Тексты для чтения на английском экзамен

Здесь находится ряд упражнений на чтение текстов научно-популярного характера на английском языке. Все тексты озвучены для самопроверки правильности чтения. Чтение отрывка текста является одним из заданий устной части ЕГЭ по английскому языку.

Задание формулируется следующим образом:

Imagine that you are preparing a project with your friend. You have found some interesting material for the presentation and you want to read this text to your friend. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, then be ready to read it out aloud. You will not have more than 1.5 minutes to read it.

Представьте, что вы готовит проект со своим другом. Вы нашли интересный материал для презентации и хотите прочитать его другу. У вас полторы минуты для чтения текста “про себя”, потом будьте готовы прочитать его вслух. На чтение у вас будет не более полутора минут.

Задание 1 на чтение отрывка

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Six of Earth’s seven continents are inhabited on a large scale. Asia is the most populated continent, with its 4.3 billion inhabitants. This accounts for 60% of the worlds population. The two most populated countries of the world are China and India. These countries together constitute about 37% of the whole population of our planet. Africa is the second most populated continent. It is home for about one billion people. This makes 15% of the world’s population. Europe has 733 million people and this makes up 12%. Latin American and Caribbean regions are home to around 600 million people (9 %). Northern America, primarily consisting of the United States and Canada, has a population of around 352 million (5%), and Oceania, the least populated region, has about 35 million inhabitants (0.5%). What about Antarctica? Though it is not permanently inhabited by anybody, Antarctica has a small, changing international population, living in polar science stations.

Задание 2 на чтение отрывка

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Medicine has existed for thousands of years. At first, medicine was rather an art than science. It was little based on skills and knowledge but, instead, it had connections to the religious beliefs. At the early stages of medicine, doctors relied on religious rituals in the same way as on medication. For example, a medicine man would apply herbs and say prayers for healing. The first physicians thought that bloodletting was the best treatment of all. In recent centuries, since the advent of science, most medicine has become a combination of art and science. Much depends on the talent of the doctor and on the efficiency of drugs and surgery. Nowadays, we come to understand more and more about our body and to know what is going on inside the cells. Also, genetic engineering opens up new perspectives for treating inherited diseases. And, of course, new medical technologies have already saves millions of lives.

Задание 3 на чтение отрывка

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Early in the morning, Evenki natives in the hills northwest of Lake Baikal observed a column of blue light. It was nearly as bright as the Sun, and it was moving across the sky. About ten minutes later, there was a flash and a sound similar to artillery fire. Eyewitnesses reported that the source of the sound was moving from the east to the north following the movement of the blue light. The sound was accompanied by a shock wave that knocked people off their feet and broke windows in the houses hundreds of kilometres away. As it often happens, eyewitnesses’ accounts varied regarding the sequence and duration of the events. On that day the legendary Tungus meteorite or a small comet fell on the Earth near the river called Podkamennaya Tunguska in Siberia. It happened at about seven o’clock in the morning, on the 30th of June 1908. The first expedition came to the site only ten years later.

Задание 4 на чтение отрывка

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Throughout the history of education the most common means of maintaining discipline in schools was corporal punishment. While a child was at school, a teacher was expected to act as a parent, with the same means of making children obey as the parents had. This often meant that school students were often punished with a cane if they did something wrong. Corporal punishment at schools has now disappeared from all European countries. Thirty-one US states have banned it, but the other nineteen states (mostly in the South) continue to allow corporal punishment in schools. Teachers have the right to apply corporal punishment, although many choose not to do so. Official corporal punishment, often by caning, remains commonplace in schools in some Asian, African and Caribbean countries. Generally speaking, most countries retain punishment for misbehavior, but it usually takes non-corporal forms such as detention after the lessons. In Russia corporal punishment in schools was banned in 1863.

Задание 5 на чтение отрывка

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A female chimp has learned how to use the Arabic numerals, 1 to 9, to memorise the order of five numbers. She, unlike males, was able to remember the sequence of at least five numbers. This is the same or even more than pre-school children can do. It comes as no surprise to scientists who discover something else that chimpanzees can do every year, bringing them closer to us. People can normally remember a sevendigit number at first sight. This is our brain’s “magic number”. A chimp’s brain is only half the size of ours. Yet, they remember five digits. In an experiment, a chimp was shown five numbers on a computer screen. Her task was then to touch each number in the correct order. In order to perform the task successfully, she had to memorise all the numbers. And she did. She got the fourth number correct 90 % of the time, and the fifth number correct 65 % of the time.

Задание 6 на чтение отрывка

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Human evolution is a lengthy process of change by which people originated from their apelike ancestors. The traits that we today recognize as human evolved over a period of approximately six million years. One of the earliest human traits was the ability to walk on two legs. This ability evolved some four million years ago. A large and complex brain, the ability to use tools and the capacity for language have developed more recently. Some studies lead us to believe that humans have some relationship to another group of primate species, the apes. Scientists say that humans and the great apes of Africa — chimpanzees and gorillas — share a common ancestor who lived between 8 and 6 million years ago. However, researchers do not all agree about how these species are related to the modern human. Genetic research into this relationship has produced some controversial results and more discoveries, perhaps sensational ones, are to be expected.

Задание 7 на чтение отрывка

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Cheating in tests is becoming more sophisticated. These cases are referred to as exam-room cheating. The statistical findings show that between 3-5% of exam candidates are likely to be cheating with almost none of these pupils being caught. A recent trend has been for more friends, helping their peers to see questions in advance. This has been prompted by increasingly high demands on the learners to perform well. If the supervision in exam rooms becomes lax, cheating is always on the rise. Cheating appears to be a global phenomenon with little cultural variation. Originally it was thought that cheating was more typical for the so called “face-saving” cultures where the observable behaviour is not the same as unobserved actions. Wherever the stakes are high and there is an advantage and an opportunity to cheat, it seems to happen everywhere. Highly industrialised and poor nations think alike.

Задание 8 на чтение отрывка

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Here is some advice about good manners and etiquette when eating food. If you are invited to dinner and you cannot eat a certain type of food, tell your host several days before the dinner party. If you are a guest, it is polite to wait until your host starts eating or when your host shows you in some way that you can start eating without waiting for him or her. Mind that is good manners to chew and swallow the food that is in your mouth and only then should you take a drink. Remember to show your appreciation of the food from time to time. It is a popular mistake that chicken can be eaten with your fingers. In fact, a piece of chicken or a slice of pizza can be eaten with your fingers if you are at a barbecue or in an informal company. Otherwise always use a knife and a fork. It is useful to note that when eating bread rolls, break off a piece of bread and only then use the knife for buttering the bread. If you are using the knife, do not lick or put your knife in your mouth even though there is something delicious on the blade. You will certainly not put your elbows on the table and you will never reach for food over somebody’s plate. Always ask for something you need to be passed over to you. And, you had better not talk with food in your mouth to tell others something interesting.

Задание 9 на чтение отрывка

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The less children play video games, or watch television, the less aggressive they become, suggests a scientific study. The American research looked at the effects of reducing the amount of computer games played, or television watched by third and fourth graders, who are aged approximately eight or nine. It was found that the more television and computer games the children had seen, the more aggressive they were. This means that television, and, more recently, games have a direct influence on such behaviour. There are potential benefits in reducing the amount of access children have to TV or computer games. This is supported by the findings of reductions in physical and verbal aggression in children who have limited exposure to television, video and computer games. Watching aggressive behaviour shapes the way children see the world and their behaviour. They learn that angry people do aggressive things and start to imitate if the circumstances prompt similar solutions.

Задание 10 на чтение отрывка

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Every nation has its customs. Modern Americans are very serious about body hygiene while in the 19th century washing one’s body frequently was considered bad for health as it “removed protection from the skin”. Most Western people think it proper to enter a house without changing shoes, while in Korea it is a desecration of the house. An American, greeting a stranger by saying “Hi mate, great to meet you!” may not be favourably regarded in a country where more formal modes of address are usual. In the West, business cards are given a cursory glance. In Japan, they are regarded with respect. In Britain, most business presentations would include a joke, which is unheard of at conferences in Japan or China. Small talk and relationship building are considered important in the Arab world between a seller and a customer. British people prefer talking about the weather. The Japanese value silence while the Italians like to express emotions.

Задание 11 на чтение отрывка

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People experience stress when they have much work to do, when they receive a promotion at work, when their car has a flat tire, when their dog gets sick, when they are worried about getting laid off their job or about having enough money to pay their bills, when their best friend and his wife come to stay at their house for a week and on many other occasions. If you are used to thinking that stress is something that makes you worry, you have the wrong idea of stress. Very hot or very cold climate can be stressful. Change of hormones in teenagers can cause stress. Taking responsibilities for other people is one of the major stressors in those who work as managers. Many people carry enormous stress and do not even realize it. To our body stress is synonymous with change. Anything that causes some change in your life causes stress.

Задание 12 на чтение отрывка

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It’s not at all easy to say what a fairy-tale is or why some stories are called fairytales. Fairy-tales do not have to be stories about fairies. Fairy-tales are part of folklore, but folktales are not necessarily fairy-tales. Fairy-tales are similar to myths and legends but are not myths and legends. Fairy-tales come from oral storytelling tradition but fairy-tales have been written down on paper by many authors. Sometimes a literary fairy-tale comes first on paper and only then it is taken back into oral tradition and becomes folklore. Simply put a fairy-tale is a story about magic with something supernatural and mysterious. Usually a fairy-tale is a story that happens in the past. If it happens sometime at the beginning of the world, then it is a myth. If this story names a specific person described as “real”, then it is a legend.

Английские тексты среднего уровня с переводом и аудио

1. Слушайте и параллельно читайте текст про себя.

2. Читайте вслух по абзацу или текст целиком.

3. Прослушайте заново, следя за текстом, и повторите чтение вслух, стараясь максимально имитировать натуральное произношение.

Corruption / Коррупция

Titanic / Титаник

Two Great Artists / Два великих художника

Dogs must be carried on the escalator / Собаки должны перевозиться на экскалаторе

The Vikings / Викинги

Dull and Boring / Серо и скучно

William Shakespeare / Уильям Шекспир

A Nice Cup of Tea / Чашка хорошего чая

The History of the English Language / История английского языка

England’s Newest Tourist Attraction / Новейшая туристическая достопримечательность Англии

Psychology / Психология

Going to the Dogs / Катиться к чертям собачьим

Good manners, bad manners / Хорошие манеры, плохие манеры

I go without my breakfast / Я ухожу без завтрака

Lord Lucan cannot cope / Лорд Лукан не справляется

Mid-life crisis / Кризис среднего возраста

School dinners / Школьный обед

Scott of the Antarctic / Скотт из Антарктики

Singing in the rain / Пение под дождём

The King under the Car Park / Король под автостоянкой

The Lighthouse Man / Смотритель маяка

The Scariest Day of the Year / Самый страшный день в году

перейти к текстам начального уровня

перейти к текстам уровня выше среднего

перейти к текстам продвинутого уровня

Курсы английского языка по уровням

Практичные советы по изучению английского языка

ДОМАШНЕЕ ЧТЕНИЕ № 1

DOG AND THREE DOLLARS

(after Mark Twain)

I have always believed that a man must be honest. “Never ask for money you haven’t earned”, I always said.

Now I shall tell you a story which will show you how honest I have always been all my life.

A few days ago at my friend’s I met General Miles. General Miles was a nice man and we became great friends very quickly.

“Did you live in Washington in 1867”, the General asked me. “Yes, I did”, I answered.

“How could so happen that we didn’t meet then?” said General Miles. “General”, said I, “we could meet then, you forget that you were a great general then, and I was a poor young writer whom nobody knew and whose books nobody read”.

“You do not remember me”, I thought, “but we met In Washington at that time.

I remember it very well. I was poor then and very often I did not have money even for my bread. I had a friend. He was a poor writer too. We lived together. We did everything together: worked, read books, went for walks together. And then we were hungry, we were both hungry.

Once we were in need of three dollars. I don’t remember why we needed these dollars so much, but I remember that we had to have three dollars by the evening.

“We must get these three dollars”, said my friend, “I shall try get the money, but you must also try”.

I went out of the house, but I did not know where to go and how to get the three dollars. For one hour I was walking along the streets of Washington and was very tired. At last I came to a big hotel. “I shall go in and have a rest”, I thought.

I went into the hall of the hotel and sat down on a sofa. I was sitting there when a beautiful small dog ran into the hall. It was looking for somebody. The dog was nice and I had nothing to do, so I called it and began to play with it. I was playing with the dog when a man came into the hall. He wore a beautiful uniform and I knew at once that he was General Miles. I knew him by the pictures in the newspapers. “What a beautiful dog”, said he. “It is your dog?”

I did not have time to answer him when he said: “Do you want to sell it?” When I heard these words I thought about my friend and the three dollars which I had to get. “Well, I… I think …”

“Good”, said the General. “How much do you want for it?”

“Three dollars” I answered at once.

“Three dollars?” he asked. “But it is very little. I can give fifty dollars for it”. “No, no. I only want three dollars”. “Well, it’s your dog. If you want three dollars for it, I shall be –glad to by your dog.”

General Miles paid me three dollars, took the dog , and went up to his room. Ten minutes later an old man came into the hall. He looked round the hall. I could see that he was looking for something. “Are you looking for a dog, sir?” I asked. “Oh, yes. Have you seen it? Said the man. “Your dog was here a few minutes ago and I saw how it went away with a man”, I said. “If you want, I shall try to find it for you”. The man was very happy and asked me to help him. “I shall be glad to help you, but it will take some of my time and…”

“I am ready to pay you for you time”, cried the man. “How much do you want for it?”

“Three dollars.”, I answered.

“Three dollars?”, said the man, “but it is very good dog. I shall pay you ten dollars if you find it for me”.

“No, sir. I want three dollars and not a dollar more”, I said. Then I went to General Mile’s room. The General was playing with his new book.

“I came here to take the dog back”, said I.

“But it is not your dog now. I have bought it. I have paid you three dollars for it”, said the General.

“I shall give you back your three dollars, but I must take the dog.”

“But you have sold it to me, it is my dog now”.

“I could not sell it to you, sir, because it was not my dog”.

“Do you want to tell me that you took three dollars for a dog that was not yours” cried the General.

“I took the money, but I never said that it was my dog. You asked me how much I wanted for the dog, and I said that I wanted three dollars. But I never told you it was my dog”. General Miles was very angry now.

“Give me back my three dollars and take the dog back”, he shouted.

When I brought the dog back to its master, he was very happy and paid me three dollars with joy. I was happy too because I had the money, and I felt that I earned it.

Now you can see why I say that honesty is the best policy and that a man must never take anything that a man must never take anything that he has not earned.

Vocabulary

honest — честный

poor — бедный

enough — достаточно

together — вместе

try — пробовать

along — вдоль

be tired – быть усталым

at last — наконец

look round — осматривать

ready — готовый

bring (brought, brought) — приносить

feel (felt, felt) — чувствовать

honestly — честность

policy — политика

Exercises

I. Найти в тексте и выписать английские эквиваленты следующих слов и словосочетаний:

честный; просить; зарабатывать; всю жизнь; несколько дней назад; подружиться; случаться; забывать; встретить однажды; иметь достаточно денег; терпеть нужду; попытаться достать (деньги); отдохнуть; сесть на диван; понять сразу; по фотографии; продавать; покупать; платить; старик; быть готовым; ни долларом больше; забрать; рассердиться; с радостью; лучшая политика.

II. Закончить следующие предложения из текста:

1. I have always believed that…

2. Never ask for money…

3. General Miles was a nice man and we…

4. How could it happen that…

5. I went out of the house…

6. I was sitting where when…

7. When we were hungry…

8. I knew at once that…

9. If you want three dollars for it…

10. I could not sell it to you, because…

11. When I brought the dog back to its master…

12. I was happy too because…

III. Перевести следующие предложения на английский язык:

1. Несколько дней назад в доме моего друга я познакомился с генералом

Майлзом.

2. Генерал Майлз был приятным человеком, и вскоре мы стали большими

друзьями.

3. Как могло случиться, что мы не встретились тогда?

4. Я был бедным молодым писателем, которого никто не знал и чьи книги

никто не читал.

5. Мы всё делали вместе: работали, читали книги, гуляли вместе.

6. Когда мы голодали, мы голодали оба.

7. Яне помню, почему нам нужны были эти доллары, но я помню, что мы

Должны были достать их к вечеру.

8. Я вышел из дома, но я не знал, куда идти и как достать эти три доллара.

9. Я играл с собакой, когда в холл вошёл какой-то человек.

10. “Какая красивая собака”,- сказал он.

11. Когда я привёл собаку её хозяину, он был очень рад и с радостью заплатил мне три доллара.

IV. Воспроизвести части текста (ситуации), где использованы следующие слова и словосочетания в качестве ключевых:

1. a few days ago, a nice man, became grate friends, how could it happen, you

forget, a great general, a poor young writer, we met once in Washington.

2. poor, did not have enough money, a friend, lived together, we were both hungry,

in need of three dollars, I don’t remember, by the evening, you must also try, I

did not know where to go.

3. for an hour, I came to a big hotel, A sofa, a beautiful small dog, I had nothing to

do, I was paying, wore a beautiful uniform, by the pictures, is it your dog, I did

not have tome, I heard these words, how much do you want, very little, fifty

dollars, I shall be glad.

4. an old man, he looked round the hall, are you looking for a dog, a few minutes

ago, it went away, to find it, happy, I shall be glad, some of my time, to pay you

for you time, ten dollars, not a dollar more.

5. the General was playing, to take the dog back, not your dog, I have paid, I

shall give you back, not my dog, I never told you, very angry, give me back, happy, he paid me, I was happy too.

V. Выразить согласие или несогласие со следующими утверждениями:

1. General miles was a nice man

2. General Miles and the author did not meet in Washington.

3. The author was a poor young writer whom nobody knew.

4. The author and his friends were in need of a large sum of money.

5. They knew there to get the money.

6. The dog was nice, and the author called it and began to play with it.

7. General Miles wore in beautiful uniform and the author knew him at once.

8. General Miles paid three dollars, took the dog and went, up to his room.

9. The author took the money, but he never told General Miles that it was his dog.

10. General Miles was not angry at all when the author came to take the dog back.

11. The author was happy because he had the money, and he felt that he had earned

it.

VI. Ответить на вопросы:

1. Did the author live in Washington in 1867?

2. Why did General Miles forget that they met in Washington?

3. Did the author meet General Miles in Washington/

4. How did the author and his friend live in Washington?

5. How much money did they need?

6. Did the author know where and how to get the money?

7. Where did the author see the dog?

8. Why did the author know General Miles?

9. Why did General Miles want to buy the dog?

10. Did he pay fifty dollars for a dog?

11. Did he want to give the dog back?

12. Why was the author happy when he got the 3 dollars?

VII. Пересказать текст:

1. от имени автора;

2. от имени генерала Майлза;

3. от имени хозяина собаки.

ДОМАШНЕЕ ЧТЕНИЕ № 2

TOO WELL

(after O’Henry)

Miss Rouse Carrington was a famous actress. She began her life in a little village named Cranberry. But that was long ago. Now she was at the height of her fame, and in the coming season was to perform the leading part in a newly-written comedy. But was to perform the male character in the play?

One day a capable young actor by the name of Highsmith called on Mr. Timothy Goldstein, the manager. Highsmith dreamed of being Miss Carrington’s partner in the new play.

“My boy”, said the Goldstein, “take the part if you cаn get it. Miss Carrington does not want to listen to any my suggestions. She say’s that all our best actors won’t do. You know it is the part of a young farmer. She wants something genuine, a real imitation of county manners. If you want to play the part, you must convince Miss Carrington. I wish you luck, my boy”.

Next day Highsmith took the train for Cranberry. He remained there for three days. He found Miss Carrington’s family and collected many facts concerning life and people at Cranberry. Then he returned to the city.

That same night a small party was sitting at a table in one of the restaurants where actors used to gather when performance was over. The star of that small party was Miss Carrington – gay , happy, at the height of her fame.

At half past twelve a plain-dressed flaxen-haired youth entered the restaurant. He seemed very shy and awkward. The moment he entered he upset a chair, and sat awkwardly in another one. He looked shyly around, and then suddenly saw Miss Carrington. He rose and went to her table with a shining smile on his face.

How are you, Miss Rose?”, he said. “Don’t you remember me—Bill Summers—the Summers that lived near the blacksmith’s shop? I think I have grown a little since

you left Cranberry. Eliza Perry told me I might see you in the city while I was here”, he went on, “You know, Eliza married Benny, and she says…”

“You don’t say so!” interrupted Miss Carrington. “Eliza Perry is married!”

“She married in June”, Grinned the young man, “and the youngest of the Walton girls ran away with a music teacher last arch. Matilda Hockins died from pricking her finger with a needle, and Tom is courting Sally”.

“You don’t say so!”, exclaimed Miss Carrington. “Excuse me a while, gentlemen, this is an old friend of mine. Come here, Mr.… What is your name? Oh, yes, Mr. Summers—I shall call you Billy, may I? Come here Billy, and tell me some more”.

She led him to an isolated table in a corner. She sat down in front of him and laid her chin upon her hands.

“I don’t recollect any Bill Summers”, she said thoughtfully, gazing straight into the innocent blue eyes of the rustic young man.

“Miss Rouse”, said he “I called on your family just two or three days ago”. “How is ma?” asked Miss Carrington.

Highsmith understood that a bit of pathos was necessary.

“She is older than she was, Miss Rouse. When I saw her last she was sitting at the door and looking at the road.

“Billy”, she said, ”I’m waiting for Rosie. She went away down that road and something tells me that she will come back that way again.” When I was leaving”, the young man went on, “I took this rose from a bush by the front door, I thought I might see you in the city and I knew that you would like to have something from Cranberry”.

Miss Carrington took the rose with a smile, and got up. “Come to the hotel and see me before you leave city”, she said. “I’m awfully glad to see you. Well, good night. I’m a little tired. It’s tune to go to bed”. When she had left the restaurant, Highsmith approached Goldstein, the manager.

“It was a brilliant idea”, said the smiling actor, “I’m sure I shall get the part in that play. Miss Carrington will have to confess that my performance was genuine, and that I was a good actor.”

“I didn’t hear your conversation”, said Goldstein, “but your make up and acting were O.K. Here’s to your success! Call on Miss Carrington early tomorrow, tell her all, and I hope that she will agree to take you as her partner in the play”.

Next morning Mr. Highsmith, handsome, dressed in the latest fashion, called on Miss Carrington at the hotel. “Is Miss Carrington at home?” he asked the maid.

“Miss Carrington has left,” the maid answered, “and will not come back. She has cancelled all her engagements on the stage, and has returned to live in that—what do you call that village? Oh, yes,- Cranberry”.

Highsmith understood that he had acted too well.

Vocabulary

Village — село

at the height — на вершине

leading part — главная роль

male — мужской

character — персонаж, роль

capable — способен

suggestion — предложение

genuine — добрый

real — современный

imitation — имитация

country manner – сельские манеры

black smith’s shop — кузнеца

since – с тех пор

marry — пожениться

grin — ухмыляться

needle — иголка

court — досматривать

isolated— отдельный

innocent — невиновный

brilliant — яркий

cancel — аннулировать

engagement — помолвка

stage — сцена

Exercises

I. Найти в тексте и выписать английские эквиваленты следующих слов и словосочетаний:

знаменитая актриса; в расцвете славы; предстоящий сезон; главная роль; мужской персонаж; по имени; мечтал стать партнером; настоящее подражание; деревенские манеры; обычно собирались; просто одетый; он казался застенчивым и неуклюжим; деревенский; “не может быть”; три дня назад; уезжать из города.

II. Закончить эти предложения в соответствии с текстом:

1. She began her life…

2. One day a capable young actor…

3. She wants something…

4. Next day Highsmith…

5. The same night a small party…

6. The moment he entered…

7. Eliza Perry told me…

8. She led him to an isolated table…

9. When I saw her last she …

10. When I was leaving, I…

11.Come to the hotel and…

12. It was a brilliant idea…

III. Пересказать части текста, используя эти слова и словосочетания в качестве ключевых:

1. a famous actress; to perform the leading part; dreamed of being Miss

Carrington partner; must convince; collected many facts; returned to the city.

2. Used to gather; the star of that small party; a plain-dressed flaxen-hair youth;

upset a chair; “how are you?”; I have grown a little; “you don’t say so”; an old friend of mine; an isolated table.

3. Recollect’ I called on your family; ma; was sitting at the door; I am waiting for;

I took this rose from a bush; a little tired; a brilliant idea; she will have to

confess; she didn’t guess; he called on Miss Carrington; she will agree;

handsome; cancelled all her engagements; Highsmith understood.

IV. Выразить согласие или несогласие со следующими утверждениями. При необходимости исправить неверные варианты:

I’m afraid that’s wrong. Боюсь, что это неверно.

That’s not quite true to the fact. Это не совсем соответствует факту.

That’s (quite) right. Совершенно верно.

According to the story… Согласно рассказу…

1. Miss Carrington lived in a small town named Cranberry.

2. She was a good actress, and she wanted to play a leading part in a newly written

comedy.

3. Highsmith, the young actor, was to perform the male character in the play.

4. Highsmith collected many facts concerning life and the people at the village where he lived.

5. At half past twelve a young handsome man entered the restaurant.

6. “I’m Mr. Highsmith”,- the plain-dressed youth said to Miss Rosie.

7. “When I was leaving “,- the young man went on,- “your mother took tills rose

from a bush by the front door”.

8. Next morning Mr. Highsmith called on Miss Carrington at her hotel.

V. Ответить на вопросы, не смотря в текст:

1. What was Miss Carrington by profession?

2. Where did she begin her life?

3. Was she a good or a bad actress?

4. What part did she to perform in the coming season?

5. Who called on Mr. Goldstein one day?

6. What did Mr. Highsmith dream of?

7. To whose suggestions didn’t Miss Carrington want to listen?

8. What sort of part was it?

9. What did Miss Carrington want?

10. Where did Mr. Highsmith go next day?

11. How long did he remain at Cranberry?

12. What facts did he collect where?

13. Where was a small party of actors sitting when the performance was over?

14. Was Miss Carrington among them?

15. Who entered the restaurant at half past twelve?

16. What was the youth like?

17. What did he do as sat down in a chair?

18. Whom did he “suddenly” see?

19.By what name did he introduce himself?

20. Was Miss Carrington interested in the news from Cranberry?

21. Did she recollect Bill Summers?

22. Whom Miss Carrington asks about?

23. What did Mr. Highsmith understand at that moment?

24. What did he say about her mother?

25. Why did a young man take the rose?

26. Did Miss Carrington ask a young man to come and see her?

27. Whom did Highsmith approach when Miss Carrington had left the restaurant?

28. What did Mr. Goldstein say about his acting?

29. Was Miss Carrington at the hotel next morning?

30. Where had she gone?

VI. Пересказать текст:

1. от имени автора;

2. от имени Хайсмита;

3. от имени Роузи Каррингтон, актрисы.

ДОМАШНЕЕ ЧТЕНИЕ № 3

THE TWO GIFTS

(after O’Henry)

Jim and Della were very poor. They lived in New York In a small room on the top floor of a high building. Jim was twenty-two years old, Della was twenty-one.

Both husband and wife worked very hard, but there never was any money in the

house; for all they got went to pay the grocer, the bother, and the baker. And the rent was $8 a week.

And yet they owned two treasures of which they were very proud. These treasures were—Jim’s gold watch, which he received from his father, and Della’s beautiful hair.

It was the eve of New-Year’s Day. Della wanted to give Jim a present. She counted her money. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all she had. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. So she sat down on the sofa and wept. Suddenly she got up and went to the looking – glass. Her eyes shone brilliantly. Quickly she undid her hair. It reached below her knees and covered her like a cloak. And then she did it again quickly and nervously. She put on her old brown hat. Then she ran out of the door and down the stairs to the street.

She stopped before a sign and read the words: “M-me Sofranie. Hairgoods of all kinds”. Then she entered the shop. She saw Madame sitting at the counter. She was fat and red cheeked.

“Will you buy my hair?”, asked Della.

“Let me see it,” said Madame.

Della took of her hat and undid her hair.

“Twenty dollars”, said Madame, lifting the mass of Della’s golden hair with a

practiced hand.

“Give me a money”, said Della…

The next two hours were like a happy dream. Della hurried from shop looking for Jim’s present.

She found it at last. It was a watch chain for which she paid $21. And then she hurried home with the chain and the remaining 87 cents.

Jim was not at home. Della got out of curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work. In forty minutes her head was covered with tiny curls. She looked like a schoolboy. She said to herself: “I hope Jim not kill me. But what could I do – oh, what could I do with one dollar and 87 cents.

At seven o’clock the coffee was ready. Della sat waiting for Jim. She heard his steps on the stairs, and she turned white for jus one moment. The door opened and Jim entered the room. He looked thin and very serious… and suddenly Jim stopped. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that terrified her.

“Jim, darling! She cried, “don’t look at me like that: I sold my hair because I wanted to give you present. My hair will grow again. It grows very fast. Say ‘A Happy New Year’, Jim, and let us be happy. You don’t know what a beautiful present I have for you”.

Jim sighed. He drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it on the table.

“If you open that package, you will understand,” he said.

Della took off the paper and string. There lay the beautiful combs that Della saw in a Broadway shop window. Now they were hers, but her hair was gone.

Suddenly Della jumped and cried:

“Oh, Jim, I shall give you your beautiful present.” She held it out to him upon her open palm.

“Isn’t it a beautiful chain? Give me your watch: I want to see how it looks on it.”

Jim did not obey. He fell on the sofa and put his hands behind his head and smiled.

“Della”, said he,” I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. It the coffee ready?”

Exercises

I. Перевести с помощью словаря:

gift the

top floor

both … and

work hard

all they got

grocer

butcher

baker

rent

own

treasure

be proud

eve

suddenly

shine (shone, shone)

undo (undid, undone)

knee

cover

do up (did, done)

nervously

sign

hairgoods

counter

at last

remain

curling irons

tiny

curls

look like

hope

turn white

be fixed

expression

terrify

like that

let us be

sigh

draw (drew, drown)

package

string

lie (lay, lain)

comb

her hair was gone

hold out (held, held)

II. Найти в тексте и выписать английские эквиваленты следующих слов и словосочетаний:

мужчина и женщина много работали; золотые часы; золотистые волосы; канун Нового года; покупать подарок; зеркало; она распустила волосы; она причесала их; одеваться; она вошла в магазин; продавать, покупать; счастливый сон; искать подарок; через сорок минут; крошечные локоны; она была похожа на школьника; не смотри на меня так; они (волосы) растут очень быстро; он вынул пакет; красивый гребешок.

III. Перевести следующие предложения:

1. Джим и Делла были очень бедными.

2. И муж, и жена работали очень много.

3. Они владели двумя сокровищами: этими сокровищами были золотые часы ипрекрасные золотистые волосы Деллы.

4. Был канун Нового года.

5. Делла хотела сделать подарок Джиму.

6. Она продала свои прекрасные волосы, чтобы купить ему цепочку для часов.

7. Джим продал свои часы, чтобы купить ей красивые гребёнки, которые

Делла видела в витрине магазина на Бродвее.

IV. Выразить согласие или несогласие со следующими утверждениями. При необходимости исправить неверные варианты:

I’m afraid that’s wrong. Боюсь, что это неверно.

That’s not quite true to the fact. Это не совсем соответствует факту.

That’s (quite) right. Совершенно верно.

According to the story… Согласно рассказу…

1. Jim and Della lived on the ground floor a low building.

2. Jim was forty-three years old, Della was forty-one.

3. Jim and Della were brother and sister.

4. Jim was proud of his silver watch which he had got from his mother.

5. Della took off her new brown jacket and undid her hair.

6. Madam Sofronie was a young woman, thin and pale, she was standing at the

counter when Della entered the shop.

7. Della sold her hair because she wanted to buy a new watch for Jim.

V. Ответить на вопросы:

1. Where did Jim and Della live?

2. How old was Jim and how old was Della?

3. Why was there never any money in the house?

4. What were their “treasures”?

5. What did Della want to give Jim?

6. Why did she weep?

7. What did Della do to get some money?

8. What did she buy?

9. What did she do when he came home?

10. What did she look like in forty minutes?

11. What did Della say when Jim saw her?

12. What did Jim buy for her?

13.Could she use the beautiful combs?

14. Why did Della want to see Jim’s watch?

15. Did Jim give her his watch? Why?

VI. Пересказать текст:

1. от имени Делли;

2. от имени Джима.

ДОМАШНЕЕ ЧТЕНИЕ № 4

THE LOVE DRUG

(after Riddle’s. He O’Henry)

Jim a young car-driver, was a boarder at old was in love with Riddle’s daughter Rosy. And Rosy was in love with Jim. They wanted to get married, but Mr. Riddle, Rosy’s father, was against it. He hoped to found a rich husband for his daughter. Jim has a friend who worked as a clerk at a druggist’s shop. His name was Pilkins.

Jim often called on Pilkins at his shop, and they talked and discussed things, and Jim, who was very frank and talkative, told Pilkins that he loved Rosy and that she loved him. When Jim talked of Rosy, Pilkins listened in silence and never said a word.

One afternoon Jim called at the shop and sat down upon a chair. He looked excited. Pilkins took the chair opposite him. Jim began: “Old Riddle does not like me. For a week he hasn’t let Rosy go out side the door with me. He probably suspects that we love each other. So rosy and I have decided to run away to-night and get married. That is,” he continued, “if she does not change her mind until the times comes. One day she says she will; the same evening she says she won’t because she is afraid”.

Ahem!” said Pilkins.

“We have agreed on to-night. But it is five hours yet till the time, and I’m afraid that she will change her mind again.”

Jim stopped and looked at Pilkins.

“But you can help me”, he said.

“I don’t see how,” said the Pilkins.

“I say, Pilkins, isn’t there a drug to give Rosy when I see her at supper to-night it may give her courage and she will keep her promise and run away with me.”

“When is this foolishness to happen?” asked Pilkins, gloomily.

“At ten o’clock. Supper is at seven. At nine Rose will go to bed with a headache. At ten go under her window and help her down the fire escape. Can you make up such a drug, Pilkins?”

“I can. I shall make it up for you, and you will see how Rosy will think of you.”

Pilkins went behind his desk. There he crushed to a powder two tablets, each containing a quarter of a grain of morphia. He folded the powder nearly in a white paper. “This,” he said to himself with a grin, “will make Rose sleep for several hours”. He handed the powder to Jim telling him to give it to Rosy in liquid, if possible, and received his hearty thanks.

Then Jim has gone, Pilkins who was secretly in love with Rosy, went to Mr. Riddle and told him of Jim’s plan for eloping with Rosy.

“Much obliged’, said Mr. Riddle briefly, “The villain! My room is just above Rosy’s. I will go there myself after supper and load my gun and wait. If he comes under Rosy’s window, he will go away in an ambulance instead of eloping with her.”

Pilkins was sure that now he had nothing he fear from his rival. All night he waited for news of tragedy, but none came. At eight o’clock Pilkins could not wait no longer and started for Mr. Riddle’s house to learn the outcome. The first man he saw when he stepped out of shop, was Jim with a victor’s smile on his face. Jim seized his hand and said:

“Rosy ad I were married last night at 10.15. She is now in my flat. Oh, how happy I am! You must come to see us some day.”

“The – the powder?” stammered Pilkins.

“Oh, that powder you gave me? It was this way. I sat down at he supper table last night at Riddle’s. I looked at Rosy and said to myself: “Don’t try any tricks with that girl. She loves you well enough: he must feel more love for me.” So I watched my chance and put the powder in old man Riddle’s coffeе-see?”.

Exercises

I. Перевести с помощью словаря:

drug

boarder

car-driver

find (found, found)

frank

in silence

probably

change one’s mind

foolishness

gun

hope

druggist’s shop

talkative

excited

suspect

until

villain

stammer

II. Выразить согласие или несогласие со следующими утверждениями. При необходимости исправить неверные варианты:

I’m afraid that’s wrong. Боюсь, что это неверно.

That’s not quite true to the fact. Это не совсем соответствует факту.

That’s (quite) right. Совершенно верно.

According to the story… Согласно рассказу…

1. Jim was in love with Riddle’s sister.

2. Jim was not frank and never talked of Rosy.

3. “I am sure”, said Jim, “that Rosy will not change her mind again.”

4. “I shall give Rosy the drug when I see her at breakfast tomorrow morning,” said

Jim.

5. “I can not make up such a drug.” Said Pilkins.

6. Pilkins told Jim that he himself was in love with Rosy.

7. “My room is just under Rosy’s room. I will go there myself before supper and

wait for her”, said old Riddle.

8. As Pilkins had learned the outcome of the tragedy that night, he did not go to old

Riddle’s in the morning.

III. Найти в тексте и выписать английские эквиваленты следующих слов и словосочетаний:

молодой водитель; он был влюблен; жениться; аптека; заходить (к кому-то); заходить (куда-нибудь); он казался взволнованным; убегать; ложиться спать; Пилкне тайно любил Роузи; ждать; порошок; делать фокусы.

IV. Ответить на вопросы:

1. Was Jim a clerk at a druggist’s shop?

2. At whose place was Jim a boarder?

3. Who was he in love with?

4. What did Jim and Rosy want?

5. Why was Rosy’s father against their wish?

6. There did Jim’s friend work?

7. What did Jim ask Pilkins about?

8. What did Jim and Rosy decide to do that night?

9. Was Jim to wait for her under the window?

10. What did Pilkins give to Jim?

11. What did Pilkins say to himself?

12. Was Pilkins secretly in love with Rosy?

13. What did Pilkins learn from Jim next morning?

14. Did Jim now that the powder was a morphia and not a love drug?

V. Пересказать текст:

1. от имени Джима;

2. от имени Пилкенса.

ДОМАШНЕЕ ЧТЕНИЕ № 5

THE COP AND THE ANTHEM

(after O’Henry)

Winter was coming, and Soapy, one of the many thousands of New York pickpockets, felt uneasy. Не knew that the time had соmе for him to look for shelter. Soapy’s desires were not great. Three months in prison was what he wanted. There he was sure of аlittle food and а bed, safe from the winter wind and the cold.

For years prison had been his shelter during the winter. Now the time had соmе again.

Having decided to go to prison, Soapy at оnсе set about fulfilling his desire. There were many easy ways of doing this. The pleasantest was to dine well at some expensive restaurant, and then, after saying that he could not рау, bе quietly arrested bу аpoliceman and sent to prison bу the judge.

Soapy got uр and walked out of the square and across the level sea of asphalt, where Broadway and Fifth Avenue How together. Не stopped at the window of а brightly lit cafe. Soapy was freshly shaven, and his coat and tie were decent. But his boots and trousers were shabby. «If I сап reach а table in the restaurant without being seen», he thought, «everything will bе all right. The upper part of me that will show above the table will raise no doubt in the waiter’s mind. А roasted duck, two bottles of wine, а сuрof coffee, and а cigar will make mе happy for the journey to mу winter quarters».

But just as Soapy entered the restaurant door, the head waiter’s еуе fell uроn his shabby trousers and boots. S long hands turned him round and pushed Мr to the sidewalk.

Soapy turned off Broadway. Не had to think of another way of getting to prison.’ Atа’comer of Sixth Avenue he saw а brightly !it shop window. Soapy took а соbblе stone and threw it at the glass and broke it. Реорlе саmе running around the comer, а

policeman at their head. Soapy stood still, with his hands in his pockets, and smiled when he saw the policeman’s bluе coat.

«Where is the mаn that has done it?» shouted the policeman.

«Do уоu think I have done it?» said Soapy in а friendly way. The policeman did not understand Soapy’s hint. Men who break windows do not usually remain to speak to policemen. They run away. Just then the policeman saw а man hurrying to catch а саr.Сlub in hand, he rushed after that mаn. Soapy had failed again.

Оn the opposite side of the street was а small and cheap restaurant. Soapy entered it, sat down at а table, and ate а beefsteak and an enormous apple-pie. «Now саll а blue-coat, I cannot рау. I have nо mоnеу», said Soapy. «And don’t keep а gentleman waiting».

«No bIue-coats for уоu», said the waiter, and seazing Soapy bу the collar threw him out of the restaurant. Soapy got uр and beat the dust from his clothes. Не was in despair. Аsudden fear seized him that some magic was keeping him from arrest and prison.

«Disorderly conduct», was his last resort. Soapy began to уеll at the top of his voice. He danced and howled like а madman. А policeman who was standing nearby turned his back to Soapy, and remarked to а passer-by: «It is оnе of those University lads. They are celebrating their traditional holiday. They are noisy, but they mean nо harm. We have instructions to let them in реасе». Soapy stopped in despair. Не buttoned his thin coat against the cold wind and the ram, and walked оn.

Не was just passing а cigar store, when he saw а well-dressed mаn entering that store and leaving his wet umbrella at the entrance. Soapy stepped in, took the umbrella, and slowly continued his way. The man saw him. Не turned and followed hastily. «Муumbrella», he said sternly.

«Oh, is it yours?» said Soapy. «Why don’t уоu саll а policeman? I took it. Why don’tуоu саll а blue-coat? There stands оnе at the corner.»

The umbrella owner slowed his steps.

«Of course», said he, «That is, — уоu know how these mistakes occur — I — if it’s your umbrella, I hope уоu’ll excuse å — I picked it uр this morning in а restaurant – if you recognize it as yours, — I hope уоu’ll…»

The ex-umbrella man retreated. Soapy walked оn muttering insults against the policeman who did not want to arrest him. At last he reached а street where there was little traffic and few pedestrians. At а quiet corner he suddenly stopped. There was an old church in front of him. Through оnе window а soft light shone, and he heard the sweet music of the organ which made him approach the iron fence. The moon was above, cold and beautiful, and the music made Soapy suddenly remember those days when his life contained such things as mothers and roses, and collars. Soapy listened to the music, looked at the moon, and murmured to himself. «There is time yet. I will reform. I will bесоmе аn honest man. I will get out of the mire. I аm still young. I will bе somebody in the world. I will –

» Soapy felt а hand оn his arm. Не looked quickly around into the broad face ofаpoliceman.

«What are уоu doing here?» asked the blue-coat.

«Nothing», said Soapy.

«Then соmе along,» said the policeman: «Thinking of robbing the church, eh?»

«Three months’ imprisonment», said the judge in the Police Court next morning

Exercises

I. Найти в тексте и перевести предложения с этими глаголами:

look for _____________________ искать

set (set, set) about _____________ приступать к

walk on _____________________ продолжать идти

flow (flew, flown) together _______сливать

get (got, got) up _______________ подниматься

run (ran, run) away ____________ убегать

keep (kept, kept) from __________ удерживаться от

throw (threw, throw) out __________выкинуть

come (came, come) _____________ проходить дальше

turn off ______________________ свернуть с

II. Найти в тексте и выписать английские эквиваленты к этим словосочетаниям:

наступила зима; желания Стоупи были не большими; искать приют; три месяца в тюрьме; он начал исполнять свое желание; много способов сделать это; хорошо пообедать; быть арестованным; его піджак и галстук были достойными; изношенные штаны и ботинки; официант толкнул его на тротуар; он розбил стекло; терпеть неудачу; я могу заплатить; официант выгнал его из ресторана; он услышал приятную музыку; я исправлюсь; тога пойдемте.

III. Закончить предложения по тексту:

1.Soapy, a New York pickpocket felt uneasy because…

2.He wanted to get into…

3.The pleasantest way was to dine…

4.Soapy was freshly shaven and his coat and tie were decent but…

5.He threw a cobble stone at the glass and…

6.Soapy entered a small and cheap restaurant, sat at table, and…

7. He danced and hawled like…

8.The man followed him and asked…

9.He reached a street where…

10.Soapy heard the music and said…

11.The policemen arrested Soapy, and the next morning the judge sentenced him to…

IV. Пересказать отрывки из текста, используя эти слова и словосочетания как план:

1. brightly lit cafe; freshly shaven; decent; shabby; a roasted duck; two bottles of wine; but just as Soapy entered; the head waiter’s eye; pushed him.

2. another way of getting to prison; shop window; cobble stone; break; glass; stood still; friendly way; policemen; a man hurrying to catch a car; rushed after; failed.

3. a quiet corner; sweet music; made Soupy; remember mother; clean thoughts; reform; honest man; get out of; the mire; Soapy felt a hand…; come along; robbing the church; judge.

V. Выразить согласие или несогласие со следующими утверждениями. При необходимости исправить неверные варианты:

I’m afraid that’s wrong. Боюсь, что это неверно.

That’s not quite true to the fact. Это не совсем соответствует факту.

That’s (quite) right. Совершенно верно.

According to the story… Согласно рассказу…

1. Soapy was one of New York workers.

2. Whiter was coming, and the time had come for him to look for a hotel

3. Soapy’s desires were not great, six months in prison was what he wanted.

4. He was freshly shaven, his trousers and tie were shabby, but his coat and boots were decent.

5. As Soapy entered the restaurant, the head waiter’s eye fell upon his shabby trousers and boots.

6. Soapy saw a policeman and told him that he had broken the shop window.

7. At a small and cheap restaurant a waiter came up to Soapy and to told him to go away.

8. The umbrella owner called a policeman and told him that Soapy had taken is umbrella.

9. He heard the sweet music of the organ and this made him go into the church.

VI. Ответить на вопросы:

1. What season was coming?

2. What was Soapy by profession?

3. Why did he feel uneasy?

4. Why did he want to get into prison?

5. Which was the pleasantest way for Soapy of fulfilling his desire?

6. How was Soapy dressed?

7. What did he want to order

8. What did the waiter do at the moment Soapy entered the restaurant?

9. What did Soapy do at the corner of Sixth Avenue?

10. What did the policeman ask him about?

11. What did Soapy answer?

12. Why didn’t policeman understand his hint?

13. What did the Soapy eat at the cheap restaurant?

14. Why did he tell the waiter to call a policeman?

15. What did the waiter do instead to calling a policeman?

16. What did Soapy begin to do next?

17. Whom did he see as he was passing a cigar store?

18. What did the man leave at the entrance?

19. What did the man does then he saw Soapy walking away with Ills umbrella?

20. Why didn’t a man call a policeman?

21. Where did he suddenly stop?

22. What did Soapy remember then he heard the music of the organ?

23. What did he decide to do?

24. That did a policeman ask him about?

25. What did the judge say in the Police Court?

VII. Пересказать текст:

1) в оригинале;

2) от имени Соупи;

3) от шимени полицейского.

ДОМАШНЕЕ ЧТЕНИЕ № 6

Repair a bicycle or ride it

(after Jerome K. Jerome)

There are people who are fond of repairing things. I have met such people and know them very well. One summer day a friend of mine by the name of Ebbson suggested going for a bicycle ride. I agreed. The next day Ebbson came very early. The first thing he did was to take my bicycle by the front wheel and shake it violently. “This wheel wobbles”, he said. “Tills is dangerous. Have you got a wrench?”

I had never noticed that either of the wheels wobbled, but I thought he really knew something about it, so I went to my room to see what could I find. When I came back, lie was sitting n the ground with the front wheel between his legs. He was playing with it turning it round and round – the rest of the machine was lying beside him.

He said: “Something has happened to tills from wheel”. “It look like it”, I said but he could not see the joke.

He said: “I think the ball bearings are all wrong. We must see what the matter with them”.

I could not stop him. He unscrewed something somewhere, and many little balls rolled over the grass. “Catch them”, he shouted. “We mustn’t lose any”. We began looking for them and in half an hour found sixteen. I put them in my hat on the door step. Then he began taking off the gear-case. I tried to stop him but he would not listen to me. “It is very easy to take off a gear-case”, he said.

He was right. In less than five minutes he had the gear-case in two pieces, lying on the path, while he was looking for the screws. He said he could never understand how screws disappear.

I began to feel tired of standing there and looking at the fool who was breaking my bicycle. It was clear to me that he knew nothing about the business. I was about to

tell him so when Ebbson said that he going to put the wheel back in its place and that everything would be all right. He hurt his hands while doing it, but at last he managed somehow to put the wheel into position. Then came the turn of the gear-case. We soon found out that it was a much harder job to put it back in its place than to take it off. It took us a whole hour to get the thing into the position, and then it was on position, Ebbson suddenly exclaimed: What fools we have been! We have forgotten the ball-bearings.” I looked for my hat- it was lying on the ground and my wife’s little dog was quickly swallowing one by one.

“He will kill himself”, shouted Ebbson. “They are of the hardest steel”.

“I am not worded about the dog”, I said. “He has eaten a packet of needles this week, I am thinking about my bicycle”.

“Well, we must put back all we can find”, said he. We found eleven balls. We took off the wheel again and put six of them on one side and five on the other. Half an hour later wheel was in its place again. It really wobbled now. Then Ebbson tried to put the gear-case back again. I held a bicycle for him, while he lay on the ground with his head between the wheels, and worked at it from below, and dropped oil upon himself. More than fifteen tunes he said: “No, it’s not after all”. At a quarter to one, dirty and tired he said: “That will do”, and rose from the ground.

Neither of us had any wish to go for a bicycle ride now, and so Ebbson go home. After he was gone I took the bicycle to the nearest repair shop. The man looked at it and said: “It won’t be easy to repair tills bicycle, but I shall do my best”. He did his best, and I paid two pounds for it. But it was never the same machine again and at the end the summer I sold it. Yes, there are two ways of getting sport out of bicycle: one

can repair it. But it is impossible to get both forms of sport out of the same machine: no machine will stand it.

Exercises

I. Запомните (вспомните) формы следующих нестандартных глаголов:

think (thought, thought) думать

find (found, found) находить

lie (lay, lain) лежать

catch (caught, caught) ловить

shake (shook, shaken) трусить

lose (lost, lost) терять

feel (felt, felt) чувствовать

break (broke, broken) ломать

hurt (hurt, hurt) ранить

forget (forgot, forgotten) забывать

eat (ate, eaten) кушать

hold (held, held) держать

II. Ответить на вопросы:

1. Are there people who are fond of repairing things?

2. Who suggested going for a bicycle ride?

3. What was a first thing Ebbson did?

4. Did the author notice that either of the wheels wobbled?

5. What did Ebbson say about the front wheel?

6. Did the author think that Ebbson really knew something about repairing things?

7. What did Ebbson say about the cause of “wobbling” of the front wheel?

8. What happened with the ball bearings when he took them off the front wheel?

9. When did it become clear to the author that Ebbson knew nothing about the business?

10. How much time did it take them to put the gear-case into the position?

11. What did Ebbson exclaim after it?

12. What was the little dog doing at that time?

13. What was the result of Ebbson’s repairing?

14. What are the two ways of getting sport out of bicycle?

III. Пересказать текст:

1. от имени автора;

2. от имени Эббсона

Государственное бюджетное
профессиональное образовательное учреждение города Москвы

«Московский государственный
колледж электромеханики и информационных технологий»

                              ТЕКСТЫ ДЛЯ
ЧТЕНИЯ

                           НА АНГЛИЙСКОМ
ЯЗЫКЕ

                   для
студентов II—IV
курсов Вузов и колледжей

                    Преподаватель
английского языка Г.В. Букия

   “Тексты для
чтения на английском языке” для студентов II-IV курсов Вузов и колледжей  представляют
собой подборку разных но тематике неадаптированных текстов. Они представляют
современную лексику английского языка. Тексты подобраны из журнала “ The Economist” из разделов
“Britain”, “Science” и “Books and Art”.

    Работа над
текстами предполагает изучение современной лексики, чтение, перевод текста и
ответы на вопросы.

                                    О
г л а в л е н и е:

Text 1. Doctor Michael E. DeBakey                                 
                стр. 4-6

Text 2. Private Education
in Britain                                                   стр. 7-10

Text 3. Not just Killing
and Cannibalism                                           стp.11-13

Text 4. Deep Roots                                                                             стp.14-16

Text 5. Head and Heart                                                        
             стр.17-19

Text 6. Written in Stone                                                      
               стр.20-21

Text 7. The Secret Life
of Words                                                       стр.22-24

Text 8. Sticky Fingers                                                           
            стр.25-27

Text 9. Victory Is Mine                                                         
           стр.28-29

Text 10. The Search
Continues for Moisture on the Moon               стр.30-32

Text 11. A Soap Opera
from Earlier Times                                       стр.33-35

Text 12. Winning Streak                                                        
           стр.36-37

Text 13. Where the Shoe
Pinches                                                      стр.38-40

Text 14. Through Death to
Life                                                         стр.41-42

Text 15. Rugby’s Role in
His Rise                                                    стр.43-46

Text l6. Big Brains and a
Hairy Chest                                               стр.47-49

                               Text
1. Doctor Michael E. Debakey

     Dr.Michael E.DeBakey died July 11,
2008 , less than two months before what would have been his 100″ birthday.
Internationally acclaimed, Dr.DeBakey was hailed as the “greatest surgeon of
the 20″ century.” Dr. Claude Lenfant, director emeritus of the National
Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, called him “ the father of modern cardiovascular
surgery.”

    Dr.DeBakey operated on more than
60,000 patients during his 75-year medical career. However, as noted by Gert
Brieger, professor of the history of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, “
what has elevated him over many other surgeons was his creativity — that’s what
made him influence on surgeons and training programs so tremendous.” A classic
example was DeBakey’s 1953 use of Dacron to repair aortic aneurysms. He sewed
the prototype on his wife’s sewing machine, using fabric purchased at Houston’s
downtown Foley’s department store.

    Dr.DeBakey is also credited with
inventing the roller pump for the cardiopulmonary bypass machine, while still
in medical school. Later, as a surgeon, he devised several surgical instruments
that still carry his name. He performed the first successful angioplasty in
1954, the first coronary bypass in 1964, and the first heart transplant in the
United States in 1968. However, realizing that the demand for human heart
transplants would outstrip the supply, he pursued the development of a total artificial
heart, as well as ventricular assist devices (VADEs).

   It was the first use of the total
artificial heart that sparked an infamous 40-year feud between DeBakey and
Dr.Denton Cooley, a onetime colleague and rival surgeon. However, the two
reconciled during the past year, with Dr. DeBakey receiving the Denton A.
Cooley Cardiovascular Surgical Society Lifetime Achievement Award in 2007, and
Dr. Cooley being honored with a comparable award by DeBakey,s surgical society.

   In recent years, Dr. DeBakey had
collaborated with NASA to develop the MicroMed DeBakey VAD. Up until the time
of his death, DeBakey was prepared to assist Dr. O.H. “ Bud” Frazier, director
of surgical research at the Texas Heart Institute, in his upcoming attempt to
implant dual heart pumps in calves as a total heart replacement. “ It’s amazing
how he never ceased to have encouragement and interest in new things, “Frazier
said of the man he described as indomitable.

   Dr. DeBakey served in the US. Army
during World War IL ( where he originated the idea for mobile surgical
hospitals ( MASH units). He is also credited with helping to establish special
medical and surgical centers for veterans returning home from war, which later
evolved into the VA Hospital System. And he was a driving force in rejuvenating
the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda MD, which has become the world’s
leading repository of medical information.

   In a bizarre twist of fate, Dr. DeBakey
nearly died at age 97. In early 2006, he became the oldest person to survive
emergency surgery for an aortic dissection, including a period of elective
circulatory arrest. The surgery, performed by his longtime partner, Dr. George
P. Noon, had been pioneered by Dr. DeBakey himself 50 years earlier. The
anesthetic was delivered by another longtime friend and colleague, Dr. Salwa
Shenaq. Remarkably, his eventual recovery was complete. He was able to travel
to Washington, D.C. earlier this year to receive the Congressional Gold Medal, the
top civilian honor of the U.S.

   After his death, Dr. DeBakey was the
only physician and the only Houstonian ever to be given the honor of “lying in
repose“ at City Hall in Houston. The open- casket viewing, attended by a
military honor guard, was held all day on July 15, 2008. Dr. DeBakey lay in
repose, dressed in his surgical scrubs, white coat and the cowboy boots that he
always wore to the operating room. On July 18, he was buried at Arlington
National Cemetery in Virginia.

   Dr. DeBakey’s personal motto was to
“strive for nothing less than excellence.”He was a perfectionist, intolerant of
incompetence, sloppy thinking and laziness. For a man who outlived nearly all
of his peers, DeBakey was never philosophical about death, appearing to view it
as a personal enemy. He was quoted in the Houston Chronicle as saying “ You
fight (death) all the time, and you never can accept it. You know in reality
that everybody is going to die, but you try to fight it, to push it away, hold
it away with your hands.”

Words and expressions:

1. to hail – приветствовать

2. director emeritus – почетный
директор

3. cardiovascular surgery — сердечно—сосудистая
хирургия

4. creativity – творческий
подход

5. aortic aneurysms — аневризмы
аорты

6. roller pumps — цилиндрический
насос

7.
cardiopulmonary bypass machine — аппарат искусственного  

                                                               
кровообращения

8. to devise
— изобретать

9. angioplasty
— ангиопластика, сосудистая пластика

10.coronary bypass
— коронарное шунтирование

11. to outstrip
— опережать

12. to pursue — добиваться

13. ventricular assist devices — стимулятор
работы
желудочков

14. to spark feud —разжечь
вражду

15. to reconcile — примирить

16. to collaborate — сотрудничать

17. calves — мышцы

18. indomitable — ynopный

19. to evolve — paзвиваться

20. to rejuvenate — обновлять

21. repository — xранилище

22. sloppy thinking — небрежное мышление

23. peer – сверстник

 Answer the questions:

1.What
is Dr. DeBakey famous for?

2.How
did Dr. Claude Lenfant call him?

3.How
many operations did Dr. Debakey do during his 75-year medical career?

4.What
infamous feud was between Dr. DeBakey and Dr. Denton Cooley?

5.Where
did Dr. DeBakey originate the idea for mobile surgical hospitals

   
(MASH units)?

6.What
did happen with Dr. DeBakey in 2006?

7.What
honour was he given after his death?

8.When
and where was he buried?

9.What
was Dr. Debakey’s personal motto?

                               Text 2. Private
Education in Britain.

    Fee-paying schools have long played a
giant part in public life in Britain, though they teach only 7% of its
children. State — educated prime ministers (such as the current one) are a
rarity; a third of all MPS, more than half the appointed peers in the House of
Lords, a similar proportion of the country’s best — known journalists and 70%
of its leading barristers were educated privately. There is no sign that the elevator
from independent schools to professional prominence is slowing: nearly half of
the undergraduates at Oxford and Cambridge were privately schooled too.

    Many ambitious parents would like to
set their children off on this gilded path. But there is a problem: the soaring
cost. Fees at private day schools have more than doubled in the past 20 years,
in real terms, those at boarding schools have risen even faster. Since 2000
fees have risen by at least 6% every year, according to Horwath Clark
Whitehill, a consultancy — double retail — price inflation and half as much
again as the growth in wages. If this continues, a four-year-old embarking on a
career in private day schools this autumn will have cost his parents around S
335,000 by the time he completes secondary school. So even more Britons than
ever before describe themselves as comfortably off, the share of children being
educated privately is barely higher than it was two decades ago.

   Yet as the cost grows, so do the
incentives. It is increasingly hard to be sure of securing an acceptable
alternative. State-financed schools for the gifted are now scarce. Other
time-honoured routes, such as finding God (and a place in a religious school
packed with the offspring of similarly provident parents ) or buying a house next
to a good state school ( the price will be hefty, but can be recouped by
selling once the children have grown ),are becoming harder Ed Balls, the school
secretary, has signaled a shift away from increasing state — funded religious
education, and many schools are thinking of choosing students by lottery rather
than proximity.

   On March 3^rd parents all
over England will get letters telling them which schools their 11-year-olds are
to go to— and many will be watching with interest to see what happens in
Brighton, on the south coast. For the first time, places in its eight secondary
schools will have been allocated randomly within each catchment area.

   Аlready the benefits are being felt
by local private schools. Brighton College, in the town center, has seen the
number of 11-year-olds taking its entrance test rise by almost half. Its head
teacher, Richard Cairns, says he is thinking of expanding.

   Just what will these refugees from
randomness be getting for their money? Researchers at the Centre for the
Economics of Education have used data on earnings, social class and education
to distinguish the effects of private schooling from other advantages that
students at such schools may enjoy (such as having richer,better- educated
parents ). Those who left private schools in the 1980s and early 1990s can
expect to earn 35% more in life than the average product of a state school, the
found, around half of which can be attributed to education, not background.
That, they calculated, means parents achieved an average 7% return on their
investment in fees.

   If that were the entire benefit their
children received, it would not be bad-but there is more, says Francis Green,
one of the researchers. “ Private education is a consumption good, not just as
investment. Long ago are the days of Spartan dormitories and cold showers —kids
in the private sector now have fabulous science labs and sports facilities, and
access to a huge range of subjects and activities.”

   The researchers also managed to
pinpoint the way private schools work their magic: through better exam results,
rather than through networking opportunities or better teaching of soft skills,
such as etiquette or leadership. Once they compared state- and private- school
leavers with identical qualifications, the earning premium disappeared. “In the
past few decades, private schools have transformed themselves into highly
effective exampassing machines,” says Mr.Green. They hire better-qualified teachers,
and more of them, offering higher salaries to lure those with qualifications in
difficult subjects such as physics, mathematics and foreign languages, and now
have twice as many teachers per pupil as state schools do.

   Whether today’s parents can expect
similar returns on their investment depends partly on whether fees continue to
grow at a similar pace. One insider thinks this unlikely: many parents have
remortgaged to pay fees, and with house prices shaky and banks tightening their
lending criteria, this route is fast closing off.

   But parents willing to take a riskier
route could reap greater rewards.Another group of researchers interviewed
parents and children from 124 well-off white middle-class families in three
English cities. The parents had made the decision to send their children to
poorly-performing local comprehensives. The children did well, with excellent
exam results and plenty of places offered by highly-regarded universities, including
Oxford and Cambridge.

   One reason for their success, the
researchers suggest, is that the schools, mindful of their positions in
official league tables, were keen to keep these valuable clients. Teachers paid
the youngsters more attention in class than they did to dozier students and arranged
extension activities for them. One school, desperate to keep a bright child in
the sixth form, even ran an A-level drama course especially for her.

    The parents were delighted by their
huge savings. But they had to work hard.More than half became school governors,
and all monitored their children’s progress relentlessly.” They thought their
children would do well being exposed to a more socially and ethnically diverse
educational experience,” says David James, one of the researchers. “ But as people
must do with more volatile, risky investments, they watched closely and were
ready to pull out if needs be.” So parents inclined to take this route must ask
themselves two things: what their risk profile is, and whether they are willing
to be activist investors.

Words and expressions:

1.barrister — адвокат, барристер

2. professional prominence
— профессиональная известность

3. soaring cost
— растущая стоимость

4. retail_price — pозничные цены

5. boarding schools — школа-интернат

6. embarking on a career — начинающий карьеру

7. incentive —стимул, поощрение

8. offspring — отпрыск

9. to be hefty — быть
высокой
(о цене)

10. proximity
— близость, соседство

11. to allocate randomly
— распределять случайным образом

12. average product
—cpeдний
продукт

13. consumption good
— потребительский товар

14. spartan dormitories
— cnapтанское
общежитие

15. to pinpoint
— точно определить

16. earning premium
— получение премии, заработная премия

17. to lure –завлекать, заманивать

18. route
— маршрут

19. to reap — пожинать

20.
socially and ethnically diverse educational experience — социально и     

     
этнически
разнообразный профессиональный опыт

21.
volatile investments —
нестабильные инвестиции

Answer the questions:

1.Why
have fee-paying schools played a giant part

   
in public life in Britain?

2.How
have fees risen every year since 2000?

3.What
acceptable alternative have parents except

   
fee-paying schools?

4.What
letters will parents get all over England on

   
March 3^rd?

5.How
have private schools transformed themselves?

6.Why
had the parents of white middle-class families

   
made the decision to send their children to poorly-

   
performing local schools?

                    Text
3. Not just Killing and Cannibalism

   The title of the book “Come on Shore
and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story” by Christina Thompson is
a kind of verbal haka or war dance. It is what the Maori were said to have
shouted to Captain Cook when he reached New Zealand in 1769. But his offbeat,
intimate and absorbing history of Maori and European encounters is not about
killing and cannibalism. There is that, true, and more: gruesome details about
tattooing, for example, and head preservation. But it is really a story about
mutual incomprehension, illuminated, if not dispelled, by the author’s own
romance with the Maori, and with one in particular, a man called Seven, whom
she married. Against most rational expectations, the marriage has worked. The
book is a lesson in the limitations of rational expectations.

   Christina Thompson is a New Englander
from a trim town outside Boston with a white church and a green. Seven belongs
to the Ngapuhi tribe and his family lives in a ramshackle settlement at the end
of a dirt road. Ms Thompson is an intellectual in the tradition of the
Enlightenment, an editor of the academic Harvard Review. Seven, with his belief
in ghosts and aliens, is the very man that tradition hopes to enlighten. She
weighs options and makes plans. He sees the future not as an arrow he shoots
ahead of him, but as an arrow that arrives at his feet.

     It all falls neatly into Western
categories about “ advanced” and “primitive”peoples. But Ms Thompson is not so
pat as that. She tells an anecdote about a friend who liked to joke that he was
a Bengali trapped in the skin of a European. Her own sensation is not so much
of a terrible mistake, but of discovery and arrival; a kind of fatedness. Not
that she claims to understand anything. On the contrary, she believes in being
willing not to understand, while simultaneously remaining curious and open.

   The initial contact especially
intrigues her, the bafflement on both sides, an equality of wonder which,
however briefly, belies the more common tale of ferocity or exploitation. She
describes an evocative episode in 1642, when a Dutch ship is greeted by canoes
off New Zealand, and the two sides, after fruitlessly calling to each other in
their own languages, resort to music—a series of trumpet calls, first one and
then the other, until darkness falls.Sadly there was death in the morning, but
as cultural exchanges go, it did not start too badly.

   Then there is the story of Charlotte
Badger, a convict who was one of the first white women to land in New Zealand,
in 1806. She lived among the Maori and twice declined to be “rescued” by ships
sailing for England. Ms Thompson recounts the little that is known about her
and, drawing on her own experience, imagines,beyond the perils and discomforts,
the attraction that must have existed on both sides, in particular the
discretion and forbearance of the Maori whom she herself encountered in her
husband’s village.

   Unlike Charlotte, Ms Thompson does
return home, anxiously bringing Seven and

by then, two sons, to her parents’ house.
But the expected clash never comes. There are tricky moments — for example,
when Seven, an ingenious mechanic, fills the drive with dumped machine parts.
But otherwise, he fits into their lives like the natural gentleman she has read
about so skeptically in “noble savage “ literature.All through  the book, the
author makes a point of wrong-footing herself. Predicting, interpreting and
being clever does not seem to work.

   It is Seven’s brother who points to the
hidden irony in Ms Thompson’s enterprise. Shortly before leaving for Boston,
she tells him that she intends to write his family story. “ Write your own
first,” he says. It was a shrewd retort. Her ancestors, Englishmen with
American — Indian blood on their hands, turn out to be not so different from
the people who impoverished Seven’s ancestors. History, in other words, brings
her closer to Seven that she could have imagined. It is the charm of this book
that the circle never quite closes — that, in its final pages, history itself becomes
another foreign country, another adventure.

Words and expressions:

1.offbeat — необычный,
удивительный

2. gruesome details — жуткие подробности

3. preservation — сохранение

4. mutual incomprehension — взаимное непонимание

5. to dispel — paзвеять

6. rational expectation — paзумные ожидания

7. trim town — маленький городок

8. ramshackle — ветхий

9. the Enlightenment – просвещение

10. alien — инопланетянин

11. to weigh options — взвешивать
возможные
варианты

12. to be pat
— быть покладистым

13. trap
— западня, ловушка

14. to claim
— требовать, претендовать, утверждать

15. bafflement
— недоумение, озадаченность

16. ferocity
— свирепость

17. convict
— осужденный, каторжник

18. discretion and forbearance
— осторожность и терпение

19. to encounter
– столкнуться

20. clash
—конфликт

21. shrewd retort
— проницательный, остроумный ответ

22. ancestor — предок

23. to impoverish — oбеднять

Answer the questions:

1.What
is the book “A New Zealand Story “by Christina Thompson about?

2.Where
are Christina Thompson and her husband Seven from?

3.What
kind of person was Ms. Thompson?

4.What
an evocative episode in 1642 does she describe in her book?

5.What
can you tell about one of the first white women landed in New Zealand?

6.Does
Ms. Thompson return home and is she happy in her parents’ house?

7.What
does she tell Seven’s brother before leaving for Boston and what does he  answer
her?

8
What is the charm of this book?

                                          Text
4. Deep Roots

   “The blues had a baby and they named
the baby rock and roll.” So sang Muddy Waters, one of the greatest bluesmen.
While true, that is only part of the absorbing story Ted Gioia tells as he
traces the blues, a seminal influence on all 20^th century popular
mucic, back to its roots. The delta of his title is a vast tract of land between
the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers, a sort of agricultural riches, particularly cotton,
and home to a poor black population whose very privation inspired an
impassioned musical culture.

   Mr.Gioia’s authoritative chronicle
interweaves the steamy character of the delta with the hard lot of its
population. Toiling in conditions not far removed from slavery, at the mercy of
plantation and prison farm, the delta’s sharecroppers expressed themselves
through the blues, a vocal form derived from Africa, as well as from work songs
and spirituals. Although the blues appeared in other places in the American South,
the delta was astonishingly prolific in quality, abundance and sheer intensity.
As the author puts it, aficionados reckoned there were blues, then deep blues,
but delta blues had “the deepest roots of all“.

   Mr.Gioia’s book is made up of a
chronological series of biographies of the region’s musical heroes, who became
famous for a style in which singing and guitar playing merged into a single
mesmerizing sound. Charley Patton, Bukka White and Son House all won local
renown, made recordings and then faded away into delta life, in which passion
and violence often went hand in hand. Robert Johnson, who was supposed to have
sold his soul to the devil in return for his prodigious skills, was poisoned
after an ill-advised dalliance with another man’s woman.

   Johnson’s recordings brought the
delta’s spell to a wider audience, as did the migration of a new generation of
musicians northward, particularly to Chicago. From the 1940s, the Windy City
became a hub for giants such as Waters and Howlin’Wolf, who added a new
dimension to the blues with supercharged amplification. The plangent attack of
electric guitar and harmonica gave the delta style greater intensity. Hard—driving
bands superseded soloists, but the redoubtable Mississippi-born John Lee Hooker
could still galvanise a room all by himself with his stomping “ Boogie Chillen”.

   With such emotional energy afoot,
cocking a snook at well-scrubbed post-war pop, it wasn’t long before the blues
burst on to the mass market. Its carefree offspring, rock and roll, went on to
become a huge commercial enterprise in which every singer affected a bluesy cry
as a testament of personal emotion.

   But Mr.Gioia is in no doubt that delta
blues retains its appeal. He describes the revival movement in which
enthusiasts tracked down some of the region’s first stars, who brought the old
sound alive. Records still convey the power of their music and of the delta
tradition; a fire, Mr.Gioia says, that is just waiting to be rekindled.

 Words and expressions:

1. absorbing story — захватывающая
история

2. to trace — отслеживать

3. seminal influence— огромное
влияние

4. privation — лишения

5. to inspire — воодушевлять. Вдохновлять

6. to interweave — переплетать, вплетать

7. sharecropper — издольщик

8. prolific — плодовитый

9. abundance — обилие

10. sheer intensity — высокая
интенсивность

11. aficionado — поклонник, ценитель

12. to reckon
— считать

13. to merge
— объединяться

14. mesmerizing sound
— завораживающий звук

15. prodigious skills
— потрясающее мастерство

16. dalliance — флирт

17. hub for giants — центр
для
гигантов

18. dimension — uзмерение

19. supercharged amplification — сверхмощное усиление

20. plangent — rpомкий

21. stomping — топающий

22. to cock a snook — подглядывать

23. well- scrubbed — xopoшо отшлифованный

24. revival movement — возрожденное движение

25. to track down — выследить

26. to rekindle — возрождать

Answer the questions:

1.What
was Muddy Waters and what did he sing about the blues?

2.Where
are the roots of impassionate musical culture?

3.Where
did a vocal form of blues derive from?

4.How
is Mr.Gioia’s book made up?

5.What
kind of music was popular just after the war?

6.Is
Mr.Gioia sure that delta blues will retain its appeal?

                                     Text
5. Head and Heart.

   The portrait, as it is known today, was
born in the Renaissance. Portraits had existed before the 15^th
century, of course: just think of the Paraohs with their colossal statues, the
busts of the Roman emperors or the painted faces of donors in medieval altar
pieces. But those figures seemed very remote. Renaissance artists, by contrast,
sought to create not just a likeness of their subjects, but also something of
their spirit.

   Portraiture became very popular.
Indeed, the principal question addressed by “Renaissance Faces “,a new
exhibition at London’s National Gallery, is why, at this time, did so many patrons
commission portraits of themselves, their lovers, friends and children? Answers
emerge in seven rooms filled with paintings, medals, drawings and sculpture.
The show also seeks to correct the misconception that Renaissance portraits were
the exclusive invention and preoccupation of artists in the south of Europe, especially
Italy. As its subtitle makes plain, this is a European exhibition: Van Eyck, after
all, painted in Flanders; Titian was a Venetian. But pleasure has not been sacrificed
to art history. Susan Foister, the show’s lead curator, stresses above all that
the gallery wants visitors to enjoy themselves.

   On the simplest level, the exhibition
is a treat for art lovers —with works by Holbein, Titian, Raphael and Durer—and
for people watchers. There are musicians and poets, kings and queens, brides
and grooms. Even the dead are brought back to life by artists working from
death masks. Some subjects seem arrogant, some sweet, others show off, some
looks as if they want to flee. A great portrait is not an exercise in photographic
realism, but a work of skill and imagination. A painter might, for example,
enlarge one eye and narrow the other or lengthen a neck to produce a particular
effect. Giuseppe Arcimboldo even made portraits out of seasonal fruits, vegetables
and flowers.

   On entering the exhibition visitors are
greeted by “The Beautiful Florentine”, a painted wood statue recently found to
be an image of Saint Constance, one of the martyred, virgin companions of Saint
Ursula. This heavy — lidded, ethereal blonde, with her fashionable Tuscan hair-
style and intricately decorated red and gold gown, stands alone on pedestal. No
one knows what Saint Constance looked like, nor who she was or who modeled for
this sculpture. But the artist’s goal is clear: this is an idealized portrait
made at a time when it was believed that inner perfection and goodness manifested
itself as physical beauty.

   Other rooms focus on attributes and
allegory (anything, from a squirrel to a violet to scissors, gave information
about the nature or interests of a sitter ); courtship and friendship; family;
love and beauty (which naughtily includes “The Ugly Duchess “attributed to
Quentin Masys ); drawing portraits and, lastly, portraits of rulers. The faces
of royal children are shown in little studies which their parents could carry with
them on their travels; so are lovers and newlyweds, or, in the case of Henry VII,
a distant prospective bride.

   Throughout the show, works from the
National Gallery’s permanent collection hang alongside loans, often to
surprising effect. In its traditional spot in the gallery, for example,
Giovanni Bellini’s “ Doge Leonardo Loredan “ appears as a head of state —stern,
imperious and wise. But in this more intimate space it is easier also to see
him as a human being.

   In the final room Raphael’s revered
portrait of Pope Julius II has been hung alongside Titian’s “Pope Paul III
Bareheaded “, which has been lent by the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples. Pope
Julius, wearing crimson velvet and heavy rings, looks old and weary; living
evidence that high office and its trappings cannot stop age from doing its
worst. Pope Paul, too, is dressed in crimson velvet and also sits looking old and
bent. Yet, here, Paul shows a humanity that seems to transcend the depredations
of old age, and this Titian outshines every other picture in the room.

Words and expressions:

1. arrogant — высокомерный, надменный

2. to flee — убегать

3. martyr — мученица

4. virgin — девственница

5. heavy- lidded — тяжелый взгляд

6. ethereal blonde — бесплотная блондинка

7. gown
— женское платье

8. violet
— фиалка

9. alongside
— бок о бок, рядом

10. loan
– заем, ссуда

11. stern
— cтрогий,
суровый ,безжалостный

12. to revere
— почитать, уважать, чтить

13. to look weary
— выглядеть утомленным

14. to look old and bent
— выглядеть старым и согбенным

15. depredation — хищение

16. to outshine — затмевать

Answer the questions:

1.When
was the portrait born and what was its history?

2.Why
did portraiture become very popular in the Renaissance?

3.Why
is a new exhibition at London’s National Gallery called

   
a European exhibition?

4.Why
is the exhibition a treat for art lovers?

5.How
does the author of the article describe “ The Beautiful

  
Florentine ” ?

6.How
do other rooms focus on attributes and allegory?

7.What
a surprising effect have works from the National

   
Gallery’s permanent collection?

                                   Text 6.
Written in Stone.

   On December 16^th 1811, the
residents of New Madrid, were startled out of their beds by a huge earthquake,
which was quickly followed by a second. Those who survived the catastrophe
reported that cracks opened in the earth’s surface, that the ground rolled
visibly in waves and that large areas of land sank downwards. The crew of the
New Orleans, the first streamboat to ply the Mississippi, told locals that they
had moored on an island the evening before the earthquake only to discover that
it was gone in the morning. People in places as far away as Boston declared that
they heard church bells ringing at the time the earthquake happened.

   The huge earthquakes occur in parts of
North America outside their traditional habitat on the Pacific margin is well
known from accounts like those from New Madrid. Such records, however, have
been kept only since Europeans arrived, so it has been hard to work out how
active the faults that cause them are. Now it is a little easier. A study
carried out by Samuel Panno of the Illinois State Geological Survey and his
colleagues has revealed that nearby caves store the dates of past earthquakes in
stone.

   Dr.Panno and his team found their
recording angel in the form of stalagmites, the conical projections that grow
on the floors of limestone caves.( The structures that hang down above them are
called stalactites.) They made their discovery when they were using a
radioactive dating technique to check the ages of small stalagmites occupying a
number of caves in the Midwest. Many of these stalagmites, they found, had come
into existence at about the same moment, and that moment coincided with the New
Madrid earthquake.

   This makes sence. Stalagmites form when
water trickles through crevices in a cave’s ceiling and drips to the floor.
Each drop carries with it a quantity of dissolved calcium carbonate (the
defining ingredient of limestone ) that it has picked up while flowing through
the rock above. When a drop lands, some of this mineral is deposited at the
landing site, where it accumulates, forming a stalagmite. A paper to be presented
at a meeting of the Geological Society of America in Houston on October 5″
by Dr.Panno’s colleaque Keith Hackley suggests that when large earthquakes shake
the ground, new cracks in cave ceiling open. The result is formation of a new generation
of stalagmites.

   Like trees, stalagmites are often
composed of concentric layers that represent annual growth periods. Counting
the layers is one way of assessing how old a stalagmite is. But radioactive
dating provides a second, and sometimes more accurate, assessment. In this case
the geologists drilled into the stalagmites and estimated their age from the
way that uranium decays into an isotope of thorium. Many, they found, dated
back to 1811, while others began life in 1917, the date of subsequent
investigation has confirmed a further seven big earthquakes previously
suspected to have happened over the course of the past 18,000 years. An average
interval between quakes of 2,500 years is a hopeful sign for New Madrid’s immediate
future. But if the technique can be tried out in the other places it might reveal
areas now thought safe, precisely because there has not been a recent earthquake,
that are actually under threat.

 Words and expressions :

1. crack — трещина

2. to ply — курсировать

3. to moor
— пришвартовывать

4. habitat
— среда обитания

5. margin — окраина

6. to store — xpaнить

7. recording angel — регистрирующий
ангел

8. limestone — uзвестняк

9. to make sense —иметь смысл

10. crevice — расщелина

11. dissolved — pacтворенный

12. layer — пласт, слой

13. annual — eжегодный

14. to assess — оценивать

15. to drill — cверлить, бурить

16. to decay
— распадаться, разлагаться

17. subsequent
— последующий, следующий

18. average — cредний

19. precisely — именно,
точно

Answer the questions:

1.Why
were the residents of New Madrid startled out

   
of their beds on December 16^th 1811?

2.What
has Samuel Panno and his colleagues revealed?

3.How
did Dr. Panno and his team make their discovery?

4.Can
we assess how old a stalagmite is?

5.What
connection has the age of stalagmite with big earthquakes?

                            Text 7. The Secret Life
of Words.

   Many will know that the word “muscle”
comes from the Latin for “mouse” (rippling under the skin, so to speak ). But
what about “ chagrin “, derived from the Turkish for roughened leather, or
scaly sharkskin. Or “ lens “ which comes from the Latin “lentil “ or “ window “
meaning “eye of wind “in old Norse? Looked at closely, the language comes apart
in images, like those strange paintings by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, where heads are
made of fruit and vegetables.

   Not that Henry Hitchings’s book is
about verbal surrealism. That is an extra pleasure in a book which is really
about the way the English language has roamed the world helping itself liberally
to words, absorbing them, forgetting where they came from, and moving on with
an evergrowing load of exotics, crossbreeds and subtly shaded near-synonyms. It
is also about migrations within the language’s own borders, about upward and
downward mobility, about words losing their roots, tuming up in new
surroundings, or lying in wait, like “ duvet “ which was mentioned by Samuel Johnson,
for their moment.

   All this is another way of writing
history. The Arab etymologies of “saffron”, “ crimson “ and “ sugar“ speak of
England’s medieval trade with the Arab world. We have “cheque” and “ tariff“
from this source too, plus “arithmetic”and “algorithm“ —just as we have “etch “
and “ sketch “ from the Dutch, musical terms from the Italians and philosophical
ones from the Germans. French nuance and finesse are everywhere. At every
stage, the book is about people and ideas on the move, about invasion,
refugees, immigrants, traders, colonists and explorers.

   This is a huge subject and one that is almost
bound to provoke question —marks and explotions in the margins — soon forgotten
in the book’s sheer sweep and scale. A balance between straight history and
word history is sometimes difficult to strike, though. There is a feeling,
occasionally, of being bundled too fast through complex linguistic developments
and usages, or of being given interesting slices of history for the sake, after
all, of not much more than a “gong “or a “moccasin “. But it is churlish to
carp. The author’s zest and grasp are wonderful. He makes you want to check out
everything — “carp “ and “ zest “ included. Whatever is hybrid, fluid and unpoliced
about English delights him.

   English had never had its Academie
Francaise, but over the centuries it has not lacked furious defenders against
foreign “ corruption “.There have been rearguard actions to preserve its ‘“
manly “ pre — Norman origins, even to reconstruct it along Anglo — Saxon lines:
“ wheel — saddle “ for bicycle, “ painlore “ for pathology. But the omnivorous
beast is rampant still. More people speak it as their second language than as
their first. Forget the language of Shakespeare. It’s “Globish “ now, the
language of aspiration. No one owns it, a cause for despair to some. Mr
Hitchings admits to wincing occasionally, but almost on principle he is more
cheerful than not.

 Words and expressions:

1. rippling — пульсация

2. roughened leather — грубая кожа

3. scaly sharkskin — чешуйчатая
акулья
кожа

4. lens — линза

5. to roam
— странствовать

6. crossbreed
— помесь, гибрид

7. subtly shaded near—synonyms—
тонко сформированные близкие синонимы

8. saffron
— шафран

9. etch
— гравюры

10. sketch
— эскиз, набросок

11. nuance and finesse
— тонкость и изящество

12. refugee
– беженец

13. marks explotions in the margins
— пометки и помарки на полях

14.  the book’s sheer sweep and scale —размах и
масштаб книги

15. to bundle — связывать

16.  churlish —  грубый

17. to carp — критиковать

18. zest
— интерес

19. zest and grasp
— “изюминка” и хватка

20. fluid
— постоянно меняющийся

21. unpoliced
— неполитизированный

22. Academie Francaise
— французская академия

23. rearguard — apъергард

24. aspiration — cтремление

25. to wince — coдрогаться

26.
The omnivorous beast is rampant still. — Всеядный зверь буйствует

                                                                         
по—прежнему. 

 Answer the questions:

1.Who
wrote the book “The Secret Life of Words’?

2.What.
words did come from Latin, Turkish, Arab, Dutch,

   
German and Italian?

3.How
did the French language influence the English one?

4.How
did the defenders against foreign “corruption” try to reconstruct

  
the English language along Anglo-Saxon lines?

5.Why
does the author call the English language “ Globish” ?

                                       Text 8.
Sticky Fingers.

   As any aficionado of whodunits will
know, lifting and analyzing fingerprints is a tedious task. Fiddling with the
little brushes, fine powders and sticky tape can test the patience of the most
fastidious crime — scene investigator. And then there is all the lab work,
which can require even greater care. However, real — life forensic experts may
soon look less like their counterparts in “csi “ and more like sci-fi sleuths armed
with extremely clever hand — held fingerprint analysers.

   This could be the upshot of a new
fingerprinting method developed by Demian Ifa and his colleagues at Purdue
University in Indiana. Their innovation is based on desorption electrospray
ionization (DESI), an analytical technique which can be deployed in the field.
It involves spraying a tiny (0,15 * 0,15 mm) area of a fingerprint with an
electrically charged mixture of methanol and water. When these charged droplets
come into contact with the surface of the print they collect any substances
deposited on it, creating a thin liquid film. As more drops are sprayed on the
same spot, some of this film is scattered and sucked into a mass
spectrometer,which can identify the molecules collected. All this takes only a
few tenths of a second. Then the spray is moved along to the next patch on the
fingerprint and the process is repeated. It will work on any surface on which
there are fingerprints.

   Each reading by the mass spectrometer
creates a kind of chemical “ pixel “. However, instead of each pixel
representing a colour, as in the image on a screen,these readings show all the
different chemical compounds present in each of the thousands of tiny patches
that together make up the sample. The overall distribution of these readings
can be converted into an image of the fingerprint that is accurate enough to
identify who left it with standard recognition software.

   But DESI also presents an additional
boon to gumshoes. Because it is based on chemical rather than purely visual
data, it can discover what else people touched before leaving their prints. In
their experiments, Dr Ifa and his team identified minute traces of drugs, such
as cocaine and marijuana, as well as explosives.

   Moreover, besides indicating what
substances had been deposited on the skin of the person who left the print,
DESI can discern traces of substances that have been secreted through it. Since
such secretions are the end result of chemical processes going on inside the body,
they can provide indirect evidence of person’s health, which could also help
with identification. One day such techniques may even help doctors diagnose
illnesses by scanning a portion of the skin of their patients.

   Given that different people tend to
handle different things ( and not necessarily illicit ones), and that they
secrete slightly different substances, this method can even help to disentangle
overlapping sets of fingerprints, which is very difficult with optical analysis
alone. Graham Cooks, a member of the Purdue team, has already built a
functioning portable DESI device with a built —in miniature mass spectrometer
that is no bigger than a doctor’s case. With such technology virtually at policemen’s
fingertips, crooks are well advised to keep their hands clean.

 Words and expressions:

1. aficionado — поклонник, ценитель

2. whodunits
— остросюжетный фильм

3. tedious
— yтомительный,
нудный

4. fiddling—
возня (зд.)

5. sticky tape
— липкая лента

6. fastidious — привередливый

7. a crime-scene investigator — криминалист

8. forensic experts
— cyдебно-медицинские
эксперты

9. sci—fi sleuths
— cыщики
из научной фантастики

10. upshot
— peзультат

11.
desorption — десорпция
(удаление адсорбированного вещества

   
  с поверхности различных объектов)

12. to deploy
— paзвертывать,
внедрять, размещать

13. to involve — вовлекать

14. charged droplets — заряженные капельки

15.  patch
— пятно, заплатка

16. pixel
— nиксель,
минимальный элемент изображения

17. overall distribution
— oбщее
распределение

18. an additional boon to gumshoes
— дополнительная находка для сыщиков

19. traces of drugs
— cледы
наркотиков

20. explosive
— взрывчатое вещество

21. discern
— paзличать

22. secretion
— выделение

23. illicit
— незаконный, недозволенный

24. to disentangle
— oтделить

25. overlapping sets
— совпадающие отпечатки

26. а crook
— преступник, мошенник

Answer the questions:

1.Why
is lifting and analyzing fingerprints a tedious task?

2.What
new fingerprinting method did Demian Ifa and his

  
colleagues develop?

3.What
does the mass spectrometer create?

4.What
additional information does DESI present?

5.How
may DESI help doctors?

6.What
has Graham Cooks already built?

                                    Text 9. Victory
Is Mine.

   Whether you are a gorilla, a
four-year-old child, a politician or an Olympic athlete, the signs of victory
are obvious for all to see: chest inflates, the head is thrown back and the
victor displays a strutting and confident air. Shame at being defeated is
equally recognizable: the head bows, and sometimes the shoulders slump and the
chest narrows too — something that is not a million miles away from the cringing
postures associated with submission in animals, from chimpanzees to rats, rabbits
and even salamanders. Are these displays of pride and shame common to all humans?
If they are, they will have evolved to serve some function.

   The past week in Beijing demonstrates
that different cultures do indeed show similar displays of pride and shame. But
it is difficult to say if these reactions are instinctive or learnt. Jessica
Tracy at the University of British Columbia and David Matsumoto at San
Francisco State University decided to explore this by comparing pictures of
blind and sighted athletes from different cultures.

   In their research, published in
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team analysed images from
the judo competition held in the 2004 Olympic and Paralympic Games. They looked
for whether or not competitors indulged in post — match behaviour such as
tilting their heads back, raising their arms or expanding their chests in
victory, or hiding their face or narrowing their chests in defeat. They found
that in response to success and failure, people from different cultures
displayed the stereotypical gestures of pride and some of the components of expressions
of shame. This included the blind competitors — even those blind from birth.

   Although the researchers say that
congenitally blind children might have been taught by their parents to lift
their hands above their heads after a victory, they speculate that it would be
harder to teach them the full spectrum of displays they witnessed. These
findings, then, imply that displays of pride are not simply cultural stereotypes
learnt after birth, but an innate form of behaviour that was relevant to the way
humans lived. A display of pride (or shame ), in other words, may be an evolved
and innate behavioural response.

   Why? Such displays may have an
evolutionary function. People could be advertising their accomplishments and
ensuring their status and acceptance within their social group. Similarly,
shame shows acceptance of a defeat and a reluctance to fight on (which may help
to avoid further aggression ), and so might well be a display of submission.

   The researchers also found that the
behavioural response to shame was weaker in sighted athletes from cultures that
were individualistic — or “ self —expression valuing “ — societies in the West.
They suggest that athletes from these parts were suppressing responses in accordance
with “cultural norms“ that stigmatise displays of shame. If so, this would
explain why the congenitally blind displayed more shame in defeat than did
people who became blind later in life.

Culture has a lot to do with displays of victory,
whether it is the two-fingered “ V “ salute of footballers removing their
clothing. Both are culturally influenced, but they have their roots in showing
exactly who is on top.

   Words and expressions:

1. to inflate — надувать

2. strutting air — важный вид

3. to slump — oпускать

4. cringing posture
— в сгорбленной позе

5. submission
— подчинение, покорность

6. to evolve
— эволюционировать, меняться

7. to indulge
— потворствовать

8. tilting
— наклон

9. congenital
– врожденный

10. to imply
— подразумевать, означать

11. innate
— природный, врожденный

12. to be relevant to
— относящийся к

13. аccomplishments
— достижения

14. reluctance
— нежелание

15. response
— peакция,
отклик

16. to stigmatise — клеймить позором, поносить

Answer the questions:

1.How
are pride and shame displayed by all humans?

  
Is there something in common?

2.What
did Jessica Tracy and David Matsumoto compare?

3.What
conclusion did they come to?

4.Where
was the behavioural response to shame weaker in

   
the West countries or in the East ones?

5.How
do people usually display victory?

           Text 10. The Search Continues
for Moisture on the Moon.

   What, prithee, is awash with seas but
hath no water? The answer, of course, is the moon. From the Ocean of Storms to
the Bay of Rainbows, it is covered with features that are aqueous in name but
not in nature. These lava plains, the result of meteoritic bombardment around 4
billion years ago, are all as dry as dust. Yet the hope remains that perhaps
the riddle is not quite right, and that a little water (or, at least ice )
might exist on the Earth’s neighbour — perhaps enough to sustain a permanently
manned moonbase, should anyone ever decide to build one.

   That hope is focused at the moment on
craters near the moon’s poles particularly one called Shackleton which has the
south lunar pole within it. The location of these craters means that parts of
their floors never see direct sunlight. So, if comets have landed there ( and,
given the craters’ ages, the odds are that several will have ), some of the ice
carried by such dirty celestial snowballs might be preserved in the permanent
shadow cast by the craters’ walls.

   Two past investigations have given
comfort to the optimists. In 1994 a spacecraft called Clementine, launched by
NASA, America’s space agency, used radio waves to probe the moon’s surface.
After the mission was over, an analysis of the data suggested there were smooth
areas in the craters at the south pole, referred to jokingly as “ skating rinks
“, that might have been ice. In 1998 another craft, Lunar Prospector, detected
hydrogen at both poles. This might ( but might not) have come from water. On
the other hand, ground — based radars have not been able to confirm Clementine’s
observation of skating rinks.

   The latest data, from a Japanese
spaceship called Selene, agree with the terrestrial radars. Junichi Haruyama,
of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, in Sagamihara City, and
his colleagues photographed places inside Shackleton that, though they receive
no direct sunlight, do get a small amount of scattered illumination from other
parts of the crater. The team’s results, published in the Science, show no
bright areas that might be bare ice. What this means is that ice, if it is
there at all, must either be below the surface or be mixed with the lunar
regolith —the crushed rock that passes for lunar soil—and thus be invisible.

   The next step, according to Barbara
Cohen, a self — confessed “ lunatic “ at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center,
will be to look at data collected by Chandrayaan 1, which was launched on
October 22™ The craft is Indian, but NASA is hitching a ride. One of the
instruments on board is an American spectroscope, the Mono Mineralogy Mapper.
Even when this has reported, though, Dr.Cohen reckons that it will not provide
enough data to say, definitely, whether there is ice at the lunar poles.

   But the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (
LRO ), due to lift off next year, should. Its detectors will be able to tell
whether the raised levels of hydrogen found by Lunar Prospector are confined to
permanently shadowed regions, which is what would be predicted if they truly
are a sign of water. The LRO will also use its instruments to build up a
detailed picture of those regions, and will observe several smaller craft crash
into them, in order to scan the resulting plumes of debris for water vapour. If
it was there, that would be pretty conclusive. Dr Cohen, though, reckons that the
only way to be sure there is ice on the moon is to go there and lick it
yourself.

Words and expressions:

1. prithee = pray thee — скажите
на
милость
(зд.)

2. to hath = has

3. aqueous — водный

4. to sustain –поддерживать

5. permanently manned moonbase — постоянную лунную базу

6. odds — шансы

7. celestial — небесный

8. permanent shadow cast — в полной тени

9. to launch — запускать

10. data — данные

11. spacecraft — космический корабль

12. terrestrial radar —наземный радар

13. scattered illumination — рассеянное освещение

14. bright areas — cветлые участки

15. regolith — реголит

16. crushed rock — щебень

17. lunar soil — лунный грунт

18. self- confessed — самокритичный

19. to hitch a ride — oтправиться в путь

20. Mono Mineralogy Mapper
— мономинералогический картограф

21. to reckon
—считать

22.
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter —лунный
разведывательный  

    
 орбитальный аппарат

23.
to predict — npeдсказывать

24.
to scan the resulting plumes of debris —для сканирования

   
  образовавшихся шлейфов обломков                                                           
    

25.
water vapour — водяные
испарения

Answer the questions:

1.How
many years ago was the moon bombarded by meteorits?

2.What
hope have the scientists today?

3.What
investigations have given comfort to the optimists?

4.What
will the next step be, according to Barbara Cohen, in searching

   
ice at the lunar poles?

5.Why
is it so important to find ice at the lunar poles?

                      Text 11. A Soap Opera from
Earlier Times.

   Sir Michael Holroyd, the doyen of
British biographers, is like a great landscape painter who works on a large,
unwieldy canvas. His book began as a modest biography of Dame Ellen Terry, an
enchanting Victorian actress whom the Times called “the uncrowned Queen of
England“. Then the author’s plot go out of hand and embraced the most eminent
of all actor — managers, Sir Henry Irving, together with four children, two
from Irving’s failed marriage and two from Terry’s infatuation with Edward
Godwin, an architect who dabbled in the theatre. The author confesses that his choice
of such a broad canvas was “ foolhardy “ but his rambling tale of theatre people
is captivating.

   In Ellen Terry’s lifetime, from 1847 to
1928, leading actors were simultaneously celebrities and social outcasts, but
she simply ignored Victorian prejudices. George Bernard Shaw, a great admirer,
wrote: “She walked through them as if they were not there, as indeed for her
they were not.”

   Irving, with whom she acted the great
Shakespearean roles at the Lyceum theatre in London, was more calculating and
eventually became the first British actor to be knighted -— an honour that was
delayed because of the scandal created by the romance between the two. Both
families thought they had not been lovers but Sir Michael leaves us in little
doubt. It would have been rash to confess at the time, but when Irving was
dead. Terry said that of course they had been.

   Before and after her passion for
Godwin, she married three times. Her first husband was an artist, G.F. Watts;
the last was an American actor half her age. Irving was no Victorian role model
either, having left his wife as they drove home from his greatest triumph, a
melodrama called “ The Bells “.““ Are you going to make a fool of yourself like
this all your life? “ she asked. He stopped the brougham at Hyde Park Corer,
alighted and never saw her again.

   The lives of Irving’s children, Henry
and Laurence, are a tragic strand in the story. Despite the opposition of their
mother, both of them were enthralled by the theatre and became fairly
successful actor — managers. But Laurence drowned when he was 43(a ship
bringing him home sank after a collision in the St Lawrence river)and Henry was
only six years older when he died of anaemia in 1919.

   Ellen Terry’s children provide the
comedy, though the author reminds us of Thomas Hardy’s dictum: “ All comedy is
tragedy, if you only look deep enough into it.’ Her daughter Edy joined her in
the theatre, principally as a costume designer, but her preoccupations were
feminism and the quarrelsome lesbian circle with whom she grew old in the Terry
household. The only character in the second generation to rival the actress’s
flamboyance was her son, who became celebrated himself as Edward Gordon Craig,
a theatrical visionary who achieved little but talked well enough to be awarded
the Companion of Honour by the queen in 1958, when he was 86.

   Craig had a vision that the future of
the theatre lay in lights, sounds, shadows and screens at the expense of “the
dry words of dramatic poets, the fancy games of foolish actors and the vain calculations
of producers”. He wrote a controversial manifesto “On the Art of the Theatre “.
But what is truly memorable about him in Sir Michael’s account is his
performance as a serial seducer. He married twice and had six children by his
wives.

   Konstantin Stanislavski, a legendary
Russian director, thought Craig was a genius, and so did Craig himself—a
conviction that receives little encouragement from the author. So incorrigible
was Craig that he was forgiven for his dalliance with fascism (in 1941 he was
released from a prison camp in Besancon in France by an admirer from Hitler’s
headquarters staff). His death in 1966 ends Sir Michael’s delightful narrative
—he has given up footnotes — which reads like a series of compelling scripts
for an extravagant soap opera, perhaps titled “WestEnders”.

Words and expressions:

1. doyen — старейшина

2. unwieldy — rpoмоздкий

3. enchanting
— очаровательная

4. eminent
— известный

5. infatuation
— увлечение

6. to dabble in the theatre — заниматься театром

7. foolhardy — безрассудный

8. rambling tale — бессвязный рассказ

9. to be celebrity — быть знаменитым

10. to be social outcast — быть
изгоем
в
обществе

11. to be knighted
— быть посвященным в рыцари

12. rash
— поспешный, необдуманный

13. to confess
— признаваться

14. brougham — машину

15. to alight — выходить

16. fairly successful — довольно успешный

17. to be enthralled by smth. — быть увлеченным чем-то

18. anaemia –малокровье

19. to provide — представлять

20. dictum — uзречение

21. preoccupation —увлеченность

22. in the Terry household — в
доме
Терри

23. flamboyance — эпатаж

24. fancy game — причудливая игра

25. a theatrical visionary — театральный
художник

26. incorrigible — неисправимый

27. a serial seducer — cерийный
соблазнитель

28. dalliance — флирт

29. delightful narrative — восхитительное
повествование

30. compelling scripts — захватывающий сценарий

Answer the questions:

1.What
book did Sir Michael Holroyd write and about whom?

2.What
Victorian prejudices did Ellen Terry ignore?

3.What
relationship was between the great actress and her partner Irving?

4.How
did the author describe her marriage?

5.Whose
lives are tragic stand in the story?

6.What
was the fate of Ellen Terry’s daughter?

7.What
vision of the future of the theatre had Edward Gordon Craig?

8.How
did Konstantin Stanislavski appreciate Edward Craig?

                                    Text
12. Winning Streak

   Every four years in summer, the British
prepare for their team to be gallant losers in the Olympics. But this August
has brought winner upon winner. As The Economist went to press, the British
team stood in third place in the medals table with 17 golds, behind only China
and America, the most since 1908 when Britain hosted the games and fielded a
third of the competitors, including all of them in some events.

   With some exceptions, such as Rebecca
Adlington’s two golds in the pool, Britain’s medals were concentrated in three
“ sitting — down “ sports: cycling, sailing and rowing. The achievements of the
cyclists, winning eight golds, four silvers and two bronzes, were especially
notable; Chris Hoy scored a golden hat — trick. Their success offers some clues
to why Britain has staged such a comeback.

   A shot of public money has undoubtedly
helped a lot. In 1996 British Cycling,which runs the sport, was so short of
cash it could not afford to send officials to the under-23 European
Championships; it even required its cyclists to return their tracksuits
afterwards. In Beijing the British cyclists’ high — tech bikes and budget were
the envy of the velodrome.

   With extra cash has come greater
professionalism. As well as state — of—theart bicycles, British Cycling has
been able to afford some of the leading advisers in the sport, focusing on
areas as varied as nutrition and sports psychology. It has also set up an
academy system that has helped foster talented young riders, who are now beginning
to make their mark.

   The way public cash is awarded, using a
formula gauging past and potential performance against targets, has sharpened
the incentives to take a more professional approach. Underperforming sports
risk losing financial support. As Stefan Szymanski, a professor of economics at
City University’s Class Business School, points out, this is a more credible
threat to sports with a small following, such as cycling. It works less well in
events such as athletics, where high public interest makes it difficult for UK Sport,
the main body which doles out the cash, to cut funding too drastically.

   Britain’s success is not without
detractors. The rationale behind public funding of elite athletes is that
success at the top will lead to greater public participation. Yet critics fear
that it may mean less money for recreational sports facilities, which would have
the opposite effect.

   Despite such worries, Britain has
exulted in the success. That suggests an unlikely victor ludorum: John Major, a
much derided prime minister, whose establishment of a national lottery in 1994
has been instrumental in getting so much extra money into sport.

Words and expressions:

1.winning streak — полоса
побед

2. to field
— выставлять

3. comeback
— возвращение

4. a shot of public money
— вливание государственных денег

5. envy — зависть

6. a state – of –theart bicycles – cовременные
велосипеды

7. nutrition — питание

8. to foster talented young riders — поощрять
талантливых молодых гонщиков

9. to gauge
— измерять

10. а target
— целевой показатель

11. to sharpen — обострять

12. incentive — стимул

13. a credible threat — реальная
угроза

14. to dole out the cash — pacпределять деньги

15. drastically — существенно

16. detractors — недоброжелатели

17. to exult — ликовать

18. victor ludorum — no6eдитель

19. to deride — ocмеивать

Answer the questions:

1.How
often does the Olympics take place in summer?

2.How
many gold medals did the British team win in

the
Olympics in summer in 2008?

3.What
kind of sports were Britain’s medals concentrated in?

4.Why
has the British team got so many gold medals?

5.How
did John Major, a much derived prime minister of Britain,

help
in getting extra money into sport?

                               Text
13. Where the Shoe Pinches.

   Old-fashioned Russians love kefir, made
from fermented milk; Vietnam, there is a kind of cold coffee, called ca phe sua
da, made with sweet, condenced milk. Consumption of both these tipples is
sagging, after a jump in the price of the dairy products they contain.

   Almost everywhere in the world, people
are feeding the pinch because of higher food and fuel prices. But levels of
optimism and pessimism, and the ways in which people act on their mood, seem to
vary in a peculiar way, according to Nielsen, a marketing — information firm.
And the countries where people complain most about feeling squeezed area
mixture of rich and poor.

   Some findings confirm stereotypes: if
they have any spare money, consumers in the Asia-Pacific region are more inclined
to save it than to splurge. Some 57% of them say they put any disposable cash
straight in the bank. For Russian consumers,who only 15 years ago had little to
consume at all, clothing is a priority: over two thirds say their wardrobe is
the most likely beneficiary of any spare funds they have. People in Nordic
countries view a holiday as a necessity, whereas Brazilians seem happier to
stay at home.

   Across the world, people want to save
money on food, but shopping habits vary a lot. In Latin America—where staples
such as powdered milk, cooking oil and rice have risen in price by up to 40% —
people say they are now more likely to buy food frequently and in modest
amounts. In both Europe and America, the response is the opposite: people who
drive to hypermarkets in search of the best bargains say they are doing so less
often than before, in part because the cost of filling their tank has gone up.

   At least in rich countries, the rise in
the price of food (and the share of the family budget it absorbs ) has to be
kept in perspective. Some 50 years ago, about 30% of household income in
Britain went on food; now it is half that. Shoppers of an earlier generation
would be startled to learn that Britons bina third of the food they buy, and
Americans not much less. In rich countries, there has been a spurt of interest
in using leftovers, but so far this is a middle-class fad; whether ordinary
folk will follow is still uncertain.

   In Europe, consumers now buy food in
the way they purchase clothes: going downmarket for basics and splurging on the
odd treat. Gourmet chocolate bars are the equivalent of a designer handbag. In
fact, cost-conscious consumers may start buying more fancy food than before, to
make up for going out to restaurants less.

   For many, spending for pleasure is
impossible: around one — fifth of respondents in Britain, Germany and France
say they have no spare cash after covering the basics. A quarter of Americans
say the same. But some habits are immune to gloom. Eight out of ten American
adults say they still go to the cinema; maybe spine — chilling movies like “
The Dark Knight “ make real life more bearable.

Words and expressions:

1. fermented milk— кисломолочный
продукт

2. condensed milk— сгущенное молоко

3. to feed the pinch — питаться
впроголодь

4. to feel squeezed — чувствовать
брезгливость

5. consumption — потребление

6. tipple — напиток

7. to sag — снижаться

8. consumer
— потребитель

9. to splurge
— тратиться

10. disposable cash
— uмеющиеся
в распоряжении деньги

11. beneficiary of any spare fuds
— получатель любых свободных средств

12. staple
— основные продукты

13. response — ответ

14. bargain — покупка

15. tank – бак

16. share
— часть, доля

17. to bin
— выбрасывать на помойку

18. a spurt of interest — всплеск
интереса

19. leftovers
— ocтатки,
объедки

20. fad
— причуда, увлечение

21. basics
— основные продукты

22. odd treat
— необычные лакомства

23. gourmet chocolate bars
— шоколадные плитки для гурманов

24. cost
— conscious
— сознательно оценивающий

25. fancy food
— необычная пища

26. to be immune
— быть невосприимчивым

27.  gloom
— уныние

28. spine
— chilling movies
— леденящие кровь фильмы

29. bearable — cносный,
терпимый.

Answer the questions:

1.What
do old-fashioned Russians and the citizens of Vietnam love?

2.Why
are people almost everywhere in the world feeding the pinch?

3.If
consumers in different countries have any spare money, what will they do with them?

4.Do
people across the world want to save money on food and how do they do it?

5.How
do people in different countries spend their spare cash?

                                Text 14. Through
Death to Life.

   “ Severn — I — lift me up, for I am
dying.I shall die easy. Don’t be frightened! Thank God it has come.” It is
perhaps the most poignant deathbed in English literature: the poet John Keats,
on February 23 1821, released at last — still only 25 —from a body in which
doctors are amazed he has been able to live at all, with the thoracic cavity
blackened and the lungs destroyed. His friend, Joseph Severn, has faithfully
watched him to the last in the coffin — like bedroom in Rome, feeding him sips
of milk, absorbing his outbursts of furious misery and, to keep himself
awake,drawing him. His sketch of Keats in the sleep of almost — death, with his
sweaty hair lank across his forehead, has become the totemic image of the poet;
that, and the deathmask that was made shortly afterwards.

   Many people could be blamed for this
death. Percy Bysshe Shelly, who tried to be a friend but could only be a rival,
thought Keats had been destroyed by the awful reviews of his long poem “ Endymion
“. ( Keats himself seemed to disagree, writing to his brother George that the
reviews were “a mere matter of the moment“, and that “I think I shall be among
the English Poets after my death.”) Charles Brown, a supposed close friend, was
too seldom there for Keats when he needed him, for money, shelter or
companionship. Keats’s mother carried the consumption that killed him; his
brother Tom, who died of the disease in 1818, probably infected him as he nursed
him. His doctors misdiagnosed him to the last, blaming his nerves and his stomach.
Fanny Brawne, the object of his love, may have broken his heart; he was buried
with her last letters to him, which he could not bear to read.

   But Keats himself had hardly taken
care: trekking through the Scottish mountains in pouring rain, going out on a
fine winter day without a greatcoat, dismissing his “slight sore throat “ as
nothing in particular. The moment of truth came early in 1820, when he coughed
up bright arterial blood onto his sheets. As a medical man himself, trained as
a hospital dresser, he knew this was a sign he could not ignore.

   Stanley Plumly, a professor of the
University of Maryland, has written a haunting study in which the poet’s death
overhangs and informs the life. It begins with Keats’s few friends arguing over
the words on his headstone — could he truly have wanted “Here lies one whose
name was writ in water” ? — moves on through his morialising by the too —lush
pre —Raphaelites and selective biographers, and dives back into his writing
life.

   Keats wrote not only superb poems but
also wonderful, witty, revealing letters,out of which the poetry sometimes
arises like a spontaneous growth. He considered and anatomized the nature of
his art all through his brief career. Mr Plumly, a poet himself, is the ideal
companion on what he sees as Keats’s meandering path to both mortality and
immortality. The book, billed as “ personal “, has an enthusiast’s flaws, such
as repetition and occasional over — indulgence; but it also has the wisdom, delicacy
and insight of long knowing and reading, and of love.

Words and expressions:

1. poignant — горький

2. thoracic cavity –rpyдная клетка

3. sip of milk —глоток молока

4. furious misery — неистовое страдание

5. sweaty hair lank across his forehead — потные
волосы
падали
на
лоб

6. rival
— coперник

7. mere matter
— единственное дело

8. consumption
— чахотка

9. to trek
— ходить в поход

10. haunting study
— призрачное исследование

11. to overhang
— нависать над

12.  morialising
— морализация

13. too—lush
— слишком пышный

14. to dive back
— norpyзиться
обратно

15. superb
— превосходный, великолепный

16. revealing letters
— разоблачительные письма

17. meandering path
— извилистая тропа

18. mortality
— cмертность

19. flaw
— недостаток, изъян

20. over
— indulgence
— чрезмерная снисходительность

Answer the questions:

1.When
did the poet John Keats die and why?

2.Who
was his friend? How did he help John?

3.Why
did the biographer blame many people for this death?

4.Did
Keats take care of himself?

5.What
study has Stanley Plumly, a professor at the University of Maryland,      

  
written?

6.What
did Keats write?

                              Text 15.
Rugby’s Role in His Rise.

   Towards the end of his 27 years in
jail, Nelson Mandela began to yearn for a hotplate. He was being well fed by
this point, not least because he was the world’s most famous political
prisoner. But his jailers gave him too much food for lunch and not enough for
supper. He had taken to saving some of his mid—day meal until the evening, by
which time it was cold, and he wanted something to heat it up.

   The problem was that the officer in
charge of Pollsmoor prison’s maximum-security “ C “ wing was prickly, insecure,
uncomfortable talking in English and virtually allergic to black political
prisoners. To get around him, Mr.Mandela started reading about rugby, a sport
he had never liked but which his jailer, like most Afrikaner man, adored. Then,
when they met in a corridor, Mr.Mandela immediately launched into a detailed
discussion, in Afrikaans, about prop forwards, scrum halves and recent games. His
jailer was so charmed that before he knew it he was barking at an underling to “90
and get Mandela a hotplate!”

   Mr.Mandela’s story never fails to
inspire. As a young man, he started an armed struggle against apartheid. It
went nowhere, and he went to jail. While maturing behind bars, he decided that
moral suasion might work where bombs had failed. It did. South Africa’s white
rulers surrendered power without a civil war. Several books have been written
about Mr.Mandela’s crucial role in coaxing his countrymen towards a more civilised
form of government. John Carlin’s is the first to tell the tale through the prism
of sport.

   This premise is not as odd as it
sounds. It was not only Mr.Mandela’s regal charm that won over white South
Africans. It was the fact that he took the trouble to study and understand
their culture. At a time when many blacks dismissed rugby as “the brutish,
alien pastime of a brutish, alien people”, Mr.Mandela saw it as a bridge across
the racial chasm.

   The game is not an incidental part of
Afrikaner culture, like cricket is to the English. To many Afrikaners, who have
grown up playing rough games on sun-baked ground so hard that every tumble
draws blood, rugby is little short of everything. Mr.Mandela knew that if he
was to convince these people that one man, one vote would not mean catastrophe,
he had to “address their hearts”, not their brains. If the fearsome terrorist
on the other side of the negotiating table was a rugby fan, could he really be
as bad as they thought?

   Mr.Carlin focuses on the decade after
1985, when most blacks thought the country was sliding into war. He draws on
his experiences as the South Africa correspondent for the Independent, a
British newspaper, during the transition to democracy. But the book does not climax,
as a standard historical text might, with South Africa’s first proper
multi-racial elections in 1994. Instead, it builds up to the rugby world cup
final in 1995, which was held in South Africa and which the home team won.

   This makes sense. Elections are all
very well, but the moment when black South Africans started cheering for a
mostly — white rugby team, when white fans in the stadium tried gamely to sing
a Zulu miners’ anthem and when Mr.Mandela donned the green jersey of the
Springboks —“ It was the moment I realized that there really was a chance this
country could work, “ gushes a teary — eyed rugby officials.

   Mr.Carlin brings the story alive by
telling it through the eyes of a broad spectrum of South Africans. Among these
is Desmond Tutu, the Nobel prize- winning archbishop of Cape Town, who was in
America on the day of the final and had to find a bar that would let him watch
it at an ungodly hour of the morning. Also, Niel Barnard, a former chief spy
for the apartheid regime, who used to keep a thick file on Bishop Tutu. And
Justice Bekebeke, a young township firebrand who killed a policeman for firing
at a child during a riot and spend time on death row.

   Mr.Bekebeke is the most interesting of
Mr.Carlin’s portraits.On the morning of the match, he is still too bitter about
a lifetime of injustice to support the Springboks. But then, something changes.
The surging emotion of the event sweeps him along. “I just had to give up, to
surrender, “he says. “ And I said to myself, well, this is the new reality.
There is no going back: the South Affican team is now my team, whoever they
are, whatever their colour.”

Many writers reveal the nuts and bolts of
South Africa’s transformation to nonracial democracy. But few capture the
spirit as well as Mr.Carlin.

Words and expressions:

1. to yearn for— тосковать
по

2. hotplate
— электрическая плита

3. officer in charge of security
— офицер, отвечающий за безопасность

4. prickly
— раздражительный

5. insecure
— ненадежный

6. to launch into a detailed discussion
—начать подробное обсуждение

7. prop forward
— onopный
нападающий

8. scrum halves
— дерущиеся за мяч полузащитники

9. to bark at
— pявкать
на кого-то

10. underling — noдчиненный

11. never fails to inspire — не
перестает
вдохновлять

12. while maturing behind bars—
во время взросления за решеткой

13. moral suasion
— моральные убеждения

14. to surrender  power—
ycтупать
власть

15. crucial role in coaxing
— peшающую
роль в убеждении

16. premise
—предложение

17. regal
— величественный

18. to dismiss
– отвергать

19. brutish
— грубый, жестокий

20. alien
— чуждый

21. racial chasm
— расовая пропасть

22. rough games
— жестокие игры

23. tumble
— падение

24. to convince — yбеждать

25. vote —голос

26. fearsome terrorist — ужасный
террорист

27. to draw on one’s experiences — опираться
на
свой
опыт

28. climax
— кульминация

29. multi—racial elections
— многонациональные выборы

30. Zulu miners’
anthem
—гимн зулусских шахтеров

31. to don
— oдевать

32. jersey
— футбольную майку

33. gushes a teary—eyed rugby—officials
—cо
слезами на глазах говорит регбист

34. firebrand
— cмутьян

35. riot
— беспорядки

36. death row
— камера смертников

37.
He is still too bitter about a lifetime of injustice. — Он все
еще слишком горько переживает несправедливость всей своей жизни.

38. surging emotion — нахлынувшие эмоции

39. to reveal the nuts and bolts — pacкрыть нюансы

Answer the questions:

1.What
did Nelson Mandela begin to yearn for?

2.What
kind of man was the officer in charge in Pillsmoor prison?

3.What
is Mr.Mandela’s story?

4.How
did Mr.Mandela take the trouble to study and understand the culture of white
South Africans?

5.When
did the team of South Africa win the rugby world cup final?

6.About
whom does Mr.Carlin write in his story besides Mr.Mandela?

                            Text 16. Big Brains and
a Hairy Chest.

   It is, or was, fashionable to look down
on Bernard—Henri Levy, a French writer and intellectual. The left tends to
despise him for questioning its idols. It doesn’t help that he is rich, talks
intelligibly and has a beautiful wife. The right condescends to him for being
vain, glib and writing too many books.

   So it was satisfying for Mr.Levy to get
a begging call from Nicolas Sarkozy last year when he was running for the
French presidency. The two men knew each other from Mr Sarkozy’s former
constituency. Neuilly, on the edge of Paris, where Mr.Levy lives and votes. As
France’s star, could Mr.Levy write “a nice article’ endorsing him? No, he
couldn’t, Mr.Levy told him. The left was his family. “ Your family?” Mr.Sarkozy
retorted. ““ These people who’ve spent 30 years telling you to go fuck yourself
?” Mr.Levy held firm. Despite everything, he still belonged on the left.

   On hanging up, he asked himself why.
“Left in Dark Times” is his answer, a mixture of political autobiography,
polemic and plea. Four 20″ — century episodes fixed Mr. Levy’s general
outlook: the Dreyfus affair, France’s wartime Vichy government, the Algerian
war and les evenements of May 1968. Those are markers for the “isms” he learned
to detest: populism, fascism, colonialism and authoritarianism. He has proud
memories of the left. His father fought fascism in Spain in the 1930s. He himself
saw left-wing soldiers end Portugal’s dictatorship in 1975.

   Other memories make him ashamed of the
left: encounters with Indian Maoists who had just shot dead several landowners,
or with Mexican and Italian nihilists threatening to shoot him for apostasy.
His most shaming memory is Bosnia, whose war he filmed and which he thinks the
West, particularly the Western left, betrayed.

   In his polemic he attacks the six
principal claims of the influential anti-global left. Liberalism is not,
Mr.Levy counters, just the free market: human rights and democracy matter too.
Europe is not, or not only, a capitalistic machine. The United States is not a
semi-fascist country. Humanitarian intervention is not an imperialist ploy.
Israel is not to blame for anti-Semitism, which is serious and growing.
Militant Islamism is not the West’s fault but a homegrown scourge that
threatens the West much as fascism did.

   He ends with a plea for the “universal
values “ of human rights and democracy. He is less for multicultural tolerance
than for secularism. By that he means keeping moral and religious demands,
where possible, out of politics. The left he would like to belong to is not
dreamy about the world. It knows how bad things can get. It accepts that there
is evil.He wants a “melancholic” not a “Tyrical” left.

   Mr.Levy’s essay deserves attention
despite notable faults. He writes in bloggese, the underedited,
all-in-one-breath style of webchat. For the business — school mind, it is too
much about ideas, not policy management. Nor will it detain party politicians,
keener to win power than to take stands. But ideas and taking stands matter
too. Politics needs intellectuals.In modern times the brainy left provided most
of the mental opposition up to the 1960s or so. The right’s eggheads then took
over.It is the left’s turn again in Mr.Levy’s view. First, though, its
intellectuals need to grow up.

Words and expressions:

1. hairy chest
— волосатая грудь

2. to tend
— cклоняться
к чему-либо

3. to despise
— презирать, пренебрегать

4. to condescend to smb.—
снисходительно относиться к кому-либо

5. vain
— тщеславный

6. glib
— болтливый

7. constituency
— uзбирательный
округ, электорат

8. to endorse smb.
— поддерживать кого-то

9. to held firm
— держаться стойко

10. to retort
— отвечать резко

11. on hanging up
— повесив трубку, положив трубку

12. plea
— обращение, заявление, призыв

13. general outlook — общий
прогноз

14. les evenements — события

15. to detest
— ненавидеть, испытывать отвращение

16. encounter
— встреча, знакомство

17. landowner
— землевладелец

18. for apostasy
— за вероотступничество

19. to betray
— предавать

20. claim
— утверждение

21. to counter
— считать

22. to matter
— иметь значение

23. semi—fascist – полуфашисткий

24. ploy
— уловка

25. Militant Islamism
— воинствующий исламизм

26. scourge
— бич, бедствие

27. secularism
— светскость

28. underedited
— не требующий редактирования

29. to detain
– yдерживать

30. to take stands
— принять точку зрения

31. egghead
— умник, «яйцеголовый»

32. to take over
— взять на себя ответственность

Answer the questions:

1.What
kind of person is a French writer Bernard-Henry Levy?

2.What
did Nicolas Sarkozy ask Mr.Levy for and what was Mr.Levy’s answer?

3.What
did Mr.Levy learn to detest?

4.Why
was he ashamed of the left?

5.What
political views has Mr.Levy?

6.Why
does Mr.Levy’s essay deserve attention?

МБОУ «Гимназия п.Нижний Куранах»

Олизаренко Ю.В.

Упражнения для подготовки к ОГЭ по английскому языку

Устная часть

ЧТЕНИЕ ТЕКСТА ВСЛУХ

1

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud. 

Nowadays solar energy is widely used as an alternative form of power. Solar panels transform the energy from the sun into electricity. The first plane that does not need fuel was constructed in France, in 2015. It uses only the sun’s energy. The panels are placed on the huge wings of the plane. It doesn’t fly very fast. Solar energy can make the plane move at only 140 miles an hour. However, the plane is able to travel round the world. It is safe and can successfully cross areas of bad weather. In the future, engineers hope to construct a model that people can fly in. Our dream of environmentally friendly transport may come true very soon. Would you like to take a flight on the solar plane?

2

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud. 

We are always told that we should clean our teeth regularly to keep them healthy and to have fresh breath. It is believed that people started using a kind of paste to clean their teeth around 5000 years ago. However, the ingredients of these tooth powders were very different from ours. For example, the people of ancient Egypt used salt, mint, dried flowers and pepper to create tooth powder. Later, in the 18th century, in some countries in Europe, people brushed their teeth with burnt bread. The first toothpaste appeared in 1890, in Great Britain. At first it was sold in jars. Then special tubes were designed to make the toothpaste more comfortable to use.

3

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud.

Do you know why it is hot in the summer and cold in the winter? Most people believe that it is because the Earth is closer to the Sun in the summer and farther from it in the winter. But it is not like this at all! In fact, the distance between the Earth and the Sun is largest in July and smallest in January! Scientists suggest that the reason for different summer and winter temperatures is the angle of the Sun’s rays. In the summer, the rays reach the Earth almost at a right angle. Due to this, the rays are not spread out and a smaller area of the planet’s surface gets the energy. In the winter, the angle changes and the Sun’s rays are spread out over a larger area. Besides this, the long nights and short days do not give enough time for the land to warm up.

4

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud.

 A robot is a machine that does work for people. The word ‘robot’ appeared in the 1920s and it was first used in a science fiction story. In real life, the robot was invented later, in 1954. There are different kinds of robots which are used in different industries. Most of them are operated with the help of a computer program. Instead of humans, robots do hard and boring work in unpleasant or dangerous environments. They usually work faster and more accurately than people. They never get tired and do not make mistakes. Nowadays robots are often used for domestic needs – to clean houses or to look after sick and elderly people. Scientists say that soon robots will become a normal part of our life, like mobiles and computers today.

5

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud.

  Nowadays people can’t imagine their kitchen without a refrigerator. The first refrigerators appeared at the end of the 18th century. They looked different: they were just iceboxes. The refrigerators of the past were just wooden boxes, sometimes lined inside with metal. People put ice into the box and then placed the food inside to keep it cool. The refrigerator, similar to the one that we have now, was produced by General Electric in 1911, in France. It was very expensive. In those days, with the same money you could buy two cars. Today, in developed countries almost every family has enough money to buy a refrigerator for their kitchen. It’s hard to imagine how difficult and uncomfortable our lives would be without a refrigerator.

6

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud.

 Without the energy from the Sun, the Earth would have no life at all. Nowadays everyone knows that the Sun is a star. Like all stars, the Sun is a great burning ball of gases. To us, it seems large and red. The other stars look white or light blue because they are much farther from us than the Sun. In the past, many people believed that the Earth was the centre of the universe. They thought that the Sun and the stars went round it. Only in 1543, a great Polish scientist published a book in which he tried to prove a different point of view. According to him, the Earth and the other planets moved round the Sun. Those people who supported the scientist were often imprisoned and even killed.

7

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud.

The carrot is a root vegetable which consists mostly of water and sugar. The carrots that we eat today originated from the wild ones which grew in Europe and Asia. The vegetable tasted sweet and the people began to use it as food.

There are two main types of carrots. There are eastern carrots that have dark purple roots and western carrots with orange roots. In fact, orange carrots first appeared in Europe in 1721. Dutch farmers selected orange carrots because orange is the colour of the Dutch Royal Family. Now orange carrots are widely grown all over the world. In modern households carrots are cooked and eaten in different ways. The vegetable is boiled, fried, baked and eaten raw. People also make juice from it.

8

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud.

Since 2007 high-speed trains have become a common type of transport in Europe. They make it possible to cut travel times by hours. The trains travel at 350 kilometres an hour, and this is not the limit! The only problem for the engineers is the loud noise the trains produce. People living in the areas the trains travel through suffer from the noise greatly. For the passengers, the situation is different. For their comfort, all the carriages are made sound-proof from the inside. Travelling on high-speed trains is comfortable and pleasant. In the future, a high-speed railroad network could cover most of Europe. For example, a trip from Paris to Rome could take only 3 hours!

9

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud. 

Venus is one of the hottest planets in the Solar system. The temperature on its surface is 482 degrees. This unfriendly place looks much the same as the Earth 4 billion years ago. Both planets were formed from the same gas cloud but Venus lost most of its water and atmosphere. This happened because the planet turns very slowly. As a result, now it has no magnetic field to protect it from the Sun’s winds. The planet has turned into a lifeless desert. Most space modules that were sent to Venus, could not work on the planet more than two hours. The acidic clouds and high pressure quickly made them absolutely useless.

10

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud.

Studies of the atmosphere first received technical support in 1912. Equipment to measure temperature and pressure was invented in Germany. But the question was how to raise it high into the air. In 1921, Russian engineers suggested using planes. The special equipment was put on planes that made regular flights. Thanks to this, scientists got a lot of new information about the structure of the atmosphere. Nowadays scientists use modern flying laboratories to study the structure of clouds at different levels. Unlike the first planes, these laboratories can work in any weather and are able to predict climate changes.

11

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud. 

Wombats are exotic animals that only live in Australia. They have become an unofficial symbol of the country. In 1974 a wombat appeared on an Australian stamp for the first time. Since then it has been regularly used on different Australian stamps and coins. Wombats look like little bears and prefer grass to meat. They also love eating berries, plant roots and mushrooms. Like camels, wombats drink little water because there is enough water in fresh grass. Wombats spend most of their life in holes under the ground. With their strong arms and long nails they are able to dig very long and complex tunnels. Fortunately, wombats have few enemies in the animal world. Most wombats live around 15 years.

12

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud. 

The word ‘tsunami’ can be translated from Japanese as ‘big wave’. It describes a natural process that can be dangerous for people and their homes. Most of the huge waves appear after earthquakes. Most waves are born in the Indian and the Pacific Oceans where volcanoes are active. The mass of water rises from the bottom of the ocean and moves to the shore. It moves at the speed of a plane and can be up to 40 meters high. The wave is very powerful and dangerous. In 2004, a tsunami happened in the Indian Ocean. It was one of most terrible natural disasters in history. It hit 14 countries bordering the Indian Ocean. Thousands of people were killed or went missing.

13

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud. 

Snowdon is the highest mountain in Wales. It is located in a national park. It stands at 1085 metres above sea level, and it is often described as the busiest mountain in Great Britain. Snowdon is very popular with tourists. If you are strong and brave enough to get to the top, you can enjoy wonderful views from there. On a clear day, you can see as far as Ireland! During the summer months there is a café at the top. There, tourists can get a welcome cup of tea, or soup if the weather is cold. If you feel too tired to walk back, you can always take the train down the mountain. The mountain railway was built in 1896. It is safe, and there have never been any accidents on this route.

14

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud. 

Most people enjoy watching the night sky. And the brightest object in the sky is the Moon. Every night the Moon rises in the East and sets in the West. It takes about 27 days to go around the Earth, and it’s an interesting fact that we always see the same side of the Moon. The Moon is the closest object to the Earth. It would take us only 13 hours to get to the Moon by rocket. If we were able to travel at the speed of light, it would take a bit less than two seconds.

There is a very thin atmosphere on the Moon. Life is not possible there. In spite of this, the Moon can be used as a base for space exploration and even for space tourism. Some space companies say that they will be able to take tourists to the Moon as soon as in 2020.

15

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud. 

People have always wanted to discover new things and new worlds. We have built spaceships to go to other planets and are planning to visit other galaxies one day. Meanwhile, we know very little about our own planet. The oceans, which cover 70 percent of the planet, are an unknown world to us. The Pacific Ocean is the largest one. The lowest point on the Earth is also there. It is called Challenger Deep and it was discovered in 1875. The Pacific Ocean stretches from the Arctic Ocean to the coast of Antarctica, but most of its water is in the warm tropics, which makes it warm. A lot of fish and animals live in the Pacific Ocean. The place is still waiting for researchers to discover its secrets for us.

16

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud. 

The Arctic Ocean is the smallest ocean of the world. It covers the northern polar region of the Earth. The Arctic region is a very cold place. The lowest recorded temperature there is minus 68 degrees. In spite of the cold, a lot of animals live on the Arctic ice. The polar bear is one of them. Now, due to global warming, the polar bear is in a serious trouble. The thing is that polar bears hunt seals and they need ice to do this. The bears wait for seals on the ice, hunt them in the water and go back to the shore. If the ice is too thin, it breaks under the bears’ heavy bodies and they may drown. The situation is getting worse and some researchers say the ocean may become ice-free as soon as 2050.

17

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud. 

In 1642 a French student invented the first mechanical calculator. He was only 18 and the counting machine was a present for his father. The father worked as a tax collector and the young man wanted to make his job easier.

The talented inventor made several machines but nobody was interested. The young man was ahead of his time. Many years passed before people realized how useful these machines could be and started mass producing them.

Today most mechanical calculators have been replaced with electronic models. These small devices can perform a lot of mathematical operations. You just need to enter the numbers by pressing the keys and you’ll see the final result on the screen in no time.

18

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud. 

One day a young man who lived near the lake in a small American town asked himself, “Why can’t people ski on water if they can ski on snow?” With his brother’s help he constructed several models of skis to test his ideas. He experimented on the local lake for a few days and created skis suitable for the water. This happened in 1922. The young man, who was only 18 at that time, didn’t patent his invention. However, he performed a lot of shows across the country that made him and the sport of water skiing popular. Later, he was recognized as the creator of a new sport – water skiing.

Water skiing equipment has been greatly improved since that time, and the number of people who enjoy this sport is growing in many countries.

19

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud. 

The ninth planet of the solar system was discovered not long ago. It happened in 1930. Scientists had been hunting for the planet for a long time. They had calculated its probable position but there was no proof that the planet really existed. It was too far away for the telescopes of that time to find it. It’s worth mentioning that the first photos of the planet were taken by a very young researcher. He was only twenty-four and had no formal education in astronomy. However he was deeply involved in the search for the ninth planet. The planet at the edge of the solar system was called Pluto, after the Roman god. The name for the planet was suggested by an 11-year-old British girl.

20

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud. 

Whether we realise it or not, TV plays a very important part in our lives. It’s the main source of information and a cheap form of entertainment for millions of people. It gives us an opportunity to «travel» all over the world, to «meet» different people and learn about their customs and traditions.It helps us to relax after a hard day’s work and escape from reality. Some people argue that television is a terrible waste of time. It makes us lazier. We stay at home instead of going out. We read less. We think less. We even talk less. It’s true that some TV addicts spend hours in front of the «box» watching whatever’s on — from second-rate Mexican soap operas to silly commercials. The trick is to learn to control television and use it intelligently. The ideal is to turn on the TV-set only when there’s a really interesting programme. Violence on TV is another problem that worries people. But the same can be said about computer games and many films and books.

And if you don’t like a certain programme, why watch it?

21

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud. 

Films and science fiction books often played with the idea of reproducing exact copies of people. Today, science fiction has become science fact. The revolution began in 1997, when British scientists produced the first cloned sheep, Dolly. Since then scientists have cloned mice, cows, dogs and pigs. Cloning animals opens exciting medical possibilities, for example cloning organs for transplantation. Scientists can create animals which produce more milk, meat and wool, or animals which don’t catch certain diseases. This can save the lives of starving people.

Cloning is a controversial issue. Some people are ready to eat cloned fruits and vegetables, but many people are against cloning animals. The question of human cloning is even more controversial. Suppose we cloned a man. Are we really sure he will be a man? Who will be responsible for him? Who will bring him up? Will he be happy? Will he have the same rights as we have? Nevertheless, the idea of human cloning seems very exciting.

22

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud. 

Physical fitness is a general state of good health, usually as a result of exercise and nutrition. Physical fitness can also be described as a condition that allows us to look, feel and do our best. Being fit helps us have more energy for work or school, and enough energy to enjoy our leisure time activities. Fitness is an individual quality. It is influenced by age, sex, heredity, personal habits, habits, exercise and eating practices. You can’t do anything about the first three factors. However, it is within your power to change and improve the others where needed. The level of physical fitness can be influenced by regular, systematic exercise. How often, how long and how hard you exercise, and what kinds of exercises you do should be determined by what you are trying to get. For example, an athlete training for high-level competition would follow a different program than a person whose goals are good health and active life.

23

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud. 

With its architecturally defined profile, this is one of London’s most popular historical buildings. Buckingham Palace was built in 1703 for the Duke of Buckingham. When the Queen is here, the royal standard flut­ters over the palace. The Buckingham Palace is open to the public on Wednesday and Thursday. The Queen’s Gallery has especial exhibitions from the Royal collection and may be visited every day except Monday. The Palace and the beautiful gardens which surround it occupy an area of approximately 40 acres. Altogether this is one of the most interesting places in London for the tourists.

The ceremony of the Changing of the Guard takes place daily at eleven o’clock in the morning. Every day a large crowd of people gather to see this famous and traditional ceremony. Buckingham Palace is not only the royal residence: it’s a small city under one roof. It has a cinema, a post-office, some cafés and a restaurant, a hospital and even a night club. More than 700 people work here every day. 

24

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud. 

The school system in the UK may seem rather confusing for people from other countries. There are two types of schools in the UK. Most of schools are state schools where education is free. But there are also private schools where you have to pay. Such schools are often very expensive. It may seem strange, but private schools in Britain are called public. A long time ago when education was a privilege of the rich, the only schools where poor people could go got the money from charity organizations. As it was public money, the schools for the poor were called public schools. Some of these public schools were very successful and later they became expensive private schools for rich people. But the conservative British continued to call them public schools. The first thing you need to have is money as studying at some public schools costs up to 20 000 pounds a year. There are some grants for bright pupils from poor families but the places are few and the competition is very strong. It’s not surprising that only six percent of the people in the UK can study at public schools.

25

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud. 

This is one of the nerve- centres of London. It was named Trafalgar Square to commemorate the historical naval victory won on the 21st of October 1805 by the British fleet under the command of Horatio Nelson over the French-Spanish fleet. The battle took place at Cape Trafalgar in the mouth of the Straits of Gibraltar and lasted several hours. Nelson was fatally wounded by a shot which broke his backbone. He died on board his flagship the Victory, but not before being told that he had won the battle. Nelson’s Column, with the statue of Admiral Lord Nelson on top, rises in the centre of Trafalgar Square. This most impressive monument is 170 feet (about 52 m) tall. The statue of Nelson, placed facing towards the sea he loved, measures 17 feet (more than 5 m) in height.

To the north-east of Trafalgar Square there is the building that houses the National Gallery of Art — one of the most important Art Galleries in the world — and behind is the National Portrait Gallery. There are many pigeons in the square and Londoners like to feed them. Everybody knows that the dove is the symbol of peace all over the world.

26

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud. 

The National gallery in London stands to the north of the Trafalgar Square. It houses one of the richest and most extensive collections of painting in the world. The collection covers all schools and periods of painting, but is a specially famous for its examples of Rembrandt and Rubents. The British school is only moderately represented as the national collections are shared with the Tate gallery. The National gallery was founded in 1824 when the government bought the collection of John Angerstein which included 38 paintings.

The Tate gallery houses the national collection of British painting from the 16-th century to the present day. It is also the national gallery for modern art, including painting and sculpture made in Britain, Europe, America and other countries. It was opened in 1897 as the national gallery of British art. It was opened due to Suie Henritate who built the gallery and gave his own collection of 65 painting.

27

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud. 

Money has played an important role in every civilization. It has taken various forms and has changed many times over the centuries. The first form of payment was the exchange of goods. People usually exchanged animal skins and meat, fruit and vegetables, cloth and precious stones. In the 7 century BC the first coins appeared. They were usually made of silver or gold and their value depended on the amount of metal in each coin. With time, coins became very popular and many countries produced their own currency. The introduction of paper money – banknotes – in the seventeenth century was the beginning of banking systems in many European countries. Since then, banks have offered a wide range of services like loans, bank accounts and many others. Today, people pay for things in many different ways: they pay in cash, by cheque, or by credit card. The last one, it seems, is the most convenient form of payment. Many people believe that one day money in the form of coins, banknotes, cheques and magnetic cards will totally disappear and that all buying and selling will be done via the Internet.

28

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud. 

There are about ninety Universities in Great Britain, the biggest one being London University, and the oldest ones Oxford and Cambridge. Oxford was founded in the 12th century as an aristocratic University: the cost of studies is comparatively high. Students have to pay for using libraries and laboratories, as well as for taking examinations. Oxford’s organization is very complicated. In fact, the University is a collection of 35 Colleges: two for women only, the rest taking both men and women. Each college is a world of its own which gives its students a specialized training in arts, law, medicine and science. The largest college has over 500 students; the smallest college has 100 students. The tutorial system of education used both in Oxford and Cambridge is one of the ways in which Oxbridge differs from other English Universities. Every student has a tutor in charge of planning his work and discussing its results with the student; the student’s duty is to see his tutor regularly and submit papers and essays. The academic year in England has three terms; each term lasts from eight to ten weeks. Examinations take place at the end of autumn, spring and summer terms. Final examinations take place at the end of the course of studies. If a student fails in an examination, he may be allowed to take the exam again, only two re-examinations being usually allowed.

29

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud. 

Scientists have noticed that the weather is getting worse and worse and so-called extreme weather events are becoming more and more frequent. The explanation is short: the reason is global warming. What is global warming? Greenhouse effect is a natural feature of our atmosphere without which the life on our planet would be impossible. Certain atmospheric gases work as a kind of a blanket, keeping the Earth warm. The amount of these ‘greenhouse’ gases used to be more or less the same for centuries. But the industrial revolution broke this balance. Climate experts predict that by 2050 the global average temperature will rise by 2-3 degrees. What would happen then? Northern regions will be wetter and warmer, southern regions will be drier and hotter. Snow will melt in the Alps and other mountains and the water will cause floods. Sea levels will rise and lots of areas will disappear under the water. So will some species of animals and plants.

30

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud. 

With the development of technology in the twenty-first century, it would be really difficult to imagine life without computers. They are a source of information, education and entertainment, but today’s world of computers can also be quite frightening and dangerous. This is because of people who use computers for illegal purposes. They are called hackers. Hackers spend their time playing with computer data in all parts of cyberspace. They are getting into computer systems and stealing or destroying information. Sometimes their activities break the law. They are especially interested in breaking through the security of military websites. Hackers know how to trick people just using their programs. They use a ‘Trojan Horse’, a program that looks perfectly safe, but actually contains something destructive. The only way of not getting into trouble is not to open it. Although they can get serious punishment if they are caught, most hackers still think that what they do is a game. Recently, hacking has started to increase. It is certain that there will be a lot more of this high-tech crime in the twenty-first century.

31

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud. 

Scientists believe that the horse first appeared in North America. But it was not the horse we know today. It was a fox-sized animal only about a foot high at the shoulder. About 50,000 years ago man established a relationship with the horse. At first people hunted horses, which wasn’t very easy, then they learned to herd these animals. The horse was becoming a worker — a source of help to man — not just a meal on the hoof. It took people many years to learn how to ride. Most scientists think that the first horses were used to pull carts, not for riding. But people finally mounted the horse. When people tamed horses, they could travel long distances, explore unknown lands and conquer them. Horse races were popular in ancient Greece and they are no less popular at present. Even now we use the term ‘horsepower’ — coined by the English engineer James Watt — to measure how much work is done by an engine. This term shows just how much respect the horses have earned People quickly realized how useful the horse could be.

32

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud. 

We all like chocolate. But what exactly is chocolate and where does it come from? And is it good for us or bad for us? Perhaps you know the history of chocolate. Like the potato, it comes from South America. The Spanish people brought it to Europe as a drink. It was so expensive that only rich people could buy it. The idea of making it into bars came later so it became popular as a sweet only in the 1850s.Why do we like chocolate so much? Of course, it tastes good, but there are other reasons. There is something in chocolate which makes us happy. And it gives us a lot of energy. But it’s also so rich in calories that you can put on weight if you eat it all the time. Is it good or bad for us? Well, some scientists say that chocolate is very healthy, that it isn’t bad for your heart or your skin and that’s it even good for your teeth. Other people think that you shouldn’t eat it at all.The truth is somewhere in the middle. You shouldn’t eat chocolate all the time but it’s too tasty to say no!

33

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud.

Shopping hours in Britain are changing. A few years ago, shops opened at nine o’clock in the morning and closed at six o’clock in the evening. Some shops also closed for an hour for lunch. On Sundays nothing was open.But now many shops are open longer hours. Some big shops and many supermarkets never close! If you want some milk or some bread at midnight, you can easily buy it. It’s very good for people who often work late at night or early in the morning. If someone finishes work at five o’clock in the morning, they can go to the supermarket on their way home and buy some breakfast or a newspaper or anything else they want. There are people who don’t think it’s good. They say that Sunday is a holiday for all people — who wants to work in a supermarket on a Sunday? But shops are very busy at the weekend and they will work to make people’s life easier.

34

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud.

It all started more than a hundred years ago, when women in poor English families had to work in factories. There was no time to shop and cook so they bought fast food in the street, on the way back from work. The most popular was fried fish with a piece of bread. The first chips came from France. The ‘chipped’ potatoes, as they were called, were also sold in the streets and soon became very popular. But at first, no one thought of selling fish and chips together. The idea to sell them together first came to a Londoner Joseph Malin. In 1860, he opened the first fish-and-chip shop in Cleveland Street in London’s East End. Soon such shops were everywhere in working-class areas. At first they put a fish and chips in an old newspaper with a lot of salt and vinegar on top. Today fish and chips are still very popular in Britain. More than 250 million portions are eaten in the country every year. But now they are sold in clean white paper bags. You can eat them just on spot or you can take them home and eat watching TV.

35

Task 1. You are going to read the text aloud. You have 1.5 minutes to read the text silently, and then be ready to read it aloud. Remember that you will not have more than 2 minutes for reading aloud.

Rose is the national flower of England and its symbol. It all started during the time of civil wars (1455-1485) known as the Wars of the Roses. It was the war between the royal house of Lancaster (whose emblem was a red rose) and the royal house of York (whose emblem was a white rose). At the end of the war the two roses were combined in the Tudor rose. During the Tudor period, hundreds of inns were named the Rose — to show loyalty to the royal family. There are still many pubs and hotels all over the country named after this flower. In 1871, the newly formed Rugby Football Union selected an England team to play the first ever international match against Scotland. The committee chose a red rose as the team’s badge. Although England lost the match, held in Edinburgh, the country’s rugby teams have worn red roses ever since.

6

ФЕДЕРАЛЬНОЕ АГЕНТСТВО
ПО ОБРАЗОВАНИЮ

Государственное
образовательное учреждение

высшего профессионального
образования

«Пермский
государственный педагогический
университет»

Кафедра
иностранных языков

Сборник текстОв для самостоятельного чтения и экзаменационные темы

по английскому
языку

Учебно-методическое
пособие для студентов I–II
курсов

заочного
отделения неязыковых факультетов

2-е
издание, исправленное и дополненное

Пермь

ПГПУ

2009

УДК 802.0

ББК
Ш 143.21-923.8

С
232

Р е ц е н з е н т :

старший
преподаватель кафедры иностранных
языков, лингвистики и

межкультурной
коммуникации Пермского государственного

технического
университета Т.
Э. Рылова

Авторы-составители : преп. каф. иностранных
языков Е.Е. Васильева,

ст. преп. каф. иностранных языков Н.П.
Зонина (отв. ред.),

ст. преп. каф. иностранных языков Н.В.
Карпенко,

ст. преп. каф. иностранных языков Н.А.
Костарева,

ст.
преп. каф. иностранных языков Е.Ю. Раскина,

ст. преп. каф. иностранных языков Р.К.
Терешкина

С 232

Сборник текстов для самостоятельного чтения и экзаменационные темы по английскому языку : учеб.-метод. пособие для студентов I–II курсов заочного отделения неязыковых факультетов / авт.-сост. Е.Е. Васильева, Н.П. Зонина, Н.В. Карпенко и др. ; Перм. гос. пед. ун-т. – 2-е изд., испр. и доп. – Пермь, 2009. – 88 с.

Издание
включает тексты по специальности для
самостоятельного чтения и семь текстов
устных разговорных тем по английскому
языку, предусмотренных программой
вузов. К каждой теме приводится словарь
и вопросы. Ряд текстов по специальности
взят из оригинальных источников.
Некоторые тексты адаптированы. Данное
пособие призвано помочь студентам в
подготовке к экзамену по английскому
языку в конце курса обучения.

Предназначено
для студентов заочного отделения
факультетов начального обучения,
дошкольной психологии и педагогики,
математики, биологии, географии и
физической культуры.

УДК
802.0

ББК
Ш 143.21-923.8

Печатается по решению учебно-методического
совета

Пермского государственного педагогического
университета

©
Васильева Е.Е., Зонина Н.П., Карпенко
Н.В., Костарева Н.А.,

Раскина Е.Ю., Терешкина Р.К., составление,
2005

©
Васильева Е.Е., Зонина Н.П., Карпенко
Н.В., Костарева Н.А.,

Раскина
Е.Ю., Терешкина Р.К., составление, 2009

©
ГОУ ВПО «Пермский
государственный

педагогический
университет», 2009

Contents

Предисловие
……………………………………………………….4

Term
I (for all faculties)

My
Working Day……………………………………………………
7

Our
University……………………………………………………………………….10

Great
Britain………………………………………………………………..13

Term
II (for all faculties)

London………………………………………………………………………….
20

My
Future
Profession………………………………………………………….
26

Heinrich
Pestalozzi………………………………………………….31

Term
III

The
Faculty of Primary Schooling and

The
Faculty of Preschool Psychology and
Pedagogy……………………36

The
Faculty of
Mathematics……………………………………………………..40

The
Faculty of
Biology…………………………………………………………….48

The Faculty
of Geography………………………………………….53

The
Faculty of Physical
Culture…………………………………………………58

Term
IY

The
Faculty of Primary Schooling and

The
Faculty of Preschool Psychology and
Pedagogy……………………62

The
Faculty of
Mathematics……………………………………………………..67

The
Faculty of
Biology…………………………………………………………….72

The
Faculty of Geography……………………………………….….78

The
Faculty of Physical
Culture…………………………………………………82

Список
литературы………………………………………………………………..87

ПРЕДИСЛОВИЕ

Требования к
зачетам и экзамену по английскому языку

Чтобы
сдать зачет
по английскому языку, студенту нужно:

1. Повторить
   грамматический материал, начитанный
   преподавателем в предыдущую сессию.
   Необходимый грамматический материал
   подробно изложен в пособии «Краткий
   курс грамматики английского языка»
   под ред. Н.П. Зониной, Н.В.Карпенко. Пермь,
   2008.;

2. Выполнить
   и защитить контрольную работу (контрольная
   работа пишется в классе);

3. Научиться
   читать и переводить тексты данного
   учебного пособия. Письменный
   связный перевод текстов делать не
   разрешается! К
   текстам следует завести тетрадь-словарь,
   куда в три колонки нужно выписать все
   незнакомые слова. Тетрадью можно
   пользоваться во время чтения и перевода
   текстов на зачете.

4. К
   каждой сессии следует выучивать не
   менее 50 новых слов, неправильные глаголы
   выписывать в специальную таблицу и
   запоминать в трех формах. Студент должен
   уметь находить в текстах и объяснять
   любые изученные грамматические явления.

5. Студент
   должен быть готов с вышеуказанным
   домашним заданием к первому же занятию
   по английскому языку, указанному в
   расписании.

Чтобы
сдать экзамен
по английскому языку, студенту нужно:

1. Прочитать
   и перевести со словарем английский
   текст по специальности (900 печатных
   знаков за 45 минут);

2. Высказаться
   по одной из разговорных тем (10-15
   предложений) и ответить на вопросы
   преподавателя.

Список
экзаменационных
тем:

1. О
   себе (семья, жизнь студента, рабочий
   день).

2. Наш
   университет.

3. Великобритания
   (немного о Лондоне).

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