Desert (Seletive Cloze, FCE)?

To most people, the word ‘desert’ means sand, a ---burningsmokingflashingbursting hot sun, camels and the occasional palm tree. And there is nothing wrong with that picture in general, ---excludingexceptapartbesides for the fact that this describes only one type of desert.

The truth is that sand deserts ---correspondillustrateequalrepresent only a very small proportion of the world’s dry lands. Many deserts are vast expanses of ---longhorizontalstraightflat stony ground, covered with thin plants. Others ---involveconsistcontaininclude of rocky mountains, with hardly a leaf in ---outlooksightshowvision . Each type is ---composedgrownproducedinvented by a combination of temperature, rainfall and wind conditions. There are hot deserts and cold deserts, deserts where rain has never been ---regardedconsideredknownunderstood to fall and deserts that have up to 10 cm of rain a year. Deserts are ---seriouslymainlyenormouslydeeply varied. They are also ---shelterlodginghomehouse to millions of people, more than 5,000 kinds of animal, and a huge ---classsortorderrange of plants.

The size of some deserts is difficult to ---thinkexpectimagineassume . The Sahara Desert covers more than 9 million square kilometres, which ---leavesmakeskeepsgives it more than sixteen times the size of Great Britain. In the great deserts the days are exceedingly hot, while night temperatures plunge to ---closenearnextalong zero. These extreme ---varietieschangesalterationstransformations of temperature mean that surviving in the desert is difficult for all ---statesaspectsformsstructures of life.