Comprehension

Exercise 1.Make up 3–5 true or false statements about the text to check comprehension.

Exercise 2.Sum up the main points of the text trying to sound as English as you can.

Language practice

Exercise 3.Select 5–7 items of advanced language for intensive study. Explain your options, comment on their register and expressiveness and suggest synonyms of various degrees of formality. Think up appropriate contexts with them and practise them in class.

Exercise 4.Identify the cultural information, things, stereotypes and topics in the text and comment on them.

Exercise 5. Phrasal Verbs Practice.

Write out all the sentences with phrasal verbs, look them up in a recent dictionary and write out more sentences with them. Translate the sentences in writing, possibly with a number of options for different speech situations.

Exercise 6.Which goes with which?

pitch	cycling
	athletics
track	cricket
	baseball
field	horse-racing
turf	football

Exercise 7.Make up a list of American and English sport idioms, explain their meanings, comment on the origins and practise them with your classmates.

Exercise 8.Complete and extend the chart

SPORTS IN THE UK – social breakdown

School Sports	Working Class	Middle Class	Upper Class
Hockey … … …	Snooker … … …	Bowls … … …	Golf … … …

Can a similar chart be completed on the sports in America? Develop your own parameters to classify sports in the States.

Speaking

Exercise 9.Use your outside reading, personal experiences, TV and video-watching, etc. to support, expand on or question the points and observations made in the chapter. Use compelling evidence and appropriate language in order to sound convincing.

Exercise 10.Go through the articles on college sport in the US and baseball rules from the Supplementary Materials. Be ready to talk about the status of college / university sport in your country; choose a traditional Russian game or sport and give a detailed description of it (the rules, equipment, whether it is an indoor or outdoor, individual or team game / sport, etc.)

Unit 24. Oxford blues (Film)

Exercise 1. Watch the film closely and notice the way the characters talk, behave and relate to one another. Use their behaviour, conversation, appearance and terms of address to trace any possible social and cultural differences between them and see how they support or disprove the points made in the previous chapters. The language list below will help you do it better:

It appears you have already seemed fit to become part of the architecture here / the odds for their survival were clearly in their favour / remove without causing irreparable damage to … / report to your don / Marlon Brando / guide you through your three happy years at Oxford / Take care, buddy / Hot-shot / come up to Oxford to study detective fiction / Benny Hill / send smb down / prepared for the rigours of the interview / The Matriculation Ceremony / They do it every time they win a race / It’s invigorating, isn’t it? / That’s too bad! / very upper-crust / Thanks for the loan / the gift of the gab / Char with no sugars / I think I’ll pass / slumming / sit at the High table / I’d like to work alone / test one’s soundness / challenge smb to a drinking contest / The flies certainly don’t gather on you / lose a grudge match against / initiate a challenge match / I was on a winning streak one night / buy oneself a year / make sth. pay off / to lecture / Isn’t it enough to get by? / have a little anger and raw energy / a grand English manor, a grand title / row eights / a coxwain, to cox / to abandon the American colonies and permit them home rule / have a brash suggestion / suit a redneck / to wash (at Oxford) / there is nothing beyond our grasp / Hear, hear! / I didn’t think you like chicks at all / to storm into a room / You are making strides / This kind of thing isn’t simply done / NBA play-offs / punting /I think you are being paged.

Exercise 2.Prepare to talk about the cultural things, cultural information, the idiom (including noises) and stereotypes reflected in the film.

Exercise 3.Drawing on your general background knowledge of the subject, outside reading, the Internet, etc., write an extended (300-word) cultural commentary for the film on:

1. English academic culture and teaching styles and formats;

2. University sport in Britain / the USA.

Exercise 4.Write a 500-word essay on one of the following:

1. What aspects of English life and national idiosyncrasies come as the biggest cultural shock to an American? Illustrate and comment.

2. Should Columbus have stayed in Spain? Argue.

3. The English and Their Language. Discuss.

4. The Americans and Their Language. Discuss.