- •Язык профессионального общения:
- •Starter activity
- •Reading one
- •Moral Re-armament: History and Challenges
- •1. Give definitions of the following words and word-combinations, make use of a dictionary. Reproduce the situations they are used in the text.
- •Reading two Britain’s Moral Crisis
- •Starter activity
- •Reading one What Makes People Volunteer
- •Speech activities
- •Reading two
- •Nurse Nicky Nears Her Peak of Fitness
- •Reading one Who Uses Drugs and Why?
- •2. Check and compare your answers with your partner. Language Focus
- •Reading two
- •Europe: Drugs – Adapting To New Realities
- •Reading three
- •They're toking up for algebra class. Teenagers need incentives to keep it clean
- •Reading four
- •Partnering Against Trafficking
- •Discussion
- •Imagine you are the head of a Charity Fund. Write a report about the charity activities your fund is performing. Functional vocabulary
- •Phrases related to the topic
- •Speech Functions Bank
- •I. Interrupting People
- •Reading One Status of Women
- •Status of women and girls around the world: facts and figures (provided by the Global Fund for Women)
- •Violence
- •Insert prepositions or particles where necessary.
- •Reading two Schoolbooks and the female stereotype
- •Reading One The Qualities to Look for in a Wife
- •Reading two What’s wrong with marrying for Love
- •Reading three
- •I’m your Equal, Partner!
- •Is your relationship out of balance? Scared to stick up for yourself? It's time for a change
- •Imagine you are having a row with your male partner/husband. Work in pairs and try to make it up with the help of the Five r’s.
- •Reading One Careers and Marriage
- •1. Explain the meaning of the word combinations used in the text:
- •3. What practical tips for having a stable and fruitful marriage were given in the text? Discuss them in pairs. Reading two They'll Never Go Home Again
- •1. Answer the questions:
- •Reading three The Frustrated Housewife
- •Insert a preposition or a particle where necessary.
- •Interview several working and staying-at-home mothers about their attitude to the problems raised in the text. Present the findings of your questionnaires in class and analyse the results together.
- •Role-play. Discuss the problem.
- •General Discussion
- •Phrases related to the topic
- •I. Asking for and Giving Opinions
- •2. Use appropriate language from the boxes above to ask for and give opinions in the following situations.
- •2. Explaining and Justifying
- •1. Make the following into statements explaining and justifying using the language from the box above.
- •2. Use appropriate language from the box above to make statements explaining and justifying in the following situations.
- •1. Asking for Clarification
- •2. Giving Clarification
- •1. Make the following into questions and statements asking for and giving clarification.
- •2. Ask for and give clarification in the following situations.
- •1. Make the following into statements of agreement and disagreement using the language in the boxes above.
- •Reading one Censorship Debate
- •Insert particles or prepositions where necessary. Translate the sentences into Russian/Belarusian.
- •Reading two bbc Chiefs Order Tough Curb on tv Sex and Violence
- •Reading three
- •Is Film Censorship Necessary?
- •Insert particles or prepositions where necessary. Translate the sentences into Russian/Belarusian.
- •Reading four Censorship – What and by Whom?
- •Insert particles or prepositions where necessary. Translate the sentences into Russian/Belarusian.
- •Reading two
- •Public Concerns
- •Did he follow this pattern? ________
- •Reading three Paying the Price for News
- •Functional vocabulary
- •Phrases related to the topic
- •The power of the media Speech Functions Bank
- •I. Expressing Preferences
- •II. Talking about likes and Interests.
- •Starter activity
- •Reading one Ten Ways to find the best schools
- •Bruce Kemble. News Week. 2002 Language focus
- •A Whitehall checklist;
- •Speech activities
- •Reading two Slimmed-down School Curriculum Aims to Free Quarter of Timetable for Pupils Aged 11 to 14
- •Reading three High-Stakes Games
- •Reading four
- •5 Times More Florida Kids to Repeat Third Grade State's New Policy Links Promotion to Reading Test Scores
- •Reading one Why Parents Choose to Opt out of State System
- •In the following sentences use the right particle with the verb to put:
- •Reading two
- •Reading three The City – as- School
- •Imagine that a friend of yours is considering sending his/her child to a non-government school (institute) you are working in. Write a letter either encouraging or discouraging him/her.
- •Reading one Survey Results Detail What Top Entry Level Employers Want Most
- •Reading two Employers Still Prefer Traditional Degrees Over Online Learning, Study Finds
- •Insert prepositions or particles where necessary.
- •In groups of 3 or 4 prepare and stage a debate on the prospects of online learning. For more ideas read the supplementary texts and visit the relevant web sites.
- •Reading three Two in Three Trainee Teachers who Qualify 'Are not up to the Job'
- •Functional vocabulary
- •Phrases related to the topic
- •Speech Functions Bank
- •1. Asking for More Detailed Information
- •1. Make the following into questions or statements asking for more detailed information using the language in the box above.
- •2. Use appropriate language from the box above to ask for more detailed information in the following situations.
- •2. Making Comparisons
- •1. Make the following into statements of comparison using the language in the box above.
- •2. Use appropriate language from the box above to make statements of comparison about the following.
- •3. Making generalisations
- •2. Use appropriate language from the box above to make generalisations about the following.
Insert particles or prepositions where necessary. Translate the sentences into Russian/Belarusian.
A new bill targeting … material “harmful … minors” was passed … Congress.
This organization is committed … opposing any censorship … the Internet.
There are several different programs available to help parents filter … material that is often considered inappropriate … children.
Some people may find it offensive, in part because it belittles … the terrible experiences that many people still alive both lived …, and have to live with the consequences … the rest of their lives.
Censoring in this case could be based … the fact that the information could become harmful … certain groups of people, if enough people then proceed to act against these groups … … a misguided sense of justice.
The government called … immediate steps aimed at curbing … the tide of racism in the Web.
The Board of Censors has found this content offensive … decency.
Some acts of violence can still slip/get … the net of censorship.
Speech activities
Answer the following questions. Exchange your views on the issues considered.
Why is The Communications Decency Act (1996) considered to be plain silly by the author? Do you share this point of view?
What constitutes ‘community standards?’ Are they universal? Who defines ‘community standards?’
Are parents really the people best suited to decide what their children should and should not see?
What’s your personal view on the program filters that are designed to filter out material that is often considered inappropriate for children? Are they really helpful?
Some people complain that censorship violates their ‘freedom of expression’. Should freedom of expression be always intact?
Who should act as censors in your opinion, and what should they censor on the Internet?
Group work
Imagine that you’ve been set up as a “Board of censors”. Work with your colleagues and decide what TV programs you’d like to cut back on or censor and what new programs (if any) are to appear. Justify your point of view and exchange your opinions with other boards of censors.
Censorship has always been a topical issue. Split in 3 groups and decide which form of censorship is really viable:
extensive censorship;
limited censorship;
no censorship.
Make use of the information provided in the supplementary texts (“Defending the faith or a weapon of censorship?”, “A Necessary Evil?”) in order to back up your arguments.
Writing
Write a free essay on the following issue: “Are we protected or harmed by censorship?”
Section 2. Media and Communications
Reading one
Read through the following text and state its main ideas
Is Television Destroying our Society?
At the start of the Fifties, hardly any U.S. homes had a television set. By the end of the decade the nearly all did. It was much the same in Britain and across the developed world.
Freed from the austerity and pessimism of the war years millions of ordinary families saw the technological miracle of TV as a sure sign that life really was getting better. They were wrong: it was about to get worse.
Emerging in the U.S. is remarkable new evidence of how television has profoundly undermined society’s traditional values and standards. Carried out by Harvard University, the research shows that as TV has become the drug of choice for an increasingly fast and self-occupied world, traditional family activities have disappeared, participation in local affairs and community life has collapsed and a damaging cult of “get-out-of-my-face” isolationism has taken hold.
In just 50 years, say the Harvard researchers, TV has not only stripped away much of our essentially gregarious nature, but demolished the social fabric and common interests that has held communities together for centuries.
Cocooned in their cathodic world, people no longer know their neighbors, friends or even families. They don’t vote, they don’t socialize, they don’t think and most of them don’t care.
Can all this be the fault of television? In a speech to the American Political Science Association’s annual meeting, Dr Robert Putnam, Dillon professor of International Affairs at Harvard, argued forcefully that it is. He painted an ominous picture of a society so helplessly glued to, and enslaved by television that it can no longer function in a normal, co-operative way.
Television, he argued, has dammed the natural flow of human contact that builds friendships, neighborhoods and, ultimately, nations. Millions of modern, comparatively well-educated people barely speak to strangers outside work and shopping trips. As a result, one of the most precious resources – simple human trust – has been all but eradicated.
“Trust and civic participation are the cornerstones of democracy,” said Dr Putnam. “Sadly, our stock of social capital has been badly depleted over the past 40 years. The social fabric is becoming visibly thinner. We don’t trust one another as much because we simply don’t know one another as much.” The reason, said Dr Putnam, is just a click of the remote control away.
“Television has made our communities wider and shallower,” he said. “ It enables individual tastes to be satisfied more fully, but at the cost of the positive social benefits associated with other forms of entertainment.”
“The same logic applies to the replacement of vaudeville by the movies and of the movies by the video recorder.”
Millions of people, whose parents and grandparents considered it second nature to be concerned with local and national affaires, now display only a tangential interest in life outside their living rooms.
They have become suspicious, reclusive and increasingly disinterested in the way their communities are run. As people have come to depend more on TV’s inevitably superficial coverage of news and current affairs, a semi-institutionalized culture of ignorance has begun to appear.
More then 60per cent of U.S. families don’t buy books. Blissfully moronic movies that celebrate ignorance, such as Dumb and Dumber, are all the rage. 30per cent of population think Bosnia is somewhere in Africa.
From the early seventies to the present day, the number of Americans able to say they have attended a meeting on public, town or social affairs in the past years has almost halved. Participation in parent-teacher associations has fallen from 12 million in 1964 to only seven million in 2007.
“Every year over the past decade or two, millions have withdrawn from the affairs of their communities,” said Dr Putnam.
At every level of education Dr Putnam found a direct, negative connection between the number of hours of television people watch and their willingness to take part in group activities. By the same token, those who watch TV most, are least likely to trust others. Television watchers are suspicious, skeptical, socially inept and inclined to think the worst of others.
“By contrast, the more you read newspapers the more trusting you are,” said Dr Putnam. He found that for those born before World War II, community activity- from joining groups to voting in elections – is a strong and responsibly-held ethic. In 1950, only 10per cent of U.S. households had a TV set. By 1958, it was more than 90per cent and the collapse of trust and participation has been accelerating ever since.
In seeking to establish the cause of what Dr Putnam calls “the profound undermining of civic culture” over the past four decades, many other possibilities were considered, including sky-high divorce rates, the exodus from the cities into the suburbs, the flood of women joining the jobs market and the simple speeding up of modern life.
But nothing, argued Dr Putnam, provides so compelling an explanation as the growth of TV and the strain of selfishness, distrust and isolation that it has bred. “It has “privatized” and “individualized” our leisure time, disrupting the opportunity for social contact,” he said.
For more and more of television’s helpless, captive millions, the message of the age has become: plug in, switch on, drop out.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society
Language focus
Join the words to make phrases and translate them into Russian/Belarusian.
gregarious |
interest |
ominous |
movies |
superficial |
undermining |
moronic |
picture |
profound |
coverage |
tangential |
nature |
Match the words with their definitions.
moronic |
having only a slight or indirect connection with something |
cocooned |
protected by surrounding himself completely with something |
ominous |
an offensive way of referring to somebody that you think is very stupid |
tangential |
suggesting that something bad is going to happen in the future |
reclusive |
acting or done with no skill |
inept |
such a lifestyle when a person lives alone and likes to avoid other people |
Speech activities
Answer the following questions:
What ideas is the author of the article concerned with?
What are Dr. Putnam’s main principles? To what extent do you agree with them?
Do you share the opinion that today’s society is ignorant and lacks knowledge? If so, how can it be improved? Can television have a positive impact on society?
Agree or disagree with the following statements and give your reasons
Television has profoundly undermined society’s traditional values and standards.
TV has not only stripped away much of our essentially gregarious nature, but demolished the social fabric and common interest that has held communities together for centuries.
People have become suspicious and reclusive.
The more you read newspapers, the more trusting you are, the more you watch television, the less trusting you are.
The message of the age has become: plug in, switch on, drop out.
Imagine that some of your group-mates are staunch supporters of Dr. Putnam’s ideas. Discuss these ideas with them and try to prove your point of view. Support your arguments with the information from the articles you’ve read and from your personal experience. Use the appropriate language exponents from the Speech Functions Bank.
Listening comprehension
You will hear interviews with Joanna Bogle, a member of the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association, a group which aims to monitor the output of television and radio in Britain and with Kate Adie, a news reporter for the BBC and a documentary film maker. They talk on similar topics, but not in the same order. Listen to the interview and answer the questions.
What sort of programmes do they find offensive? Why? What examples do they give?
Do they feel people can tell the difference between fantasy and reality?
Do they think it matters whether they can?
What examples do they quote to support their views?
What sort of programmes do you think these are?
Do they think television reflects society or influences it?
Do they feel that television has positive as well as negative influences?