- •Т.В. Поплавская т.А. Сысоева
- •Ббк 81.432.1 – 923.1
- •Contents
- •Introduction
- •3. In what situation would you use the following set expressions? Give your own examples.
- •4. Match the words and their definitions.
- •II. Discussing the text
- •1. Read the text.
- •2. Use the text to answer the following questions.
- •III. Follow-up activities
- •IV. Additional tasks
- •Violent English
- •A Confluence of Cultures
- •How to Plan a Town
- •2. Use the text to answer the following questions.
- •Bungalows for sale
- •3. Look at the verbs below. Match each one with an appropriate phrase from the list on the right. Use the expressions in contexts of your own.
- •II. Discussing the text
- •1. The following extracts from guide books describe five of the world’s most famous cities. Work in small groups. Read the descriptions and decide which city is being described in each text.
- •2. Read the extracts again and point out the facts that helped you decide which city is being described.
- •3. Work with a partner and discuss these questions.
- •4. Complete these sentences using appropriate phrases from the text. Make any changes to the phrases that are necessary.
- •5. Look at the adverbial phrases below and decide which of them have negative or limiting meaning.
- •6. Rewrite the sentences below, starting with the word or words given.
- •7. Speak about your plans for the holidays. Use at least ten expressions from Ex. 5 and 6.
- •III. Follow-up activities
- •IV. Additional tasks
- •5. Match the words to make up phrases. Explain their meaning in English.
- •II. Discussing the text
- •1. Read the following extract from the book.
- •2. Use the text to answer the following questions.
- •3. Read the remaining parts of the book and dwell on the following issues.
- •4. Becky is in the habit of itemizing clothes (her own and other people’s). How does she describe/speak about clothes? Compile “Becky’s clothes and fashion vocabulary”.
- •Shopaholic Abroad
- •I. Vocabulary work
- •1. Study the following words.
- •2. Fill in the gaps with the suitable word from the box. Put the words in the correct form.
- •3. Define the following words and phrases in English. Make up sentences with these words.
- •4. Match the words and their definitions.
- •II. Discussing the text
- •1. Read the following extract from the book.
- •2. Use the text to answer the following questions.
- •3. Read the remaining parts of the book and dwell on the following issues.
- •Shopaholic Ties the Knot
- •I. Vocabulary work
- •1. Study the following words.
- •2. Match the words and their definitions.
- •3. Fill in the words from the active vocabulary list.
- •4. In what situations would you say the following? Provide your own context for these utterances. Then find them in the text and check their actual usage.
- •II. Discussing the text
- •1. Read the following extract from the book.
- •2. Use the text to answer the following questions.
- •3. Read the remaining parts of the book and dwell on the following issues.
- •II. Discussing the text
- •2. Read the whole text. Do we have the press we deserve?
- •3. Use the text to answer the following questions.
- •5. Explain how you understand the following idiomatic expressions: to throw out the baby with the bath water, a toothless watchdog, to get a rough ride. In what contexts can you use them?
- •III. Follow-up activities
- •IV. Additional tasks
- •Publican Jailed for Assault
- •II. Discussing the text
- •1. Read the text. What is the topic and the implied main idea of paragraphs 6, 7 and 9?
- •2. True or false.
- •3. Select the best answer.
- •4. Discuss the following issue: What is the most important overall message the writer wants the reader to understand about stress?
- •III. Follow-up activities
- •Bill’s Eyes
- •5. Complete each sentence with the appropriate phrase.
- •II. Discussing the text
- •4. Explain the final scene of the story. Were you shocked by it or was it quite predictable? Give your reasons.
- •III. Follow-up activities
- •IV. Additional tasks
- •The Emergency Ward
- •I. Vocabulary work
- •1. Study the following words.
- •2. Choose the best definition of the italicized word.
- •3. Match the words to make up word combinations from the text.
- •II. Discussing the text
- •1. Read the text.
- •2. Choose the best answer. Explain your choice by providing evidence from the text.
- •3. On the basis of the evidence from the text, mark these statements as accurate inferences, inaccurate inferences or insufficient evidence.
- •III. Follow-up activities
- •IV. Additional tasks
- •Home reading
- •2. Can we call Champagne and Jane opposites? Prove it. Do you believe such opposites could “attract”?
- •II. Discussing the text
- •1. Read the required extracts from the book “Can You Keep a Secret?” by s. Kinsella and consider the following questions.
- •2. Agree or disagree: Being stressed out is an excuse for blabbering all your secrets to a complete stranger.
- •4. Look at the expressions in bold in these sentences. Is mind a verb or a noun in each one?
- •5. Match each expression in Ex. 4 with one of these meanings.
- •II.Discussing the text
- •II. Discussing the text
- •3. Comment on the “look-alike” pattern theory. Does it work in real life?
- •II. Tasks for “Man and Boy” by t. Parsons
- •III. Tasks for “Man and Wife” by t. Parsons
- •IV. Tasks for “How to be Good” by n. Hornby
- •Reference
- •Читай и обсуждай Пособие по курсу «Практикум по культуре речевого общения»
How to Plan a Town
I. Vocabulary work
1. Study the words.
Dispense with, effeminate, muddle, vestige, conceit, ingenious.
2. Make sure you pronounce these words correctly. If necessary, look up their pronunciation in a dictionary.
Decadent, yogis, conspiracy, hieroglyph, thoroughfare, camouflage, promenade, viaduct.
3. Think of appropriate contexts to use the following expressions.
Weak and effeminate peoples, to keep up one’s fighting spirit, century-old practices and tricks, an ingenious compliment, further precautions, to claim without immodesty, to shatter smb’s morale.
II. Discussing the text
1. Read the text. In the first five paragraphs several sentences contain mistakes. Spot the mistakes and correct them.
How to Plan a Town
By G. Mikes
Britain, far from being a “decadent democracy” is Spartan country. This is mainly due because of the British way of building towns, which dispenses with the reasonable comfort enjoyed by all others weak and effeminate peoples of the world.
Medieval warriors wore steel breast-plates and leggings not only for defence but also to keep up their fighting spirit; priests of the Medieval ages tortured their bodies with hair-shirts; Indian yogis take their daily nap laying on a carpet of nails to remain fit. The English plan their towns in such a way that these replace the discomfort of steel breast-plates, hair-shirts and nail-carpets.
On the continent doctors, lawyers, bookmakers – just to mention about a few examples – are sprinkled all over the city, so you can call on a good or at last expansive doctor in any district. In England the idea is that it is the address that makes the man. Doctors in London are crowded in Harley Street, solicitors in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, second-hand-bookshops in Charing Cross Road, newspaper offices in Fleet Street, tailors in Savile Row, car-merchants in Great Portland Street, theatres around Piccadilly Circus, cinemas in Leicester Square, etc. If you have a chance for replanning London you can greatly improve on this idea. All greengrocers should be placed in Horsey Lane (№ 6), all butchers in Mile End (E.1), and all gentlemen’s conveniences in Bloomsbury (W.C.).
Now I should like to give you a little practical advice of great help on how to build an English town.
You must understand that an English town is a vast conspiracy to mislead foreigners. You have to use century-old practices and tricks.
1. First of all, never build a street straight. The English love privacy and do not want to see one end of the street from the other end. Make sudden curves in the streets and build them S-shaped too; the letters L, T, V, W and O are also becoming increasingly popular. It would be a fine tribute to the Greeks to build a few Φ and Θ-shaped streets; it would be an ingenious compliment to the Russians to favour the shape of Я, and I am sure the Chinese would be more than flattered to see some hieroglyph-shaped thoroughfares.
2. Never build the houses of the same street in a straight line. The British have always been a freedom-loving race and “the freedom to build a muddle” is one of their most ancient civic rights.
3. Now there are further camouflage possibilities in the numbering of houses. Primitive continental races put even numbers on one side, odd numbers on the other, and you always know that small numbers start from the north or west. In England you have this system too; but you may start numbering your houses at one end, go up to a certain number on the same side, then continue on the other side, going back in the opposite direction.
You may leave out some numbers if you are superstitious; and you may continue the numbering in a side street; you also give the same number to two or three houses.
But this is far from the end. Many people refuse to have numbers altogether, and they choose names. It is very pleasant, for instance, to find a street with three hundred and fifty totally similar bungalows and look for “The Bungalow”. Or to arrive in a street where all the houses have a charming view of a hill and try to find “Hill View”. Or search for “Seven Oaks” and find a house with three apple trees.
4. Give a different name to the street whenever it bends; but if the curve is so sharp that it really makes two different streets, you may keep the same name. On the other hand, if, owing to neglect, a street has been built a straight line it must be called by many different names (High Holborn, New Oxford Street, Oxford Street, Bayswater Road, Notting Hill Gate, Holland Park, and so on).
5. As some cute foreigners would be able to learn their way about even under such circumstances, some further precautions are necessary. Call streets by various names: street, road, place, mews, crescent, avenue, rise, lane, way, grove, park, gardens, alley, arch, path, walk, broadway, promenade, gate, terrace, vale, view, hill, etc.
Now the further possibilities arise:
a. Gather all sorts of streets and squares of the same name in one neighbourhood: Belsize Park, Belsize Gardens, Belsize Green, Belsize circus, Belsize Yard, Belsize Viaduct, Belsize Arcade, Belsize Heath, etc.
b. Place a number of streets of exactly the same name in different districts. If you have about some twenty Princes Squares and Warwick Avenues in the town, the muddle – you may claim without immodesty – will be complete.
6. Street names should be painted clearly and distinctly on large boards. Then hide these boards carefully. Place them too high or too low, in shadow and darkness, upside down and inside out, or, even better, lock them up in a safe in your bank, otherwise they may give people some indication about the names of the streets.
7. In order to break down the foreigner’s last vestige of resistance and shatter his morale, one further trick is advisable: introduce the system of squares – real squares, I mean – which run into streets like this:
Princes Square Leinster Square
-
Princes Square
Princes Square
Leinster Square
Leinster Square
Princes Square Leinster Square
With this simple device it is possible to build a street of which the two sides have different names.
P.S. I have been told that my above-described theory is all wrong and is only due to my Central European conceit, because the English do not care for the opinion of the foreigners. In every other country, it has been explained, people just build streets and towns following their own common sense. England is the only country of the world where there is a Ministry of Town and Country Planning. This is the real reason for the muddle.