They were asked to read the opening chapter of Bleak House. It's pretty much standard English.
> LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln�s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes � gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun.
The only word I see there that isn't used the same way in bog standard American English is "wonderful." I will grant you that "Michaelmas" is obscure to an American, but "Michaelmas Term [] over" is clear enough: it's a specific span of time that has elapsed. You don't need to know exactly what "Lincoln's Inn Hall" is any more than if you read
> I went to Carnegie Deli
and didn't know what Carnigie Deli is. It's obviously a deli.