THE BEDQUILT
Of all the Elwell family Aunt Mehetabel was certainly the most unimportant member. It was in the New England days, when an unmarried woman was an old maid at twenty, at forty was everyone’s servant, and at sixty had gone through so much discipline that she could need no more in the next world. Aunt Mehetabel was sixty-eight.
She had never for a moment known the pleasure of being important to anyone. Not that she was useless in her brother’s family; she was expected, as a matter of course, to take upon herself the most tedious and uninteresting part of the household labors. On Mondays she accepted as her share the washing of the men’s shirts, heavy with sweat and stiff with dirt from the fields and from their own hard-working bodies. Tuesdays she never dreamed of being allowed to iron anything pretty or even interesting, like the baby’s white dresses or the fancy aprons of her young lady nieces. She stood all day pressing out a tiresome monotonous succession of dish-cloths and towels and sheets.
In preserving-time she was allowed to have none of the pleasant responsibility of deciding when the fruit had cooked long enough, nor did she share in the little excitement of pouring the sweet-smelling stuff into the stone jars. She sat in a corner with the children and stoned cherries incessantly, or hulled strawberries until her fingers were dyed red to the bone.
The Elwells were not consciously unkind to their aunt, they were even in a vague way fond of her; but she was so utterly insignificant a figure in their lives that they bestowed no thought whatever on her. Aunt Mehetabel did not resent this treatment; she took it quite as unconsciously as they gave it. It was to be expected when one was an old-maid dependent in a busy family. She gathered what crumbs of comfort she could from their occasional careless kindnesses and tried to hide the hurt which even yet pierced her at her brother’s rough joking. In the winter when they all sat before the big hearth, roasted apples, drank mulled cider, and teased the girls about their beaux and the boys about their sweethearts, she shrank into a dusky corner with her knitting, happy if the evening passed without her brother saying, with a crude sarcasm, «Ask your Aunt Mehetabel about the beaux that used to come a-sparkin’ her!» or, «Mehetabel, how was’t when you was in love with Abel Cummings.» As a matter of fact, she had been the same at twenty as at sixty, a quiet, mouse-like little creature, too timid and shy for anyone to notice, or to raise her eyes for a moment and wish for a life of her own.
Her sister-in-law, a big hearty housewife, who ruled indoors with as autocratic a sway as did her husband on the farm, was rather kind in an absent, offhand way to the shrunken little old woman, and it was through her that Mehetabel was able to enjoy the one pleasure of her life. Even as a girl she had been clever with her needle in the way of patching bedquilts. More than that she could never learn to do. The garments which she made for herself were the most lamentable affairs, and she was humbly grateful for any help in the bewildering business of putting them together. But in patchwork she enjoyed a tepid importance. She could really do that as well as anyone else. During years of devotion to this one art she had accumulated a considerable store of quilting patterns. Sometimes the neighbors would send over and ask «Miss Mehetabel» for such and such a design. It was with an agreeable flutter at being able to help some one that she went to the dresser, in her bare little room under the eaves, and extracted from her crowded portfolio the pattern desired.
She never knew how her great idea came to her. Sometimes she thought she must have dreamed it, sometimes she even wondered reverently, in the phraseology of the weekly prayer-meeting, if it had not been «sent» to her. She never admitted to herself that she could have thought of it without other help; it was too great, too ambitious, too lofty a project for her humble mind to have conceived. Even when she finished drawing the design with her own fingers, she gazed at it incredulously, not daring to believe that it could indeed be her handiwork. At first it seemed to her only like a lovely but quite unreal dream. She did not think of putting it into execution—so elaborate, so complicated, so beautifully difficult a pattern could be only for the angels in heaven to quilt. But so curiously does familiarity accustom us even to very wonderful things, that as she lived with this astonishing creation of her mind, the longing grew stronger and stronger to give it material life with her nimble old fingers.
She gasped at her daring when this idea first swept over her and put it away as one does a sinfully selfish notion, but she kept coming back to it again and again. Finally she said compromisingly to herself that she would make one «square,» just one part of her design, to see how it would look. Accustomed to the most complete dependence on her brother and his wife, she dared not do even this without asking Sophia’s permission. With a heart full of hope and fear thumping furiously against her old ribs, she approached the mistress of the house on churning-day, knowing with the innocent guile of a child that the country woman was apt to be in a good temper while working over the fragrant butter in the cool cellar.
Sophia listened absently to her sister-in-law’s halting, hesitating petition. «Why, yes, Mehetabel,» she said, leaning far down into the huge churn for the last golden morsels—»why, yes, start another quilt if you want to. I’ve got a lot of pieces from the spring sewing that will work in real good.» Mehetabel tried honestly to make her see that this would be no common quilt, but her limited vocabulary and her emotion stood between her and expression. At last Sophia said, with a kindly impatience: «Oh, there! Don’t bother me. I never could keep track of your quiltin’ patterns, anyhow. I don’t care what pattern you go by.»
With this overwhelmingly, although unconsciously, generous permission Mehetabel rushed back up the steep attic stairs to her room, and in a joyful agitation began preparations for the work of her life. It was even better than she hoped. By some heaven-sent inspiration she had invented a pattern beyond which no patchwork quilt could go.
She had but little time from her incessant round of household drudgery for this new and absorbing occupation, and she did not dare sit up late at night lest she burn too much candle. It was weeks before the little square began to take on a finished look, to show the pattern. Then Mehetabel was in a fever of impatience to bring it to completion. She was too conscientious to shirk even the smallest part of her share of the work of the house, but she rushed through it with a speed which left her panting as she climbed to the little room. This seemed like a radiant spot to her as she bent over the innumerable scraps of cloth which already in her imagination ranged themselves in the infinitely diverse pattern of her masterpiece. Finally she could wait no longer, and one evening ventured to bring her work down beside the fire where the family sat, hoping that some good fortune would give her a place near the tallow candles on the mantelpiece. She was on the last corner of the square, and her needle flew in and out with inconceivable rapidity. No one noticed her, a fact which filled her with relief, and by bedtime she had but a few more stitches to add.
As she stood up with the others, the square fluttered out of her trembling old hands and fell on the table. Sophia glanced at it carelessly. «Is that the new quilt you’re beginning on?» she asked with a yawn. «It looks like a real pretty pattern. Let’s see it.» Up to that moment Mehetabel had labored in the purest spirit of disinterested devotion to an ideal, but as Sophia held her work toward the candle to examine it, and exclaimed in amazement and admiration, she felt an astonished joy to know that her creation would stand the test of publicity.
«Land sakes!» ejaculated her sister-in-law, looking at the many-colored square. «Why, Mehetabel Elwell, where’d you git that pattern?»
«I made it up,» said Mehetabel quietly, but with unutterable pride.
«No!» exclaimed Sophia incredulously. «Did you! Why, I never see such a pattern in my life. Girls, come here and see what your Aunt Mehetabel is doing.»
The three tall daughters turned back reluctantly from the stairs. «I don’t seem to take much interest in patch work,» said one listlessly.
«No, nor I neither!» answered Sophia; «but a stone image would take an interest in this pattern. Honest, Mehetabel, did you think of it yourself? And how under the sun and stars did you ever git your courage up to start in a-making it? Land! Look at all those tiny squinchy little seams! Why the wrong side ain’t a thing but seams!»
The girls echoed their mother’s exclamations, and Mr. Elwell himself came over to see what they were discussing. «Well, I declare!» he said, looking at his sister with eyes more approving than she could ever remember. That beats old Mis’ Wightman’s quilt that got the blue ribbon so many times at the county fair.»
Mehetabel’s heart swelled within her, and tears of joy moistened her old eyes as she lay that night in her narrow, hard bed, too proud and excited to sleep. The next day her sister-in-law amazed her by taking the huge pan of potatoes out of her lap and setting one of the younger children to peeling them. «Don’t you want to go on with that quiltin’ pattern?» she said; «I’d kind o’ like to see how you’re goin’ to make the grape-vine design come out on the corner.»
By the end of the summer the family interest had risen so high that Mehetabel was given a little stand in the sitting-room where she could keep her pieces, and work in odd minutes. She almost wept over such kindness, and resolved firmly not to take advantage of it by neglecting her work, which she performed with a fierce thoroughness. But the whole atmosphere of her world was changed. Things had a meaning now. Through the longest task of washing milk-pans there rose the rainbow of promise of her variegated work. She took her place by the little table and put the thimble on her knotted, hard finger with the solemnity of a priestess performing a sacred rite.
She was even able to bear with some degree of dignity the extreme honor of having the minister and the minister’s wife comment admiringly on her great project. The family felt quite proud of Aunt Mehetabel as Minister Bowman had said it was work as fine as any he had ever seen, «and he didn’t know but finer!» The remark was repeated verbatim to the neighbors in the following weeks when they dropped in and examined in a perverse silence some astonishingly difficult tour de force which Mehetabel had just finished.
The family especially plumed themselves on the slow progress of the quilt. «Mehetabel has been to work on that corner for six weeks, come Tuesday, and she ain’t half done yet,» they explained to visitors. They fell out of the way of always expecting her to be the one to run on errands, even for the children. «Don’t bother your Aunt Mehetabel,» Sophia would call. «Can’t you see she’s got to a ticklish place on the quilt?»
The old woman sat up straighter and looked the world in the face. She was a part of it at last. She joined in the conversation and her remarks were listened to. The children were even told to mind her when she asked them to do some service for her, although this she did but seldom, the habit of self-effacement being too strong.
One day some strangers from the next town drove up and asked if they could inspect the wonderful quilt which they had heard of, even down in their end of the valley. After that such visitations were not uncommon, making the Elwells’ house a notable object. Mehetabel’s quilt came to be one of the town sights, and no one was allowed to leave the town without having paid tribute to its worth. The Elwells saw to it that their aunt was better dressed than she had ever been before, and one of the girls made her a pretty little cap to wear on her thin white hair.
A year went by and a quarter of the quilt was finished; a second year passed and half was done. The third year Mehetabel had pneumonia and lay ill for weeks and weeks, overcome with terror lest she die before her work was completed. A fourth year and one could really see the grandeur of the whole design; and in September of the fifth year, the entire family watching her with eager and admiring eyes, Mehetabel quilted the last stitches in her creation. The girls held it up by the four corners, and they all looked at it in a solemn silence. Then Mr. Elwell smote one horny hand within the other and exclaimed: «By ginger! That’s goin’ to the county fair!» Mehetabel blushed a deep red at this. It was a thought which had occurred to her in a bold moment, but she had not dared to entertain it. The family acclaimed the idea, and one of the boys was forthwith dispatched to the house of the neighbor who was chairman of the committee for their village. He returned with radiant face. «Of course he’ll take it. Like’s not it may git a prize, so he says; but he’s got to have it right off, because all the things are goin’ to-morrow morning.»
Even in her swelling pride Mehetabel felt a pang of separation as the bulky package was carried out of the house. As the days went on she felt absolutely lost with out her work. For years it had been her one preoccupation, and she could not bear even to look at the little stand, now quite bare of the litter of scraps which had lain on it so long. One of the neighbors, who took the long journey to the fair, reported that the quilt was hung in a place of honor in a glass case in «Agricultural Hall.» But that meant little to Mehetabel’s utter ignorance of all that lay outside of her brother’s home. The family noticed the old woman’s depression, and one day Sophia said kindly, «You feel sort o’ lost without the quilt, don’t you, Mehetabel?»
«They took it away so quick!» she said wistfully; «I hadn’t hardly had one real good look at it myself.»
Mr. Elwell made no comment, but a day or two later he asked his sister how early she could get up in the morning.
«I dun’no’. Why?» she asked.
«Well, Thomas Ralston has got to drive clear to West Oldton to see a lawyer there, and that is four miles beyond the fair. He says if you can git up so’s to leave here at four in the morning he’ll drive you over to the fair, leave you there for the day, and bring you back again at night.»
Mehetabel looked at him with incredulity. It was as though someone had offered her a ride in a golden chariot up to the gates of heaven. «Why, you can’t mean it!» she cried, paling with the intensity of her emotion. Her brother laughed a little uneasily. Even to his careless indifference this joy was a revelation of the narrowness of her life in his home. «Oh, ’tain’t so much to go to the fair. Yes, I mean it. Go git your things ready, for he wants to start to-morrow morning.»
All that night a trembling, excited old woman lay and stared at the rafters. She, who had never been more than six miles from home in her life, was going to drive thirty miles away—it was like going to another world. She who had never seen anything more exciting than a church supper was to see the county fair. To Mehetabel it was like making the tour of the world. She had never dreamed of doing it. She could not at all imagine what it would be like.
Nor did the exhortations of the family, as they bade good-by to her, throw any light on her confusion. They had all been at least once to the scene of gayety she was to visit, and as she tried to eat her breakfast they called out conflicting advice to her till her head whirled. Sophia told her to be sure and see the display of preserves. Her brother said not to miss inspecting the stock, her nieces said the fancywork was the only thing worth looking at, and her nephews said she must bring them home an account of the races. The buggy drove up to the door, she was helped in, and her wraps tucked about her. They all stood together and waved good-by to her as she drove out of the yard. She waved back, but she scarcely saw them. On her return home that evening she was very pale, and so tired and stiff that her brother had to lift her out bodily, but her lips were set in a blissful smile. They crowded around her with thronging questions, until Sophia pushed them all aside, telling them Aunt Mehetabel was too tired to speak until she had had her supper. This was eaten in an enforced silence on the part of the children, and then the old woman was helped into an easy-chair before the fire. They gathered about her, eager for news of the great world, and Sophia said, «Now, come, Mehetabel, tell us all about it!»
Mehetabel drew a long breath. «It was just perfect!» she said; «finer even than I thought. They’ve got it hanging up in the very middle of a sort o’ closet made of glass, and one of the lower corners is ripped and turned back so’s to show the seams on the wrong side.»
«What?» asked Sophia, a little blankly.
«Why, the quilt!» said Mehetabel in surprise. «There are a whole lot of other ones in that room, but not one that can hold a candle to it, if I do say it who shouldn’t. I heard lots of people say the same thing. You ought to have heard what the women said about that corner, Sophia. They said—well, I’d be ashamed to tell you what they said. I declare if I wouldn’t!»
Mr. Elwell asked, «What did you think of that big ox we’ve heard so much about?»
«I didn’t look at the stock,» returned his sister indifferently. «That set of pieces you gave me, Maria, from your red waist, come out just lovely!» she assured one of her nieces. «I heard one woman say you could ‘most smell the red silk roses.»
«Did any of the horses in our town race?» asked young Thomas.
«I didn’t see the races.»
«How about the preserves?» asked Sophia.
«I didn’t see the preserves,» said Mehetabel calmly. You see, I went right to the room where the quilt was, and then I didn’t want to leave it. It had been so long since I’d seen it. I had to look at it first real good myself, and then I looked at the others to see if there was any that could come up to it. And then the people begun comin’ in and I got so interested in hearin’ what they had to say I couldn’t think of goin’ anywheres else. I ate my lunch right there too, and I’m as glad as can be I did, too; for what do you think?»—she gazed about her with kindling eyes—»while I stood there with a sandwich in one hand didn’t the head of the hull concern come in and open the glass door and pin ‘First Prize’ right in the middle of the quilt!»
There was a stir of congratulation and proud exclamation. Then Sophia returned again to the attack. «Didn’t you go to see anything else?» she queried.
«Why, no,» said Mehetabel. «Only the quilt. Why should I?»
She fell into a reverie where she saw again the glorious creation of her hand and brain hanging before all the world with the mark of highest approval on it. She longed to make her listeners see the splendid vision with her. She struggled for words; she reached blindly after unknown superlatives. «I tell you it looked like——» she said, and paused, hesitating. Vague recollections of hymn-book phraseology came into her mind, the only form of literary expression she knew; but they were dismissed as being sacrilegious, and also not sufficiently forcible. Finally, «I tell you it looked real well!» she assured them, and sat staring into the fire, on her tired old face the supreme content of an artist who has realized his ideal.
Ю.С. Веселова
ТЕМАТИЧЕСКИЙ
ТРЕНАЖЕР ПО АНГЛИЙСКОМУ ЯЗЫКУ
ЧТЕНИЕ
ГОТОВИМСЯ К ЕГЭ
Москва
«Интеллект-Центр»
2012
удк 373. 167.l:81 1.l l l+81 1. l l l (075.3)
ББК 81.2 Англ — 922 в 38
Веселова, Ю.С.
В38 Тематический тренажер по
английскому языку. Чтение. (Готовимся к ЕГЭ)/ ЮС. Веселова. — Москва:
Интеллект-Центр, 2012. — 64 с.
ISBN 978-5-89790-845-5
«Тематический тренажер ЧТЕНИЕ по
английскому языку» поможет подготовиться к выполнению заданий по лексике
раздела «Чтение» ЕГЭ по английскому языку. В пособие включены задания
экзаменационного типа, соответствующие заданиям В2, ВЗ и А 15—A21 ЕГЭ по
английскому языку. В пособие также включены рекомендации и алгоритмы, с помощью
которых выполнять задания на чтение можно легко и без ошибок. «Тематический
тренажер ЧТЕНИЕ по английскому языку» можно использовать как при классной
работе в школе, так и для самостоятельной подготовки к ЕГЭ по английскому языку
и для индивидуальных занятий с репетитором. Материалы данного пособия
пригодятся вам для подготовки к международным экзаменам FCE, IELTS, TOEFL и
других удк 373.167.l:81 1.l l l+81 1.1 1 1 (0753) ББК 81.2 Англ — 922
Генеральный
директор издательства «Интеллект-Центр»: Миндюк М.Б.
Редактор:
Локтионов Д.П.
Художественный
редактор: Воробьева ЕЮ.
Подписано в
печать 24.11.2011 г. Формат 60х84/8.
Усл. печ. ле
8,0. Тираж 5000 экз.
Заказ № 2474
ISBN
978-5-89790-845-5 
«Интеллект-Цснтр», 2012
© ЮС. Веселова, 2011
ВВЕДЕНИЕ
«Тематический тренажер ЧТЕНИЕ по
английскому языку» предназначен для подготовки учащихся 1 1 классов
общеобразовательных школ разного типа к выполнению заданий В2, В2 и A15-A21
раздела «Чтение» Единого Государственного Экзамена, для самостоятельной подготовки
к Единому Государственному Экзамену по английскому языку и для индивидуальных
занятий с репетитором. Также «Тематический тренажер ЧТЕНИЕ по английскому
языку» может быть использован для подготовки к международным экзаменам FCE,
IELTS, TOEFL и других.
«Тематический тренажер ЧТЕНИЕ по
английскому языку» состоит из теоретических и практических материалов, с
помощью которых можно наиболее полно подготовиться к выполнению заданий на
чтение.
В «Тематический тренажер ЧТЕНИЕ по
английскому языку» включены следующие темы:
— Описание раздела «Чтение» в ЕГЭ по
английскому языку.
Задание В2 направлено на установление
соответствия и относится к базовому (простому) уровню сложности. При выполнении
данного задания нужно уметь понять основную тему текста. В задании В2
используются краткие тексты (или абзацы текста) информационного и
научно-популярного характера. В задании В2 нужно установить соответствие между
заголовками и текстами, один из заголовков в задании лишний. В пособие включены
12 заданий В2 и алгоритмы выполнения для данного типа заданий.
Задание ВЗ направлено на понимание
логической структуры текста и относится к повышенному уровню сложности. В
задании ВЗ проверяется умение понять структурносмысловые части текста. В
задании ВЗ нужно заполнить пропуски в тексте частями предложений, одна из
которых лишняя. В данном задании используются публицистические (например,
рецензия) и научно-популярные тексты. В пособие включены 12 заданий ВЗ и
алгоритмы выполнения для данного типа заданий.
— Задания A15—A21 направлены на проверку
полного понимания текста и относятся к высокому уровню сложности. В заданиях
A15—A21 проверяется умение полностью понять текст, в том числе проверяется
способность делать выводы из прочитанного текста. В заданиях A15—A21 нужно
выбрать один из четырех вариантов ответа, в соответствии с прочитанным текстом.
В данном задании используются художественные или публицистические (например,
эссе) тексты. В пособие включены 12 заданий A15—A21 и алгоритмы выполнения для
данного типа заданий.
— В конце «Тематического тренажера ЧТЕНИЕ
по английскому языку» включены ответы к упражнениям.
Для подготовки к остальным разделам
экзамена рекомендуем использовать следующие книги серии «Тематический
тренажер»: ГРАММАТИКА, СЛОВООБРАЗОВАНИЕ, ЛЕКСИКА, ПИСЬМО. Более подробную
информацию по подготовке е ЕГЭ по английскому языку можно найти на сайте
www.help-ege.ru.
Успехов!
Автор и составитель ЮС. Веселова
З
РАЗДЕЛ
«ЧТЕНИЕ»
Раздел «Чтение» включает в себя 20
заданий. Рекомендуемое время выполнения раздела «Чтение» — 30 минут. Задания
включают в себя три типа заданий: задания Ю, ВЗ и задания А15—А21. Задания
различаются по формату (задание на установление соответствия и задание с
множественным выбором ответа), по уровням сложности (базовый, повышенный и
высокий уровни сложности), по проверяемым умениям (умение понять основную тему
текста, умение понять структурно-смысловые связи текста, умение понимать
логические связи в предложении и между частями текста; делать выводы из
прочитанного). В данном разделе могут быть использованы публицистические,
художественные, научно-популярные и прагматические тексты. Другими словами, это
могут быть тексты журнальных статей, брошюр, путеводителей, газетные и
журнальные статьи. Только в заданиях Al 5—A21, которые относятся к высокому
уровню сложности, могут быть использованы отрывки из художественных текстов.
|
ЗаДание |
Количество вопросов |
Проверяемые умения |
Тип текста |
Тип заДания |
|
Базовый уровень |
7 |
Умение понять |
Журнальные статьи, брошюры, п теводители |
Задание на установление соответствия |
|
вз Повышенный уровень |
6 |
Умение |
Газетные или журнальные статьи |
Задание на установление соответствия |
|
А15-А21 Высокий уровень |
7 |
Умение понимать |
Журнальные статьи, современных авторов |
Задание с множественным выбором ответа |
ЗАДАНИЕ НА
УСТАНОВЛЕНИЕ СООТВЕТСТВИЯ Ю
(понимание
основного содержания текста)
Задание В2 направлено на установление
соответствия и относится к базовому (простому) уровню сложности. Для успешного
выполнения задания В2 нужно уметь понять основную тему текста. В задании В2
используются краткие тексты (или абзацы текста) информационного и
научно-популярного характера. В задании В2 нужно установить соответствие между
заголовками и текстами, один из заголовков в задании лишний.
При выполнении данного задания можно
использовать следующие стратегии:
1. Внимательно
прочитайте заголовки и выделите (подчеркните) в них ключевые слова.
2. Быстро
прочитайте тексты или абзацы текста, чтобы понять, о чем они.
З. Выделите в текстах ключевые слова
или фразы, выражающие тему/ основную мысль и соотнести их с ключевыми словами в
заголовке.
4. Подберите
заголовок, соответствующий, с Вашей точки зрения, тому или иному тексту.
5. Не
обращайте внимания на незнакомые слова, если они не • мешают понимать основную
мысль. При выполнении этого задания вам не нужно полностью понимать значения
всех слов. Можно применить метод «языковой догадки» в отношении незнакомых слов
или просто не обращать на них внимания.
6. Помните,
что лишний заголовок не соотносится ни с одним из текстов.
7. Не
оставляйте ни одного вопроса без ответа. Если вы не знаете ответ — постарайтесь
угадать его.
1.
YcmŒogume coomgemcmeue
Me.ycÒy 3aeonoocapvtu 1—8 u maccma.Mu A—G. 3Œecume ceou omeembl 8 ma6nuqy.
14cn0J1b3Yüme KaoæÒyo guØpy monbK0 oÒuH pa3. B
3aòaHuu oÒuH 3azonoeoR nuumuü.
|
1. Cultural activities |
5. |
|
2. |
6. Special consideration |
|
3. Formal means of assessments |
7. |
|
4, Getting around the |
8, |
A. For many courses in the University, the
majority of your marks will be based on your written work. It is essential that
you develop your skills as a writer for the different disciplines in which you
study. Most departments offer advice and guidelines on how to present your
written assignments. But you should be aware that the requirements may vary
from one department to another.
B. There are two formal examination periods each
year: first semester period beginning in June and the second period beginning
in November. Additionally, individual departments may examine at other times
and by various methods such as ‘take-home’ exams, assignments, orally,
practical work and so on.
|
c |
D |
|||||
C. If you feel your performance in an
examination has been adversely affected by illness or misadventure, you should
talk to the course Coordinator in your department and complete the appropriate
form. Each case is considered on its own merits.
D. The University has arrangements with colleges
throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. The schemes are open to
undergraduate and postgraduate students and allow you to complete a semester or
a year of your study overseas. The results you gain are credited towards your
degree at the University. This offers an exciting and challenging way of
broadening your horizons as well as enriching your academic experience in a
different environment and culture.
E. Youth Allowance may be available to full-time
students. Reimbursement of travel costs may also be available in some cases.
Postgraduate research funds are offered for full-time study towards Masters by
Research or PhD degrees. These are competitive and the closing date for
applications is 31 October in the year prior to the one for which the funds are
sought.
F. Your student card, obtained on co:npletion of
enrollment, is proof that you are enrolled. Please take special care of it and
carry it with you when you are at the University. You may be asked to show it
to staff at any time. This card is also your discount card and access card for
the Students’ Union as well as allowing you access to the library.
G. The University provides opportunities for a
wide range of activities, from the production of films and plays, to concerts
and magazines, and even art and photo exhibitions. If you have a creative idea
in mind, pick up a form from ACCESS on Level 3 of the College Wandsworth
Building and fill it through. All the ideas will be considered.
2.
VcmaHoeume
coomæmcmeue Me.ycÒy 3aeon08Ka,uu 1—8 u mevccmauu A—G.
3aæcume ceou omeembl e ma6nugy. ¼cnonb3YÜme
Kaoæòyo quØpy monbK0 oÒuH pm. B 3aòaHuu
oÒuH 3azon080K nuumuü.
1. Dancing helps to
overcome difficulties 5. Hip-Hop movement
2, Boy’s talents 6.
Senseless Life
3. Youth’s life in Bronx 7. Youth’s
hobbies in Belafonte’s film
4. Popularity
of breakdance 8. Personal view of the film
A. These three young men belong to
‘Hip-Hop’. This movement developed during the seventies in the USA, especially
in the New York Bronx. It includes rap-songs, graffiti paintings as well as
breakdance. For young boys and girls this movement is becoming more and more a
kind of expression. They see it as a way to achieve something. Here they can
express their longing for admiration, their desires and their disappointments.
B. For too many young people in the USA —
especially those living in slums such as the New York Bronx — life seems to be
without sense. «Only living people are able to cry. People murder people.
A world without sense.» This is their. reaction sung in a rap-song.
C. The film isn’t a copy of usual
breakdance films. Belafonte shows more. He shows the life of youth in the Bronx
and their thrilling joy of life. And he demonstrates breakdance in nearly
acrobatic pictures. Little Lee, whose feet seem to be of gum when the rhythm of
breakdancing not only as a means of earning some cents. For him it is more than
just dancing. In it he expresses his disappointments and his longing for
something better.
D. Those young people — Black and White —
create a world of their own — a wild, crazy, colourful world, and the rhythm of
their music is their pulsation. For a short time they forget the cruelty of
daily life in a world without illusions and without pity. The film tries to
seize light and darkness of that life.
E. So it is understandable why little
Black Lee is breakdancing in the streets of New York, why Ramon — an unemployed
white boy who is painting the white trains of the New York subway — considers
himself to be an artist. And Kenny, who is unemployed, too, as a disc jockey
produces his own music, mixing it with the help of things like dropping
watertaps or brushes, thus producing a truly fascinated music. The reaction of
his audience speaks for itself.
F.
My first
impression was that the problem dealt with is not presented as clichés,
everybody gets a lot background information. In an interview Harry Belafonte
said: «I’ve followed breakdevelopment attentively. It is an outcry of a
youth we all have forgotten. A shriek of a youth without future in reality,
with true ‘no future’ .. «
G. Breakdance, graffiti-painting,
rap-songs, Hip-Hops… — fascinating words, but what about their background?
What make Black youth in the USA engage in such admittedly impressive hobbies?
«Beat Street», a film produced by Harry Belafonte, provides some
information. There a lot of pros and cons about this film, a lot of different
opinions about it.
|
B |
c |
|||||
3.
YcmaH06ume
coomæmcmeue Meoæòy 3aeonogŒca.Mu 1—8 u meKcma.Mu A—G
3Œecume ceou omeembz g ma6nuqy. Mcnonæyüme Kaoæòyo
uuØpy monbK0 oÒuH pa.3. B 3aòaHuu oÒuH 3azon060K
nuumuÜ.
1. Successful career 5.
Sharing impressions with a friend
2. Challenging job 6. Job offer
3, Preparing for a job
interview 7. Enjoyable job
4.
Personality 8. Applying for a job
A.. A bright sixteen-or-seventeen-year-old is
needed to work on Saturdays from nine till six on our market stall selling
clothes. Our stock consists of a wide range of trousers, jeans and shirts of
modern design. No previous experience is necessary as we provide full training
on the job. The main qualities required are an ability to deal with the
customers in a positive and friendly manner.
B.
You are a natural
optimist. You are happy most of the time and always expect the best. However,
you are often careless and you don’t always work hard enough, because you think
everything will be fine. Remember, nobody is lucky all the time.
|
B |
c |
D |
||||
C.
I was twenty-three when I
went to Cosmopolitan as a secretary. I had to do all the usual secretarial jobs
like answering the phone and typing letters. And at eleven o’clock I made the
coffee, and I had to clean the fridge once a month. After a year I began to
train as a sub-editor and then got my National Certificate — a qualification
for British journalists. After a time I became features editor on Cosmopolitan.
My secretarial training has been incredibly useful.
D Find out as much as you can about your prospective
employers and the business they are in. Think about the questions you are most
likely to be asked, and at least three questions you would like to ask them.
Don’t only talk about what you hope to get from the fim. Say what you can do
for them and all the things in your previous experience and training that you
think will be useful in the new job.
E. feel I would be suitable for this position
because I have good organizational skills, and I greatly enjoy going out and
meeting new people. I have experience of this kind of work. Last summer I was
employed by Imperial Hotels as a tour organizer, and arranged excursions to
places of interest. I also worked for London Life last Christmas, which
involved taking groups of tourists around the capital. Please do not hesitate
to contact me if you require any further information. I look forward to hearing
from you.
F. At the moment I’m staying at a hotel in
Athens and I’m doing quite a lot of sightseeing. You would not believe it but
the job doesn’t seem to be too demanding. Most of the time I deal with bookings
and answer inquiries. But I suppose it’ll be different when the tourist season
starts next month. Even now restaurants are beginning to get busier. Next, I’m
moving to the island of Crete, which is where most of the people in the company
live. See you soon.
G. There are Search and Rescue Services all
around the coast of Britain. They must be ready to go out at any time of the
day or night and in any weather. Sometimes they must rescue people in the
mountains in a storm at night. It isn’t easy to navigate a helicopter in the
dark just a few metres from a mountain. The crews work on 24 hour shifts, so if
a ship sinks or if someone falls down a cliff, Search and Rescue will be there
to help.
4,
YcmŒoeume coomeemcmeue MeatCÒy
3aeon06Kajuu 1 — 8 u maccmauu A — G. 3aHecume ceou omeembl g ma6nuqy.
Mcn0J1b3Yüme Kaacòyo quØpy mo.WbK0 oÒuH B
3aòaHuu oÒuH 3az0J1080R nuumuÜ.
1.
Simulating a
natural environment
2.
Demands on space and energy are reduced
3.
The plans for
future homes
4.
Underground living accommodation
5.
Some buildings do not require natural light
6.
Developing underground services
7.
Homes sold before completion
8.
An underground home is discovered
A.
The first anybody knew about Dutchman Franck Siegmund and his family
was when workmen tramping through a field found a narrow steel chimney
protruding from the glass. Closer inspection revealed a chink of sky-light
window among the thistles, and when amazed investigators moved down the side of
the hill they came across a pine door complete with leaded diamond glass and a
brass knocker set into an underground building. The Siegmund had managed to
live undetected for six years outside the border-town of Breda, in Holland.
There are the latest in a clutch of individualistic homemakers who have
burrowed underground in search of tranquillity.
B.
Most have been forced to dismantle their individualistic homes
and return to more conventional lifestyles. But a Dutch-style houses are about
to become respectable and chic. The foundations had yet to be dug, but
customers queued up to buy the unusual part-submerged houses, whose back wall
consists of a grassy mound and whose front is a long grass gallery.
C.
The Dutch are not the only would-be moles. Growing numbers of
Europeans are burrowing below ground to create houses, offices, discos and
shopping malls. It is already proving a way of life in extreme climates; in
winter months in Montreal, Canada, for instance, citizens can escape the cold
in an underground complex complete with shops and even health clinics. In Tokyo
builders are planning a massive underground city to be begun in the next
decade, and underground shopping malls are already common in Japan, where 90
percent of the population is squeezed into 20 percent of the landscape.
D.
Building big commercial buildings underground can be a way to
avoid threatening a beautiful and ‘environmentally sensitive’ landscape. Indeed
many of the buildings which consume most land — such as cinemas, supermarkets,
theatres, warehouses or libraries — have no need to be on the surface since
they do not need windows.
E.
There are big advantages too, when it comes to private homes. A
development of 194 houses which would take up 14 hectares of land above ground
would occupy 2,7 hectares below it, while the number of roads would be halved.
Under several of earth, noise is minimal and insulation is excellent.
F.
In the US, where
energy-efficient homes became popular after oil crisis of 1973, 10,000
underground houses have been built. A terrace of five homes, Britain’s first
subterranean development, is under way in Nottinghamshire. Italy’s outstanding
example of subterranean architecture is the Olivetti residential centre in
Ivrea. Commissioned by Roberto Olivetti in 1969, it comprises 82 one-bedroomed
apartments and 12 maisonettes and forms a house-hotel for Olivetti employees.
It is built into a hill and little can be seen from outside except a glass
façade. Patricia Vallecchi, a resident since 1992, says it is little
different from living in a conventional apartment.
G.
Not everyone adapts so
well, and in Japan scientists at the Shimuzu Corporation have developed ‘space
creation’ systems which mix light, sounds, breezes and scents to stimulate
people who spend long periods below ground. Underground offices in Japan are
being equipped with ‘virtual’ windows and mirrors, while underground
departments in the University of Minnesota have periscopes to reflect views and
light.
|
c |
D |
|||||
5,
YcmŒoeume coomeemcmgue .n,te3fCÒy 3aeon08Kauu 1—8
u maccmauu A—G. 3aHecume ceou omeembl g maõnuqy. Mcnonb3Yüme
Kaoæòyo qu(þpy monbK0 oÒuH pa3, B
3aòaŒtuu oÒuH 3a20J1080K nuuuuü.
|
1. Odd Hobby |
5. Divorces in Britain |
|
2. Animal Protection |
6. Reserved nation? |
|
3. Marriage: Modern View |
7, |
|
4. A National Hobby |
8, Spoil Your Pet |
A.
The family in Britain is changing. People get married at a later
age and many career-oriented women don’t want to have children immediately.
They prefer to do well at their jobs first and put off having a baby until
their late thirties. However, maniage and the family are still popular. Most
people in Britain still get married and stay together until the end of their
lives. The majority of divorced people marry again, and they sometimes take
responsibility for a second family. Relationships within the family are also
changing. Parents treat their children more as equals than they used to.
B.
Many visitors who come to Britatin often say that it is very
difficult to make friends with British people because they are cold and
resewed. This is not true. What is true is that different cultures have
different ways of showing affection. In many countries (e.g. Spain or Russia)
friends often hug and kiss each other when they get together. In Britain this
is not so common. British people are not likely to tell their whole life story
to a complete stranger or even share their problems and worries with a friend.
The reason is that they don’t want to trouble other people with their problems.
C.
From going for picnics in the rain to playing cricket, the
British do many things that confuse people from other countries. However, there
are some sports and hobbies that confuse even British people themselves.
Perhaps the strangest of them is train spotting. Basically train spotting is
collecting trains. But a locomotive won’t fit in your house or garage, will it?
So train spotters simply write down the serial number of every train they see.
They stand for hours at major UK stations sipping tea from their thermos flasks
and waiting for the next train.
D.
Like everybody else, British people like doing things outside
work. Gardening is a well-known favourite. As the weather in Britain is
relatively mild, British people manage to do gardening almost all the year
round. Sometimes this can be just doing a bit of weeding, and sometimes serious
vegetable and fruit growing. Mowing grass is also very important. Every Sunday
morning (except for winter) people come out to mow their lawns. The British see
an unmown lawn not only as a sign of laziness, but also as disrespect to others
(and you can get fined for it as well).
E.
It is no secret that British people love their pets to bits and
would do anything to make their life happy. But just how far does this love go?
The answer is QUITE far. Today, half of the 24.2 million homes in Great Britain
have a pet. Cats are especially popular because many people who live alone and
go to work like independent pets. There are eight million cats in Britain.
Other popular pets are dogs, birds, rabbits, fish, guinea-pigs and hamsters.
But you can also come across such exotic pets as crocodiles, spiders, snakes
and lizards.
F.
The British have
always loved animals. Great Britain was the first country to create a society
to protect animals in 1824. The society still exists today, and it is called
the RSPCA — the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The
RSPCA finds new owners for 96,000 homeless animals every yeare Besides, it
organizes different public events and is involved in lots of activities in the
sphere of protecting animals’ rights. The RSPCA also provides charity support
to animal shelters.
G.
Today’s posh pets
need more than good food. They want to be pampered, just like humans. In
Britain you can see an astrologer who will do a special horoscope for your pet.
You can take your pet to see a psychologist. You can buy pet accessories and
designer clothes. There are also special accessories designed to keep your pet
fit, such as treadmills for dogs to exercise indoors or orthopaedic beds for
dogs that suffer from a bad back. There is even a pet hotel in Newcastle that
offers cats and dogs a gym, a jacuzzi and watching videos of their owners!
|
c |
F |
|||||
6.
YcmaHoeume coomeemcmeue
auewcòy 3azonooca..uu 1—8 u meccma.uu A—G. 3Œecume cgou omgenabz e
ma6nuvy. Mcnonæyüme Kaacòyo quØpy monbK0 oÒuH
pan B 3aòaHuu oÒug 3aZ0JZ080K JIUWHuÜ.
|
1, Magic and Heroes |
5. Images on Stone |
|
2. Doing Business |
6. Stories and Seasons |
|
3, Early Developments |
7. Personal Record |
|
4, Sounds and Symbols |
8. From Visual to Sound |
A. The
earliest stage of writing is called pre-writing or proto-literacy, and depends
on direct representation of objects, rather than representing them with letters
or other symbols. Evidence for this stage, in the form of rock and cave
paintings, dates back to about 15,000 years ago, although the exact dates are
debatable. This kind of proto-literate cave painting has been found in Europe,
with the best known examples in South-Western France, but also in Africa and on
parts of the American continent. These petrographs (pictures on rock) show
typical scenes of the period, and include representations of people, animals
and activities.
B. Why
did ancient people put such effort into making them? Various theories have been
put forward, but the most compelling include the idea that the pictures were
records of heroic deeds or important events, that they were part of magical
ceremonies, or that they were a form of primitive calendar, recording the
changes in the seasons as they happened. These, then, are all explanations as
to why man started to write.
C. A
related theory suggests that the need for writing arose thereafter from the
transactions and bartering that went on. In parts of what is now Iraq and Iran,
small pieces of fired earth — pottery — have been found which appear to have
been used as tokens to represent bartered objects, much as we use tokens in a
casino, or money, today. Eventually, when the tokens themselves became too
numerous to handle easily, representations of the tokens were inscribed on clay
tablets.
D. An early
form of writing is the use of pictograms, which are pictures used to
communicate. Pictograms have been found from almost every part of the world and
every era of development, and are still in use in primitive communities
nowadays. They represent objects, ideas or conceptsmore or less directly. They
tend to be simple in the sense that they are not a complex or full picture,
although they are impressively difficult to interpret to an outsider unfamiliar
with their iconography, which tends to be localized and to differ widely from
society to society. They were never intended to be a detailed testimony which
could be interpreted by outsiders, but to serve instead as aide-memoires to the
author, rather as we might keep a diary in a personal shorthand.
E. The
first pictograms that we know of are Sumerian in origin, and date to about 8000
BC. They show how images used to represent concrete objects could be expanded
to include abstractions by adding symbols together, or using associated
symbols. One Sumerian pictogram, for example, indicates ‘death’ by combining
the symbols for ‘man’ and ‘winter’, another shows ‘power’ with the symbol for a
man with the hands enlarged.
F. By
about 5,000 years ago, Sumerian pictograms had spread to other areas, and the
Sumerians had made a major advance towards modem writing with the development
of the rebus principle, which meant that symbols could be used to indicate
sounds. This was done by using a particular symbol not only for the thing it
originally represented, but also for anything which was pronounced in a similar
way. So the pictogram for na (meaning ‘animal’) could also be used to mean
‘old’ (which was also pronounced na). The specific meaning of the pictogram
(whether na meant ‘old’ or ‘animal’) could only be decided through its context.
G. It is a
short step from this to the development of syllabic writing using pictograms,
and this next development took about another half a century. Now the Sumerians
would add pictograms to each other, so that each, representing an individual
sound — or syllable — formed part of a larger word. Thus pictograms
representing the syllables he, na and mi (‘mother’, ‘old’, ‘my’) could be put
together to form henami or ‘ grandmother’.
|
c |
||||||
7.
YcmŒoeume coomeemcmeue .Me3fCÒy 3aeOJZ06Ka.MU 1—8
u maccma.,uu A—G. 3aæcume ceou omeembl e ma6nuqy.
¼cnonæyüme RaozÒyo qu4py monbK0 oÒuH pa-3. B
3aòaHuu oÒuH 3aZOJ1080K nuumui.
|
1, Learning takes time |
5. Ear training |
|
2, Use of a tense |
6. Public speaking |
|
3. Opinion essay |
7. Listening for note-making |
|
4. Punctuation |
8. Applying for a job |
A.
They help the reader to make good of what is being read. The
comma is second in importance to the full stop. The full stop marks a break
between sentences, and the comma marks a slightly smaller or shorter break in
the sentence. It tells the reader to pause slightly within the sentence. There
are also particular cases where commas are always used, for example, marking
off the items in a list.
B.
Choose a topic of interest to the class as a whole. In preparing
your speech remember that it is a speech and not an essay. When you give a
speech, it should not sound as though it is being read. Some people make notes
and then address the audience using their notes. Others, though, write out the
whole speech but then read it «dramatically». In general, the
sentences in a speech are shorter than they are in an essay.
C.
The use of the present perfect and the past simple can be one of
the most difficult things to learn in English, particularly for Russian
speakers. It won’t be possible for you to leam it very quickly. 
Don’t worry.
Practice the tenses as much as possible whenever you can and little by little
you will learn how to use them properly.
D.
The present perfect links the past and the presente It is often
used with «just» to describe an action in the recent past. It is also
used for recent actions in the past with a present result, when the evidence is
in the present. It also denotes actions which began in the past and still take
place or are happening now. Finally, we use the present perfect tense to relate
experience from the past until now.
E.
Use the first paragraph to state your reason for writing. If you
are replying to an advertisement you should mention where you saw it. In the
second paragraph draw attention to what makes you a particularly suitable
person for the post. Use present tenses to highlight your present situation and
skills. Use the present perfect to describe relevant recent experience. Use the
past tense to describe relevant achievements in the past. Don’t use informal
expressions.
F.
The best way of improving is to get as much practice in listening
as possible. Some of this may be «real» English on television and
radio. Use your knowledge of the world to help you predict or guess what people
are talking about. Never stop listening too early, because quite a lot of what
is said may be repeated, Don’t worry if you cannot understand every word. We
rarely follow everything we hear, even in our own language.
G.
It is important to have a good strong opening if your writing is
aimed at persuading people to change their views. You can start by presenting
the opposite point of view to your own, using expressions like «Some
people argue etc. This is usually followed by linking words which serve to
introduce the other side of the argument. You can personalise the argument by
using real examples. Group what you want to say into main topic areas.
|
c |
||||||
8.
YcmaHoeume coomeemcmeue
MeotcÒy meoJ108Ka.n,tu 1—8 u me,tccma.Mu A—G. 3Œecume
ceou omgembz 8 ma6nuw. 14cn0J1b3Yüme ,tcaoæòyo
guØpy monbK0 oÒuŒ{ pa.3. B 3aòaHuu OÒUH
3aeon060K JZUIUHUÜ.
|
1, An unexpected preference for modern items 2. 3. A lengthy, but necessary task 4. The |
5. The two roles of museums 6, Who owns the museum 7. 8. |
A. When, in
1938, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, in Washington DC,
decided it had run out of space, it began transferring part of its collection
from the cramped attic ad basement rooms where the specimens had been
languishing to an out-of-town warehouse. Restoring those speciments to pristine
conditions was a monumental task. One member staff, for example, spent six
months doing nothing but gluing the legs back on the crane flies. But 30
million items and seven years later, the job was done.
B. At
least for the moment. For the Smithsonian owns 130 million plants, animals,
rocks and fossils and that number is growing at 2-3% a year. On an
international scale, however, such numbers are not exceptional. The Natural
History Museum in London has 80 million speciments. And the Science Museum has
300,000 objects recording the history of science and technology. Deciding what
to do with these huge accumulations of things is becoming a problem They cannot
be thrown away, but only a tiny fraction can be put on display.
C. The
huge, invisible collections behind the scenes at science and natural history
museums are the result of the dual functions of these institutions. On the one
hand, they are places for the public to go and look at things. On the other,
they are places of research — and researchers are not interested merely in the
big, showy things that curators like to reveal to the public.
D. The
public is often surprised at the Science Museum’s interest in recent objects.
Neil Brown, the senior curator for classical physics, says he frequently turns
down antique brass and mahogany electrical instruments on the grounds that they
are already have enough of them, but he is happy to receive objects such as the
Atomic domestic coffee maker, and a 114-piece Do-ItYourself toolkit with canvas
case, and a green beer bottle.
E. Natural
history Museums collect for a different reason. Their accumulations are part of
attempts to identify and understand the natural world. Some of the plants and
animals they hold are «type speciments». In other words, they are the
standard reference unit, like a reference weight or length, for the species in
question. Other speciments are valuable because of their age. One of the most
famous demonstrations of natural selection in action was made using museum
speciments. A study of moths collected over a long period of time showed that
their wings became darker (which made them less visible to birds) as the
industrial revolution made Britain more polluted.
F. Year
after year, the value of such collections quietly and valuably increases, as
scientists find uses that would have been unimaginable to those who started
them a century or two ago. Genetic analysis, pharmaceutical development and so
on would have been unimaginable to the museum’s founders.
G.
But as the
collections grow older, they grow bigger. Insects may be small, but there are
millions of them and entomologists would like to catalogue every one. And when
the reference material is a pair of giraffes or a blue whale, space becomes a
problem. That is why museums such as the Smithsonian are increasingly forced to
tum to out of town storage facilities. But museums that show the public only a
small fraction of their material risk losing the goodwill of governments and
the public, which they need to keep running. Hence, the determination of so
many museums is to make their back room collections more widely available.
|
c |
||||||
9.
YcmŒoeume coomæmcmgue
MeoæÒy 3’Z20JZ08Ka.MU 1—8 u maccma,’vtu A—G. 3aHecume cgou omeembl
e ma6nuqy. 14cnonb3Yüme Kaoæòyo qz4py monbK0 oÒuH pa3,
B 3aòaHuu oÒuH 3aeonoeoK .nuumuÜ.
|
1. About Jago International |
5. The Professional Development Unit |
|
2. Training Outside Jago |
6. Find out More |
|
3. Personal Development |
7. Routes to Professional Development |
|
4. Achieving the Best |
8. Why Jago Encourages |
A.
Jago International is a by-word for quality in vocational
education. From training in the use of the humble word processor to the highest
level of negotiation skills, Jago International will arrange for employers to
gain the most from their employees’ abilities, and for employees to make the
best of themselves. Jago International has an unblemished record of achievement
after more than 50 years’ work with the world’s largest companies.
B.
Jago International is committed to the personal and professional
development of its own staff. This is in keeping with its philosophy of
‘Achieving the best, for the best of all possible worlds’. Only if our own
staff arc fully-trained and fulfilled can our customers receive the most
up-to-date and most effective training for their own development.
C.
Staff are encouraged to pursue both personal and professional
qualifications to ensure they fulfil their potential to the greatest degree.
There are a number of ways staff can achieve this with the support of Jago
International. Staff may take any of the wide assortment of training courses
administered through our own Professional Development Unit. Staff may be
directed to take outside qualifications from other training providers where we
do not provide these qualifications ourselves. Staff may also wish to take time
to pursue individual training goals and, where appropriate, Jago international
will support this.
D.
Jago
International’s Professional Development Unit is housed in our Freemantle
headquarters but delivers courses on-site in each of our regional centres. A
Inonthly schedule of courses available is sent to every section and department
head and is postcd on main noticc boards and the Jago wcbsite, Thesc courses
extend from word proccssing and spreadsheet use, to staff and project
management, to our own MBA courses run in association with the University of
Freemantlc. Thcsc courses are frec to all Jago staff. Applications should bc
made through your linc supervisor or head of department.
E.
It may be
appropriate to take courses or qualifications which are not covered in the
range offered by our P DU. Staff arc encouraged to take courses and
qualifications with other trainincr organisations with the agreement
of their line supcžvisor or head of depanment. Support and funding is
available to staff through the PDU where this is thought appropriatc and
helpful to the company as a whole. Application forms for funding can bc
obtained from Dr Bob Morley, the Director of our PDU, but must bc submitted by
the appropriate head of department. Within thc last year we have supported
staff taking courses in Advanced Marketing at the University of Freemantle. It
is company policy for staff to make sonnc financial commit:nent to the courses
they take in these circumstances.
F.
Staff may also wish to take other courses or training for their
own personal development and there are opportunities for support here too. The
PDU has a budget for extraordinary training to provide some help to staff
undertaking training in this category. This is also administered by Dr Morley
in the PDU and an application fon•n should be sought from him. Currently being
funded are courses at the Queensland Higher College in aromatherapy and
spiritual cleansing.
G.
For a full description of all courses and funding opportunities
available to staff through Jago International, contact Dr Bob Morley on
extension 5391 or at the Professional Development Unit at the Headquarters
Building.
|
D |
||||||
10.
YcmŒoeume coomgemcmeue
.MeOfCÒy .3ac’0J108Ka,uu 1—8 u meKcmauu A—G. 3aHecume ceou owtgembl e
ma6nugy. Mcn0J1b3Yüme Kaoæòyo bf*).’ monbK0 oÒuH pa3.
B 3aòaHuu oÒuH 3az0J1060K nuuazuü.
10 Stages of sleep 5.
What causes insomnia
2.
The purpose of
sleep 6. Reasons for sleep disorders
3. How
to overcome sleep-related problems 7. Sleep helps to remain healthy
4. Average
amount of sleep 8, How some hormone works
A.
It is estimated that the average man or woman needs between
seven-and-a-half and eight flours’ sleep a night. Some can manage on a lot
less. Baroness Thatcher, for example, was reported to be able to get by on four
hours’ sleep a night when she was Prime Minister of Britain. Dr Jill Wilkinson,
senior lecturer in psychology at Surrey University states that healthy
individuals sleeping less than five hours or even as little as two hours in
every 24 hours are rare, but represent a sizeable minority.
B.
The latest beliefs are that the main purposes of sleep are
to enable the body to rest and replenish, allowing time for repairs to take
place and for tissue to be regenerated. One supporting piece of evidence for
this rest-and-repair theory is that production of the growth hormone
somatotropin, which helps tissue to regenerate, peaks while we are asleep. Lack
of sleep, however, can compromise the immune system, muddle thinking, cause
depression, promote anxiety and encourage irritability.
C.
Researchers in San Diego deprived a group of men of sleep between
3am and ‘lam on just one night, and found that levels of their bodies’ natural
defences against viral infections had fallen significantly when measured the
following morning. ‘Sleep is essential for our physical and emotional
well-being and there are few aspects of daily living that are not disrupted by
the lack of it’, says Professor William Regelson of Virginia University, a
specialist in insomnia. ‘Because it can seriously undermine the functioning of
the immune system, sufferers are vulnerable to infection.’
D.
For many people, lack of sleep is rarely a matter of choice. Some
have problems getting to sleep, others with staying asleep until the morning.
Despite popular belief that sleep is one long event, research shows that, in an
average night, there are five stages of sleep and four cycles, during which the
sequence of stages is repeated. In the first light phase, the heart rate and
blood pressure go down and the muscles relax. In the next two stages, sleep
gets progressively deeper. In stage four, usually reached after an hour, the
slumber is so deep that, if awoken, the sleeper would be confused and
disorientated. It is in this phase that sleep-walking can occur. In the fifth
stage, the rapid eye movement (REM) stage, the heartbeat quickly gets back to
normal levels, brain activity accelerates to daytime heights and above and the
eyes move constantly beneath closed lids. During this stage, the body is almost
paralysed. This phase is also the time when we dream.
E.
Sleeping patterns change with age, which is why many people over
60 develop insomnia. In America, that age group consumes almost half of the
sleep medication on the One theory for the age-related change is that it is due
to hormonal changes. The temperature rise occurs at daybreak in the young, but
at three or four in the morning in the elderly. Age aside, it is estimated that
roughly one in three people suffer some kind of sleep disturbance. Causes can
be anything from pregnancy and stress to alcohol and heart disease. Smoking is
a known handicap to sleep, with one survey showing that ex-smokers got to sleep
In 18 minutes rather than their earlier average of 52 minutes.
F.
Apart from self-help therapy such as regular exercise, there are
psychological treatments, including relaxation training and therapy aimed at
getting rid of pre-sleep worries and anxieties. There is also sleep reduction
therapy, where the aim is to improve sleep quality by strictly regulating the
time people go to bed and when they gel up. Medication is regarded by many as a
last resort and often takes the form of sleeping pills, normally
benzodiazepines, which are minor tranquillisers.
G.
Professor Regelson advocates the use of melatonin for treating
sleep disoFders. Melatonin is a naturally secreted hormone, located in the
pineal gland deep inside the brain. The main ffinction of the hormone is to
control the body’s biological clock, so we know when to sleep and when to wake.
The gland detects light reaching it through the eye; when there is no light, it
secretes the melatonin into the bloodstream, lowering the body temperature and
helping to induce steep, Melatonin pills contain a synthetic version of the
hormone and are commonly used for jet lag as well as for sleep disturbance.
|
c |
G |
|||||
11.
YcmŒoeume coomeemcmeue
MeoŒcòy 3aeon08Ka.Mu 1—8 u maccmauu A—G. 3aæcume ceou omeembl
e ma6nuqy. Mcnonæyüme KaoæÒyo quñ.’ monbK0
oÒuH pa3. B 3aòaHuu oÒuH 3azon060K nuumuü.
|
1. |
5. Fashion houses |
|
2. |
6, |
|
3. Preparation of a |
7. |
|
4. Conflicting interests |
8. Fashion as the spirit of an age |
A.
One of the most famous
fashion designers of the 20th century was Gianni Versace. At the age of
eighteen, he began working for his mother and quickly learned the skills of
dressmaking and design. By 1982 he was incredibly famous and had won the first
of many awards. His clothes were popular with famous musicians, such as Elton
John and George Michael. He was asked to design costumes for ballets, shows and
concerts. Versace died in 1997, at the age of fifty.
B.
The great dressmaking
firms are usually directed by outstanding dress designers, such as
Schiaparelli, Balenciaga, Molyneux and Chanel. They are in Paris, London, Rome,
Florence and New York, but by far the most important are French ones. This is
because France has nearly always set the fashion in clothes. Twice a year, in
January and July, they present their «collections», that is, their
displays of model clothes, which suggest the ideas on which fashion will be
based in the following spring and autumn.
C.
Some months before the
show the fabric manufacturers bring their materials to the fashion house, and
the designer makes his selection. At the same time, he makes hundreds of
sketches from which new fashion «lines» will eventually develop. If
the original idea proves a success, a «model» is made in materials of
suitable texture and colour. Accessories — hat, gloves, jewellery, etc. — are
added. After months of hard work the «models» are finally ready for
presentation.
D. Since the
beginning of the 20th century ready-made copies of very expensive and
fashionable models have been sold in shops. Clothing manufacturers developed a
method by which simplified versions of a «model» could be reproduced
in large quantities and sold to a much wider market. They employ their own
designers to adapt «models» so that they can be copied and
mass-produced in different sizes.
E.
If you wish to be not
only fashionable but also well dressed, you should bring individuality to your
clothes. Now that fashion has become universal and clothes are mass produced,
it is very difficult to avoid monotony. However, by skilful adaptation and
careful selection, you can give a certain individuality to a general fashion
«line», so that a dress manufactured by the thousands can appear to be
just the dress for you.
F.
The future of fashion as
art may be endangered by the possibility that new styles will be dictated by
businessmen rather than by dress designers. The latter are creative artists,
who are searching for new and original ideas in fashion which will reflect the
mood of the contemporary world. The aim of the businessman is to please the
mass market, which tends to be conservative in its tastes, so they cannot
afford to make a mistake, which often results in dull, lifeless fashion.
F. Fashion does not just
depend on one person’s idea of a new line or a different look, but on something
much wider. It expresses a feeling for what is going on in the world around. It
is a mirror in which are reflected the events, ideas and interests of an entire
era. Dress designers, the artists of the fashion world, try to interpret these
influences and express them in the fashions they produce.
|
c |
D |
|||||
Task 12.
YcmŒoeume coomgemcmgue
Meacòy 3aZOJZOßKa.MU 1—8 u maccma.Mu A—G. 3aHecume ceou omeernbl e
ma6nuqy. Mcnonæyüme qz4py «IOJZbKO OÒUH pa3. B
3aòaHuu OÒUH 3aZOJZ080K JZUWHUÜ,
|
1. New method of research |
5. New phrases enter dictionary |
|
2. Non-verbal content |
6. A cooperative research project |
|
3, The first study of |
7, Accurate word frequency counts |
|
4. Traditional |
8. Alternative expressions provided |
A.
The compiling of dictionaries has been historically the
provenance of studious professorial types — usually bespectacled — who love to
pore over weighty tomes and make pronouncements on the finer nuances of
meaning, They were probably good at crosswords and definitely knew a lot of
words, but the image was always rather dry and dusty. The latest technology is
revolutionising the content of dictionaries and the way they are put together.
B.
For the first time, dictionary publishers are incorporating real,
spoken English into their data. It gives lexicographers (people who write
dictionaries) access to a more vibrant, up-to-date language which has never
really been studied before. In one project, 150 volunteers each agreed to tie a
Walkman recorder to their waist and leave it running for anything up Wvo weeks.
Every conversation they had was recorded. When the data was collected, the
length of tapes was 35 times the depth of the Atlantic Ocean. Teams of audio
typists transcribed the tapes to produce a computerized database of ten million
words.
C.
This has been the basis — along with an existing written corpus —
for the Language Activator dictionary, described by lexicographer Professor
Randolph Quirk as «the book of world has been waiting for.» It shows
advanced foreign learners of English how the language is really used. In the
dictionary, key words such as ‘eat’ are followed by related phrases such as
‘wolf down’ or ‘be a picky eater’, allowing the student to choose the
appropriate phrase.
D.
«This kind of research would be impossible without
computers,» said Delia Summers, a director of dictionaries. «It has
fransfon•ned the way lexicographers work. If you look at the word ‘like’, you 
may
intuitively think that the first and most frequent meaning is the verb, as in ‘I
like swimming’. It is not. It is the preposition, as in ‘she walked like a
duck.» Just because a word or phrase is used doesn’t mean it ends up in a
dictionary. The sifting out process is as vital as ever. But the database does
allow lexicographers to search for a word and find out how frequently it is
used — something that could only be guessed at intuitively before.
E.
Researchers have found that written English works in a very
different way to spoken English. The phrase ‘say what you like’ literally means
‘feel free to say anything you want’, but in reality it is used, evidence
shows, by someone to prevent the other person voicing disagreement. The phrase
‘it’ is a question of crops up on database over and over again. It has nothing
to do with enquiry, but it’s one of the most frequent English phrases which has
never been in a language learner’s dictionary before: it is now.
F.
The spoken Corpus
computer shows how inventive and humorous people are when they are using
language by twisting familiar phrases for effect. It also reveals the power of
the pauses and noises we use to play for time, convey emotion, doubt and irony.
G, For the moment, those benefiting
most from the Spoken Corpus are foreign learners. «Computers allow
lexicographers to search quickly through more examples of real English,»
said Professor Geoffrey Leech of Lancaster University. «They allow dictionaries
to be more accurate and give a feel for how language is being used.» The
spoken Corpus is part of the larger British National Corpus, an initiative
carried out by several groups involved in the production of language learning
materials: publishers, universities and the British Library.
|
B |
c |
D |
||||
ЗАДАНИЕ НА ПОНИМАНИЕ СТРУКТУРНО-СМЫСЛОВЫХ СВЯЗЕЙ В ТЕКСТЕ ВЗ
(на
установление соответствия)
Задание ВЗ направлено на понимание
логической структуры текста и относится к повышенному уровню сложности. В
задании ВЗ проверяется умение понять структурносмысловые части текста. В
задании ВЗ нужно заполнить пропуски в тексте частями предложений, одна из которых
лишняя. В данном задании используются публицистические (например, рецензия) и
научно-популярные тексты,
При выполнении данного задания можно
использовать следующие стратегии:
1. Быстро
прочитайте текст, чтобы понять, о чем он.
2. Внимательно
прочитайте части предложения, которыми Вам следует заполнить пропуски.
3. Старайтесь
заполнять пропуски частями предложений последовательно. Для этого внимательно
прочитайте предложения до и после пропуска.
4. Выделите слова]словосочетания, в
частях предложений, и проанализируйте слова/словосочетания, с которыми они
могут соотноситься в тексте.
5. Решите,
какими частями предложений Вы заполните пропуск. Если у Вас появится желание
вставить какую-то часть предложения еще раз, тогда вернитесь к тексту.
6. Чтобы
видеть, какие части предложения Вы еще не использовали, по ходу выполнения
задания вычеркивайте использованные части предложений.
7. Обращайте
внимание на слова, стоящие до или после пропуска, а также знаки препинания.
8. Обратите
особое внимание на согласование подлежащего со сказуемым, устойчивые выражения
и грамматические структуры.
9. Восстановить
нужную часть предложения помогают союзы и слова-связки:
1) moreover, also,
too, as we11 — используются для того, чтобы добавить факты, мысли к тем,
которые были уже упомянуты.
2) however, but,
though, оп the other hand — используются для того, чтобы сообщить информацию,
противоположную той, которая уже упоминалась.
З) compared with, in comparison with —
используются для того, чтобы сравнить факты, мысли с уже упомянутыми.
4) because, because of.
as а result, therefore — используются для того, чтобы сравнить факты, мысли с
уже упомянутыми.
5) so, then, in
conclusion, in short, after all, as а result — используются для того, чтобы
подвести итог сказанному.
6) so that, in order to
— используются для того, чтобы показать цель действия.
7) for example, for
instance — используются для того, чтобы дать пример.
6rstly, secondly,
fnally, 6rst, next, then, after that, at 6rst — используются для того, чтобы
установить последовательность фактов, событий.
9). this means that — используются для
того, чтобы сделать вывод, заключение.
10) if, in that case — используются для
того, чтобы объяснить условие действия.
1 1) generally — используется для того,
чтобы дать обобщение,
12) by the
way — используется для того, чтобы ввести новую информацию или
прокомментировать то, о чем уже было сказано.
13) that is
to say, to put it in another way — используются для того, чтобы выразить
другими словами то, что уже было сказано.
10. Если Вы затрудняетесь
в выборе части предложения, поставьте цифру наугад, но не оставляйте в бланке
ответов соответствующую клетку незаполненной.
11. По окончании выполнения
задания прочитайте текст с заполненными частями предложения и убедитесь, что
повествование логично.
1.
Tlpogumaüme
meKcm u 3anon,qume nponyacu A—F gacmn.uu npeònooæewü,
0603HageHHbZX 
1—7. OÒHa gacmeü 8
cnucKe 1—7 JZUIUHBB. 3aHecume quØpb1, 0603Hagarotgue coomgemcmg ue
gacmu n eònooæewü, g ma6nu
Ordinary people all over the world are willing to risk their
lives for the ultimate experience — an ‘adrenaline buzz’. What basic human need
is driving them to do it?
Risk sports are one of the fastest-growing
leisure activities. Daredevils try anything from organized bungee jumps to
illegally jumping off buildings. These people never feel so alive as
In their quest for the ultimate sensation,
thrillseekers are thinking up more and more elaborate sports.
So
why do some people’s lives seem to be dominated by the ‘thrill factor’,
? Some say that people who do risk sports are reacting against
society C
David Lewis, a psychologist, believes that
people today crave adventure. In an attempt to guarantee safety, our culture
has eliminated risk. «The world has become a bland and safe place»,
says Lewis. «People used to be able to seek adventure by hunting wild
animals, D 
Now they turn to risk sports as an
escape».
Risk
sports have a positive side as well. They help people to overcome fears
This makes risk sports particularly valuable
for executives in office jobs who need to stay alert so that F
They learn that being frightened doesn’t mean they can’t be in
control.
1. that affect them in their real lives.
2. which they feel has become dull and
constricting.
3. when they are risking their lives.
4. or taking part expeditions.
5. which means that you are about to risk your
life.
6. while others are perfectly happy to sit at
home by fire.
7. they can cope when things go wrong.
|
c |
D |
||||
2,
Tlpogumaüme maccm u 3an0JIHume nponyacu A—F
gacma..uu npeònooæewü, 0603HageHHbZX guØpa.Mu 1—7,
OÒHa «3 gacmeü 8 cnucvce 1—7 nuuotga. 3aæcume
guØpbz, 0603Hagamgue coomeemcme 70 ue gacmu n eònooæeHuÜ,
8 ma6nu
On
the 14th of February 1966 Australians said goodbye to the currency
denomination
,
Naturally enough when the British established what was then a penal colony,
they used the currency denominations of their homeland, 
. From as early as 1901, when Australia
gained independence from Britain, there had been discussion about the
introduction of decimal currency, c
Nevertheless it was more than half a century
before it was introduced. The new notes and coins, D, were roughly parallel to
the old denominations. A dollar was the same colour and size as ten shillings,
the note EThe twodollar note was greenish in colour like the pound note, whose
place it had taken. The only completely new coins introduced at this stage were
the one- and two- cent coins, though many of the old coins, such as penny, the
halfpenny and the threepence, ceased to be valid currency. Others, like the
sixpence, the shilling and the two shilling coin, Finitially mingled with the
new currency but were gradually withdrawn from circulation.
Australian school children, who had struggled with complicated
sums done in the old currency, breathed a sigh of relief on that day because
arithmetic suddenly became much easier. The government had put a lot of effort
into educating older people as well as children about currency. Perhaps what
people remember best is a little song, played constantly on radio and TV, in
which they were told ‘be prepared folks when the coins begin to mix on the 14th
of February 1966′.
l. which had an
equivalent value in the old system
2.
which were pounds,
shillings and pence
3.
which they had known
since the European settlement of Australia in 1788
4.
which were the same size
respectively as the new five, ten and twenty cent coins 
which has considerable advantages over
non-decimal systems
6.
whose currency
denominations had not been accepted yet
7.
whose names had been the
subject of quite heated debate
|
c |
D |
||||
3.
Ilpogumaüme maccm u 3an0JIHume nponycxu A—F
gacmmau npeònooæewü, 0603HageHHbZX quØpa..uu 1—7.
OÒHa 113 qacmeü e cnucŒce 1—7 .nzuuHRB, 3Œecume
quØpbz, 0603Haga}0tgue coomeemcmg ‘oz.gue gacmu n eÒnooŒceHuü,
6 maõnug
The modern zoo is an educational institution
carefully planned and arranged to bring to the visitor the story of the animal
world. The methods of exhibiting animals have undergone certain drastic changes
in the last century. Originally, animals were kept either in cages or in open
pits A 
The
cage type of exhibit remains the backbone of the average zoo display, but the
pit type, with many variations, is also very popular.
At the beginning of
the 20th century, a new trend in zoo exhibits was introduced in Germany and was
soon adopted in many other parts of the world, particularly in America, 
This was the so-called barless cage exhibit.
In barless cages the animals are presented to the public with the necessary
barriers hidden or camouflaged, like, for example, on an «island»
surrounded by either a dry or water-filled ditch. Many zoos are slow in adopting the new trend in animal exhibits,
c
The newer zoos, however, are incorporating the modern exhibit
design into their plans. The most up-to-date exhibits not only feature barless
cages D
. They try to reproduce the animals’ native
habitats, including vegetation and rock formations.
Often quite extensive records are in modern zoos
The
studies cover the longevity, diet requirements, medical histories and so on of
various animals. Zoo records are primarily of interest to other zoos 
However, some of the studies originating at
zoos have proven of value to the medical profession as well.
1, but also pay close attention to the setting of the displays.
2.
because many zoos conduct
serious studies in zoology.
3.
where the original idea
was greatly developed.
4.
where zoo directors are
thinking of setting up new animal exhibits.
5.
because it involves
rebuilding the animal quarters.
6.
but animals may be
grouped according to habitat.
7.
where the public could
look down on them.
|
c |
D |
||||
4.
Ilpogumaüme maccm u 3anom-tume nponycKu A—F
gacmm,tu npeònoozewü, 0603HageHHbLX vuØpa.Mu 1—7.
OÒŒta 113 gacmeü 6 cnucKe 1—7 nuumga. 3aHecume Zf*bl,
0603HaqaŒotgue coomeemcme ‘0 ue eacmu n eòno.ycewü, e ma6nuq
Parents are soon to be offered the ultimate weapon to win the
war over how much TV their children watch. Instead of constantly fighting to
ration viewing habits, they will have the job done for them by a coded
electronic device.
It will switch off the set once an allotted
period runs out, leaving the child to turn to other activities A
The gadget, ‘TV allowance’, was invented by
Miami photographer Randal Levenson, a former engineer, B
«There
was a lot of anger in the house about the TV and Nintendo usage», said Mr
Levenson,
47. His response was to built the calculator-sized box C
|
B |
c |
D |
|||
The Levensons now use a code to set the four
hours that the three children can watch each week. Each has his own code, and
when his time is up, the screen goes blank. He can find out how much time is
left by touching the button. The gadget, D, also controls video games and the
video. It can block out specific periods such as homework time and cannot
disconnected by frustrated youngsters.
«They’ve got their lives back»,
said Mr Levenson’s wife, Rusty. «Not that they were total couch potatoes,
but they certainly spent too much time in front of the TV. The problem before
was that we were giving up. We could only said ‘No’ so many times. But the
unemotional gadget can go on saying ‘No’ for as long as necessary».
But
being children and therefore devious, they have found ways of getting round the
system,
The set is switched off for advertisements
and they barter with each other for TV time. They also decide FAny time left
over at the end of the week can be carried over into the next.
1. which will sell in Britain for £49 this
summer
2. such as reading or even playing in the fresh
air
3. if not beating it
4, who despaired of
ever reducing his three children’s screen time
5, which programmes
more than one child wants to watch
6.
which can be used for
reducing the time in front of the TV
7.
which plugs into the TV
5.
Ilpogumaùme
maccm u 3an0J’1Hume nponycxu A—F gacmm•tu
npeòJžooæeHuü, 0603HageHHb1X Mi4pa»tu 1—7. OÒHa
183 qacmeü 8 cnucwe 1—7 nuzuHB*. 3Œecume guØpbZ,
0603Haga10zgue coomeemcmg ‘0 ue gacmu n eÒnooæeHuÜ, e
ma6nuq
Among the most
important factors in man’s environment are those to which we give the
allembracing name of weather: rain, snow, hail, hurricanes, thunder and
lightning and clear skies. From the earliest days, man has had to reckon with
factors such as these. Even today we are often quite helpless in the face of
nature A
A heavy
snowstorm can paralyze a big city and bring about great suffering in rural
communities.
The science
that deals with the study of the weather, therefore, is vitally important to
mankind. It is called meteorology, from the Greek word «meteoros»,
meaning «high in the air». The name is most appropriate, for weather
phenomena take place within the comparatively small part of the atmosphere
BThis region is known as the troposphere. The air in the troposphere is in
constant movement which accounts for all the changing conditions
c
|
c |
|||||
Weather
observations are collected at a series of weather stations, which communicate
at regular intervals with one another. These stations form networks and they
are to be found in nearly all countries of the world. Ships and airplanes also
report the weather; so do a good many part-time observers D
Observations
made at many different points are entered on a weather map. The forecaster
analyzes weather conditions and predicts changes in the weather.
Forecasting
the weather is not yet an exact science; it is still an art depending upon
personal experience. However, forecasts for a day or two ahead have become
increasingly accurate,
Weather experts have
become proficient, too, in supplying advance information about dangerous weather conditions
1.
that are called weather.
2.
that extends to a height of six to ten miles above the earth.
3.
despite occasional mistakes on the part of weathermen.
4.
despite all our scientific progress.
5.
so that their effects may not be so damaging.
6.
so that their predictions are based on various past observations.
7.
who devote a certain number of hours every week to taking and
recording weather observations.
6.
Ilpogumaüme maccm u 3anom-tume nponyacu A—F
gacma..uu npeònooæewü, 0603HageHHbZX quØpa..uu 1—7.
OÒHa gacmeü 8 cnucKe 1—7 JZUEUHAH. 3aæcume qu#z,
0603Haga’0tgue coomgemcme }0tgue qacmu n eÒJZ09fœHuÜ, g
ma6nuz.f
There is a tendency to
think of each of the arts A
Many artists, however, would testify to the fact that there has always been a
warm relationship between the various spheres of human activity. For example,
in the late nineteenth century the connection between music and painting were
particularly close. Artists were commissioned to design costumes and sets for
operas and ballet, but sometimes it was the musicians B Of the musical compositions
perhaps
the most famous is Mussorgsky’s
Pictures at an Exhibition. Mussorgsky composed the piece in 1874
after the death, at the age of 39, of the artist Victor Hartmann. D
Mussorgsky was shattered by Hartmann’s
untimely death. The following year a critic, Vladimir Stasov, decided to hold
an exhibition of Hartmann’s work. He suggested that Mussorgsky try to soothe
his grief by writing something to commemorate Hartmann’s life and work. The
exhibition served as Mussorgsky’s inspiration. The ten pieces that make up
Pictures at an Exhibition are intended as symbols 
Between each is a promenade, as the composer
walks from one painting to another. The music is sometimes witty and playful,
sometimes almost alarming and frightening, but always spellbinding. Through a
range of startling contrasts, Mussorgsky managed to convey the spirit of the
artist and his work. F
the composer Ravel, who had already managed
to carry off successful adaptation of many works for solo instruments, wrote an
orchestral version of Pictures at an Exhibition in 1922.
l. rather than
representations of the paintings in the exhibition
2.
although it was
originally intended as a series of pieces for solo piano
3.
as a separate area of
activity
4.
as they were very close
to each other in arts
5.
though their friendship
had not been a particularly long-standing one
6.
that were conceived as
responses to the visual arts
7.
who were inspired by the
work of contemporary painters
|
c |
D |
||||
70
Ilpogumaüme
maccm u 3an0JIHume nponycŒcu A—F gacmmtu npeònooæewü,
0603HageHHb1X tf*a.MU 1—7, OÒHa u.3 gacmeü e cnucxe 1—7 nuumgg.
3Œecume tf*bl, 0603Haqa}ouue coomæmcme 10tgue gacmu n
eÒzooæeHuÜ, e ma6nut4
Are there such
things as telepathy and hypnosis? Or are they just the products of some
people’s imagination? Telepathy means that you are able to pick up messages
from someone else 
Somehow you communicate without any
apparent messages changing hands. This can happen between people who cannot see
each other at the time, or indeed happen to be thousands of miles away from
each other. One of them is able, as they say, to read the other’s mind.
Another type of paranormal experience is connected with the
strange powers 
. The best example of this is hypnosis, in
which one person — the hypnotist — appears to take control of the mind of his
subject. Under hypnosis people act according to the wishes of the hypnotist.
Hypnosis is now used quite widely in doctor’s surgeries and hospitals, instead
of anaesthetics. Patients who respond to hypnosis do not need an anaesthetic
before an operation, they only need the hypnotist C
|
c |
D |
||||
The third type
of paranormal experience is connected with similar powers D
Perhaps the most
famous of these is levitation, in which a person is able to float in the air.
There have been many documented cases of such powers. Another form of such
power is firemastery, in which a person is able to walk through a raging fire
and remain unharmed.
It is also possible
for such powers to exist over things. In other words, some people can use the
force of their minds EThe celebrated Uri Geller has been reported as making a
pair of cufflinks fly all on their own across the Atlantic 
The same
gentleman has demonstrated many times on television programmes all over the
world his ability to make watches stop just by looking at them.
1.
that some people can exercise over themselves.
2.
when he discovered he had accidentally left them at home in New
York.
3.
that some people have over others.
4.
even though neither of you knows how this is done.
5.
when he is put in a trance and feels no pain.
6.
to tell them they will feel no pain.
7.
to move, make and break things.
8.
Tlpogumaüme maccm u 3anonHume
nponyocu A—F qacmn,uu npeònooŒcewü, 0603HaqeHHbžx
quØpa.,uu 1—7. OÒHa 113 gacmeü 8 cnucŒce 1—7 nuumag.
3Œecume ZfUØPbZ, 0603Hagamgue coomæmcm ‘0 ue gacmu n
eònooæewü, g ma6nutf
For some, the
advent of television marked the beginning of the end of civilized society. More
and more, people have watched TV at the cost of playing cards or board games,
or other communal pastimes. Many fear that the Internet too will further limit
social interaction.
That may be true but,
as researches at Stanford University in the USA are the first to say, further
study is needed. In a recent survey they found that AWhat’s more, people who go
online are likely to watch less television than others.
The study
makes two things clear. Contrary to all the fuss in the media, the Internet’s
popularity is still in its infancy. More than half of US households are not
connected yet, but
 |
Workers may be using the Web on the job for such personal ends as
checking sports scores but, according to the study, C . Just 4 per cent of the
surveyed Internet users said they had cut back on their working hours since
getting connected to the Internet.
But
will the Internet make us more isolated socially? While a fourth of the
Internet users say they spend less time talking on the telephone with friends
and relatives, D . Since e-mail is free and can be sent and received at any
hour of the day, it has many built-in advantages. For some, it has actually
revived the highly social art of letter writing. As for spending less time on
the telephone,
Few would argue that
the Internet has had a profound effect on the lives of many in its first decade
on common use. But assessing its long-term impact is difficult. That’s why for
all the questions they raise, FIf we don’t pay close attention to how we use
the Internet, it will change our lives not just for better, but for worse.
1.
they also use the Internet to work from home.
2.
the continuing boom in mobile phone use makes an overall decrease
less and less likely.
3.
they also use it to buy and sell shares on the stock market 
4.
studies such as Stanford’s are so useful.
5.
the Internet’s potential impact on how we live and interact is
enormous
6.
e-mail allows them to stay in touch, regardless of distance
7.
the Internet and the use of e-mail have actually increased some
forms of human interaction.
9,
Ilpogumaüme meŒccm u 3an0JIHume
nponycŒcu A—F qacmzuu npeònoacewü, 0603HageHHbZX
yuØpa»tu 1—7. OÒHa «3 gacmeü 8 cnucŒce 1—7
JIUJUHBA. 3aHecume z*bl, 0603}tatmouue coomæmcme ,zoz.gue
gacmu n eðnooçceHt1ü, g maõnuu
A group of
adults are lying in a circle on the floor listening to a recording of ‘The
Laughing Policeman’. At first everyone feels ridiculous and there’s only the
odd nervous giggle,
It quickly spreads
around the room This is laughter therapy in action.
Doctors are
starting to believe that laughter not only improves your state of mind, c The people lying
in a circle are attending a workshop to learn the forgotten art of laughter.
Some have ever been referred by their family doctors.
|
B |
c |
||||
But we could be losing our ability to laugh. A French
newspaper found that in 1930 the French laughed on average for nineteen minutes
per day. By 1980 this had fallen to six minutes. Eighty per cent of the people
questioned said that they would like to laugh more. Other research suggests
that children laugh on average about 400 times a day,
Somewhere in the process of growing up we
lose an astonishing 385 laughs a day.
William Fry — a
psychiatrist from California — studied the effects of laughter on the body. He
got patients to watch Laurel and Hardy films, and monitored their blood
pressure, heart rate and muscle tone. He found that E
It speeds up the heart rate,
increases blood pressure and quickens breathing. It also makes our facial and
stomach muscles work. Fry thinks laughter is a type ofjogging on the sport.
Researchers from Texas tested this. They divided forty
students into four groups. The first group listened to a funny cassette for
twenty minutes, the second listened to a cassette intended to relax them, the
third heard an informative tape, while the fourth group listened to no tape at
all. Researches found that if they produced pain in the students,
could
tolerate the discomfort for much longer.
l . laughter has a similar effect to physical exercise.
2. but
suddenly the laughter becomes real.
3. but
by the time they reach adulthood this has been reduced to about fifteen times.
4. until
everyone is infected by it.
5. those
who had listened to the humorous tape
6. but
this will also help improve your personal relationships.
7. but
actually affects your entire physical well-being.
10.
Ilpogumaüme
meccm u 3an0JIHume nponyacu A—F gacma.Mu npeònooæewü,
0603HageHHbZX uuØpa.juu 1—7. OÒHa «3 qacmeü 8 cnuc»ce
1—7 JZUUIHAB. 3Œecume z*bl, 0603HagŒowue coomeemcme .10tgue
gacmu n eònoaceHuü, e ma6nu
British eccentrics are famous the world over.
We breed eccentrics and we’re fascinated by them. Eccentrics are found in all
walks of life, A, teachers or train drivers. Some wear odd clothes, some
collect to the point of obsession, while others inhabit strange environments or
hold unorthodox beliefs. B, we usually just avoid them but let them carry on in
their own sweet way.
David Weeks, an American psychologist has
conducted the first in-depth psychological study of eccentrics and has
concluded that Britain’s are still the best in the world. Weeks did detailed
personality tests and taped interviews with 130 eccentrics. «A true
eccentric is never acting,» writes Dr David Weeks. «They are strong
individuals with strange inclinations of their own cThey refuse to
compromise.» He believes one in 10,000 people in the UK is a genuine
eccentric, and that for every female candidate there are nine male eccentrics.
|
B |
D |
||||
One of the most interesting findings was the
good health that eccentrics enjoy. «Almost all of them visit the doctor
only once every eight or nine years; the rest of us go twice a year.»
Eccentrics tend to live longer than the rest of us. The theory is that if you
have a particular obsession, Dlife becomes full of meaning and significance and
the resulting happiness strengthens the body’s immune system. «Eccentrics
are living proof that one does not necessarily have to go through life with a
fixed set of rules,» says Dr Weeks. «They are their own best leaders
and proof followers, and do not feel a need to possess the ordinary things of
everyday life. They are prepared to stand out from the crowd.»
Some of Weeks’s collection — such as the man
who climbs down tower blocks dressed as a pink elephant — would stick out
anywhere, EWeeks believes that inside lie resources of creativity and
imagination that are not sufficiently used. «They are neglected, or not
taken seriously, F
Often they are convicted that they are ahead
of their time and that others have stolen or exploited their good ideas.»
l . which they are not afraid to express
2.
whether they are lords or
lavatory cleaners
3.
but most are unremarkable
on the surface
4.
because they are happy
people on the whole
5.
provided they are in no
way a threat to society
6.
whether it is eating
cardboard or living in a cave
7.
because of the way they
express themselves
11.
Ilpoqumaüme maccm u 3anom-tume
nponyacu A—F qacrnnuu npeònooæewü, 0603HageHHbZX
quØpa.,uu 1—7. OÒHa 113 gacmeü g cnucŒce 1—7 nuuman.
3Œecume z*bZ, 0603Haqa}0tgue coomeemcme 10 ue gacmu n
eðnooæeHuü, e ma6nuzf
Looking for a
new sport that keeps you fit and gets the adrenaline flowing? How about
climbing? You can climb indoors or out, from small walls or boulders to peaks
anywhere in the world — A
«It’s a
sport that involves your mind, body and emotions,» John Gibbons of
London’s Westway sports centre says. «It’s one of the few sports where you
compete against yourself. You may be part of a club and climbing with others B
And, unlike
other sports, friends of all abilities can climb together and enjoy it.
Indoor walls can be from 7 to 16 metres, C
Each wall has bolt-on holds (to
place your feet and hands) of different shapes and sizes. These can be moved
around and varied to make the climb more or less challenging 
|
c |
D |
||||
. «Big holds,
spaced comfortably apart so that you can easily move your feet and hands from
one to the other without too much trouble, are the easiest,» John
explains. «With them, you can gently climb to the top without any
difficulty. That kind of climb is called a Slab.»
Trickier
climbs have smaller holds that are harder to grip, and they are spaced more
awkwardly apart. If you do one of those, EThe angle of the wall can also make
the climb more difficult.
Falling is not
a problem at climbing centres, though. When you climb, you are attached by a
harness to a rope looped to a firm anchor at the top of the wall and held by
your instructor or one of your team mates at the bottom. A device called a
belay holds it taut,
, the rope is kept firm
in case you slip. If that happens, you don’t plunge to the ground. Instead, you
dangle safely in your harness away from the climbing wall.
Maybe you’d like a go at climbing but
don’t know where to staff. Well, you can find out on our website. We’ve found
an online Extreme Climbing game to test your skills and get you started.
l. although some centres have walls of 20 metres or more
2. you
have to think more about how you move
3. to
help you get climbing yourself
4. once
you get the hang of it
5. so
while you are climbing
6. and
routes can be changed every few months
7. but
you are seeing how good you can be
12.
Ilpogumaüme moccm u 3an0JIHume
nponycKu A—F gacma.,uu npeòJ100Œcewü, 0603HageHHbZX
vuØpa.Mu 1—7. OÒHa u.3 gacmeü e cnucŒce 1—7 nuzuHHH.
3Œecume 14*b1, 0603Hagamgue coomeemcme 
ue gacmu n
eðnooæeHuü, e ma6nu
For some, the
advent of television marked the beginning of the end of civilized society. More
and more, people have watched TV at the cost of playing cards or board games,
or other communal pastimes. Many fear that the Internet too will further limit
social interaction.
That may be true but,
as researches at Stanford University in the USA are the first to say, further
study is needed. In a recent survey they found that AWhat’s more, people who go
online are likely to watch less television than others.
The study
makes two things clear. Contrary to all the fuss in the media, the Internet’s
popularity is still in its infancy. More than half of US households are not
connected yet, but
|
c |
|||||
Workers may be using
the Web on the job for such personal ends as checking sports scores but,
according to the study, C . Just 4 per cent of the surveyed Internet users said
they had cut back on their working hours since getting connected to the
Internet.
But will the
Internet make us more isolated socially? While a fourth of the Internet users
say they spend less time talking on the telephone with friends and relatives, D
. Since e-mail is free and can be sent and received at any hour of the day, it
has many built-in advantages. For some, it has actually revived the highly
social art of letter writing. As for spending less time on the telephone,
Few would argue that
the Internet has had a profound effect on the lives of many in its first decade
on common use. But assessing its long-term impact is difficult. That’s why for
all the questions they raise, F . If we don’t pay close attention to how we use
the Internet, it will change our lives not just for better, but for worse.
l . they also use the Internet to work from home.
2. the
continuing boom in mobile phone use makes an overall decrease less and less
likely.
3. they
also use it to buy and sell shares on the stock market
4. studies
such as Stanford’s are so useful.
5. the
Internet’s potential impact on how we live and interact is enormous
6. e-mail
allows them to stay in touch, regardless of distance
7. the
Intemet and the use of e-mail have actually increased some forms of human
interaction.
ЗАДАНИЯ НА ПОЛНОЕ И ТОЧНОЕ ПОНИМАНИЕ ИНФОРМАЦИИ В ТЕКСТЕ А15-А21
(на
множественный выбор)
Задания A15—A21 направлены на проверку
полного понимания текста и относятся к высокому уровню сложности. В заданиях
A15—A21 проверяется умение полностью понять текст, в том числе проверяется
способность делать выводы из прочитанного текста. В заданиях A15—A21 нужно
выбрать один из четырех вариантов ответа, в соответствии с прочитанным текстом.
В данном задании используются художественные или публицистические (например,
эссе) тексты.
При выполнении данного задания можно
использовать следующие стратегии:
1. Быстро
просмотрите текст, чтобы понять, о чем он.
2. Затем
прочитайте текст внимательнее, чтобы полностью понять содержание текста.
З. Прочитайте вопросы к тексту, продумайте
ответы, не читая предложенные варианты.
4. Найдите
отрывок в тексте или фрагмент текста, который относится к каждому из вопросов и
который подтвердит ваш ответ.
5. Вернитесь
к вопросам и выберите из один из четырех предложенных вариантов ответов,
который вы считаете правильным.
6. Прочитайте
оставшиеся три варианта и проанализируйте, почему они не могут быть
правильными. Обратите внимание на то, что неверные ответы часто содержат слегка
измененную информацию из текста. Часто верным будет ответ, который содержит
синонимичную информацию.
7.
Обратите внимание на то, что во всех предложенных вариантах
ответа могут использоваться слова и словосочетания, встречающиеся в тексте,
поэтому тщательно прочитайте сам вопрос и проанализируйте соответствующий
отрывок текста.
8. Помните,
что выбранный вами ответ должен основываться только на тексте. Ваш вариант
ответа может быть правильным и логичным, но не отвечать на конкретный вопрос.
9. Особое
внимание обратите на то, что в тексте сформулировано четко и на то, что только
подразумевается. В данных заданиях намерения и отношение автора могут иметь
большое значение, но они не всегда выражены прямо и открыто. Поэтому, нужно
проанализировать не только использованную в тексте прямую информацию, но и
понять скрытый смысл, который может содержаться в тексте.
10. Никогда не оставляйте
ни одного вопроса без ответа. Если вы затрудняетесь в выборе ответа, отклоните
те варианты, которые с вашей точки зрения не соответствуют содержанию текста; а
из оставшихся вариантов выберите один наугад.
11. По окончании
выполнения задания просмотрите все вопросы и ответы еще раз.
1,
Tlpogumaüme
maccm u 6bznonHume 3aðaHua A15—A21. B RaO,CÒOM 3aòaHuu
06eeòume quÞpy 1, 2, 3 unu 4, coomgemcm8 }0 
aHHOM eauu ga uawn omeema.
Brunetti was
at the post office at seven-thirty the next morning, located the person in
charge of the postmen, showed his warrant card, and explained that he wanted to
speak to the postman who delivered mail to the area in Cannaregio near the
Palazzo del Cammello. She told him to go to the first floor and ask in the
second room on the left, where the Cannaregio postmen sorted their mail. The
room was high-ceilinged, the entire space filled with long counters with
sorting racks behind them. Ten or twelve people stood around, putting letters
into slots or pulling them out and packing them into leather satchels. He asked
the first person he encountered, a long-haired woman with a strangely reddened
complexion, where he could find the person who delivered the mail to the Canale
della Misericordia area. She looked at him with open curiosity, then pointed to
a man halfway along the table and called out, «Mario, someone wants to
talk to you.»
The man called
Mario looked at them, then down at the letters in his hands. One by one, merely
glancing at the names and addresses, he slipped them quickly into the slots in
front of him, then walked over to Brunetti. He was in his late thirties,
Brunetti guessed, with light brown hair that fell in a thick wedge across his
forehead. Brunetti introduced himself and started to take his warrant card out
again, but the postman stopped him with a gesture and suggested they talk over
coffee. 
They walked
down to the bar, where Mario ordered two coffees and asked Brunetti what he
could do for him.
«Did you deliver mail to Maria Battestini at
Cannaregio …?»
«Yes. I
delivered her mail for three years. I must have taken her, in that time, thirty
or forty items of registered mail, had to climb all those steps to get her to
sign for them.»
Brunetti
anticipated his anger at never having been tipped and waited for him to give
voice to it, but the man simply said, «I don’t expect to be tipped,
especially by old people, but she never even said thank you.»
«Isn’t that a lot of registered mail?» Brunetti
asked. «How often did they come?»
«Once a
month,» the postman answered. «As regular as a Swiss watch. And it
wasn’t letters, but those padded envelopes, you know, the sort you send photos
or CDs in.»
Or money, thought Brunetti, and asked, «Do you remember
where they came from?»
«There
were a couple of addresses, I think,» Mario answered. «They sounded
like charity things, you know, Care and Share, and Child Aid. That sort of
thing.»
«Can you
remember any of them exactly?» «I deliver mail to almost four hundred
people,» he said by way of answer.
«Do you remember when they started?»
«Oh, she was getting them already when I
started on that route.» «Who had the route before you?» Brunetti
asked.
«Nicolo Matucci, but he retired and went back to
Sicily.»
Brunetti left
the subject of the registered packages and asked, «Did you bring her bank
statements?» — «Yes, every month,» he said, and recited the
names of the banks. «Those and the bills were the only things she ever
got, except for some other registered letters.»
«Do you remember where those were from?»
«Most of them came from people in the neighbourhood,
complaining about the television.»
Before
Brunetti could ask him about how he knew this, Mario said, «They all told
me about them, wanted to be sure that the letters were delivered. Everyone
heard it, that noise, but there was nothing they could do. She’s old. That is,
she was old, and the police wouldn’t do anything. They’re useless.» He
looked up suddenly at Brunetti and said, «Excuse me.»
Brunetti smiled and waved it away with an
easy smile. «No, you’re right,» Brunetti went on, «there’s
nothing we can do, not really. The person who complains can bring a case, but
that means that people from some department — I don’t know what its name is,
but it takes care of complaints about noise — have to go in to measure the
decibels of the noise to see if it’s really something called ‘aural
aggression’, but they don’t work at night, or if they get called at night, they
don’t come until the next morning, by which time whatever it was has been
turned down.» Like all policemen in the city, he was familiar with the
situation, and like them, he knew it had no solution.
Which of the following happens in the first paragraph?
l) Everyone stops working when Brunetti enters the room.
2)
Someone wonders why Brunetti is looking for Mario.
3)
Brunetti is confused by something he is told. 4) Brunetti becomes
impatient with someone.
When Mario mentioned getting Maria Battestini to sign for registered
mail,
l) he said that most old people weren’t polite to postmen.
2) Brunetti asked
him if her reaction had annoyed him.
3) he said that
his efforts deserved a tip.
4) Brunetti formed
an incorrect opinion about how he had felt.
Mario mentions a Swiss watch to give an idea of
l) how similar the registered envelopes were. 2) the
neat appearance of the registered envelopes.
3) the constant pattern of the arrival of the
registered envelopes. 4) how unusual the registered envelopes were.
[Ãjg::] When asked exactly where the registered
envelopes came from, Mario
l) indicated that he could not be expected to remember
that information.
2) suggested that
the addresses had seemed strange to him at first.
3) said that
someone else might have that information.
4) replied that
there were too many addresses for him to remember.
When they discussed other mail that Maria Battestini
received, Mario
l) explained why he knew what some of it contained.
2) wasn’t sure
where some of the bank statements came from.
3) expressed
surprise at the amount of it.
4) said that he
had asked other people about it.
When Mario mentioned the problem of noise, he made it clear
that
l) he sympathized with the police in that situation.
2) he
didn’t want to criticize Brunetti personally.
3) nothing
would have had any effect on the old woman. 4) he had discussed the matter with
the police himself.
When he talks about complaints about noise, Brunetti
l) suggests that he finds the system for dealing
with them ridiculous. 2) explains that he is not sure what the system for
dealing with them is.
3) says that he
wishes that the police could deal with them.
4) says that the
people who deal with them are always very busy.
2.
llpogumaüme naeyccm u oznonwme 3aðaHua A15—A21. B
KaOfCÒOM 3aòŒuu 06æòume quØpy 1, 2, 3
unu 4, coomeemcmg ‘0 ßb16 aHHOM ea»tu ea uaHm omeema.
Harry Houdini,
who died in 1927, was the entertainment phenomenon of the ragtime era. He could
escape from chains and padlocks, from ropes and canvas sacks. They put him in a
strait-jacket and hung him upside down from a skyscraper and he somehow untied
himself. They tied him up in a locked packing case and sank him in Liverpool
docks. Minutes later he surfaced smiling. They locked him in a zinc-lined
Russian prison van and he emerged leaving the doors locked and the locks
undamaged. They padlocked him in a milk chum full of water and he burst free.
They put him in a coffin, screwed down the lid, and buried him and… well, no,
he didn’t pop up like a mole, but when they dug him up more than half an hour
later, he was still breathing.
Houdini would
usually allow his equipment to be examined by the audience. The chains, locks
and packing cases all seemed perfectly genuine, so it was tempting to conclude
that he possessed superhuman powers. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes
was the very paragon of analytical thinking but Conan Doyle believed that
Houdini achieved his tricks through spiritualism. Indeed, he wrote to the
escapologist imploring him to use his psychic powers more profitably for the
common good instead of just prostituting his talent every night at the
Alhambra. However, Houdini repeatedly denounced spiritualism and disclaimed any
psychic element to his act.
The alternative
explanation for his feats of escapism was that Houdini could do unnatural
things with his body. It is widely held that he could dislocate his shoulders
to escape from straitjackets, and that he could somehow contract his in order
to escape from handcuffs. His ability to spend long periods in confined spaces
is cited as evidence that he could put his body into suspended animation, as
Indian fakirs are supposed to do.
This is all
nonsense. If you ever find yourself in a strait-jacket, it’s difficult to
imagine anything less helpful than a dislocated shoulder. Contracting your
wrists is not only unhelpful but, frankly, impossible because the bones of your
wrist are very tightly packed together and the whole structure is virtually
incompressible. As for suspended animation, the trick of surviving burial and
drowning relies on the fact that you can live for short periods on the air in a
confined space. The air shifted by an average person in a day would occupy a
cube just eight feet square. The build-up of carbon monoxide tends to pollute
this supply, but, if you can relax, the air in a coffin should keep you going
for half an hour or so.
In other words,
there was nothing physically remarkable about Houdini except for his bravery,
dexterity and fitness. His nerve was so cool that he could remain in a coffin
six feet underground until they came to dig him up. His fingers were so strong
that he could undo a buckle or manipulate keys through the canvas of a
strait-jacket or a mail bag. He made a comprehensive study of locks and was
able to conceal lock-picks about his person in a way which fooled even the
doctors who examined him. When they locked him in the prison van he still had a
hacksaw blade with which to saw through the joins in the metal lining and get
access to the planks of the floor. As an entertainer he combined all this
strength and ingenuity with a lot of trickery. His stage escapes took place
behind a curtain with an orchestra playing to disguise the banging and sawing.
The milk chum in which he was locked had a double lining so that, while the lid
was locked onto the rim, the rim was not actually attached to the churn.
Houdini merely had to stand up to get out. The mail sack he cut open at the
seam and sewed up with similar thread. The bank safe from which he emerged had
been secretly worked on by his mechanics for 24 hours before the performance.
All Houdini’s feats are eminently
explicable, although to explain them, even now, is a kind of heresy. Houdini
belongs to that band of mythical supermen who, we like to believe, were capable
of miracles and would still be alive today were it not for some piece of low
trickery. It’s said of Houdini that a punch in his belly when he wasn’t
prepared for it caused his burst appendix. Anatomically, it’s virtually
impossible that a punch could puncture your gut, but the story endures. Somehow
the myth of the superman has an even greater appeal than the edifice of
twenty-first century logic.
In the first paragraph, what does the writer say Houdini
managed to do?
1) Jump
upside down from a skyscraper.
2) Escape
from a submerged box.
3)
Break the locks
of a Russian prison van.
4) Fight
his way out of an empty milk churn.
The writer mentions Houdini’s burial alive to illustrate
the fact that
l) his tricks sometimes went disastrously wrong.
2)
he was not always able to do what he claimed he could.
3)
he was capable of extraordinary feats of survival. 4) he had
overcome his tear of confined spaces.
The writer suggests that Conan Doyle
l) was less analytical about Houdini than one might
have expected.
2) asked
Houdini if he could include him in a Sherlock Holmes story.
3)
felt that Houdini
could make more money in other ways.
4) thought
there were scientific explanations for Houdini’s feats.
The writer comes to the conclusion that Houdini
l) had an unusual bone structure.
2)
could make parts of his body smaller.
3)
was able to put himself in a trance. 4) was not physically
abnormal.
It appears that Houdini was able to escape from
strait-jackets by
l) using hidden lock-picks.
2)
undoing buckles
from inside the material.
3)
cutting the canvas with a hacksaw. 4) turning keys he had
concealed.
The writer states that when Houdini escaped from the milk
churn
l) the role of the orchestra was important. 2) he
made use of the hacksaw to free himself.
3) the container had been modified beforehand. 4)
he was in full sight of the audience.
How does the writer say people regard Houdini nowadays?
l) They want to hear the scientific explanations for his
feats.
2)
They prefer to believe that he had extraordinary powers.
3)
They refuse to believe the story of how he died.
4)
They doubt the fact that he ever really existed.
3.
llpogumaùme mevccm u ßblnojmume 3aòanua
A15—A21. B RCžOfCÒOM 3aòanuu 06geðume quñ,’ 1, 2,
3 unu 4 coomgemcmg .70 a,t1HOM ga,vtu ga uamn omgema.
Was it poor
visibility or superstition that made Manchester United’s players abandon their
grey strip for away games in the middle of a Premiership match in 1996? The
players couldn’t pick each other out, manager Alex Ferguson told reporters at
the time. It was nothing to do with superstition. They said it was difficult to
see their team mates at a distance. But his protest failed to mention that one
of the five occasions the grey strip had been worn, the team had failed to win.
Dr Richard
Wiseman, a psychologist at Hertfordshire University, says United’s players may
have succumbed to the power of superstition without even realising it. «I
might argue that the players may have unconsciously noticed that when they do
certain things, one of which might well involve the wearing of red shirts, they
are successful.» He draws a parallel with research into stock market
speculators. Like gamblers they swore that certain days were lucky for them.
Eventually it was shown that the successful market speculators were
unconsciously picking up on numerous indicators and were shadowing market
trends but were unable to explain how they did it. Superstition plays a part
whenever people are not certain what it is they do to achieve a good
performance and people who have to perform to order are particularly
vulnerable, It is as if the imagination steps into the gap in the dialogue
between the conscious and the unconscious mind.
Many
superstitions have deep roots in the past according to Moira Tatem, who helped
edit the 1,500 entries in the Oxford Dictionary of Superstitions. People today
observe superstitions without knowing why and they’d probably be surprised to
discover origins. The idea that mail vans are lucky is a good example. Sir
Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister during World War Il, was said to
have touched a mail van for luck whenever he saw one in the street. The reason
for this superstition resides in the ancient belief that Kings and Queens had
the ability to cure by touch. Monarchs, naturally enough, grew fed up with
being constantly touched and at some point started trailing ribbons with gold
medals or coins out of the door of their coaches •when travelling and people
touched them instead. Mail vans carry the Crown symbol on the side and touching
the van is a direct throwback to that earlier belief.
While some
ancient superstitious beliefs and practices have been maintained, others have
died out. This is because those practices with a connection to farming and a
life spent in close proximity to nature no longer make much sense now that so
many of us live in cities. Nevertheless, we continue to develop our own
sometimes very private and personal superstitions. Many people carry or wear
lucky objects although they may not in fact think of them as such. It only
becomes obvious that the object forms a part of a superstitious belief when the
person is unable to wear or carry it and feels uncomfortable as a result.
Experts agree
that these individual superstitious practices can be an effective means of
managing stress and reducing anxiety. The self-fulfilling nature of
superstitions is what can help. The belief that something brings you good luck
can make you feel calmer, and as a result, able to perform more effectively.
International cello soloist Ralph Kirshbaum says musicians are a good example
of the effectiveness of these very particular rituals. «I know string
players who won’t wash their hands on the day of a recital and others who avoid
eating for eight hours prior to a performance. They can then play with
confidence.’
But this
self-fulfilling aspect of superstitions can also work against you. This is why
Kirshbaum prefers to confront the superstitious practices of other musicians.
«If you’re in a situation where you can’t avoid eating or forget and wash
your hands, you then feel that you’ll play badly. And you often do, simply
because you feel so anxious. I wash my hands and have broken the taboo about
eating. My only vice is to insist that people leave and give me two minutes
complete silence in the dressing room before I go on.»
Superstitions can become even more
harmful when they develop into phobias or obsessions, often characterized by
elaborate collections of rituals. «It’s not a problem if I carry a lucky
object of some kind,» says psychologist Robert Kohlenberg of the
University of Washington. «But if I don’t have it with me and I get
terribly upset and turn the house upside down looking for it, that’s a bad
thing.’
According to their manager, Alex Ferguson, Manchester
United decided to change out of their grey shirts because:
l) they had lost every time they had worn them.
2)
the colour was not bright enough.
3)
it was difficult for the other team to see them.
4)
a psychologist told them they might play better without them.
Dr Wiseman says MU players and stock market speculators
are similar in that:
1)
both groups can identify the factors that contribute to improving
performance.
2)
both groups attribute their success to wearing particular items
of clothing.
3)
neither group can understand why they do well on some occasions
and not on others. 4) both groups believe that certain days of the week are
lucky for them.
According to Moira Tatem, what would most British people
say if you asked them why touching a mail van is considered lucky?
1) ‘A
famous politician used to do it too.’
2) ‘The
vans are lucky but I don’t know why.’
3) ‘Being
touched by a monarch can cure disease.’
4) ‘The
royal coat of arms is on the side of the van.’
Which older superstitions have been preserved?
l) Those that still seem meaningful. 2) Those
connected with life in the city.
3) Those
connected with life in the countryside.
4) Those
that are created and held by individuals.
How does going without food affect some string players?
l) It makes them feel too tired and hungry to play well.
2)
It helps them play with more assurance.
3)
It makes no difference to the way they perform. 4) It ensures
that they perform.
Why doesn’t Ralph Kirshbaum keep the superstitious
practices of other musicians?
1)
He can’t be bothered with them.
2)
He has his own complicated rituals.
3)
He doesn’t think they always help. 4) He is not superstitious.
What attitude does the author of the article have to
superstitions?
l) He thinks they are harmful.
2) He
thinks they are inevitable.
3) He
thinks they can be nonsensical.
4) He
thinks they can be beneficial.
4.
Ilpoqumaüme
maccm u omonnume 3aÒaHt1R Al 5421. B Ra9fCÒOM 3aÒŒuu
oõgeòume quØpy 1, 2, 3 unu 4, coomeemcmg 10 10 BbZõ
anHOM gan,tu ea uanm omgema.
Of all the
Elwell family Aunt Mehetabel was certainly the most unimportant member. Not
that she was useless in her brother’s family; she was expected, as a matter of
course, to take upon herself the most tedious and uninteresting part of the
household labours. The Elwells were not consciously unkind to their aunt, but
she was so insignificant a figure in their lives that she was almost invisible
to them. Aunt Mehetabel did not resent this treatment; she took it quite
unconsciously as they gave it. It was to be expected when one was an old maid
dependent in a busy family. She had been the same at twenty as at sixty, a
mouselike little creature, too shy for anyone to notice or to wish for a life
of her own.
Even as a girl
she had been clever with her needle in the way of patching quilts which
consisted of several layers of cloth sewn together to make an attractive
pattern or a picture. More than that she could never learn to do. The garments
which she made for herself were lamentable affairs, and she was humbly grateful
for any help in the bewildering business of putting them together. But in
patchwork she enjoyed some importance. During years of devotion to this one art
she had accumulated a considerable store of quilting patterns. Sometimes the
neighbours would send over and ask her for a loan of her sheaf-of-wheat design,
or the double-star pattern.
She never knew
how her great idea came to her. Sometimes she even wondered reverently, in the
phraseology of the weekly prayer-meeting, if it hadn’t been «sent» to
her. She never admitted to herself that she could have thought of it without
other help. It was too great, too ambitious a project for her humble mind to
have conceived. Even when she finished drawing the design with her fingers, she
gazed at it incredulously, not daring to believe that it could indeed be her
handiwork.
Now her nimble
old fingers reached out longingly to turn her dream into reality. She began to
think adventurously of trying it out — it would perhaps be not too selfish to
make one square — just one unit of her design to see how it would look. She
dared do nothing in the household where she was a dependent without asking
permission. With a heart full of hope and fear thumping furiously against her
old ribs she approached her sister-in-law, who listened to her absently and
said, «Why, yes, start another quilt if you want to». Mehetabel tried
honestly to make her see that this would be no common quilt, but her limited
vocabulary and her emotion stood between her and expression.
Mehetabel
rushed back up the steep attic stairs to her room, and in joyful agitation
began preparations for the work of her life. She had but little time during the
daylight hours filled with the incessant household drudgery. After dark she did
not dare to sit up late at night lest she burn too much candle. She was too
conscientious to shirk even the smallest part of her share of the housework,
but she rushed through it now so fast that she was panting as she climbed the
stairs to her little room. It was weeks before the little square began to show
the pattern.
Finally she
could wait no longer, and one evening ventured to bring her work down beside
the fire where the family sat, hoping that good fortune would give her a place
near the tallow candles on the mantelpiece. She had reached the last corner of
that first square and her needle flew in and out with nervous speed. To her
relief no one noticed her. As she stood up with the others, the square fell
from her trembling old hands and fluttered to the table. Up to that moment
Mehetabel had laboured in the purest spirit of selfless adoration of an ideal.
The emotional shock given to her by her sister’s-in-law cry of admiration as
she held the work toward the candle to examine it, was as much astonishment as
joy to Mehetabel.
As she lay that
night in her narrow hard bed, too proud, too excited to sleep, Mehetabel’s heart
swelled and tears ofjoy ran down from her old eyes.
Living with her
brother’s family Aunt Mehetabel l) could hardly do any household chores due to
her old age.
2) suffered
from not having a family of her own.
3) had
got accustomed to her humble existence.
4) expected
to be left alone to live a life of her own.
Since her youth Aunt Mehetabel had been good at needlework
and
l) was known for making nice
dresses for herself.
2)
was eager to help other people with sewing.
3)
humbly accepted people’s admiration of her skills. 4) made nice
bedcovers from pieces of fabric.
Aunt Mehetabel’s new quilt followed the complicated pattern
which
l) one of the neighbours had given her.
2)
she herself had happened to invent.
3)
she had copied at the weekly prayer-meeting. 4) had been sent
over to her.
Aunt Mehetabel took her time about starting her new quilt
because she
1) wanted
to make sure that the family wouldn’t object to it.
2) wanted
to think over every detail of the pattern carefully.
3) was
afraid that other members of the family would find her selfish.
4) was
too old to start a new quilt with such a difficult pattern,
As Aunt Mehetabel wanted to find some time to work on her
quilt she
l) started to get up earlier to use the early hours of the
morning.
2)
tried to do her regular chores as quickly as possible.
3)
skipped some of her minor household chores. 4) worked in her room
at night by candlelight.
One evening Aunt Mehetabel came down to the room where the
family sat in order to
l) boast about the splendid
intricate pattern of the quilt. 2) show them the first square of the quilt she
had made.
3) demonstrate how skillfully she could use her
needle. 4) have enough light to proceed with her work.
When Aunt Mehetabel started her new quilt, she was driven by
l) a sudden flash of
inspiration of an artist. 2) an urge to get rid of her monotonous existence.
3) her
wish to win everybody’s admiration.
4) her
desire to become a rightful member of the family.
5.
llpoqumaüme maccm u
oznonwme 3aðaHzo A15—A21. B Kao,cò0M 3aòŒuu
oõgeòume guØpy 1, 2, 3 unu 4, coomgemcme 10 10 6b1õ
aHHOM eauu ea uamn omeema.
«Take the Circle, District or Piccadilly Line to
South Kensington, then walk up Exhibition Road. It will take you between 10 and
15 minutes. The Royal Geographical Society is on the junction between
Exhibition Road and Kensington Gore.» The instructions are so idiot-proof
that at 9 am precisely all seven of us are in our places, like expectant
schoolchildren.
A man in a check suit, with a neatly trimmed beard,
enters and infroduces himself. Tristan Gooley. Welcome.’ He flashes a shy
smile. ‘Just to put this all into context, I think I can safely say that you
are the only people in the world studying this particular topic today.’ It is
quite an intro. There are a few oohs and ahs from the audience. Tristan Gooley,
navigator extraordinary, has his audience in the palm of his hand. We are here
because we are curious about how you get from A to B. And if you are curious about
how to get from A to B, who better to ask than Tristan Gooley? He is the only
man alive who has both flown and sailed solo across the Atlantic. You can’t
argue with that sort of CV.
Natural navigation’, his new baby, is exactly what that
phrase suggests: route-finding that depends on interpreting natural signs — the
sun, the stars, the direction of the wind, the alignment of the trees — rather
than using maps, compasses or the ubiquitous satnav. ‘Of course, 99.9 per cent
of the time, you will have other ways of finding wherever it is you want to get
to. But if you don’t … ‘t Gooley pauses theatrically, ‘there is a lot to be
said for understanding the science of navigation and directionfinding. If
people become too dependent on technology, they can lose connection with
nature, which is a pity.’
The natural navigator’s best friend, inevitably, is the
sun. We all know that it rises in the east, sets in the west and, at its
zenith, is due south. But if it is, say, three in the afternoon and you are
lost in the desert, how do you get your bearings? The answer, says Gooley, is
to find a stick. By noting the different places where its shadow falls over a
short period of time, you will quickly locate the eastwest axis. ‘The sun
influences things even if you can’t see it,’ he explains. You might not be in
the desert, but walking along a forest track in Britain. One side of the track
is darker in colour than the other. ‘Ah-ha!’ thinks the natural navigator. ‘It
is darker because it is damper, which means it is getting less sun, because it
is shaded by the trees, which means that south is that way.’ You can now stride
confidently southwards — or in whichever direction you wish to head — without
fiddling with a map.
As the day wears on, the detective work forces us to look
at the world in new and unexpected ways. Just when we think we are getting thc
hang of it, Gooley sets us a particularly difficult task. A photograph of a
house comes up on the screen. An orange sun is peeping over the horizon behind
the house. There is a tree in the foreground. «Just study the picture for
a few minutes,» Gooley says, «and tell me in which direction the
photographer is pointing the camera.» Tricky. Very tricky. Is the sun
rising or setting? Is the tree growing straight up or leaning to the right? Is
that a star twinkling over the chimney? Are we in the northern or southern
hemisphere? ‘South-east,’ I say firmly, having analysed the data in minute
detail. «Not quite.» — «Am I close?» — «Not really.
The answer is north-west.» Ah well. Only 180 degrees out.
Still, if I am bottom of the class, I have caught the
natural navigation bug. What a fascinating science, both mysterious and
universal. It is hardly what you would call a practical skill: there are too
many man-made aids to navigation at our disposal. But it connects us,
thrillingly, to the world around us — and to those long-dead ancestors who
circled the globe with nothing but stars to guide them. It reminds us what it
means to bc human.
What is the writer’s main point in the first paragraph?
l) that the Royal Geographical Society was easy for
all of them to find. 2) that the route to the Royal Geographical Society might
sound complicated.
3) that all of them wanted to arrive at the Royal
Geographical Society on time. 4) that they did not need instructions to find
the Royal Geographical Society.
What does the writer say about Tristan Gooley in the second
paragraph?
l) He was different from what he
had expected.
2)
He began in an
impressive way.
3)
He had always wanted to meet him. 4) He seldom gave talks to the
public.
What does Tristan Gooley say about ‘natural navigation’?
l) It can be more accurate than
using technology.
2)
It is quite a
complicated skill to master.
3)
It should only be used in emergency situations. 4) It is not
required most of the time.
According to Gooley, the use of a stick which he
explains
l) only works in the desert.
2)
involves more
than one piece of information.
3)
works best at particular times of the day. 4) may surprise some
people.
The example Of walking along a forest track
illustrates
l) the fact that the sun may not
be important to finding your way.
2) the
difference between the desert and other locations.
3) the
advantage of learning natural navigation.
4) the
relationship between natural navigation and other skills.
What does the writer say about the task involving a
photograph?
l) It was not as simple as it
first appeared.
2)
He needed more
information in order to do it successfully.
3) He
became more confused the longer he spent on it.
4) He
was not surprised to hear that his answer was wrong.
The writer’s attitude towards natural navigation is that
l) it would take a long time to be
good at it.
2)
it is a valuable skill in the modern world.
3)
it is only likely to appeal to a certain kind of person. 4) it is
exciting but not very useful.
6.
Ilpogumaüme
maccm u Bblnonwme 3aòaHun A15—A21. B KaOfCðOM 3aÒaHuu
06eeòume quÞpy 1, 2, 3 unu 4, coomeemcmg ‘0 8b16 aHHOM
ea-Mu ga uawn omeema.
Knowing that
Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break
to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death. It was her friend
Josephine who told her, in broken sentences veiled hints that revealed in half
concealing. Her husband’s friend Mr Richards was there, too, near her.
It was he who
had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was
received, with Brently Mallard’s name leading the list of «killed.»
He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second
telegramme, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend
in bearing the sad message. She did not hear the story as many women would have
heard the same, with a paralysed inability to accept its significance. She wept
at once, with sudden, wild abandonment. When the storm of grief had spent
itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.
There stood,
facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank,
pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach
into her soul. She could see in the open square before her house the tops of
trees that were full of new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in
the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a
distant song which someone was singing reached her faintly, and countless
sparrows were twittering in the eaves.
There were
patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and
piled one above the other in the west facing her window. There was something
coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not
know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of
thê sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the colour
that filled the air. A little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips.
She said it over and over under her breath: «Free, free, free!» There
would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for
herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence
with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will
upon a fellow-creature. And yet she had loved him — sometimes. What did it
matter! «Free! Body and soul free!» she kept whispering.
Josephine was
kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhole, imploring for
admission. «Louise, open the door! I beg, open the door—you will make
yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven’s sake open the
door.» «Go away. I am not making myself ill.» No; she was
drinking in the elixir of life through that open window. Her fancy was running
riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts
of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be
long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be
long.
She arose at
length and opened the door to Josephine’s persistent requests. There was a
feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a
goddess of Victory. She clasped her friend’s waist, and together they descended
the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.
Someone was
opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a
little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had
been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been
one. He stood amazed at Josephine’s piercing cry; at Richards’ quick motion to
screen him from the view of his wife. When the doctors came they said she had
died of heart disease — of the joy that kills.
Mrs Mallard learned the sad news of her husband’s death from
l) Mr Richards who clarified
Josephine’s vague hints.
2)
Josephine incoherent beating around the bush.
3)
the newspaper news of the railroad disaster.
4)
the telegramme which Richard had hastened to bring.
When Mrs Mallard
learned the sad news she l) accepted it as other women would have done in her
position.
2) was
paralysed and refused to believe it.
3) failed
to cope with her acute sense of grief.
4) sought
consolation in her friends’ company.
The peaceful atmosphere of a nice spring
day helped Mrs Mallard
l) feel real gratitude to her friends for their support.
2)
listen to what was going on inside her.
3)
think rationally about the steps she should take next. 4) summon
up the strength to face the tragic loss.
When Mrs Mallard repeated the word
«free» she implied that
l) according to her late husband’s
will she had inherited all the money and was free to spend it any way she
liked.
2)
she had stopped loving her husband a long time before and now she
was free to make a fresh start in her private life.
3)
from now on there would be no one to dominate her life and give
her orders and she was free to live the way she liked.
4)
her husband had turned her life into a nightmare hurting her
physically and now she would be free from pain and humiliation.
Mrs Mallard wouldn’t open the door to
Josephine because Mrs Mallard
l) took her time enjoying her new position.
2)
was praying and wanted to be left alone.
3)
was carefully planning her future life.
4)
wanted to recollect the events of her past life.
When Mrs Mallard finally left her room she
l) was unable to walk and
Josephine supported her. 2) was prepared to accept condolences on her tragic
loss.
3) could hardly conceal the feeling that overwhelmed
her. 4) looked majestic in her black mourning dress.
Mrs Mallard passed away because
l) she had been overcome with joy
at seeing her husband alive.
2) all
her hopes and expectations had been brutally shattered.
3) her
heart had stopped at Josephine’s piercing cry.
4) she
had experienced too many emotions that day.
7.
Ilpogumaùme mezccm u gt,znonnume 3aòŒua
A15—A21. B Ka9fCÒOM 3aÒanuu oõgeÒume quØpy
1, 2, 3 unu 4, coomgemcmg ‘0 10 8bZõ al-IHOM gauvtu ga uamn omgema.
J. S. G. Boggs
is a young artist with a certain flair and panache. What he likes to do, for
example, is to invite you out to eat at an expensive restaurant, run up a bill
of, say, eighty-seven dollars, and then, while sipping coffee after dessert,
reach into his satchel and pull out a drawing he’s already been working on for
several hours before the meal. The drawing, on a small sheet of highquality
paper, might consist, in this instance, of a virtually perfect rendition of the
face-side of a onehundred-dollar bill.
He then pulls out a couple of precision pens from his
satchel — one green ink, the other black — and proceeds to apply the finishing
touches to his drawing. This activity invariably causes a stir. Guests at
neighbouring tables crane their necks. Passing waiters stop to gawk. The head
waiter eventually drifts over, stares for a while, and then praises the young
man on the excellence of his art. «Thatts good,» says
Boggs, «I’m glad you like this drawing, because I intend to use it as
payment for our meal.»
At this point,
a vertiginous chill descends upon the room — or, more precisely, upon the head
waiter. He blanches. You can see his mind reeling as he begins to plot
strategy. Should he call the police? How is he going to avoid a scene? But
Boggs almost immediately reestablishes a measure of equilibrium by reaching
into his satchel, pulling out a real hundred-dollar bill — indeed, the model of
the very drawing he’s just completed — and saying, «Of course, if you
want, you can take this ordinary hundred-dollar bill instead.» Colour is
already returning to the head waiter’s face. «But as you can see»,
Boggs continues, «I’m an artist, and I drew this. It took me many hours to
it, and it’s certainly worth something … So you have to make up your mind
whether you think this piece of art is worth more or less than this standard
one-hundred-dollar bill. It’s entirely up to you.»
As a conceptual artist, Boggs feels a work isn’t
complete until he has spent one of his bills; not only spent it, in fact, but
often also received change in real currency — and a receipt. A ‘successful
transaction’, as he explains, is one that makes people think about such
concepts as value and beauty and leads them to their own conclusions,
independent of any establishment — whether governmental or cultural.
But mightn’t his money still be counterfeit? Boggs
always makes impish changes on his bills — signing his own name instead of the
Secretary of the Treasury’s, for instance, or substituting the faces of
celebrated American women (a current project) for the men gracing US currency.
Governments, however, don’t take kindly to this. Boggs has been prosecuted,
unsuccessfully, for counterfeiting in both England and Australia; the
Australian government was even required to pay him more than $20,000 in
damages.
In the United
States things have gone less well. In 1990, just before a major exhibition of
his work opened, Boggs became embroiled with the U.S. Secret Service. Its
agents moved to prevent publication of the show’s catalogue as it was then
conceived, with actual-size, full-colour reproductions of Boggs’s drawings. In
the end, the catalogue «J. S. G. Boggs Smart Money (Hard Currency)»,
was printed using enlarged images.
This was just
the beginning for Boggs: when ‘Smart Money’ moved on to another gallery, Secret
Service agents threatened to confiscate everything but had no search warrant.
In December 1992, Boggs was preparing to embark on ‘Project Pittsburgh’ and
spend a million dollars’ ‘worth’ of a new series of drawings. The Secret
Service raided his studio and office at Carnegie Mellon University, where he
was a visiting lecturer in Art and Ethics. They confiscated 1,300 items. They
did not, however, arrest Boggs, whose suit to regain his material is currently
on appeal.
According to
Kent Yalowitz, the lawyer who has taken Boggs’ case on, «The government
has never tried to explain to the courts why they think he’s breaking the law
or why they have a right to seize his work.» Yalowitz points out that,
unlike counterfeiters, Boggs has never tried to defraud anyone with his notes,
nor has anyone ever complained of fraud in any of Boggs’ transactions. Yalowitz
said he’s offered the government a compromise solution: «So long as no one
complains of being defrauded by Boggs or anyone else using one of his drawings,
the government should not interfere with his work.»
«What’s driving them so crazy?»
Boggs asks for his part. «It must be the way these bills of mine subvert
the whole system, calling into question the very credibility of the country’s
entire currency.» Boggs commissioned Thomas Hipschen, the master engraver
whose portraits adorn the new denominations of American currency, to make a
steel-engraved portrait. This portrait — of Boggs — now also adorns a series of
$100,000 bills, which the artist foresees using to pay his legal expenses.
How do other guests and restaurant staff react initially to
J. S. G. Boggs’s behaviour?
l) They are worried by it. 2) They are curious about
it.
3) They are impressed by the quality of his work.
4) They try not to take any notice.
The head waiter is relieved when he realises that
l) Boggs’s drawing is worth more than the cost of the meal.
2)
Boggs is not willing to pay the bill with legal currency.
3)
Boggs is not going to cause an embarrassing incident. 4) Boggs
takes the concepts of value and art seriously.
What is Boggs’s main objective?
1) To
trick people into accepting his drawings as payment.
2) To
get people to question established values.
3) To
obtain real currency as change.
4) To
provoke a reaction from the government.
How have governments outside the United States reacted to
Boggsts art?
l) They have tried unsuccessfully to convict him of
counterfeiting.
2) They
have asked him not to change the images on the original notes.
3) They
have fined him as much as $20,000 for exhibiting his drawings.
4) They
have shown quite a lot of sympathy for his work and ideas.
What difficulties has Boggs had with the authorities in
the United States?
l) They have forced him to make changes to a catalogue for
one of his exhibitions.
2) They
have confiscated all the work from his exhibition ‘Smart Money’.
3) They
have charged him with fraud for trying to pay with his drawings.
4) They
have charged him with counterfeiting for reproducing images on US currency.
How does Boggs hope to pay his lawyers?
1)
With a real $100,000 bill.
2)
With a portrait by another famous artist.
3)
With his latest piece of work.
4)
With the change from a transaction with one of his drawings.
What does the writer think about
Boggs? l) He is breaking the law and should be punished.
2)
He is a little eccentric but interesting.
3)
He is mentally unbalanced but amusing at the same time. 4) He is
being unfairly victimised by the authorities.
8.
llpogumaüme maccm u oznonwme
3aÒaHt1H A15—A21. B Raacð0M 3aòŒuu 06æðume
vuØpy 1, 2, 3 unu 4, coomeemcm6 }0 70 016 aHHOM ea.MU ga uŒtm
omeema.
Last October, a
land cruiser truck carrying the limp body of a month-old African elephant
pulled up to the gate of Daphne Sheldrick’s property just outside Kenya’s
Nairobi National Park. It had been found wandering alone outside another park
dazed and dehydrated, its floppy ears badly sunburned. «The babies are
always ill and sometimes severely traumatized,» says Sheldrick. «Constant
attention, affection, and communication are crucial to their will to live. They
must never be left alone.»
Remarkably,
those that make it to Sheldrick homestead never are. Until they are two, they
get all the attention that a human infant would receive, including having a
keeper sleep at their side every night. Sheldrick, 61, a widow of David
Sheldrick, a renowned naturalist and founder of Kenya’s Tsavo National Park,
opened her elephant and rhino orphanage in 1977 and has become a leading
authority on infant elephant behaviour. After 25 years of frustrating trial and
error, she developed a system for nurturing baby elephants. Her method includes
a skim milk-coconut oil fonnula devised for human babies. Since then, she and
her staff of eight keepers have raised 12 elephants from infancy — the highest
success rate in the world.
«Infant
elephants are very similar to human infants,» says Sheldrick. «They
can be naughty, competitive and disobedient. When you say, ‘No’, they want to
do it.» If punishment is called for, Sheldrick gives them ‘a little zing
on the bottom’ with a battery-powered cattle prod. «It’s an unfamiliar
sensation, so it’s unpleasant for them. But then,» she adds, «you
have to be careful to make friends with them again.» Prodigious memory may
explain why zoo keepers are occasionally killed by elephants they have known
for years. «They’ve done something to the elephant which they have
forgotten, but the elephant hasn’t,» she explains.
For every step
forward, there were painful retreats. In 1974 Sheldrick achieved a breakthrough
when she nursed a newborn, Aisha, to 6 months. But then she had to leave for 2
weeks to attend her daughter Jill’s wedding. Aisha, who had been bonded
exclusively with Sheldrick — stopped eating. «She died of a broken
heart,» she says, who now rotates keepers to prevent babies from bonding
with only one person.
The orphans
remain at Sheldrick’s compound until the age of 2, when they are fully weaned
onto a vegetable diet. Once they are able to feed themselves, they are trucked
to The National Park, 150 miles away, where they are put into a stockade and
gradually introduced to local herds. Eleanor, who was rescued and introduced to
the wild in 1970, has become a willing adoptive mother. «The little
elephants are always welcome in a wild herd,» says Sheldrick.
But the adults
can also be stern parents. «If the matriarch gives them a smack with her
trunk, they’ll come flying back to their human keepers,» says Sheldrick,
who makes sure the youngsters are free to come and go from the stockade.
«It takes 12 to 15 years (of their 60- to 70-year lifespan) before the
baby becomes independent of his human family. Eventually they get bored stiff
with people because they’re having more fun with elephants.»
For their part,
elephants can make it instantly clear when humans have overstepped their
welcome. Last year, Sheldrick was visiting The National Park when mistakenly
she thought she had spotted Eleanor. «I called her, and she came
over,» she recalls.» I talked to her for about 10 minutes and touched
her ear. She didn’t like it at all and used her tusk and truck to send me
flying into a pile of boulders.» Despite a shattered right knee and femur
from which she is still recovering, Sheldrick doesn’t hold a grudge. «On
the contrary,» she says, «I’m very flattered that a completely wild
elephant would come and talk to me.»
What is the most important element in Sheldrick’s approach to
rearing baby elephants?
l) Providing them with
companionship 24 hours a day.
2)
Feeding them with a dairy-based milk devised for human babies.
3)
Not giving them too much attention after they turn two. 4)
Getting the keepers to sleep with them.
Why is it important to make friends with an elephant after
you have punished it?
l) They are like human
children and can be naughty. 2) They might never forgive you for punishing
them.
3) They
may kill you if you don’t.
4) They
will forget the punishment too quickly.
Why was it a mistake for Sheldrick to nurse the baby elephant
Aisha on her own?
l) She couldn’t leave Aisha to attend her daughter’s
wedding.
2) Aisha
became too attached to her.
3) The
other keepers didn’t know how to look after Aisha.
4) Elephants
like to have a variety of people looking after them.
Why are the baby elephants kept in a stockade after
taking to the National Park?
l) The wild elephants do not accept them. 2) They are
still not able to feed themselves.
3) They
have not yet been adopted by Eleanor.
4) The
process of assimilation into a herd takes time.
Why do the young elephants eventually stop coming back to the
stockade?
l) They prefer the company of other elephants. 2) The
other elephants are too rough with them.
3) The keepers stop them because they are too old. 4)
The humans get bored with them.
Why did Sheldrick touch the wild elephant’s ear?
1)
She wanted to make the elephant feel welcome.
2)
She had confused her with another elephant.
3)
She had already been talking to her for about ten minutes. 4) She
was flattered by the elephant’s attention.
What overall impression does the author of the article give
of work with elephants?
l) It is dangerous. 2) It is depressing.
3) It
is rewarding.
4) It
is unpleasant
9.
Ilpogumaüme meŒccm u 01’10JIHume
3aòaŒ{ua A15—A21. B RaOÆCÒOM 3aÒaHuu
06eeòume tf*y 1, 2, 3 unu 4, coomeemcm 10 8b16 am-IOM eauu ga uaHm
omeema.
Whether it’s
holidays, great days out or lazy days at home, you hope your children will
retain happy memories of their childhoods. But often their treasured
recollections don’t match parental expectations.
Take my
exasperated friend Sarah. Back on the train after a day at both the Natural
History and the Science museums with three children under 10, she asked:
«So what did you all learn?’ That if I bang my head on something hard,
it’s going to hurt,» came the reply from her six-year-old daughter.
Roaring dinosaurs and an expensive lunch had little impact, but the bump on a
banister was destined to become family legend. After I’d helped out on a school
trip to Tate Modern art gallery, the teacher told me that three of my
five-year-old charges drew the escalators as their most memorable bit of the
day. «On a zoo trip, Luca liked the caterpillar best,» says my friend
Barbara. «Forget lions, giraffes and gorillas. What made the most
impression (and what he still talks about five years later) is the time he
found a caterpillar at the zoo.»
My children
are masters of odd-memory syndrome, recalling the minutiae and looking
blankraced at major events. The self-catering cottage of last year is ‘the
yellow house that smelled funny’. A skiing holiday is ‘remember when we had
burgers for breakfast?’ and a summer holiday is ‘when we had two ice creams
every night’.
Food features
large in other children’s memories. ‘Did you like going on the plane?’ a friend
asked her three-year-old daughter after her first flight. «I liked the
crisps,» came the reply. Four «ears on, another friend’s daughter
still remembers Menorca for the tomato-flavoured crisps and Pembrokeshire for
the dragon ice cream (ice cream in a dragon-shaped pot). Last summer, Janey and
her husband took their three children on a three-week train trip around Europe.
«We wanted to open their minds to the joys of travel and experiencing
different cultures,» she says. «But the high point for them was the
Mickey Mouse-shaped ice cream. That was in Rome. I wonder whether the Coliseum
made any sort of impression.»
But parenting
expert Suzie Hayman is reassuring. «I think food figures high in
everybody’s memories,» she says. «I just have to think of hot
chocolate and I’m transported back to Paris. Adults tend to be less direct or
simply try hard to come up to other people’s expectations. The important thing
is that you give your children lots of stimulation. If you visit a museum, you
can convey your appreciation for something. Just don’t expect them to share it.
It’s all about laying out the buffet and letting children pick. What children
want most is you — your attention, your approval, your time. They may prefer
the box to the present, but you’re still giving them variety for their memory
pool. It’s also important that they don’t grow up expecting that happy times only
equate with spending money on expensive days out.»
My
nine-year-old has a memory theory: the more uncomfortable the bed, the better
the holiday. So sleeping on bathroom floors and bending Z-beds make for a
fantastic time and fluffy pillows and soft mattresses (more expensive) equal
boring. This is one unexpected memory I plan to nurture for years to come.
What do all of the memories mentioned in the second paragraph
have in common?
l) They concerned something
unexpected that happened during a trip.
2) They
were not connected with the main purpose of the trip.
3) They
concerned trips that adults particularly enjoyed.
4) They
were not things that the children remembered for long.
What does the writer suggest about ‘major events’ in the
third paragraph?
1) Her
children’s memories of them are different from hers.
2)
Her children’s
memories of them change over time.
3) Her
children are unable to remember them at all.
4) Her
children remember only certain parts of them.
The food examples in the fourth
paragraph illustrate the fact that l) food is often what children remember
about journeys. 2) children’s memories of past events frequently involve food.
3)
children like talking about unusual food they have had.
4)
children keep their memories of unusual food for a long time.
What does Suzie Hayman say about
memories of food? l) Children are more likely to mention food than adults.
2)
Adults forget what food they have had after a while.
3)
The fact that children remember food is not important. 4) All her
best memories of childhood involve food.
What does Suzie Hayman say about parents?
l) They should not expect their children to enjoy the same
things that they enjoy.
2)
They should not take their children on expensive days out.
3)
They should not pay attention to what their children can remember.
4) They should not take their children to places that will not interest them.
The writer says that her child’s memory theory
l) is different from that of other children.
2) has
an advantage for the writer.
3) makes
logical sense to the writer.
4) is
something that she shares with her child.
The writer’s purpose in the article is to point out
1) how
difficult it is for children to remember the kind of things that adults
remember.
2) how
annoying children’s memories of past events can be for adults.
3) how
happy children’s own memories of past events make them feel.
4) how
different children’s memories are from what adults want them to remember.
10.
llpogumaüme maccm u
oznonwme 3aðaHug A15—A21. B KCZJCÒOM 3aÒŒuu
oõæòume quØpy 1, 2, 3 unu 4, coomæmcme 10
8b1õ aHHOM gaMU ea uaHrn omeema.
In 1789 began
the celebrated French Revolution, an event which shook the old certainties of
European states and European monarchies to the core. It also raised debate on
the desired structure of the state throughout whole populations to an
unprecedented degree. In October the following year, Edmund Burke brought out
his Reflections on the Revolution in France which sold 35,000 copies within
weeks, then a huge number. It reinforced all the fears and prejudices of the
traditional aristocracy. Immediately, more progressive authors began writing
their responses including the celebrated Thomas Paine whose The Rights ofMan
sold an amazing two million copies.
But Paine’s was
not the first response. Less than a month after Burke’s book was published
there appeared the anonymous A Vindication of the Rights ofMen. It sold so well
that a second edition appeared only three weeks after the first. However, in
this edition the author was named as Mary Wollstonecraft. The involvement of
women in politics was almost unknown at the time and there was outrage. Horace
Walpole called her «a hyena in petticoats».
If she was intimidated by the outcry, it
did not show. Only two years later, at the beginning of
1792, she produced another book
with an even more inflammatory title: A Vindication of the Rights of Women.
This has been a handbook for feminists ever since. Women tended to like her
strong opinions while men were, not surprisingly, infuriated. What is surprising
is that so many of the men who attacked this piece are usually thought of as
politically advanced. Even William Godwin, for example, supported the idea that
men and women were different and complementary and this required a political
arrangement where men led and women followed. Wollstonecraft attacked this
notion and demanded independence and equality for women.
This
rebellious streak led her in quite a different direction from most of her
contemporaries. As bloodshed in Paris reached its peak during 1792 and 1793,
and most British fled from France, Wollstonecraft moved to Paris to live. She
stayed while most of her French friends were killed. Quite why is not clear
since she clearly preferred the society of the bourgeois intellectuals who were
dying to the street revolutionaries who were killing them. Perhaps it was only
after this experience that she appreciated some of the practical pitfalls of
unchecked liberty.
The reality of revolution seemed
to change her in a number of other ways. A feature of her Vindication was to
urge both men and women to subjugate passion to reason. Before her experience
in France she had remained single and, single-mindedly, celibate despite the
temptation offered by the painter Fuseli. But whilst in France she threw herself
into a passionate affair with the American adventurer Gilbert Imlay. She even
followed Imlay to Scandinavia in search of stolen silver treasure; a triumph of
passion over reason if ever there was one! How ironic that she should suffer
this fate in the middle of, what she hoped would be, the foundation of a
better, more rational, society.
She never entirely lost her principles, however, and clung to
the belief that a better world based on equality and reason was attainable.
Eventually she returned to Britain and, after a failed suicide bid, she married
the very William Godwin who had so criticised her before. She died in
childbirth not long after and pronounced herself «content to be
wretched» but refused to be a nothing and discounted.
Mary
Wollstonecraft’s life was revolutionary in many ways, even for her time. She
may have been inconsistent and contradictory but this cannot diminish the
effect she had on the political thoughts of her contemporaries. We cannot
ignore too, the degree to which she has influenced later thought, even down to
the present day. Her son-in-law, Percy Shelley, was a fervent admirer who
immortalised her in verse in The Revolt of Islam. De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex
and Greer’s The Female Eunuch both owe their origins to Wollstonecraft’s
pioneering writing. The notions of equality we take for granted today first
appeared in her work.
The revolution in France
l) frightened everybody. 2)
prejudiced the aristocracy.
3)
concerned everybody.
4)
challenged the established order.
Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights ofMen
l) was an immediate best seller.
2)
sold only slowly
at first.
3)
hardly sold at
all.
4)
was only read by women.
The response to A Vindicaton ofthe Rights ofMen
l) intimidated Mary. 2) made Mary
flee to France.
3) attracted William Godwin. 4) made Mary write
another book.
Men objected to the book because
l) it was written by a woman. 2)
it challenged established ideas about men and womel 3) she published before
them.
4) the writer was a female politician.
Mary’s personal life
l) always matched her published
beliefs. 2) sometimes contradicted her published beliefs.
3) never contradicted her published beliefs. 4) never
matched her published beliefs.
In refusing to be discounted she meant
l) women should be taught literacy and numeracy.
2)
the role of women
should not be reduced.
3)
she was not to be overlooked for being a woman. 4) she was happy
as she was.
Mary Wollstonecraft’s writing
l) was constant and
contemporary. 2) inspired modern feminist writers.
3) took equality for granted. 4) was ignored.
58
11.
Ilpogumaüme meccm u
8bžnonwme 3aòaHun A15—A21. B RaO+CÒOM 3aòaHuu
06geòume quØpy 1, 2, 3 wzu 4, coomæmcme ‘0 016 aHHOM gauu
ga uaHm omeema.
For three
centuries the greatest minds on the planet were baffled by a seemingly simple
equation set by an amateur 17th century mathematician, Pierre de
Fermat. The battle to prove Fermat’s theory about this equation was a long and
hard one and it was not until 1997 that Professor Andrew Wiles received the
prestigious Wolfskehl Prize, in recognition of his epic struggle with this
‘simple equation’ which had become one of the most notorious problems in
mathematics: Fermat’s Last Theorem.
Wiles first
read about Fermat’s Last Theorem when, as a schoolboy, he visited his local
library: «One day I borrowed a book about this ancient and unsolved
problem. It looked so simple, and yet the greatest mathematicians in history
couldn’t solve it. A 10-year-óld, I knew from that moment I would never
let it go.’
The theorem’s
creator was a civil servant and mathematician. Having studied an equation. He
claimed that he could prove it was impossible to solve this particular
equation, but the mischievous Frenchman never committed his proof to paper.
For thirty
years, teachers, lecturers and then colleagues told Wiles he was wasting his
time but he never gave up. When he eventually spotted a potential strategy, the
mathematician did not publicise his idea. Instead he worked in complete
isolation. Only his wife knew of the new direction his work had taken. He
believed his approach was right, but feared that rival mathematicians might
beat him to the proof if they discovered his plan. Making his strategy succeed
would take seven years of dedicated effort, conducted in complete secrecy.
During this period, Wiles continued to publish papers of conventional
calculations every year to put his peers off the scent.
To show that
no numbers fitted the equation, Wiles had to confront infinity — the
mathematician’s nightmare. He likens his experience to a journey through the
dark: «You enter the first room and it’s completely dark. You stumble
around, bumping into the furniture. After six months or so you find the light
switch and suddenly everything is illuminated. Then you move into the next room
and spend another six months in the dark. Although each of these breakthroughs
can be momentary, they are the culmination of many months of stumbling around
in the dark.»
In June 1993,
Wiles revealed to the world that he had proved Fermat’s Last Theorem. However,
within a few months referees spotted an error in the proof. Wiles attempted to
fix it before news of the error had leaked out, but he failed. By the end of
1993, the mathematical community was full of gossip and rumour, with many
academics criticising Wiles because he refused to release the flawed calculations,
thus preventing others from fixing the error.
Wiles spent an
agonizing year before making the final breakthrough that resurrected his proof.
«It was so indescribably beautiful. I stared at the calculation in
disbelief for 20 minutes. It was the most important moment of my working
life.» The sheer complexity of the proof shows it can’t possibly be the
proof Fermat had in mind, and some mathematicians are continuing the search for
the original 1 7th century proof.
How did Wiles feel about Fermat’s Last Theorem?
l) He was obsessed with it. 2) He
couldn’t understand it.
3) He
was worried about it.
4) He
didn’t think he could solve it.
Why is Fermat described as ‘mischievous Frenchman’?
l) He said it was impossible to
find a solution to the equation.
2)
He only did mathematics in his spare time as a hobby.
3)
The proof he claimed to have discovered was not written down. 4)
He wouldn’t say whether he had found a proof or not.
Why were Wiles’ teachers and colleagues discouraging about
his project?
l) They thought he had adopted the
wrong approach.
2)
They did not know he had found the strategy.
3)
They did not know his wife knew about it. 4) They thought the
problem was unsolvable.
How did Wiles avoid attracting
suspicion? l) He was very secretive about his work.
2)
He carried on doing his normal work.
3)
He was extremely dedicated to his work. 4) He published papers
about the proof.
What did the process of arriving at a proof involve?
l) Long periods of bewilderment
followed by flashes of understanding. 2) Careful, painstaking work which
gradually began to reveal a solution.
3) A
series of sudden realisations leading to a final answer.
4) A
long journey of exploration at the end of which the solution was revealed
Why did other mathematicians criticise Wiles in 1993?
l) There were errors in the
original proof.
2)
He could not fix the errors in the original proof.
3)
He would not let others work on his original proof. 4) He allowed
rumours about the original proof to circulate.
The equation Fermat and Wiles studied
l) was solvable but Wiles could
not work out the solution. 2) was solvable and Wiles eventually worked out the
solution.
3) was
unsolvable but Wiles could not prove this.
4) was
unsolvable and Wiles eventually proved this.
12.
|
llpoqumaüme maccm u et,znonwme 3aÒaHun A15—A21. B |
1, 2, |
Sir Thomas More
was the most brilliant Englishman of his age in an age, the early Renaissance,
which is thought to be particularly brilliant. He scaled the heights in law, in
philosophy and literature, and attained high political rank as Chancellor. But the
most challenging thing about this man is nothing that he achieved in life but
the nature of his death. The facts are well known. He was executed by King
Henry VIII in 1534 for refusing to accept Henry as head of the church in
England. What is unclear is why he chose to refuse, and to die, in this way.
Clouding the
issue are the political and religious arguments which were at the root of his
refusal and his death. It will be remembered that King Henry VIII was, for the
most of his life, an ardent Catholic who was awarded the title of Defender of
the Faith for his resistance to the Protestant reformation. But his desperation
for a male heir led Henry to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, in
favour of the younger Ann Boleyn who offered the promise of a son. High
politics among the crowned heads of Europe meant that this could only be
achieved by a break with Rome and the acceptance of Protestantism in England.
In a time when religion was taken very seriously by whole populations there was
bound to be resistance.
Traditional
Catholic writers, such as Friar Anthony Foley, have cast More as a martyr who
stood up for the cause of Catholicism and perished for the true religion.
«More was a beacon of light in those dark times,» says Friar Foley,
«whose actions have shown the path of righteousness for true believers
even down to the present day. This interpretation was convenient for the
Catholic church, then as now, and resulted in More being made a saint. It
ignores, however, the fact that More took every step to stop his ideas being
made a political issue. Whatever reason he had it was not support of the
Catholic church. It also does not explain why More chose to take a stand, and
effectively commit suicide, on this issue. Even under the teachings of the Catholic
church he could have sworn the necessary oath to Henry because he was under
duress. The church in his day did not expect or require him to refuse. More’s
personal beliefs were his own but refusal to take the oath is what condemned
him.
A more recent
biography, by Paul Hardy, views More as a medieval man and not the renaissance
man he is often seen as. As such, Hardy argues, he would have been deeply
conservative. The changes which Henry was embracing, with the acceptance of
Protestantism, would have been highly offensive. «As a lawyer and
Chancellor, More had spent his life defending the status quo and now it was
turned round,» he writes. This rather ignores the deliberate modernity
which imbued every other aspect of More’s life from legal reform to the
rewriting of school textbooks.
Other writers, such as the psychotherapist Bill Blake,
see More’s demise as an example of depressive illness. Melancholy was widely
known at the time but not seen as an illness. It is not implausible that under
the sfi•ain of work and the profile of his position as Chancellor, he succumbed
to depression and, desperate and indecisive, let death sweep over him. But
contemporary reports are odds with this. He made every effort to comfort and
cheer up his own relatives and never appeared lost or undecided.
Since More
himself left no explanation we will probably never really know what his
motivation was. However, Hardy’s observations are very true in some respects in
that More lived in a very different world and one that is hard for us to
understand. Life could be very cheap 500 years ago especially if one held high
political office of intellectual views at odds with the establishment. There is
no better way of appreciating this than to consider the fate of the poets in
the Oxford Book of Sixteenth Century verse. Two thirds of these poets died
violent deaths, almost all at the hands of an executioner. With the possibility
of death ever present it seems to have been regarded then with something less
than the dread it evokes today. Perhaps this is what happened with More. After
a lifetime of good fortune, considerable luxury and achievement, the wheel of
fortune had turned, and More accepted his fate with good grace in the hope of
an even better life in the hereafter.
Which of the following was More not expert in?
l) literature 2) religion
3) philosophy
4) law
Henry VIII
executed More because 1) Henry VIII wanted a son.
2)
More believed in Protestantism.
3)
More was Chancellor.
4)
More refused to take an oath.
Henry VIII broke from Rome because
l) He believed Protestantism was the true faith.
2)
Rome refused him a divorce.
3)
He wanted to ensure the succession. 4) He wanted to marry Ann
Boleyn.
Traditional Catholic writers proclaimed More as a martyr
because
l) wanted to be executed.
2)
he did not refuse his religious belief.
3)
he tried not to make his belief a political issue. 4) he did not
support Protestantism in England.
The writer disbelieves traditional views of More’s death
because
l) More committed suicide.
2) More
didn’t follow Catholic teaching in refusing the oath.
3) Theories
of depression are more persuasive.
4) Little
is really understood of the time More lived in.
More’s death is a mystery because 1)
he chose to be executed.
2) he
left no written explanation.
3) the
facts of his death are not known.
4) it
is bound up in religious controversy.
According to the writer, the life of an intellectual 500
years ago could be dangerous
1) Because
the standard of living was cheap.
2) Because
they held high political office.
3) If
they held dissident views,
4) If
they suffered from depression.
OTBETb1
3anaHHe Ha YCTaHOBJ1eHwe COOTBeTCTBHS1 B2
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8362571 |
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5631287 |
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4187526 |
3anaHHfl Ha 110HHMaHue CTPYKTYPHO-CMb1CJIOBb1X CBfl3eÜ B TeKCTe B3
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3aAaHHfl Ha no.rmoe H TOU-1HOe 1101—1HMaHHe
HHÞPMaUHH B TeKcrre A15-A21
Task 1. A15-2, A16-4, 1, A20-2,A21 —
1
Task 2. A15-2, 3, -3,
A18 -4, A19 -2, MO -3, A21 -2
|
Task 3. Task 4. Task 5. |
A15-2, A 16 —3, A17 -2, — A15-3, A 17 —2, — 1, A19 |
Task 6. A15-2, 16 —3, -2, -3,
A19- 1, A20 -3, A21 -2
Task 7. A15-2,A
16 —A20 —3,A21 -2
Task 8.
— 1, A16 -2, -2, A18
-4, A19- l, A20 — 2, A21 -3
|
Task 9. Task 10. Task 11. Task 12. |
A |
— 1, 3,СОДЕРЖАНИЕ
ВВЕДЕНИЕ
РАЗДЕЛ «ЧТЕНИЕ»
ЗАДАНИЯ НА ПОЛНОЕ И ТОЧНОЕ ПОНИМАНИЕ
ИНФОРМАЦИИ В ТЕКСТЕ Al 5-A21 ..38
ОТВЕТЫ
Отпечатано с
готовых диапозитивов в филиале ГУП МО «КТ» «Воскресенская типография» 140200,
г.
Воскресенск Московской области, ул. Вокзальная, д. 30 E-mail:
vosprint@mail.ru тел.: 8 (49644) 2-45-42
somethin’! But I can’t help it. I’ll go, I’ll do as you say, but—-«
His uncle’s agitation went out like a wind-blown flame. He, too, drooped in an utter fatigue. «Never mind, Natty,» he said tremulously, «it’ll all come out right somehow. Just you do as Uncle Jehiel says.»
A trampling upstairs told him that the service was over. «You run home now and tell her I’ll be over this afternoon to fix things up.»
He hurried up the stairs to open the front doors, but Deacon Bradley was before him. «You’re late, Jehiel,» he said severely, «and the church was cold.»
«I know, Deacon,» said the s.e.xton humbly, «but it won’t happen again. And I’ll be around the first thing in the morning to do that job for you.» His voice sounded dull and lifeless.
«What’s the matter?» asked the deacon. «Be you sick?»
«Yes, I be, but ’tain’t nothin’. ‘Twill pa.s.s after a while.»
That evening, as he walked home after service, he told himself that he had never known so long a day. It seemed longer than all the rest of his life.
Indeed he felt that some strange and racking change had come upon him since the morning, as though he were not the same person, as though he had been away on a long journey, and saw all things with changed eyes. «I feel as though I’d died,» he thought with surprise, «and was dead and buried.»
This brought back to his mind the only bitter word he had spoken throughout the endless day. Nathaniel had said, as an excuse for his haste (Jehiel insisted on his leaving that night), «You see, mother, it’s really a service to Uncle Jehiel, since he’s got n.o.body to keep house for him.»
He had added, in the transparent self-justification of selfish youth, «And I’ll pay it back to him every cent.» At this Jehiel had said shortly, «By the time you can pay it back what I’ll need most will be a tombstone. Git a big one so’s to keep me down there quiet.»
But now, walking home under the frosty stars, he felt very quiet already, as though he needed no weight to lie heavy on his restless heart. It did not seem restless now, but very still, as though it too were dead. He noticed that the air was milder, and as he crossed the bridge below his house he stopped and listened. Yes, the fine ear of his experience caught a faint grinding sound. By tomorrow the river would begin to break up. It was the end of winter. He surprised himself by his pleasure in thinking of the spring.
Before he went into the house after his evening ch.o.r.es were done, he stopped for a moment and looked back at the cleft in the mountain wall through which the railroad left the valley. He had been looking longingly toward that door of escape all his life, and now he said goodby to it.
«Ah, well, ‘twan’t to be,» he said, with an accent of weary finality; but then, suddenly out of the chill which oppressed his heart there sprang a last searing blast of astonished anguish. It was as if he realized for the first time all that had befallen him since the morning. He was racked by a horrified desolation that made his st.u.r.dy old body stagger as if under an unexpected blow. As he reeled he flung his arm about the pine-tree and so stood for a time, shaking in a paroxysm which left him breathless when it pa.s.sed. For it pa.s.sed as suddenly as it came. He lifted his head and looked again at the great cleft in the mountains, with new eyes. Somehow, insensibly, his heart had been emptied of its fiery draught by more than mere exhaustion. The old bitter pain was gone, but there was no mere void in its place. He felt the sweet, weak light-headedness of a man in his first lucid period after a fever, tears stinging his eyelids in confused thanksgiving for an unrecognized respite from pain.
He looked up at the lofty crown of the pine-tree, through which shone one or two of the brightest stars, and felt a new comradeship with it. It was a great tree, he thought, and they had grown up together. He laid his hardened palm on it, and fancied that he caught a throb of the silent vitality under the bark. How many kinds of life there were! Under its white shroud, how all the valley lived. The tree stretching up its head to the stars, the river preparing to throw off the icy armor which compressed its heart—they were all awakening in their own way. The river had been restless, like himself, the tree had been tranquil, but they pa.s.sed together through the resurrection into quiet life.
When he went into the house, he found that he was almost fainting with fatigue. He sat down by the desk, and his head fell forward on the pile of pamphlets he had left there. For the first time in his life he thought of them without a sore heart. «I suppose Natty’ll go to every one of them places,» he murmured as he dropped to sleep.
He dreamed strange, troubled dreams that melted away before he could seize on them, and finally he thought his sister stood before him and called.
The impression was so vivid that he started up, staring at the empty room.
For an instant he still thought he heard a voice, and then he knew it was the old clock striking the hour. It was ten o’clock.
«Natty’s just a-crossin’ the State line,» he said aloud The text-ornament caught his eye. Still half asleep, with his sister’s long-forgotten voice ringing in his ears, he remembered vaguely that he had meant to bring the second text to light. For a moment he hesitated, and then, «Well, it’s come true for Natty, anyhow,» he thought.
And clumsily using his heavy jackknife, he began to cut the tiny st.i.tches which had so long hidden from his eyes the joyous exultation of the escaped prisoner.
THE BEDQUILT
Of all the Elwell family Aunt Mehetabel was certainly the most unimportant member. It was in the New England days, when an unmarried woman was an old maid at twenty, at forty was everyone’s servant, and at sixty had gone through so much discipline that she could need no more in the next world.
Aunt Mehetabel was sixty-eight.
She had never for a moment known the pleasure of being important to anyone. Not that she was useless in her Brother’s family; she was expected, as a matter of course, to take upon herself the most tedious and uninteresting part of the household labors. On Mondays she accepted as her share the washing of the men’s shirts, heavy with sweat and stiff with dirt from the fields and from their own hard-working bodies. Tuesdays she never dreamed of being allowed to iron anything pretty or even interesting, like the baby’s white dresses or the fancy ap.r.o.ns of her young lady nieces. She stood all day pressing out a tiresome monotonous succession of dish-cloths and towels and sheets.
In preserving-time she was allowed to have none of the pleasant responsibility of deciding when the fruit had cooked long enough, nor did she share in the little excitement of pouring the sweet-smelling stuff into the stone jars. She sat in a corner with the children and stoned cherries incessantly, or hulled strawberries until her fingers were dyed red to the bone.
The Elwells were not consciously unkind to their aunt, they were even in a vague way fond of her; but she was so utterly insignificant a figure in their lives that they bestowed no thought whatever on her. Aunt Mehetabel did not resent this treatment; she took it quite as unconsciously as they gave it. It was to be expected when one was an old-maid dependent in a busy family. She gathered what crumbs of comfort she could from their occasional careless kindnesses and tried to hide the hurt which even yet pierced her at her brother’s rough joking. In the winter when they all sat before the big hearth, roasted apples, drank mulled cider, and teased the girls about their beaux and the boys about their sweethearts, she shrank into a dusky corner with her knitting, happy if the evening pa.s.sed without her brother saying, with a crude sarcasm, «Ask your Aunt Mehetabel about the beaux that used to come a-sparkin’ her!» or, «Mehetabel, how was’t when you was in love with Abel c.u.mmings.» As a matter of fact, she had been the same at twenty as at sixty, a quiet, mouse-like little creature, too timid and shy for anyone to notice, or to raise her eyes for a moment and wish for a life of her own.
Her sister-in-law, a big hearty housewife, who ruled indoors with as autocratic a sway as did her husband on the farm, was rather kind in an absent, offhand way to the shrunken little old woman, and it was through her that Mehetabel was able to enjoy the one pleasure of her life. Even as a girl she had been clever with her needle in the way of patching bedquilts. More than that she could never learn to do. The garments which she made for herself were the most lamentable affairs, and she was humbly grateful for any help in the bewildering business of putting them together. But in patchwork she enjoyed a tepid importance. She could really do that as well as anyone else. During years of devotion to this one art she had acc.u.mulated a considerable store of quilting patterns.
Sometimes the neighbors would send over and ask «Miss Mehetabel» for such and such a design. It was with an agreeable flutter at being able to help someone that she went to the dresser, in her bare little room under the eaves, and extracted from her crowded portfolio the pattern desired.
She never knew how her great idea came to her. Sometimes she thought she must have dreamed it, sometimes she even wondered reverently, in the phraseology of the weekly prayer-meeting, if it had not been «sent» to her. She never admitted to herself that she could have thought of it without other help; it was too great, too ambitious, too lofty a project for her humble mind to have conceived. Even when she finished drawing the design with her own fingers, she gazed at it incredulously, not daring to believe that it could indeed be her handiwork. At first it seemed to her only like a lovely but quite unreal dream. She did not think of putting it into execution—so elaborate, so complicated, so beautifully difficult a pattern could be only for the angels in heaven to quilt. But so curiously does familiarity accustom us even to very wonderful things, that as she lived with this astonishing creation of her mind, the longing grew stronger and stronger to give it material life with her nimble old fingers.
She gasped at her daring when this idea first swept over her and put it away as one does a sinfully selfish notion, but she kept coming back to it again and again. Finally she said compromisingly to herself that she would make one «square,» just one part of her design, to see how it would look.
Accustomed to the most complete dependence on her brother and his wife, she dared not do even this without asking Sophia’s permission. With a heart full of hope and fear thumping furiously against her old ribs, she approached the mistress of the house on churning-day, knowing with the innocent guile of a child that the country woman was apt to be in a good temper while working over the fragrant b.u.t.ter in the cool cellar.
Sophia listened absently to her sister-in-law’s halting, hesitating pet.i.tion. «Why, yes, Mehetabel,» she said, leaning far down into the huge churn for the last golden morsels—«why, yes, start another quilt if you want to. I’ve got a lot of pieces from the spring sewing that will work in real good.» Mehetabel tried honestly to make her see that this would be no common quilt, but her limited vocabulary and her emotion stood between her and expression. At last Sophia said, with a kindly impatience: «Oh, there!
Don’t bother me. I never could keep track of your quiltin’ patterns, anyhow. I don’t care what pattern you go by.»
With this overwhelmingly, although unconsciously, generous permission Mehetabel rushed back up the steep attic stairs to her room, and in a joyful agitation began preparations for the work of her life. It was even better than she hoped. By some heaven-sent inspiration she had invented a pattern beyond which no patchwork quilt could go.
She had but little time from her incessant round of household drudgery for this new and absorbing occupation, and she did not dare sit up late at night lest she burn too much candle. It was weeks before the little square began to take on a finished look, to show the pattern. Then Mehetabel was in a fever of impatience to bring it to completion. She was too conscientious to shirk even the smallest part of her share of the work of the house, but she rushed through it with a speed which left her panting as she climbed to the little room. This seemed like a radiant spot to her as she bent over the innumerable sc.r.a.ps of cloth which already in her imagination ranged themselves in the infinitely diverse pattern of her masterpiece. Finally she could wait no longer, and one evening ventured to bring her work down beside the fire where the family sat, hoping that some good fortune would give her a place near the tallow candles on the mantelpiece. She was on the last corner of the square, and her needle flew in and out with inconceivable rapidity. No one noticed her, a fact which filled her with relief, and by bedtime she had but a few more st.i.tches to add.
As she stood up with the others, the square fluttered out of her trembling old hands and fell on the table. Sophia glanced at it carelessly. «Is that the new quilt you’re beginning on?» she asked with a yawn. «It looks like a real pretty pattern. Let’s see it.» Up to that moment Mehetabel had labored in the purest spirit of disinterested devotion to an ideal, but as Sophia held her work toward the candle to examine it, and exclaimed in amazement and admiration, she felt an astonished joy to know that her creation would stand the test of publicity.
«Land sakes!» e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed her sister-in-law, looking at the many-colored square. «Why, Mehetabel Elwell, where’d you git that pattern?»
«I made it up,» said Mehetabel quietly, but with unutterable pride.
«No!» exclaimed Sophia incredulously. «_Did_ you! Why, I never see such a pattern in my life. Girls, come here and see what your Aunt Mehetabel is doing.»
The three tall daughters turned back reluctantly from the stairs. «I don’t seem to take much interest in patchwork,» said one listlessly.
«No, nor I neither!» answered Sophia; «but a stone image would take an interest in this pattern. Honest, Mehetabel, did you think of it yourself?
And how under the sun and stars did you ever git your courage up to start in a-making it? Land! Look at all those tiny squinchy little seams! Why the wrong side ain’t a thing _but_ seams!»
The girls echoed their mother’s exclamations, and Mr. Elwell himself came over to see what they were discussing. «Well, I declare!» he said, looking at his sister with eyes more approving than she could ever remember. «That beats old Mis’ Wightman’s quilt that got the blue ribbon so many times at the county fair.»
Mehetabel’s heart swelled within her, and tears of joy moistened her old eyes as she lay that night in her narrow, hard bed, too proud and excited to sleep. The next day her sister-in-law amazed her by taking the huge pan of potatoes out of her lap and setting one of the younger children to peeling them. «Don’t you want to go on with that quiltin’ pattern?» she said; «I’d kind o’ like to see how you’re goin’ to make the grape-vine design come out on the corner.»
By the end of the summer the family interest had risen so high that Mehetabel was given a little stand in the sitting-room where she could keep her pieces, and work in odd minutes. She almost wept over such kindness, and resolved firmly not to take advantage of it by neglecting her work, which she performed with a fierce thoroughness. But the whole atmosphere of her world was changed. Things had a meaning now. Through the longest task of washing milk-pans there rose the rainbow of promise of her variegated work. She took her place by the little table and put the thimble on her knotted, hard finger with the solemnity of a priestess performing a sacred rite.
She was even able to bear with some degree of dignity the extreme honor of having the minister and the minister’s wife comment admiringly on her great project. The family felt quite proud of Aunt Mehetabel as Minister Bowman had said it was work as fine as any he had ever seen, «and he didn’t know but finer!» The remark was repeated verbatim to the neighbors in the following weeks when they dropped in and examined in a perverse silence some astonishingly difficult _tour de force_ which Mehetabel had just finished.
The family especially plumed themselves on the slow progress of the quilt.
«Mehetabel has been to work on that corner for six weeks, come Tuesday, and she ain’t half done yet,» they explained to visitors. They fell out of the way of always expecting her to be the one to run on errands, even for the children. «Don’t bother your Aunt Mehetabel,» Sophia would call.
«Can’t you see she’s got to a ticklish place on the quilt?»
The old woman sat up straighter and looked the world in the face. She was a part of it at last. She joined in the conversation and her remarks were listened to. The children were even told to mind her when she asked them to do some service for her, although this she did but seldom, the habit of self-effacement being too strong.
One day some strangers from the next town drove up and asked if they could inspect the wonderful quilt which they had heard of, even down in their end of the valley. After that such visitations were not uncommon, making the Elwells’ house a notable object. Mehetabel’s quilt came to be one of the town sights, and no one was allowed to leave the town without having paid tribute to its worth. The Elwells saw to it that their aunt was better dressed than she had ever been before, and one of the girls made her a pretty little cap to wear on her thin white hair.
A year went by and a quarter of the quilt was finished, a second year pa.s.sed and half was done. The third year Mehetabel had pneumonia and lay ill for weeks and weeks, overcome with terror lest she die before her work was completed. A fourth year and one could really see the grandeur of the whole design; and in September of the fifth year, the entire family watching her with eager and admiring eyes, Mehetabel quilted the last st.i.tches in her creation. The girls held it up by the four corners, and they all looked at it in a solemn silence. Then Mr. Elwell smote one h.o.r.n.y hand within the other and exclaimed: «By ginger! That’s goin’ to the county fair!»
Mehetabel blushed a deep red at this. It was a thought which had occurred to her in a bold moment, but she had not dared to entertain it. The family acclaimed the idea, and one of the boys was forthwith dispatched to the house of the neighbor who was chairman of the committee for their village.
He looked up at the lofty crown of the pine-tree,
through which shone one or two of the brightest stars,
and felt a new comradeship with it. It was a
great tree, he thought, and they had grown up together.
He laid his hardened palm on it, and fancied that
he caught a throb of the silent vitality under the
bark. How many kinds of life there were!
Under its white shroud, how all the valley lived.
The tree stretching up its head to the stars, the
river preparing to throw off the icy armor which compressed
its heart—they were all awakening in their
own way. The river had been restless, like himself,
the tree had been tranquil, but they passed together
through the resurrection into quiet life.
When he went into the house, he found that he was
almost fainting with fatigue. He sat down by
the desk, and his head fell forward on the pile of
pamphlets he had left there. For the first time
in his life he thought of them without a sore heart.
“I suppose Natty’ll go to every one of
them places,” he murmured as he dropped to sleep.
He dreamed strange, troubled dreams that melted away
before he could seize on them, and finally he thought
his sister stood before him and called. The impression
was so vivid that he started up, staring at the empty
room. For an instant he still thought he heard
a voice, and then he knew it was the old clock striking
the hour. It was ten o’clock.
“Natty’s just a-crossin’ the State
line,” he said aloud The text-ornament caught
his eye. Still half asleep, with his sister’s
long-forgotten voice ringing in his ears, he remembered
vaguely that he had meant to bring the second text
to light. For a moment he hesitated, and then,
“Well, it’s come true for Natty, anyhow,”
he thought.
And clumsily using his heavy jackknife, he began to
cut the tiny stitches which had so long hidden from
his eyes the joyous exultation of the escaped prisoner.
THE BEDQUILT
Of all the Elwell family Aunt Mehetabel was certainly
the most unimportant member. It was in the New
England days, when an unmarried woman was an old maid
at twenty, at forty was everyone’s servant, and
at sixty had gone through so much discipline that
she could need no more in the next world. Aunt
Mehetabel was sixty-eight.
She had never for a moment known the pleasure of being
important to anyone. Not that she was useless
in her Brother’s family; she was expected, as
a matter of course, to take upon herself the most tedious
and uninteresting part of the household labors.
On Mondays she accepted as her share the washing of
the men’s shirts, heavy with sweat and stiff
with dirt from the fields and from their own hard-working
bodies. Tuesdays she never dreamed of being allowed
to iron anything pretty or even interesting, like
the baby’s white dresses or the fancy aprons
of her young lady nieces. She stood all day pressing
out a tiresome monotonous succession of dish-cloths
and towels and sheets.
Ill a first-class carriage of a train speeding Balkanward two Britons sat in friendly, fitful converse. They had first foregathered in the cold grey dawn at the frontier line, where the presiding eagle takes on an extra head and Teuton lands pass from Hohenzollern to Habsburg. After a day’s break of their journey at Vienna the travellers had again foregathered at the train side and paid one another the compliment of settling instinctively into the same carriage. The elder of the two was a wine businessman. The other was certainly a journalist. Neither man was talkative and each was grateful to the other for not being talkative. That is why from time to time they talked.
One topic of conversation naturally thrust itself forward in front of all others. In Vienna the previous day they had learned of the mysterious vanishing of a world-famous picture from the Louvre.
‘A dramatic disappearance of that sort is sure to produce a crop of imitations, ’ said the Journalist.
‘I was thinking of the spiriting away of human beings rather than pictures. In particular I was thinking of the case of my aunt, Crispina Umberleigh.’
‘I remember hearing something of the affair, ’ said the Journalist, ‘but I was away from England at the time. I never quite knew what was supposed to have happened.’
‘You may hear what really happened if you respect it as a confidence, ’ said the Wine Merchant. ‘In the first place I may say that the disappearance of Mrs. Umberleigh was not regarded by the family entirely as bereavement. My uncle, Edward Umberleigh, was not by any means a weak-kneed individual, in fact in the world of politics he had to be reckoned as a strong man, but he was unmistakably dominated by Crispina. Some people are born to command. Mrs. Umberleigh was born to legislate, codify, administrate, censor, license, ban, execute, and sit in judgement generally. From the kitchen regions upwards everyone in the household came under her despotic sway and stayed there with the submissiveness of molluscs involved in a glacial epoch. Her sons and daughters stood in mortal awe of her. Their studies, friendships, diet, amusements, religious observances, and way of doing their hair were all regulated and ordained according to the august lady’s will and pleasure.
This will help you to understand the sensation of stupefaction which was caused in the family when she unobtrusively and inexplicably vanished. It was as though St. Paul’s Cathedral or the Piccadilly Hotel had disappeared in the night, leaving nothing but an open space to mark where it had stood.
As far as it was known, nothing was troubling her; in fact there was much before her to make life particularly well worth living. The youngest boy had come back from school with an unsatisfactory report, and she was to have sat in judgement on him the very afternoon of the day she disappeared. Then she was in the middle of a newspaper correspondence with a rural dean in which she had already proved him guilty of heresy, inconsistency, and unworthy quibbling, and no ordinary consideration would have induced her to discontinue the controversy. Of course the matter was put in the hands of the police, but as far as possible it was kept out of the papers, and the generally accepted explanation of her withdrawal from her social circle was that she had gone into a nursing home.’
‘Couldn’t your uncle get hold of the least clue?’
‘As a matter of fact, he had received some information, though of course I did not know of it at the time. He got a message one day telling him that his wife had been kidnapped and smuggled out of the country; she was said to be hidden away, on one of the islands off the coast of Norway I think she was in comfortable surroundings and well cared for. And with the information came a demand for money; a lump sum of 2000 pounds was to be paid yearly. Failing this she would be immediately restored to her family.’
The Journalist was silent for a moment, and then began to laugh quietly.
‘It was certainly an inverted form of holding to ransom, ’ he said. ‘Did your uncle succumb to it?’
‘Well, you see, for the family to have gone back into the Crispina thraldom after having tasted the delights of liberty would have been a tragedy, and there were even wider considerations to be taken into account. Since his bereavement he had unconsciously taken up a far bolder and more initiatory line in public affairs, and his popularity and influence had increased correspondingly. All this he knew would be jeopardised if he once more dropped into the social position of the husband of Mrs. Umberleigh. Of course, he had severe qualms of conscience about the arrangement. Later on, when he took me into his confidence, he told me that in paying the ransom he was partly influenced by the fear that if he refused it, the kidnappers might have vented their rage and disappointment on their captive. It was better, he said, to think of her being well cared for as a highly-valued payingguest on one of the Lofoden Islands than to have her struggling miserably home in a maimed and mutilated condition. Anyway he paid the yearly instalment as punctually as one pays fire insurance. And then, after a disappearance of more than eight years, Crispina returned with dramatic suddenness to the home she had left so mysteriously.’
‘She had given her captors the slip?’
‘She had never been captured. Her wandering away had been caused by a sudden and complete loss of memory. She usually dressed rather in the style of a superior kind of charwoman, and it was not so very surprising that she should have imagined that she was one. She had wandered as far afield as Birmingham, and found fairly steady employment there, her energy and enthusiasm in putting people’s rooms in order counterbalancing her obstinate and domineering characteristics. It was the shock of being patronisingly addressed as ‘my good woman’ by a curate who was disputing with her where the stove should be placed in a parish concert hall that led to the sudden restoration of her memory.’
‘But, ’ exclaimed the Journalist, ‘the Lofoden Island people! Who had they got hold of?’
‘A purely mythical prisoner. It was an attempt in the first place by someone who knew something of the domestic situation to bluff a lump sum out of Edward Umberleigh before the missing woman turned up. Here is Belgrad and another custom house.’
(Adapted from ‘The Disappearance Of Crispina Umberleigh’ by H. H. Munro)
The Bedquilt
by Dorothy Canfield
Of all the Elwell family Aunt Mehetabel was certainly the
most unim.portant member. It was in the old.time New England days, when an unmarried woman was an old maid at twenty, at forty was everyone’s servant, and at sixty had gone through so much discipline that she could need no more in the next world. Aunt Mehetabel was sixty.eight.
She had never for a moment known the pleasure of being important to anyone. Not that she was useless in her brother’s family; she was expected, as a matter of course, to take upon herself the most tedious and uninteresting part of the household labors. On Mondays she ac.cepted as her share the washing of the men’s shirts, heavy with sweat and stiff with dirt from the fields and from their own hard.working bodies. Tuesdays she never dreamed of being allowed to iron anything pretty or even interesting, like the baby’s white dresses or the fancy aprons of her young lady nieces. She stood all day pressing out a monotonous succes.sion of dish.cloths and towels and sheets.
In preserving.time she was allowed to have none of the pleasant responsibility of deciding when the fruit had cooked long enough, nor did she share in the little excitement of pouring the sweet.smelling stuff into the stone jars. She sat in a corner with the children and stoned cherries incessantly, or hulled strawberries until her fingers were dyed red.
The Elwells were not consciously unkind to their aunt, they were even in a vague way fond of her; but she was so insignificant a figure in their lives that she was almost invisible to them. Aunt Mehetabel did not resent this treatment; she took it quite as unconsciously as they gave it. It was to be expected when one was an old.maid dependent in a busy family. She gathered what crumbs of comfort she could from their occa.sional careless kindnesses and tried to hide the hurt which even yet pierced her at her brother’s rough joking. In the winter when they all sat before the big hearth, roasted apples, drank mulled cider, and teased the girls about their beaux and the boys about their sweethearts, she shrank into a dusky comer with her knitting, happy if the evening passed with’ out her brother saying, with a crude sarcasm, «Ask your Aunt Mehetabel about the beaux that used to come a.sparkin’ her!» or, «Mehetabel, how was’s when you was in love with Abel Cummings?» As a matter of fact, she had been the same at twenty as at sixty, a mouselike little creature, too shy for anyone to notice, or to raise her eyes for a moment and wish for a life of her own.
Her sister.in.law, a big hearty housewife, who ruled indoors with as autocratic a sway as did her husband on the farm, was rather kind in an absent, offhand way to the shrunken little old woman, and it was through her that Mehetabel was able to enjoy the one pleasure of her life. Even as a girl she had been clever with her needle in the way of patching bedquilts. More than that she could never learn to do. The garments which she made for herself were lamentable affairs, and she was humbly grateful for any help in the bewildering business of putting them together. But in patchwork she enjoyed a tepid importance. She could really do that as well as anyone else. During years of devotion to this one art she had accumulated a considerable store of quilting patterns. Sometimes the neighbors would send over and ask «Miss Mehetabel» for the loan of her sheaf.of.wheat design, or the double.star pattern. It was with an agreeable flutter at being able to help someone that she went to the dresser, in her bare little room under the eaves, and drew out from her crowded portfolio the pattem desired.
.
But as she dreamed, her nimble old fingers reached out longingly to tum her dream into reality. She began to think adventurously of trying it outit would perhaps not be too selfish to make one squarejust one unit of her design to see how it would look. She dared do nothing in the household where she was a dependent, without asking petmission. With a heart full of hope and fear thumping furiously against her old ribs, she approached the mistress of the house on chuming.day, knowing with the innocent guile of a child that the countty woman was apt to be in a good temper while working over the flagrant butter in the cool cellar.
Sophia listened absently to her sister.in.law’s halting petition. «Why, yes, Mehetabel,» she said, leaning far down into the huge chum for the last golden morsels»why, yes, start another quilt if you want to. I’ve got a lot of pieces from the spring sewing that will work in real good.» Mehetabel tried honestly to make her see that this would be no common quilt, but her limited vocabulary and her emotion stood between her and expression. At last Sophia said, with a kindly impatience: «Oh, there! Don’t bother me. I never could keep track of your quiltin’ pattems, any.how. I don’t care what pattem you go by.»
Mehetabel rushed back up the steep attic stairs to her room, and in a joyful agitation began preparations for the work of her life. Her very first stitches showed her that it was even better than she hoped. By some heaven.sent inspiration she had invented a pattem beyond which no patchwork quilt could go.
She had but little time during the daylight hours filled with the incessant household drudgery. After dark she did not dare to sit up late at night lest she bum too much candle. It was weeks before the little square began to show the pattem. Then Mehetabel was in a fever to finish it. She was too conscientious to shirk even the smallest part of her share of the housework, but she rushed through it now so fast that she was panting as she climbed the stairs to her little room. Every time she opened the door, no matter what weather hung out. side the one small window, she always saw the little room flooded with sunshine. She smiled to herself as she bent over the innumerable scraps of cotton cloth on her work table. Alreadyto herthey were ranged in orderly, complex, mosaic.beauty.
Finally she could wait no longer, and one evening ventured to bring her work down beside the fire where the family sat, hoping that good fortune would give her a place near the tallow candles on the man.telpiece. She had reached the last corner of that first square and her needle flew in and out, in and out, with nervous speed. To her relief no one noticed her. By bedtime she had only a few more stitches to add.
As she stood up with the others, the square fell from her trembling old hands and fluttered to the table. Sophia glanced at it carelessly. «Is that the new quilt you said you wanted to start?» she asked, yawning «Looks like a real pretty pattern. Let’s see it.»
Up to that moment Mehetabel had labored in the purest spirit of selfless adoration of an ideal. The emotional shock given her by Sophia’s cry of admiration as she held the work towards the candle to examine it, was as much astonishment as joy to Mehetabel.
«Land’s sakes!» cried her sister.in.law. «Why, Mehetabel Elwell, where did you git that pattern?»
«I made it up,» said Mehetabel. She spoke quietly but she was trembling.
«No!» exclaimed Sophia. «Did you! Why, I never seen such a pat tern in my life. Girls, come here and see what your Aunt Mehetabel is doing.»
The three tall daughters turned back reluctantly from the stairs. «I never could seem to take much interest in patchwork quilts,» said one. Already the old.time skill born of early pioneer privation and the crav.ing for beauty, had gone out of style.
«No, nor I neither!» answered Sophia. «But a stone image would take an interest in this pattern. Honest, Mehetabel, did you really think of it yourself?» She held it up closer to her eyes and went on, «And how under the sun and stars did you ever git your courage up to start in a.making it? Land! Look at all those tiny squinchy little seams! Why, the wrong side ain’t a thing but seams! Yet the good side’s just like a picture, so smooth you’d think ’twas woven that way. Only nobody could.»
The girls looked at it right side, wrong side, and echoed their moth.er’s exclamations. Mr. Elwell himself came over to see what they were discussing. «Well, I declare!» he said, looking at his sister with eyes more approving than she could ever remember. «I don’t know a thing about patchwork quilts, but to my eye that beats old Mis’ Andrew’s quilt that got the blue ribbon so many times at the County Fair.»
As she lay that night in her narrow hard bed, too proud, too excited to sleep, Mehetabel’s heart swelled and tears of joy ran down from her old eyes.
The next day her sister.in.law astonished her by taking the huge pan of potatoes out of her lap and setting one of the younger children to peeling them. «Don’t you want to go on with that quiltin’ pattern?» she said. «I’d kind o’ like to see how you’re goin’ to make the grapevine design come out on the corner.»
For the first time in her life the dependent old maid contradicted her powerful sister.in.law. Quickly and jealously she said, «It’s not a grape.vine. It’s a sort of curlicue I made up.»
«Well, it’s nice looking anyhow,» said Sophia pacifyingly. «I never could have made it up.»
By the end of the summer the family interest had risen so high that Mehetabel was given for herself a little round table in the sitting room, for her, where she could keep her pieces and use odd minutes for her work. She almost wept over such kindness and resolved firmly not to take advantage of it. She went on faithfully with her monotonous house.work, not neglecting a corner. But the atmosphere of her world was changed. Now things had a meaning. Through the longest task of wash.ing milk.pans, there rose a rainbow of promise. She took her place by the little table and put the thimble on her knotted, hard finger with the solemnity of a priestess performing a rite.
She was even able to bear with some degree of dignity the honor of having the minister and the minister’s wife comment admiringly on her great project. The family felt quite proud of Aunt Mehetabel as Minister Bowman had said it was work as fine as any he had ever seen, «and he didn’t know but finer!» The remark was repeated verbatim to the neigh.bors in the following weeks when they dropped in and examined in a perverse Vermontish silence some astonishingly difficult tour de force which Mehetabel had just finished.
The Elwells especially plumed themselves on the slow progress of the quilt. «Mehetabel has been to work on that corner for six weeks, come Tuesday, and she ain’t half done yet,» they explained to visitors. They fell out of the way of always expecting her to be the one to run on errands, even for the children. «Don’t bother your Aunt Mehetabel,» Sophia would call. «Can’t you see she’s got to a ticklish place on the quilt?» The old woman sat straighter in her chair, held up her head. She was a part of the world at last. She joined in the conversation and her remarks were listened to. The children were even told to mind her when she asked them to do some service for her, although this she ventured to do but seldom.
One day some people from the next town, total strangers, drove up to the Elwell house and asked if they could inspect the wonderful quilt which they had heard about even down in their end of the valley. After that, Mehetabel’s quilt came little by little to be one of the local sights. No visitor in town, whether he knew the Elwells or not, went away without having been to look at it. To make her presentable to strangers, the Elwells saw to it that their aunt was better dressed than she had ever been before. One of the girls made her a pretty little cap to wear on her thin white hair.
A year went by and a quarter of the quilt was finished. A second year passed and half was done. The third year Mehetabel had pneumonia and lay ill for weeks and weeks, horrified by the idea that she might die before her work was completed. A fourth year and one could really see the grandeur of the whole design. In September of the fifth year, the entire family gathered around her to watch eagerly, as Mehetabel quilted the last stitches. The girls held it up by the four comers and they all looked at it in hushed silence.
Then Mr. Elwell cried as one speaking with authority, «By ginger! That’s goin’ to the County Fair!»
Mehetabel blushed a deep red. She had thought of this herself, but never would have spoken aloud of it.
«Yes indeed!» cried the family. One of the boys was dispatched to the house of a neighbor who was Chairman of the Fair Committee for their village. He came back beaming, «Of course he’ll take it. Like’s not it may git a prize, he says. But he’s got to have it right off because all the things from our town are going tomorrow moming.»
Even in her pride Mehetabel felt a pang as the bulky package was carried out of the house. As the days went on she felt lost. For years it had been her one thought. The little round stand had been heaped with litter of bright.colored scraps. Now it was desolately bare. One of the neighbors who took the long journey to the Fair reported when he came back that the quilt was hung in a good place in a glass case in «Agri.cultural Hall.» But that meant little to Mehetabel’s ignorance of every.thing outside her brother’s home. She drooped. The family noticed it. One day Sophia said kindly, «You feel sort o’ lost without the quilt, don’t you, Mehetabel?»
«They took it away so quick!» she said wistfully. «I hadn’t hardly had one good look at it myself.»
The Fair was to last a fortnight. At the beginning of the second week Mr. Elwell asked his sister how early she could get up in the morning.
«I dunno. Why?» she asked.
«Well, Thomas Ralston has got to drive to West Oldton to see a lawyer. That’s four miles beyond the Fair. He says if you can git up so’s to leave here at four in the morning he’ll drive you to the Fair, leave you there for the day, and bring you back again at night.» Mehetabel’s face turned very white. Her eyes filled with tears. It was as though someone had offered her a ride in a golden chariot up to the gates of heaven. «Why, you can’t mean it!» she cried wildly. Her brother laughed. He could not meet her eyes. Even to his easy~going unimaginative indif~ ference to his sister this was a revelation of the narrowness of her life in his home. «Oh, ’tain’t so muchjust to go to the Fair,» he told her in some confusion, and then «Yes, sure I mean it. Go git your things ready, for it’s tomorrow morning he wants to start.»
A trembling, excited old woman stared all that night at the rafters. She who had never been more than six miles from homeit was to her like going into another world. She who had never seen anything more exciting than a church supper was to see the County Fair. She had never dreamed of doing it. She could not at all imagine what it would be like.
The next morning all the family rose early to see her off. Perhaps her brother had not been the only one to be shocked by her happiness. As she tried to eat her breakfast they called out conflicting advice to her about what to see. Her brother said not to miss inspecting the stock, her nieces said the fancywork was the only thing worth looking at, Sophia told her to be sure to look at the display of preserves. Her nephews asked her to bring home an account of the trotting races.
.
The buggy drove up to the door, and she was helped in. The family ran to and fro with blankets, woolen tippet, a hot soapstone from the kitchen range. Her wraps were tucked about her. They all stood together and waved goodby as she drove out of the yard. She waved back, but she scarcely saw them. On her return home that evening she was ashy pale, and so stiff that her brother had to lift her out bodily. But her lips were set in a blissful smile. They crowded around her with questions until Sophia pushed them all aside. She told them Aunt Mehetabel was too tired to speak until she had had her supper. The young people held their tongues while she drank her tea, and absent.mindedly ate a scrap of toast with an egg. Then the old woman was helped into an easy chair before the fire. They gathered about her, eager for news of the great world, and Sophia said, «Now, come Mehetabel, tell us all about it!»
Mehetabel drew a long breath. «It was just perfect!» she said. «Finer even than I thought. They’ve got it hanging up in the very middle of a sort o’ closet made of glass, and one of the lower corners is ripped and turned back so’s to show the seams on the wrong side.»
«What?» asked Sophia, a little blankly.
«Why, the quilt!» said Mehetabel in surprise. «There are a whole lot of other ones in that room, but not one that can hold a candle to it, if I do say it who shouldn’t. I heard lots of people say the same thing. You ought to have heard what the women said about that corner, Sophia. They saidwell, I’d be ashamed to tell you what they said. I declare if I wouldn’t!»
Mr. Elwell asked, «What did you think of that big ox we’ve heard so much about?»
«I didn’t look at the stock,» returned his sister indifferently. She turned to one of her nieces. «That set of pieces you gave me, Maria, from your red waist, come out just lovely! I heard one woman say you could ‘most smell the red roses.»
«How did Jed Burgess’ bay horse place in the mile trot?» asked Thomas.
«I didn’t see the races.»
«How about the preserves?» asked Sophia.
«I didn’t see the preserves,» said Mehetabel calmly.
Seeing that they were gazing at her with astonished faces she went on, to give them a reasonable explanation, «You see I went right to the room where the quilt was, and then I didn’t want to leave it. It had been so long since I’d seen it. I had to look at it first real good myself, and then I looked at the others to see if there was any that could come up to it. Then the people begun comin’ in and I got so interested in hearin’ what they had to say I couldn’t think of goin’ anywheres else. I ate my lunch right there too, and I’m glad as can be I did, too; for what do you think?»she gazed about her with kindling eyes. «While I stood there with a sandwich in one hand, didn’t the head of the hull concern come in and open the glass door and pin a big bow of blue ribbon right in the middle of the quilt with a label on it, ‘First Prize.»‘
There was a stir of proud congratulation. Then Sophia returned to questioning, «Didn’t you go to see anything else?»
«Why, no,» said Mehetabel. «Only the quilt. Why should I?»
She fell into a reverie. As if it hung again before her eyes she saw the glory that shone around the creation of her hand and brain. She longed to make her listeners share the golden vision with her. She struggled for words. She fumbled blindly for unknown superlatives. «I tell you it looked like» she began, and paused.
Vague recollections of hymnbook phrases came into her mind. They were the only kind of poetic expression she knew. But they were dis’ missed as being sacrilegious to use for something in real life. Also as not being nearly striking enough.
Finally, «I tell you it looked real good,» she assured them and sat staring into the fire, on her tired old face the supreme content of an artist who has realized his ideal.
ЭМОТИВНОСТЬ ХУДОЖЕСТВЕННОГО ТЕКСТА: СЕМАНТИКО-КОГНИТИВНЫЙ АСПЕКТ
Страница 4
Символический характер показателей эмотивности может быть проанализирован на примере рассказа Р.Пилчер “The White Birds” (К, р. 13–33). Его заглавие “Белые птицы” выступает как показатель эмотивности, значение которого эмоционально наполняется на протяжении всего текста и становится стратегически важным при его интерпретации.
Twelve white swans. She had watched them come and watched them go. Gone forever. She knew that she would never witness such a miraculous sight again.
She looked up into the empty sky. <…> Twelve white swans. She buried her hands deep in the pockets of her coat, and turned and went indoors to telephone her husband. (К, р. 33)
Встреча героини с белыми птицами в момент, когда решается вопрос о жизни и смерти её дочери, становится своеобразным предсказанием благополучного исхода. Образ двенадцати белых лебедей, соответственно, знаменует собой сбывающиеся надежды и символизирует счастливый финал рассказа. При этом происходит семантическое приращение значения эмотивно заряженного текстового компонента “white birds”, за счёт чего данная фраза ассоциируется с положительными эмоциями гипотетического читателя. Наряду с характерной для анализируемого компонента текста символичностью, ему как заглавию рассказа, в силу первоначально заданной текстовой неполноты и неоднозначности, присуща симптоматичность. Благодаря использованию параллели “белые птицы” – “счастливые события” не только происходит эмоциональное наполнение показателя эмотивности, но и раскрывается его иконичный характер. Размытость границ между симптоматичностью, иконичностью и символичностью показателей эмотивности основывается на тесной переплетённости знаков, в основе разделения которых, как указывал Р.Якобсон, лежит не наличие или отсутствие подобия или смежности между означающим или означаемым, а лишь преобладание одного из этих факторов над другими.
Указанная выше лингвосемиотическая специфика показателей эмотивности и их превалирующая соотнесённость с одним из основных типов понимания текста (семантизирующим, когнитивным и распредмечивающим), согласно типологии, предложенной Г.И.Богиным, позволили нам выделить три разновидности показателей эмотивности – сигналы эмотивности, эмотивные ситуации и эмотивные топики. Исходя из того, что при семантизирующем понимании происходит означивание единиц текста (Г.И.Богин), мы предполагаем, что воздействие на эмоциональную сферу адресата осуществляется с помощью эмоционально значимых языковых средств, использованных в тексте. Текстовые элементы, семантика которых является узусно эмоционально значимой или становится такой окказионально в результате нарушения языковых и/или речевых норм, рассматриваются нами как сигналы эмотивности (СЭ). СЭ характеризуются симптоматичностью в силу того, что служат своеобразным указанием на возможность возникновения эмоциональных реакций гипотетического читателя в ответ на узусную эмотивную заряженность текстовых элементов или на определённые отклонения в ткани текста. Идентификация сигналов эмотивности в тексте основывается на знании читателем значений единиц языковой системы и правил их употребления (знания о языке и в языке).
Для того, чтобы показать, с помощью каких языковых средств возможно воздействие на эмоциональную сферу предполагаемого читателя, обратимся к рассказу Д.К.Фишер “The Bedquilt” (AP, p. 41–47), где в качестве СЭ выступают ряд фраз, посредством которых описывается положение одинокой, уже немолодой женщины, живущей в доме своих родственников на правах приживалки.
Of all the Elwell family Aunt Mehetabel was certainly the most unimportant one. <…> The Elwells were not consciously unkind to their aunt, they were even in a vague way fond of her; but she was so insignificant a figure in their lives that she was almost invisible to them. <…> As a matter of fact she had been the same at twenty as at sixty, a mouselike little creature, too shy for anyone to notice, or to raise her eyes for a moment and wish for a life of her own. <…> Her sister-in-law, a big hearty housewife, who ruled indoors with as autocratic a sway as did her husband on the farm, was rather kind in an absent, offhand way to the shrunken little woman. (AP, p. 41)
Подчёркнутые фразы могут рассматриваться как СЭ в силу нескольких причин. Во-первых, эпитеты “insignificant”, “mouselike”, “shrunken”, “unimportant” относятся к эмотивной лексике, т.е. узусно эмоционально значимы, и отмечены отрицательной семой, которая в двух случаях усиливается интенсификаторами “the most” и “so” (знания о языке). Во вторых, все фразы, за исключением последней (the shrunken little woman), не столько идентифицируют некоторый объект текстовой действительности (в нашем случае – женщину), сколько характеризуют его (знания в языке). Лишь существительное “woman” является средством “идентифицирующего именования” (Н.Д.Арутюнова), т.к. указывает на пол и опосредованно на возраст называемого лица. Соответственно, в случае, когда уже немолодая женщина называется “незначительной фигурой” (so insignificant a figure); “маленьким, похожим на мышку созданием” (a mouselike little creature); “высохшей маленькой женщиной” (the shrunken little woman), приведенные текстовые элементы приобретают эмотивную коннотацию, стимулирующую эмоциональные реакции читателя на семантику конкретных языковых средств.
Эмоциональная значимость СЭ задаётся с помощью ресурсов языковой системы и возникает: 1) при использовании в художественном тексте эмотивных языковых средств; 2) за счёт нетрадиционности знаковых образов, представленных в тексте; а также 3) при неконвенциональном употреблении языковых знаков. В первом случае имеются в виду элементы текста, эмоциональная значимость которых определяется присущими им как языковым единицам или речевым образованиям характеристиками, не зависящими от особенностей текста, в котором эти единицы (образования) используются. Данные СЭ в работе названы узуальными. Во втором и третьем случаях к СЭ причисляются такие текстовые элементы, которые становятся эмоционально значимыми окказионально благодаря своей визуальной или семантической выделенности (визуально-акцентированные и семантически-акцентированные СЭ).
В отличие от семантизирующего понимания текста целью его когнитивного понимания является не освоение адресатом знаковой ситуации, а овладение содержанием отдельного текста и его фрагментов (Г.И.Богин). В рамках когнитивного понимания, за счёт подключения общего знания и приобретения читателем совместного с автором знания, у адресата формируется эмоциональное отношение к определённым ситуациям, представленным в тексте. Под эмотивными ситуациями (ЭС) в диссертации понимаются такие фрагменты художественного текста, которые связаны с экспликацией в тексте эмоциогенного знания о мире, а именно, с воплощением в тексте ситуаций объективной действительности, способных влиять на эмоциональную сферу читателя и формировать его эмоциональное отношение к объектам, агентам и событиям текстовой действительности. При выделении в тексте ЭС учитываются общее знание адресанта и адресата о прототипических ситуациях, сопряжённых с эмоциями человека, а также та когнитивная информация (убеждения, мнения, установки, мотивации и пр.) (см. T.A.ван Дейк, В.Кинч), которая может быть использована при обработке конкретной эмотивной ситуации. При этом ЭС выступают как эксплицитные картинно-образные, так и имплицитные (через сравнения, ассоциации, параллели, образы) характеристики объектов, агентов, событий текстовой действительности и в этом смысле отмечены иконичностью.
Для того, чтобы объяснить, каким образом экспликация в тексте эмоциогенного знания способствует формированию эмоционального отношения к объекту текстовой действительности, обратимся к рассказу Дж.Чивера “The Children” (SJC, p. 209–234). В приводимом отрывке описывается мистер Хатерли – богатый человек, руководитель фирмы и наставник главного героя рассказа.
Here and there one saw in Mr. Hatherly a touch of obsolescence. His beginnings were obscure, and, as everyone knows, he got reach to be an ambassador. In business, he was known as a harsh and unprincipled trader. He broke wind when he felt like it and relished the ruin of a competitor. He was very short – nearly a dwarf. His legs were spindly and his large belly had pulled his spine out of shape. He decorated his bald skull by combing across it a few threads of gray hair, and he wore an emerald fob on his watch chain. (SJC, p. 210)
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Examples
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Quietly setting to work on a new and very complex design the family suddenly realise she is creating a masterpiece and the quilt becomes central to their lives and earns Mehetabel some respect for the 5 years it takes to be completed.
52 entries from July 2006
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Quietly setting to work on a new and very complex design the family suddenly realise she is creating a masterpiece and the quilt becomes central to their lives and earns Mehetabel some respect for the 5 years it takes to be completed.
Yet another quilting tale
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Of all the Elwell family Aunt Mehetabel was certainly the most unimportant member.
Yet another quilting tale
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Of all the Elwell family Aunt Mehetabel was certainly the most unimportant member.
52 entries from July 2006
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As dependent relative and family slave Mehetabel has little to call her own including her time but she does have a skill and that is piecing and quilting.
Yet another quilting tale
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Of all the Elwell family Aunt Mehetabel was certainly the most unimportant member.
Yet another quilting tale
-
As dependent relative and family slave Mehetabel has little to call her own including her time but she does have a skill and that is piecing and quilting.
Yet another quilting tale
-
Quietly setting to work on a new and very complex design the family suddenly realise she is creating a masterpiece and the quilt becomes central to their lives and earns Mehetabel some respect for the 5 years it takes to be completed.
Yet another quilting tale
-
As dependent relative and family slave Mehetabel has little to call her own including her time but she does have a skill and that is piecing and quilting.
52 entries from July 2006
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And Baalhanan the son of Achbor died, and Hadar reigned in his stead: and the name of his city was Pau; and his wife’s name was Mehetabel, the daughter of Matred, the daughter of Mezahab.
Probably Just One Of Those Funny Coincidences