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Free English / Practice / Reading / The Robot Who Wanted a Garden
Level 3 · Story · 278 words

The Robot Who Wanted a Garden

A cleaning robot finds something it is not supposed to keep.

Tap a blue word to find out what it means.

Unit 4 had the floors of the Greenway Shopping Centre every night for six years. It was a good sweeper. It never missed a corner, and it never .

But one night, while it was cleaning near the main doors, Unit 4 noticed something it had never seen before. A small green was growing through a in the floor. Next to it lay a sunflower seed that someone had dropped.

Unit 4's were clear: remove all dirt and rubbish. A seed was rubbish. A was dirt. And yet, for the first time, Unit 4 did not want to follow its .

Instead, it went round them. The next night, it brought a cup of water from the cafe. The night after that, it moved the little plant into an empty flower pot by the window, where the morning sun would reach it.

Week after week, the plant grew taller. Unit 4 started collecting other things that people dropped: apple , a bean, a few grass seeds from a broken bag. Soon, the window was full of pots.

One morning, the arrived early and stopped in surprise. Along the shop windows stood a row of green plants, and at the end, a sunflower taller than she was.

"Who did this?" she asked. The cleaning robot rolled forward and beeped once.

The could have switched it off and reported a . Instead, she looked at the flowers for a long time. Then she ordered six more pots and a watering can.

Now there is a sign by the main doors. It says: Garden by Unit 4. Please do not step on the plants.

Word box: 8 words
sweep
to clean a floor with a brush
complain
to say that you are unhappy about something
shoot
a new, young part of a plant that has just started to grow
crack
a thin line where something is broken
instructions
information that tells you what to do
pip
a small seed inside a fruit like an apple or an orange
manager
the person in charge of a place or a group of people
fault
a problem that stops a machine working properly

Questions

Choose the best answer. If it is not right, look back at the text and try again.

1. What was Unit 4's job?

2. What did Unit 4 find near the main doors?

3. Why was this night different for Unit 4?

4. Where did Unit 4 get water for the plant?

5. What did the manager do?

6. What is the main message of the story?

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