ) to spot something
h. to suddenly see something
8.( ) remote (adjectives)
i. something that is impossible to eat because it
9.( ) to revere something
tastes very bad
While reading
1 Before reading the article look at the sentences. Guess if they are true (T) or false (F).
Now read the first five paragraphs of text to see if your ideas were correct.
a In India there is no beef in the burgers at McDonald’s.
b McDonald’s first opened a restaurant in India 20 years ago.
c McDonald’s is leaving India because it has had too many problems.
d Both cows and chicken are sacred animals in India.
e McDonalds’s uses more beef than any other company in the world.
f. McDonald’s started in the United States in 1895.
g There are McDonald’s restaurants in more than 100 countries.
h In India most of the burgers sold in McDonald’s are made from pork
or chicken.
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2 Read and answer the questions below.
a Why was McDonald’s drawn to India?
b What do the critics of McDonald’s in India complain about?
c Why did Kentucky Fried Chicken leave India?
d Why did many multinational companies have problems in India in the 1990s?
e What type pf people go to McDonald’s in China?
f Which countries could you visit to avoid McDonald’s?
It is lunch time at Ansal Plaza, Delhi’s newest shopping centre. Inside the groundfloor branch of McDonald’s, Ashish and Jasmeet are busy selling seven-rupee (about 14
cents) ice-cream cones to a group of schoolboys. The restaurant is half-empty or half-full,
depending on your view of global capitalism. At first glance the branch resembles any
McDonald’s restaurant across the world. We could be in French Guyana, the most recent
addition to the company’s empire, or Kuwait, or Russia. Only when you spot a small sign
on the wall do you realise that this is India. It reads: “No beef or beef products sold at this
restaurant.”
Four years after arriving in Delhi and Bombay, McDonald’s is set to launch a
huge expansion programme in India, its last great frontier. There are plans to increase the
existing 24 restaurants to 80.
That McDonald’s has come here at all seems curious. The subcontinent has
revered the cow for thousands of years. The creatures are everywhere in India - on traffic
islands, grazing in rubbish dumps, in temples - everywhere, that is, except on your plate.
To give an idea of how highly the animals is revered, nobody thought it odd when 634
cows, on the way to a slaughterhouse in Muslim Bangladesh, were rescued from a train
by animal rights activists last year. The sight of naked Hindu saints holding pro-cow
rallies is not unusual.
McDonald’s, by contrast, is the world’s largest user of beef. Hundreds of
thousands of animals have died since McDonald’s founder, Ray Kroc, first opened a
modest burger parlour in Des Plaines, Illinois, in 1955. From humble beginnings, Kroc
set out on a voyage of expansion that was to take McDonald’s into 119 countries,
sweeping aside barriers of ideology, language and taste. But in recent years there has
been resistance to his global vision from, for example, the two London Greenpeace
activists who took on McDonald’s in Britain’s longest trial; residents’ opposition groups;
and concerned environmentalists around the world.
As the stand-off between anti-globalists and multinationals continues, India has
become the last big battleground. If McDonald’s can succeed here, without beef, it can
succeed anywhere, so the reasoning goes. To attract customers, the company has come up
with an unusual marketing strategy. India is the only country in the world where
McDonald’s does not offer beef. With 140m Indian Muslims, pork is off the menu, too.
This leaves chicken and mutton-the ingredient of its flagship “Maharaja Mac”. There are
other additions to the menu specifically designed to lure India’s middle class, such as the
McAloo tikki burger. All foods are strictly separated into vegetarian and non-vegetarian
lines. Even the mayonnaise has no egg in it, so as not to offend vegan sensibilities.
Vikram Bakshi, McDonald’s managing director in India, admits that beef was a
“complete no-no” from the start: “We have to be sensitive to the culture here. No beef
and no pork. We are absolutely politically correct. The point is to be commercially viable.
Using beef would take us away from 80% of our customers.”
McDonald’s was drawn to India because of its huge potential market of 1bn
people, Bakshi says. He points with pride to the new McDonald’s on the road between
Delhi and Agra, which allows customers to munch Maharaja Macs on the way to the Taj
Mahal. More branches in north India will follow, he adds.
Critics complain that McDonald’s food is “bad”, “expensive”, even “unIndian”.
They also claim that McDonald’s, together with other fast-food outlets that arrived in the
mid 90s, is losing money. “India has a very ancient food culture. We are not going to
change to American patterns of consumption,” says Dr Vandana Shiva, director of the
Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology. “McDonald’s will never
become part of mass culture in India, because most people can’t afford to eat there.”
Indians, she add, are gradually “waking up” to the threat posed by foreign
multinationals to traditional methods of farming and ecology.
India’s fast-food industry has been keeping a low profile because of such
opposition. Five years ago Kentucky Fried Chicken found its new restaurant in the
Westernised city of Bangalore under attack from farmers and anti-globalisation protesters.
Customers had been staying away too, put off by what they regarded as high prices and
inedible food. The mob ended up vandalising the restaurant. KFC eventually abandoned
India altogether. “India is no Thailand, where we could create the Kentucky magic within
two years of operations,” its former MD in India, Sandeep Kohli, acknowledged. “We
closed because the economics didn’t work out.”
Many of the multinationals which came to India after economic liberalisation in
the early 90s made the same mistake as KFC. They over-estimated the size of India’s
middle class. It is about 100m, though the figure of 200m is often talked about. And it is
discerning. Domino’s Pizza, McDonald’s, TGI Fridays and others discovered to their
horror that their restaurants were rarely full. They began a desperate round pf price cuts.
A Big Mac “Lamb Wonder” today sells for the lowly sum of 19 rupees (about 50 cents),
while the cost of a Domino’s pizza with cheese toppings has plunged from 90 rupees to
49 rupees.
McDonald’s has had a happier time in China, where its 260 restaurants are
frequented by the better off and urban rich. There, Ronald McDonald has been
transformed into Uncle McDonald (and Aunt McDonald). In Japan, which was
assimilated into the Kroc empire 30 years ago, there are more than 3,000 branches.
There are few countries in Asia where McDonald’s has yet to penetrate. To avoid
the chain entirely you would have to go somewhere really remote: Afghanistan, perhaps,
with its landmines, civil war and Islamic fundamentalism. Or there is Bhutan, a small
Himalayan kingdom of few tourists and no beef-burgers, where there exists a long
tradition of skepticism towards dubious Western ideas.
Adapted from The Guardian Weekly
Learning English January 25-31-2001
After reading
1 Compound adjectives
Look at this example from the article.
India’s fledgling fast-food industry has been keeping a low profile…….
Match a word or prefix from A with a word from B to make six compound adjectives.
Then use the adjectives to complete the sentences that follow.
A
half
B
-globalisation
non
-floor
anti
-empty
ground
-off
well
-minute
last
-existent
a There was a large
McDonald’s in Delhi.
demonstration outside the new
b She needed to do some
packing before going to the airport.
c The customer complained that his glass of lemonade was
.
.
and can’t afford to eat at
d Many Indian people are not
McDonalds’s.
e The restaurant is on the
of a large block of flats in Bombay.
f The salad with my burger was so small that it was virtually
.
____________________________________________________________________
2 Homonyms
When a word has the same form but a different meaning, it is called a homonym.
For example:
After the storm several branches fell off the tree.
There are more than 3,000 branches of McDonald’s in Japan.
The following words from the article have two different meanings. Put the correct word
into the gaps below. Decide which meaning is being used.
a branch = part of a tree or a shop/restaurant that is part of a big company
a chain = metal rings joined together or a number of shops/restaurants owned by the
same company
a cut = an injury made to the body with a knife or a reduction in something
a view = what you can see from a certain place or what you believe about something
a After the election, the government will make a 10%
b The company has bought a
in taxes.
of 450 fast food restaurants.
c How long will it take to remove the
from that bush?
d After the attack, he was left with a painful
e In my
, the president should resign now.
f He was wearing an expensive gold
g There was a fantastic
on his cheek.
around his neck.
from our hotel window.
h Kentucky Fried Chicken is opening another
in Indonesia next week.
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3 The –ing form with “before” and “after”
Look at this example from the article.
Four years after arriving in Delhi and Bombay, McDonald’s is poised to launch a huge
expansion programme.
Read the sentences below and write a second sentence with the same meaning.
Example:
We watched the news and then went out.
After watching the news we went out.
a We played football, but first we all went to a pizza restaurant.
Before
b The helicopter took off, but soon afterwards it crashed into the sea.
Soon after
c I made dinner first and then watched a film on TV.
Before
d They signed the agreement and then shook hands.
Immediately after
Answer Key Logo-Symbol
Answer Key
Give me a Big Mac
Before reading
2 1e 21 3b 4c 5g 6a 7h
8d
9f
While reading
1 a T b F c F d F eT f F gT h F
2 a There is a huge potential market for its products.
b The food is bad, expensive and un-Indian. Foreign multinationals also pose a threat to
traditional farming methods and ecology.
c Its operation wasn’t profitable because the customers didn’t like the food or the prices.
d They overestimated the middle-class market.
e The better-off and the urban rich.
f Afghanistan and Bhutan
After reading
1 a anti-globalisation
b last-minute
c half-empty
d well-off
e ground-floor
f non-existent
2 a cut (reduction)
b chain (group of restaurants)
c branch (part of a tree)
d cut (injury)
e view (belief)
f chain (metal)
g view (what you can see)
h branch (part of a big company)
3 a Before playing football, we all went to pizza restaurant.
b Soon after taking off, the helicopter crashed into the sea.
c Before watching a film on TV, I made dinner.
d Immediately after signing the agreement, they shook hands.