Chapters 27 and 28

Vocabulary work

I. Learn the following words and expressions:

- to be keen on smb. - leftover - to weigh three stone - to choke - generous - to draw a red herring across the path - pattern - threat - (un)subtle - cross-eyed - customer - a breach of human rights

- evidence - wham! - victim - frankly - decent - namely - life-span - straightforward - to envy smb. - to be fed up with - bingo!

II. Answer the questions:

1. What did Ali and Marcus talk about? Why Marcus decided to leave quietly?

2. What happened after Will brought Marcus back to Rachel’s?

3. Describe what happened at the newsagent’s. What do you think were the reasons underlying Ellie’s protection of Marcus?

4. What was Rachel’s attitude towards Will telling her the truth about Marcus and himself?

III. State who these words belong to. Translate and reproduce the situations in which they are used:

1. “She’s not keen on him! She’s only keen on me!”

2. “Difficult? He was going to tie me up and lock me in a cupboard and only feed me once a day.”

3. “… you get into a pattern, and then each new person who comes along seems to represent some kind of a threat.”

4. “Boys are peculiar creatures.”

5. “It must look very confusing from the outside.”

6. “Yeah, right. It’s me who’s the fantasist. I wanted to believe you had a son, so I let my imagination run riot.”

IV. Translate into English:

- смена темы;

- выскользнуть через парадную дверь;

- не быть в хороших отношениях с кем-л.;

- умственно неполноценный;

- перехитрить кого-л.;

- неважно;

- краткосрочный;

- быть потрясенным;

- выдумывать что-л.

Oral practice

V. Comment on the following:

1. Marcus considered his options carefully. The least attractive, he felt, and also the most unlikely, was to stay here and pass the time of day with Ali, chat about this and that, have a laugh and a couple of games on the computer; that simply wasn’t going to happen. He could go downstairs and join in with Will and Rachel, but Will had as good as told him to stay upstairs, and if he went downstairs he’d have to explain that Ali was a psycho who was on the point of cutting off his arms and legs, and that would be really embarrassing. No, Marcus’s choice would simply be to dash downstairs without anyone noticing, sneak out of the front door and get a bus home; after a very brief moment’s thought, that is exactly what he did. (p. 198)

2. … maybe Will was being too traditional in his thinking. Maybe that’s how things worked now, and until a girl had smacked someone in the eye for you she wasn’t worth a second look.’ (p. 204)

3. … halfway through their first time out alone together, he was reminded of the old April Fool’s Day joke about Britain changing over to driving on the right, and making the changeover gradually. Either you lied or you told the truth, it appeared, and that in-between state was pretty tricky to achieve. (p. 206)

VI. Give a good literary translation of the following:

1. “Will smiled. ‘It’s OK,’ he said gently, and Rachel looked at him and smiled back. Suddenly Marcus could see why people like Rachel and Suzie – nice, attractive women who you thought wouldn’t give someone like that the time of day – might like Will. He had gone into this way of looking that he never used on Marcus: there was something in his eyes, a kind of softness that Marcus could see would really work. While he was listening to the conversation, he practised with his own eyes – you had to sort of narrow them, and then make them focus exactly on the other person’s face.” (p. 201)

2. “Will and Rachel had been sitting down, facing one another, and basically talking about how much they liked each other. Walking along the street meant that Marcus kept having to twist his neck to do the eye thing, and he could see that this would make him look a little peculiar, but the trouble was that he and Ellie never did any sitting down and facing each other. They hung out at the vending machine, and sometimes, like today, they met up after school and just mooched around for a while. So what was he supposed to do? How could you gaze into someone’s eyes if all you ever saw was their ears?” (p. 202)

3. “She was right, of course, and he rescued a potentially disastrous evening by telling her everything there was to tell. Nearly everything, anyway: he didn’t tell her the reason he had come across Marcus in the first place was because he had joined SPAT. He didn’t tell her that because he thought it might sound bad coming on top of a similar revelation. He didn’t want her to think he had a problem.” (p. 209)

VII. Agree or disagree with the following statements:

1. Ali threatened to kill Marcus if Will decided to date his mother.

2. Marcus was not scared and decided to play computer games in Ali’s room.

3. Will had to follow Marcus into the street.

4. Marcus slapped Lee Hartley in the face.

5. Marcus thought that Ellie fancied him.

6. Rachel felt that Will and Marcus had some kind of connection.

7. Rachel thought it was her own mistake to think that Marcus was Will’s son.

8. Will said he used to live with Fiona.

VIII. Retell the 27^th Chapter as if you were:

1. Marcus

2. Ali

3. Ellie

Retell the 28^th Chapter as if you were:

1. Will

2. Rachel.

Writing

IX. Write a one-page summary of the Chapters 27,28.

X. Make up your own story (8-10 sentences) using your active vocabulary.