8. Read the text and tell how Nick has become a collector.

In fact I haven’t got the patience to engage myself in any regular and continuous activities. At least I thought so until … Well, I’ll tell you from the very beginning.

Three years ago our group went on a tour of old Russian towns. We took along with us a great deal of souvenirs for the boys and girls to present them with. As for me, I had bought about thirty or forty various badges and post-cards with views of our city.

Well, we enjoyed the tour very much. We saw many interesting things and tried to remember every place we visited. In those towns we were warmly received by our friends who gave us all sorts of things in memory of our stay there.

By the end of our tour I had found myself a possessor of quite a number of different badges and each of those little pieces of iron could tell me a lot about the places I had visited. On returning home I went to see my friend who had been ill and couldn’t join us in our travel. Telling him the story of our journey I showed the badges and explained them. When my friend saw the badges which I brought his eyes sparkled. He took each of them and scrutinized it for a long time. We spent the whole evening talking about the badges. I understood that if I had presented him with the badges, that would have been a great consolation for the fact that he didn’t go with us and I said, “Alec, what if I give you all those things for good?” “Oh no”, said he, “You hardly realize what a valuable collection of badges you have. It would be very nice of you to go on collecting them. I’m sure nobody can boast of such a collection”.

I followed his advice. Last year I added to my collection a hundred of badges which I exchanged with the British, French, German and Polish students. Several Italian and Swedish badges were presented to me by my elder sister after her tour of foreign countries.

Thus I became a regular collector. Collecting badges has become my hobby. I didn’t know it was such a fascinating business.

Leisure time disco? tv? or books?

1. Read the texts and answer their questions.

a) How do young people spend their spare time? What leisure activities do they prefer? These and other questions were asked in a sociological survey. The results of the opinion poll conducted among young people living in big cities and in the country add up to the following hierarchy of pastimes: music in combination with such forms of group activities as discos and concerts followed by the Internet, theatre and reading. Then come films, museums, amateur arts and engineering; and finally, TV and classical music. The questionnaire, circulated among pupils of 9-11 forms, students and young workers, has shown that the arts are regarded only to contacts with friends.

Most young people admit that they do not know how to plan their leisure. According to the poll, the actual priorities are as follows: TV comes first, followed by Internet, reading, films, listening to records, radio, going out to dances and discos; then come concerts, museums, amateur arts, and finally theatre.

And how do you spend your leisure time?

b) Television is a powerful means of spreading news in modern society. They show all sorts of things on TV – films, plays, ballets etc. Some people even say that the cinema and theatre have no future because of the development of television. Still there are many theatre- and cinema-goers among students. Are you one of them?

NOTES:

Spare (leisure) time – свободное время

Sociological survey – социологическое исследование

opinion poll – опрос мнения

pastime - развлечение

amateur art – любительское искусство

questionnaire – вопросник, анкета

to circulate – распространять(ся)