II topic: the media.

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers. 

~Thomas Jefferson

(3d President of the USA)

Text growing up with the media

What do you remember most about your childhood? Run­ning through the grass or the Saturday morning TV cartoons? Sitting in the kitchen watching your mother cook supper or sitting in the living-room watching children's morning television programme. Which came first on Sunday morning — breakfast or the comics?

Now bring your memories up to date. What did you and your friends talk about, at least part of the time, before class? An item from a newspaper? An ad that you noticed in a maga­zine or a television commercial? An episode from a popular TV series? A movie? Or a new record that you heard on the radio?

If your answers are ‘yes’, that proofs that mass media play a large and influential part in your life. Your answers also prove that you accept the media, just as you accept the house you live in, cars, electricity, telephones, your school, and your family as part of your environment. Parents and teachers agree that all young people growing up with the media learn from them sometimes more than adults.

If the use of them referring to media in the last sentence seems strange, remember that the word media linguistically is plural. When people say about a bad influence of the media, they usually are talking about television, the most powerful medium of all, because television, as a medium, has functions of several media such as newspapers, magazines, movies, and recordings.

The major media can be divided into two kinds, print and electronic. The print media — newspapers, magazines, books, pamphlets, catalogues, circulars, brochures, anything you read — are the oldest, dating back to the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century. The electronic media — radio, television, films of all kinds, records, tapes, anything that is transmitted by the use of electricity — are less than a hundred years old.

One of the problems facing us today is being reached by the media when we really don't choose to be. Do you some­times find it difficult to have a moment of complete silence in your environment or a time when your eyes are not presented with signs, billboard, or pictures demanding attention?

Another meaning the word mass has is "the people", a phrase too often associated with adjectives like dull-witted, ill-informed, uncritical, and passive. Or are the mass of people well-informed, thoughtful, and active? Which are you? How much of what you know about yourself has been taught you by the media? You may not realize how greatly the media influence you because in your lifetime they have always been there. No one will ever again grow up without the presence and influ­ence of the mass media.

Is this good or bad?

Watching television is psychologically addictive. In a commercial society the media's ability to stimulate motivation to buy — almost as though people were puppets — builds other people's power. It can be power for good or power for bad, but it is always power for control. At the same time you are enjoying the posi­tive aspects of immediately knowing what's going on in the world, sharing great entertainment and historical events with everyone else in our "global village", and having the fun of try­ing out a new product that you wouldn't have known about without advertising.

(By P. G.Aldrich)

Exercise 20. Find the English for the following phrases.

1. Что в начале (сперва)

2. вспоминать

3. Современный, новейший, стоящий на уровне современных требований

4. Реклама в журнале

5. Реклама на телевидении

6. Принимать(воспринимать) средства массовой информации

7. Как часть окружающей среды

8. Молодежь, которая растет вместе со средствами массовой информации

9. Кажется странным

10. Плохое влияние

11. Включает в себя различные функции

12. Можно разделить на два вида

13. Брошюра(памфлет)

14. Рекламный проспект

15. Восходить, датировать ,вести начало

16. Изобретение печатного станка

17. Передаваться с использованием электричества

18. Одна из проблем, стоящая перед нами сегодня

19. Когда перед вашими глазами не предстает

20. Афиша

21. Требовать внимания

22. Слабоумный, тупой

23. плохо информированный

24. хорошо информированный

25. насколько велико влияние средств массовой информации на Вас?

26. с точки зрения психологии является привыканием (наркотиком)

27. стимулировать, мотивировать покупку

28. как будто люди марионетки

29. власть для управления, контроля

30. исторические события

Exercise 21. Answer the following questions.

1. What influence does TV have on children's lives? Do you remember the TV programmes that you watched when you were a child?

2. Why do you think people often refer to "the media" when talking about television?

3. Why do the modern media cause more problems than the printed media?

4. How do you think watching television can become addictive?

5. Comment on the meaning of "global village" and how it's connected with the TV.

6. Is TV more successful than the other forms of media?

7. Is satellite television very popular?

8. How many television channels are there in Russia?

9. How many hours a day do people watch TV?

10. What are the most popular types of programmes?

11. Is radio more or less popular than television?

12. How many radio channels are there in Russsia?

13.What sort of programmes are there on the radio?

14.Do most people read a newspaper every day?

15.What are main newspapers?

16.Which newspaper has the largest circulation?

17. Does the government control the media?

18. What is your favourite radio programme/TV programme?

19.What does the abbreviation BBC stand for?

20. What does the abbreviation CNN stand for?

21. Do you often watch news programme?

22. What is the latest news?

23. How do you keep up-to-date with the news?

24. What have been the most important stories in the last five years?

Exercise 22. Pair work. Make up and practice a dialogue using the phrases from exercise 20.

Exercise 23. Explain what is meant by:

- Watching television is psychologically addictive.

- Sharing great entertainment and historical events with everyone else in our ‘global village’.

Exercise 24. Give a summary of the text.

Exercise 25. 1. Give the example of

a) print media

b) electronic media