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the objects in the strong-room of the Titanic was the mummy case of the priestess of the temple of Amon-Ra. Or so they say.

Exercise 2.2. Find the equivalents in the text.

1) To go to the bottom of the sea; 2) big passenger ship; 3) unexplained, mysterious; 4) excite; 5) old-fashioned or antique; 6) man of god; 7) a church; 8) very happy; 9) rich materials or valuable things; 10) ceremony when a person has died; 11) predict; 12) enter; 13) break; 14) a person employed by another, especially to perform domestic duties; 15) curse, magic; 16) sell or give; 17) a man engaged to be married, future husband; 18) an object or a collection of objects shown to the public; 19) an employee, worker; 20) silly.

Exercise 2.3. Restore the correct order of the events.

a)A few deaths around the object;

b)the museum's exhibit;

c)the sinking of the great ship;

d)warning of danger;

e)a good bargain;

f)the returning to the beginning;

g)fatal travel of the object;

h)an explosion;

i)the purchase comes to Britain.

Exercise 2.4. Answer the questions.

1)What was the route of the Titanic?

2)What ocean was the Titanic crossing?

3)Who offered the mummy-case?

4)Was the purchase expensive?

5)Where was the mummy found?

6)What warning did the mummy-case have?

7)What did Murray decide on the return journey to England?

8)Did Douglas Murray manage to survive?

9)Was the British Museum the last destination of the mummy? Why?

10)What happened with the mummy on the way to New York?

Exercise 2.5. Retell the text in detail.

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Lesson 3. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH A TWISTER

Exercise 3.1. Read the text and translate it.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH A TWISTER

Paul Denman tells about the day he came face to face with America's most frightening meteorological phenomenon, a tornado.

Until last year, I’d always wanted to see a tornado. A few years ago, in Oklahoma, I saw one of those violent dark green storm skies, with small cones hanging down from its underside; but the tornado that people feared at that moment never materialized. The cones were sucked back into the clouds, and eventually the sun came out again. Last year I met my first (and thankfully only) tornado.... and it was not in the south. We were in Montana – tranquil old Montana – enjoying our summer vacation, when the twister struck. The day had begun like any ordinary July day in Montana, with a bright blue sky, and hot sunshine. A few bubbling clouds were blowing across, as we made our way towards an ancient mining town called Castle. In the days when the West was Wild, Castle was a rough and busy town, full of miners looking for silver and gold. Today, Castle is a «ghost town», a collection of old wooden buildings, some still standing, others just a pile of fallen boards and planks of wood. Abandoned over 100 years ago, when the mines ran out of precious metals, Castle now lies in the middle of nowhere, miles from a paved road, miles from civilisation.

That morning, Castle was deserted. Few visitors make the journey to this distant part of Montana, and even fewer want to drive ten miles on a dirt-track to visit a place like Castle. The sun was shining brightly when we arrived. It wasn't until the sun went behind a cloud that we looked up at the sky.

«Hey!» said Sarah, «Look, there's a storm coming ...».

Indeed, to the south, the sky had turned an inky black. A storm was coming, and it looked like a big one.

«Let’s get back to the main road», Sarah added. «These tracks will be unpassable if there’s a storm».

«Sure, that’s a good idea, let’s get going!», I said.

«If we go north, we’ll come out near White Sulphur Springs», said Robbie. The track wound upwards through a forest of pine trees, then divided. «Which way?», I asked.

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«Take the track to the right», said Julie who had the map. «Are you sure?»

«No, I’m not sure exactly where we are... the map doesn’t show all these tracks... but I think so»

The time was just about midday, yet somehow, in the space of ten minutes, all the blue had vanished from the sky, and the light was fading fast, as if evening was coming on. The track twisted and turned, up and down, through woods and over streams, and then, at last, out onto an open, treeless, hilltop. Suddenly Sarah shouted «Look, a tornado!».

I pulled the car to a stop, and looked back; and there it was. Just like in the movie: the clouds were hanging like a dark ceiling above our heads. And there, just a few miles to the south, was the tornado, an inky funnel of twisting cloud coming right down to the ground. Beside it, several other menacing cones were hanging downwards, ready to strike. We could see them moving in our direction. «Let’s get out of here!», I said, and threw the car into gear.

I don’t usually drive cars at 50 mph along dirt tracks, but this time I did; as we sped across the open hilltop, it seemed like there were three different storms coming towards us at once, from three different directions. By now we could see waves of wind gusting across the grassland. Then, beside the track, we came across a group of tourists on quad bikes, enjoying a cross-country trip. We stopped the car for a moment to warn them, but the tour-guide laughed. «Tornado?! No! We don’t get tornados here!» I wasn’t going to hang around arguing with him, so we just set off again, hoping to find a real road where we could move faster than the storm. But it was not to be. We had come out of the woods, and were going down into a valley when suddenly the hills in front of us vanished. It all happened in the space of about two minutes.

«It’s coming this way», shouted Sarah. «Find some shelter!», said Julie. There was none – not a tree, not a building, not a bridge, until, just as we

were giving up hope, like a mirage in the desert, we spotted an old abandoned church. Just beyond it, the sky seemed to touch the ground. As we raced towards the shelter of this – probably the most solid building for miles around – the first hailstones hit us, as big as golf balls. We reached the church. Shelter! By then we could see nothing – or at least nothing further from us than about fifteen meters; and although there were four of us in the car, and it was a heavy car too, the vehicle was jumping up and down on its springs, as if someone was trying to push it over.

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The noise of the wind and the hailstones on the roof was deafening, and conversation was impossible, so we just sat there in silence hoping and praying that our car was not going to be picked up like a leaf, and thrown across into the unknown that we could not see.

It probably lasted about ten minutes – but sitting in that bumping noisy car, it seemed more like ten hours until, almost as suddenly as it had started, the wind stopped, and the hail stopped falling. Normality returned.

«Phew!», said Sarah. «I thought» «Me too», said Robbie.

Fortunately, the tornado had missed us, and we’d just been through the very violent storm that accompanied it. But just short distance down the road, the twister had caused chaos and destruction, flattening a farm and a garage as it rolled across the prairies of Montana. A week later, a similar twister crashed into a camp ground in Alberta, Canada, killing a dozen people, and wrecking hundreds of tents and caravans. I felt that we'd been quite lucky. I’d seen my twister, I’d been on the edge of it, but fortunately not in the middle. Frankly, that was quite enough.

Exercise 3.2. Find the equivalents in the text.

1) a meeting; 2) become real, appear; 3) peaceful; quiet; calm; 4) to hit; 5) to go; 6) violent, dangerous; 7) come to the end of, have no more of; 8) very valuable or costly; 9) a road with no hard surface; 10) like ink, very dark; 11) leave, depart, start; 12) twist, turn; 13) disappear; 14) almost black; 15) something that threatens to cause evil, harm, injury; 16) to waste time; 17) move away; 18) protection; 19) abandon; 20) to see; 21) small balls of ice; 22) a mechanism that absorbs bumps; 23) very loud indeed; 24) to destroy.

Exercise 3.3. Read the article, and decide which of the three suggested alternatives is the best synonym for the following words or phrases.

1)Eventually: a) perhaps, b) finally, c) by chance;

2)funnel: a) chimney, b) hole, c) lake;

3)at once: a) immediately, b) very fast, c) at the same time;

4)we came across: a) we saw, b) we hit, c) we got stopped by;

5)to warn them: a) to watch them, b) to inform them of the danger, c) to let them pass;

6. it lasted: a) it finished, b) it seemed to be, c) it continued for.

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Exercise 3.4. Make up four questions that you would like to ask Sarah, using the structures from each of these groups.

Group 1: Questions with NO question word. Group 2: Questions with how much or how many.

Group 3: Questions with how often, how long, or how + adjective.

Group 4: Questions with what, where, how, when or why. Imagine Sarah’s reply in each case.

Exercise 3.5. Using exercise 3 as a starting point, make up an imaginary interview involving Sarah or Paul and a radio reporter. Act it out in class.

Exercise 3.6. Answer the questions.

1)What was the weather like when Paul Denman experienced a tornado in Castle? Explain the development of the weather.

2)How many people were there in the car? Give the names.

3)What were the reactions of the various people in the car?

4)Who and what saved them?

5)What do you think happened to the group of tourists?

6)How do you think you would react in a similar situation?

Lesson 4. MORE AND MORE PEOPLE WANT TO LIVE

THE RURAL LIFE

Exercise 4.1. Read the text and translate it.

MORE AND MORE PEOPLE WANT TO LIVE

THE RURAL LIFE

Lots of people in Britain want to live in the country; but young people often prefer living in the city. City life is cool; but is country life cooler? Apparently yes. More and more people in Britain want to live in the country, and this is causing more and more problems in some rural areas.

The population of British cities has been falling for years. Cities like Liverpool and Glasgow have lost about 30% of their population in 30 years. But Britain's population is still growing. Where are the people going? Answer: to the country.

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The English countryside has a classic image. People imagine that life in the country is slow and calm; that there are no traffic jams, no pollution, and no crime. In some places, this is true; but in others it is not.

Small towns and villages are becoming more and more popular; people have more space and most houses have gardens. But problems are growing. Lots of people want to live in the country and work in the city; so more and more people travel long distances each day, to go to work. Of course they don't use buses (they are too slow) or trains (they don’t stop in the country); they use cars. And although they live in the country, they want to use supermarkets and good fast roads.... but they do not want to see them or hear them. Besides, lots of young people say that life in the country is boring: there is not enough to do, there are not enough activities and excitements.

Little villages now have traffic problems in the morning, just like big cities! And they are getting worse.

The problems are very complicated! If everyone moves into the country, large parts of the countryside will disappear! People leave cities and big towns, to escape from urban problems; but more and more, they are bringing their problems with them.

On warm summer days, and cold winter days, air pollution can be a big problem in large parts of the south of England, not just in London. Traffic jams are now often part of life, even in the country; crime has become a serious problem in rural areas.

Perhaps there is hope for the future. Soon Britain’s population will stop rising. From about the year 2020, it will perhaps start to fall. In 100 year’s time, there will be less people in Britain than today – perhaps two million less. No doubt there will be less pollution too; oil and petrol will probably be rare by then.

Exercise 4.2. Find the equivalents in the text.

1)possibly, probably; 2) provoke, give rise to, create; 3) a countryside zone;

4)inhabitants of a place; 5) non-city environment; 6) when traffic moves very slowly, or has to stop; 7) dirtiness, contamination; 8) action against the law; 9) enthusiasm, stimulation; 10) complex, difficult; 11) vanish, escape; 12) city; 13) exceptional, infrequent.

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Exercise 4.3. Decide whether these statements are true or false.

1)There were more people in Britain in 1966 than today.

2)There are good fast bus services in rural parts of England.

3)Air pollution and traffic are problems in parts of the country.

4)Young people particularly like living in the country.

5)There is very little crime in rural areas of England.

6)The British population will start to get smaller before the year 2030.

Exercise 4.4. Is the situation the same in our country? Where do people want to live and why? What life will be like in our country in ten year’s time?

Give your reasons.

Exercise 4.5. Retell the text in detail.

Lesson 5. FANCY A BAD TIME?

Exercise 5.1. Read the text and translate it. While reading the text find answers to these questions:

FANCY A BAD TIME?

Hardship holidays are booming every year, thousands of British vacationers hand over good money only to be left wet, cold, hungry and sore. Some have been ripped off by dodgy package-tour operators selling holidays in concrete hell-holes on the Mediterranean. But for a select minority, being drenched, frozen, starved and bumped is the point of the whole thing. Such adventure holidays come in lots of different shapes and sizes. The domestic market runs from school trips to slightly riskier «adrenalin sports», such as whitewater rafting and cliff-jumping, and full-blast «survival schools», where pasty-faced desk-jockeys learn how to skin rabbits and live off the land, under the supervision of a grizzled instructor with a military background … . Thrill-seekers whose appetite for punishment out strips the options available at home risk their necks in more far-flung places, such as Peru and the Australian outback. The business is booming. Stephen Home of Outward Bound, a long established firm catering mostly for school groups, says that between 1995 and 2001 the number of young adventurers coming to their camps shinned up from

8,000 to 26,000. Enrolments on its «professional development» courses have risen 16

fourfold. The problem-solving and team work activities, Mr Home says, appeal to bosses keen to find new ways to raise morale among their worker bees and drones. Simon Tobin, the managing director of Explore Worldwide, Britain's biggest operator of adventure holidays abroad, says the market has grown by 10 –15% a year for the past five years or so. That compares with 4 – 5% for the traditional sun, sea and sand package holiday. In 2001, his company arranged trips for 30,000 clients, up from around 20,000 in 1999. Travelling in small groups with a local guide, punters can follow in the footsteps of Lawrence of Arabia, or try life as a troglodyte in Matmata, an underground village in Tunisia. Asked what accounts for the burgeoning popularity of adventure holidays, operators will often allude to «the Ray Mears effect». Mr. Mears is the presenter of a string of hugely popular television programmes, and the author of several best-selling books on bush survival. Mr. Mears's laidback style and intimate knowledge of outdoorsy arcana appeal widely, especially, it seems to women – who are signing up for adventure holidays in increasing numbers. Mick Tyler, a former commando who served in Kuwait, the Arctic and among the headhunters of Borneo, and who now runs the Breakaway Survival School in Wales, says the number of visitors to his outfit has doubled over the past three years. «People are fed up with ordinary holidays», Mr. Tyler says. «Most of them have no need to think for themselves in everyday life. They come out here and are surprised to find how unaware of the world around them they have become. They want to learn basic skills, like how to use a map and compass or build a shelter». Handy stuff, no doubt, and maybe even quite useful on a more traditional holiday – say when the tour operator's minibus breaks down somewhere between the airport and a miserable two-star hotel in Mallorca.

1)What do many British vacationers hand over good money for?

2)What holidays come in lots of different shapes and sizes?

3)Where did Mick Tyler, a former commando, serve?

Exercise 5.2. Find the English equivalents in the text.

Отпускник, отдыхающий; значительные суммы, запрашивать слишком высокую цену, вымогать деньги; изворотливый, хитрый, беcчестный; грязное, запущенное место («дыра»); сильный порыв ветра, выживание; бледный, нездоровый (о цвете лица); человек, проводящий много времени за письменным столом, т. е. ведущий сидячий образ жизни; добывать себе пропитание;

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седой; опыт несения военной службы; искатель захватывающих и рискованных (на грани опасности) приключений; лишения, трудности; перевешивать; превышать (разг.), рисковать своей жизнью; широко раскинувшийся, обширный; малонаселенная, необжитая местность; быстро расти, процветать; моральное состояние; рабочая пчела, трудолюбивый человек (перен.), «трудяга»; трутень, бездельник, лентяй; организованная туристическая поездка, групповой туризм, комплексное турне (проводится с использованием нескольких видов транспорта и включает в себя различные виды обслуживания); клиент, пользующийся особым набором услуг; первобытный пещерный человек; расцветать; ссылаться на (что-либо); невозделанная земля, покрытая кустарником; отрешенный, спокойный, неторопливый (разг.); любящий вылазки на природу, пешие путешествия; загадка, секрет, тайна.

Exercise 5.3. Match the synonyms.

Group –	dangerous;
vacationer –	frozen;
cold –	ordinary;
hungry –	holiday-maker;
director –	boss;
punter –	team;
usual –	main;
basic –	organization;
outfit –	starving;
risky –	customer.

Exercise 5.4. Match the antonyms.

Domestic –	majority;
unaware –	foreign;
present –	death;
instructor –	live;
survival –	aware;
minority –	past;
die –	punter.

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Exercise 5.5. Match the words with their definitions.

Whitewater rafting	– very hungry because of systematic lack of food;
available	– things you do together with other people;
starved	– the activity of floating on several pieces of wood se-
	cured together along rivers where the current is very fast
	and rough;
thrill	– involving the possibility of danger, harm, or failure;
risky	– a sudden very strong feeling of excitement, pleasure,
	or fear;
teamwork	– people who like doing exciting and dangerous things;
thrill-seekers	– able to be obtained, taken, or used.

Exercise 5.6. Answer the questions on the text.

1)What kind of holidays are considered to be hardship holidays?

2)Why do some vacationers pay good money only to be left wet, cold, hungry and sore?

3)Why such sports as whitewater rafting and cliff-jumping are called «adrenalin sports»?

4)Are these sports really risky?

5)What tourists are called thrill-seekers?

6)What people are called desk-jockeys?

7)Why do bosses want to raise morale among their drones, too?

8)Why are desk-jockeys fed up with ordinary holidays?

9)Why are «survival schools» so popular with pasty-faced desk-jockeys?

10)Why do thrill-seekers prefer to risk their necks in far-flung places, such as Peru and the Australian outback?

11)Why do teamwork activities and problem-solving appeal to bosses?

12)What is the main difference between worker bees and drones?

13)Why are bosses interested in raising morale among their workers?

14)What accounts for the burgeoning popularity of adventure holidays?

15)Why do you think women are signing up for adventure holidays in increasing numbers?

16)What does «the Ray Mears effect» mean?

17)What skills do most punters want to learn? Why?

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