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    Amazing Thinkers and Humanitarians: B2
    Amazing Thinkers and Humanitarians: B2
    Amazing Thinkers and Humanitarians: B2
    Ebook120 pages1 hour

    Amazing Thinkers and Humanitarians: B2

    By HarperCollins UK

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    About this ebook

    The inspiring stories of 6 people who changed history.

    Contents:
    Confucius, the great Chinese philosopher
    Socrates, the great Greek philosopher
    Aristotle, the first to organize scientific knowledge
    William Wilberforce who ended the British slave trade
    Karl Marx who wrote The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital
    Mahatma Gandhi who helped free India from British rule

    BRITISH ENGLISH
    Word count: 16,058
    Headword count: 1,701

    PLUS: visit www.collinselt.com/readers for videos, teacher resources and self-study materials.

    This book is Level 4 in the Collins ELT Readers series.
    Level 4 is equivalent to CEF level B2.

    About the Amazing People series:
    A unique opportunity for learners of English to read about the exceptional lives and incredible abilities of some of the most insightful people the world has seen.

    Each book contains six short stories, told by the characters themselves, as if in their own words. The stories explain the most significant parts of each character’s life, giving an insight into how they came to be such an important historic figure.

    After each story, a timeline presents the most major events in their life in a clear and succinct fashion. The timeline is ideal for checking comprehension or as a basis for project work or further research.

    Created in association with The Amazing People Club.

    About Collins ELT Readers:
    Collins ELT Readers are divided into four levels:
    Level 1 – elementary (A2)
    Level 2 – pre-intermediate (A2-B1)
    Level 3 – intermediate (B1)
    Level 4 – upper intermediate (B2)
    Each level is carefully graded to ensure that the learner both enjoys and benefits from their reading experience.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateFeb 27, 2014
    ISBN9780007556953
    Amazing Thinkers and Humanitarians: B2

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      Book preview

      Amazing Thinkers and Humanitarians - HarperCollins UK

         CONTENTS   

      Cover

      Title Page

      Introduction

      The Grading Scheme

      Confucius

      Socrates

      Aristotle

      William Wilberforce

      Karl Marx

      Mahatma Gandhi

      Glossary

      Keep Reading

      Copyright

      About the Publisher

         INTRODUCTION   

      Collins Amazing People Readers are collections of short stories. Each book presents the life story of five or six people whose lives and achievements have made a difference to our world today. The stories are carefully graded to ensure that you, the reader, will both enjoy and benefit from your reading experience.

      You can choose to enjoy the book from start to finish or to dip in to your favourite story straight away. Each story is entirely independent.

      After every story a short timeline brings together the most important events in each person’s life into one short report. The timeline is a useful tool for revision purposes.

      Words which are above the required reading level are underlined the first time they appear in each story. All underlined words are defined in the glossary at the back of the book. Levels 1 and 2 take their definitions from the Collins COBUILD Essential English Dictionary and levels 3 and 4 from the Collins COBUILD Advanced English Dictionary.

      To support both teachers and learners, additional materials are available online at www.collinselt.com/readers.

      The Amazing People Club®

      Collins Amazing People Readers are adaptations of original texts published by The Amazing People Club. The Amazing People Club is an educational publishing house. It was founded in 2006 by educational psychologist and management leader Dr Charles Margerison and publishes books, eBooks, audio books, iBooks and video content which bring readers ‘face to face’ with many of the world’s most inspiring and influential characters from the fields of art, science, music, politics, medicine and business.

         THE GRADING SCHEME   

      The Collins COBUILD Grading Scheme has been created using the most up-to-date language usage information available today. Each level is guided by a brand new comprehensive grammar and vocabulary framework, ensuring that the series will perfectly match readers’ abilities.

      For more information on the Collins COBUILD Grading Scheme, including a full list of the grammar structures found at each level, go to www.collinselt.com/readers/gradingscheme.

      Also available online: Make sure that you are reading at the right level by checking your level on our website (www.collinselt.com/readers/levelcheck).

      Confucius

      551 BCE–479 BCE

      the great Chinese philosopher

      He who learns but does not think is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger. Real knowledge is understanding that we actually know very little.

      I was born a very long time ago – the story of my life was not written down until a long time after my death, so many of the facts are uncertain. But here I will tell you what was believed about my life and the events that shaped my thinking. I was born in China in the summer of 551 BCE – nobody can agree on the exact date and naturally I was too young to remember it myself. I was born in the village of Zou, in the state of Lu, near present-day Qufu in Shandong Province. My father was from an aristocratic family of warriors – brave, experienced fighters – and he died when I was three years old. This is not surprising when you know that he was about forty years older than my mother. Despite his family background, my father left us little money – the family had lost their fortune some time before – and we were often hungry. In Shandong Province, the winters were extremely cold, and just staying alive was difficult at times. I managed to bring in some money by working as a shepherd – looking after sheep – and I also took care of a local farmer’s cows, so we did not starve.

      My mother did her best to educate me and she taught me many fine lessons about life. The hours I spent with the animals gave me the chance to think about life and what made it good. I asked myself about how we should live, what was fair and unfair and how people should live together. As I grew older and became a teenager, these questions became all the more important to me. When I was 19 years old, I met a girl called Qi Guan. Within a short time we had got married and by the time I was 20, we had started our family. After the birth of our son, King Li, we went on to have two more children but our marriage was not a happy one. When I was 23, my mother died which affected me deeply for the next three years.

      After my mother’s death, I started studying philosophy. Already, one of my ‘life’ questions had been answered – as a family we learnt to understand each other’s emotional needs. However, as I had a wife and children and all the extra costs that came with a family, I had to make sure that our practical needs were met as well as our emotional ones. I needed to make some more money. Because I could read and write, and many people at that time could not, I found a job as a clerk – keeping records and doing the accounts – for the Duke of Lu, the ruler of the state.

      Lu was a powerful man who spent every day making decisions about other people’s lives. Some people thought he was fair

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