PREPARING FOR EXAMS

TESTS

English

Choosing a Profession

47

May 2013

I. LISTENING

(A) 1. Listen to Lena’s story and decide whether the statements below are

true (T) or false (F) according to the text.

Five-Minute Tests

CHOOSING A PROFESSION: GENERATION GAP

I decided to become a professional musician. I knew it would be difficult, but

I wanted to try. However, my father didn’t like the idea. Of course, I didn’t want

to tell him at first, because I knew he wouldn’t understand.

1

I

But one day my father said he wanted to talk to me. He asked me what I

intended to do when I left school. I told him I wanted to be a musician. He said

Match these professions with their Russian

that a career in music was very risky. He said I ought to become an account-

equivalents.

ant, because it was a very safe job. We talked for a long time. The longer we

talked the more depressed I got. Of course, I could see my father was right in

1. Physician

a. Психолог

a way. I knew it would be more sensible to pass my exam and get a safe job.

2. Physicist

b. Психиатр

But I didn’t want to do that. I was only interested in playing the guitar. That was

3. Psychiatrist

c. Терапевт

I wanted to do!

4. Psychologist

d. Физик

Gap – расхождение во взглядах

Key: 1. c; 2. d; 3. b; 4. a

1. Lena chose a career of a professional musician. _____

2. Lena’s father wanted her to have a safe job. _____

2

I

3. The longer they talked the more depressed both of them got. _____

4. Lena knew it would be more sensible to be an accountant. _____

Name these people’s jobs.

5. Lena’s father persuaded her to pass her exam and get a safe job. _____

(B) 2. Listen again, and for questions 1–4, complete the sentences with a

1.

a person who helps to beautify and im-

word or a phrase.

prove the skin

1. Lena knew it would be difficult to become ___________.

________________________________

2. Lena’s father thought that a career in music was very______.

2.

a person who arranges diets

3. Lena could see my father was right in a _______.

4. Lena ________ in playing the guitar.

________________________________

II. READING

3.

a member of any nation’s arm forces

________________________________

Six sentences in the text are incomplete.Choose from the list A–G the one

4.

a person who designs houses

which fits each gap (1–6). There is one extra letter which you do not need

________________________________

to use.

5.

an animal doctor

DOWNSHIFTING

Daniel and Liz used to work in central London. He was a journalist and she

________________________________

used to work for an international bank. They (1)_______________ from their

6.

a doctor who specialises in mental prob-

large house in the suburbs leaving their children with a nanny. Most evenings

lems

Daniel (2)__________ until eight or nine o’clock, and nearly twice a month he

________________________________

would have to fly to New York for meetings. They both (3)____________ but

7.

a person who walks down a cat-walk

began to feel that life was passing them by.

Nowadays they run a farm in the mountains of Wales. ‘I always wanted to

________________________________

have a farm here’, says Daniel, ‘and we took almost a year to make a decision

8.

a person who is in charge of a school

to downshift. It’s taken some (4)__________, but it’s been worth it. We have to

________________________________

think twice now about spending money on car repairs and we no longer have

9.

a person in charge of a ship

any holidays. However, I think it’s made us stronger as a family, and the children

________________________________

are a lot happier.’

Liz, however, is not totally convinced. ‘I (5)___________ even though it

10.

a person who writes plays

was hard work and long hours.I’m not really a country girl , but I suppose I’m

________________________________

(6)______________ looking after the animals. One thing I do like though is be-

11.

a person who works in a bank

ing able to see more of my children. My tip for other people wanting to do the

________________________________

same is not to think about it too much or you might not do it at all.’

12.

a person who cuts, washes and styles

Downshift – переходитьсвысокооплачиваемой, носвязаннойсчрезмерным

people’s hair

стрессом и нагрузками и отнимающей все свободное время работы на

________________________________

более спокойную, хотя и низкооплачиваемую по сравнению с прежней.

Key: 1. a cosmetologist; 2. a dietician;

A. earned a large amount of money

E. getting used to

3. a serviceman; 4. an architect; 5. a vet;

B. took the decision to downshift

F. wouldn’t get home

6. a psychiatrist; 7. a model; 8. a head master/

C. gradually getting used to

G. used to enjoy my job

mistress; 9. a captain; 10. a playwright;

D. would commute

ª

11. a teller, banker; 12. a hairdresser

ª

			English		TESTS			PREPARING FOR EXAMS
48									box.
									III. VOCABULARY
									What jobs are linked to these six places? Distribute words from the
			May 2013
									mate, back-office operators, nurse, chef, cleaner, receptionist, headteacher/
									principal, waiter, manager, purser, doctor, cashiers, secretary, sister, concultant,
									risk analyst, computer operators, porter, staff nurse, teacher, specialist, manager,
		Five-Minute Tests
									assistant, security guard, surgeon, window dresser, caretaker, matron, accountant,
									coach/trainer, financial analyst, doctor of sports medicine, captain
		3	I						1. a bank__________________________________________
		Rewrite the following text and put in all the							2. a school_________________________________________
									3. a hospital ________________________________________
		necessary commas(,) and full stops (.).
									4. a department store ___________________________________
		I spend about half of my time in my of-							5. a sports center ____________________________________
		fice and the other half in the court I don’t							6. a cruise ship _________________________________________
		have customers I have clients they come to							VII. SPEAKING
		me with legal problems and I represent them
		it’s a very demanding job because you feel							(C5) You have 3–4 minutes to discuss the following problem:
		responsible for what happens to your clients							Student A. You have always wanted to be something like a computer pro-
									grammer. Your classmate is not sure what he is going to do after leaving
		but it’s also very satisfying one of my clients
									school. Advise him to uncover his/her hidden abilities with a special com-
		was recently arrested for a crime he hadn’t
									puter programme. Your classmate knows about this test but has a skeptical
		commited and I was able persuade the po-
									outlook on it.
		lice they’d made a mistake it’s a great feeling							You speak first.
		helping people when they’re in trouble							Student B. Ask your classmate why he/she has always wanted to work in
									a computational field. Explain him/her why you can’t trust the results of this
		Key:							special computer programme.
		I spend about half of my time in my o ce,							Sample conversation.
		and the other half in the court. I don’t have
		customers, I have clients. They come to me
									Student A		Student B
		with legal problems and I represent them. It’s							– Where are you going to study after		– These are difficult questions. It’s great
		a very demanding job, because you feel re-							leaving school? Do you know what your		when you have long-standing dreams
		sponsible for what happens to your clients,							future profession is?		which can turn into something serious
		but it’s also very satisfying. One of my clients									in the future. What if I do not gravitate
		was recently arrested for a crime he hadn’t									towards a definite subject?…And you?
											Have you already formed an idea of what
		commited, and I was able persuade the po-
											you’d like to do?
		lice they’d made a mistake. It’s a great feel-
		ing helping people when they’re in trouble.							– I have always wanted to be something		– Yes, the profession of a programmer
									like a computer programmer. I like com-		has a lot of advantages and can offer a
		4	I						puters, besides maths is my favourite		lot of opportunities…
		Choose the infinitive or the -ing form.							subject. I’m going to enter a university to
									study computer science.
		1. I want to change/changing my job.							– Do you know about a computer pro-		– Yes, the testing is very interesting:
	_________________________________
									gramme which helps to uncover hidden		you can find out something new about
		2. Would you like to be/being a commercial
									abilities? You can try it. This programme		yourself. But according to this computer
		traveller?							consists of about two or three hundred		program I should be a musician. Unfor-
	_________________________________								questions of different subject matter.		tunately, when I was seven and went to
		3. Should I come/coming to work early to-							There are lexical, mathematical prob-		musical classes my teacher told my par-
									lems; exercises to check your general		ents that I was a hopeless case.
		morrow?
									knowledge; visual and abstract logic; at-
	_________________________________								tention. This test defines the sphere in
		4. To have /Having a lot of freedom is very							which you would be better to work (sci-
		important to me.							ence, business, art, or public service).
	_________________________________								– Did they believe her?		– Yes, because she was absolutely right.
		5. Thomas Edison was well known for to
									Key.
		work/working very long hours.
	_________________________________								I. 1. 1. T; 2. T; 3. F; 4. T; 5. F;
									2. 1. professional musician; 2. risky; 3. way; 4. was only interested.
		6. They have had no trouble to get/getting
									II. 1. D; 2. F; 3. A; 4. E; 5. G; 6. C.
		loans from the bank to start/starting the							III. 1. financial analyst, risk analyst, back-office operator, manager, cashier, secretary,
		business.							computer operator, security guard
	_________________________________								2. headteacher/principal, teacher, caretaker, secretary
									3. doctor, surgeon, nurse, matron, porter, sister, staff nurse, consultant, specialist
		Key: 1. to change; 2. to be; 3. come; 4. Hav-							4. manager, window dresser, assistant, accountant
									5. manager, coach/trainer, receptionist, cleaner, doctor of sports medicine
		ing; 5. working; 6. getting, to start.							6. captain, purse, steward, waiter, mate, chef
				By Youdif Boyarskaya,							By Youdif Boyarskaya,
				School No. 814, Moscow							School No. 814, Moscow

PREPARING FOR EXAMS

PTE ACADEMIC – A FAST, FAIR AND RELIABLE ENGLISH TEST

English

49

May 2013

It is estimated that over one billion people worldwide are learning English. Their reasons for wanting to learn this language are many and varied, but for a substantial proportion it is the desire to follow a course of study in an Englishspeaking country (or in one of an increasing number of countries in which English is widely used as a medium of instruction). Not surprisingly, universities in these countries require overseas students to show evidence that they have sufficient command of English to be able to follow a course of study, hence the demand for exams in EAP (English for Academic Purposes).

PTE Academic is a relative newcomer in the field of EAP exams, but it is a newcomer with style. For one thing, the test is done entirely on computer, so it is in line with the way English is used these days in most universities. (Students no longer write their assignments with pen and paper; they word process them and email them to their tutors; academic lectures are increasingly delivered in digital form via Virtual Learning Environments). What’s more it uses Pearson’s state-of-the-art natural language processing technology to provide automatic marking of student’s responses in all four skills. This includes open-ended speaking and writing tasks such as describing a graph or diagram orally or writing a short essay.

Test scores are highly reliable, not subject to the variability which is inevitable with subjective human marking. The test takes advantage of technology in other ways too. Different media (text, recorded speech, video) and response formats (speaking into a microphone, keyboard text entry, drag and drop) are combined in a variety of ways so as to provide no fewer than 20 different item types. Of particular interest are “integrated items” in which two skills – such as reading and speaking, or listening and writing – are assessed simultaneously in ways that tasks that closely resemble the conditions of real life language use. These include the kinds of tasks that students will be faced with in a real course, such as listening to lectures or writing summaries. All the content used in the test is taken from authentic academic sources: textbooks, recorded lectures, university websites.

Universities like the realism which these features provide, and they like the reliability assured by machine scoring, which is why the test is accepted as evidence of language competence by over 1600 study programs in the USA and by 96% of universities in the UK. They also appreciate the unrivalled levels of security provided at Pearson’s dedicated test centres. Rigorous identity checks, making use of cutting edge biometric data monitoring, together with video surveillance, ensure against fraud.

The test is popular with students, too. As well as the widespread recognition, which opens doors to so many study opportunities, PTE Academic gets high scores for convenience. The whole test – covering all four skills – is taken in a single session of three hours (maximum) duration. Candidates can book the time of their choice, any day of the week, and

usually with only 48 hours’ notice. Better still, thanks to machine scoring, results are typically available within five working days, sometimes in as few as two!

Score reports give the candidate’s level in terms of a 90-point scale, making for much finer discrimination of levels than is provided by most comparable exams. In addition to a global result, the score report gives grades for the four communicative skills (listening, reading, speaking and writing) and for five “enabling skills”: fluency, grammar, pronunciation, spelling and written discourse. This information is communicated direct to the candidate’s chosen universities via a secure website, so there is no need to obtain certified copies of certificates or to send paper forms through the mail.

For teachers, preparing students for PTE Academic makes a refreshing change from more conventional exams. The diversity of item types means that there is scope for introducing a variety of activities in the classroom. Preparation for integrated items lends itself well to lively communicative tasks using authentic materials. In fact, the best way to prepare for the exam is to practise just the sort of activities that students will need in the real academic world. There is already a wealth of learning materials, teaching tips and lesson plans available on the Pearson website and from major publishers. So if you have students who plan to study at an English medium institution, PTE Academic might be the test for them!

PTE Academic is available in Moscow and St Petersburg and costs US$295. For more information, please see www. pearsonpte.com

By Glyn Jones, Research Developer, Pearson Language Tests in co-operation with Language 360, Approved Distributor of Pearson Test of English General and Pearson Test

of English Young Learners in Moscow and Regions

English TESTS

50 Контрольно-измерительные May 2013 материалы

Предлагаемвашемувниманиювариантытестовизсборника“Контрольно-измерительныематериалы” изд-ва“Вако”, составленныенаоснове

материалов учебника М.З. Биболетовой и др. “Enjoy English”, рабочих программ по английскому языку и Федерального государственного образовательного стандарта нового поколения.

9 КЛАСС. Test 12. It’s time to think about your future career

10 КЛАСС. Test 1. The World of Jobs

Ключи к тестам см. на CD

РЕКЛАМА English

51

English

52

May 2013

TEXTS FOR READING

THE CARPET MAKER FROM INDIA

Indian Fairytale

Once upon a time there lived a weaver in South India. He wove beautiful carpets, but he did it very slowly, one carpet a year, that’s why he earned a little, and he hardly had enough money for living. Once, when he was nearly finishing one of his best carpets, suddenly his loom broke.

The weaver was a poor man and instead of complaining about his fate he took an axe and went straight to the forest to find a suitable tree to make a loom from. He observed a lot of trees until he saw a tall box-tree that grew at the seaside.

‘That’s the tree from which I’ll make a new loom’, the carpet-maker said happily and went close to the tree. As soon as he started to cut it with his axe, he heard an invisible voice: ‘Save the tree, weaver!’

‘Who said that?’ the weaver asked in surprise.

‘It’s me, the forest spirit. I live inside the box-tree. Why do you want to cut the tree down?’

The carpet-maker put his axe on the ground and said, ‘I’ve chosen that tree for my new loom. My old loom has been broken recently, and if I don’t make a new one, I won’t finish making the carpet and sell it. My family will die of hunger. Oh, invisible spirit, please, leave this place, and I’ll cut the box-tree down!’

‘I beg you not to touch the box-tree! It’s so good for me here. The wind blows from the sea, and it’s cool even in a hot day. You’d better make a wish and I’ll make it come true’, the forest spirit said.

The carpet maker thought a little and agreed. However, he told the spirit he would return home and ask his wife for some advice.

On his way home the carpet-maker met his friend, the barber.

‘Where are you hurrying to?’ asked the barber.

‘Don’t delay me’, answered the carpet-maker, ‘I’m hurrying back home to ask my wife for some advice, I mean, what I shall ask for from the forest spirit who lives inside the box-tree.’

‘Well, you may ask him for the kingdom’, said the barber, ‘then you’ll become King and I’ll be your minister or adviser’.

‘Maybe, you are right,’ said the carpet maker, ‘but I’ll listen to my wife first of all’.

When he arrived home, he asked his wife what he should ask for from the forest spirit who lived inside the box-tree and told her that his friend, the barber, advised him to ask for the kingdom.

‘How stupid the barber is!’ his wife exclaimed. ‘Please, please, don’t listen to him! Don’t you know that any king is surrounded by a lot of betrayers and flatterers? His life isn’t so sweet!’

‘Wise words, my darling! Betrayers and flatterers… But tell me, please, what shall I ask for?’

‘Most of all you like you craft, don’t you?’

‘Yes, you are right, I do’.

‘All the people appreciate your beautiful carpets, but you can’t make more than one carpet a year. That’s why we are so poor. Ask the forest spirit for such a loom that could weave the beautiful carpets much more quickly’.

The carpet-maker nodded and went back to the seaside. But the closer he got, the heavier was his heart.

So the carpet maker thought to himself: ‘Well, the forest spirit will give me a new loom, but what shall I do? Shall I be going to the market, selling the carpets and saving some money? But it’s not really my cup of tea’. And he was so sad that coming close to the box-tree he said, ‘Oh, forest spirit, I don’t want anything from you. If you don’t let me cut the tree down, please, repair my broken loom’.

‘All right, I’ll make your wish come true’.

When the man returned home, he found his old loom repaired perfectly well. He immediately sat down at his loom, started working and forgot about everything. He worked hard from early morning till late evening. When he finished his work, he thought: ‘I’m happy! I could have been made the King, but despite all the treasures I’d have possessed, I’d have had a lot of slaves who would have all been betrayers and flatterers and there would have been no faithful friends around me. Well… And now I can see the beautiful designs on my carpet and hear how all the people praise my work. That’s why the national wisdom says, ‘The man makes his wishes come true only with the help of labour.’

The carpet maker lived long. He didn’t become rich but the carpets he had made were more beautiful than the golden coins he got for his work, and he forgot his poverty. He was famous all over the country, and even after his death people remembered the wonderful carpets made by the weaver from South India.

EXERCISES

1. Translate from Russian into English:

a)внезапно его ткацкий станок сломался;

b)вместо того, чтобы жаловаться судьб;

c)я живу внутри самшита;

d)срубить дерево;

e)моя семья умрёт от голода;

f)куда ты так торопишься?;

g)не задерживай меня;

h)любой король окружён предателями и льстецами;

i)мудрые слова, дорогая;

j)но это мне не по душе;

k)народная мудрость гласит.

2.Answer the questions:

1.Where did the story take place?

2.There were five characters in the story, weren’t there?

3.What happened to the weaver when he nearly finished his work?

4.Who asked the carpet maker not to cut the box-tree down?

5.Why did the spirit enjoy living inside the box-tree?

6.Who did the man meet on his way home?

7.Was his friend’s advice good?

8.Did the man listen to his wife’s piece of advice?

9.What happened as soon as he returned home?

10.The carpet maker became rich, didn’t he?

3.Give a character sketch of: a) the weaver;

b) his wife; c) his friend;

d) the forest spirit

4.Grammar

Change direct speech into indirect speech:

1.‘Who said that?’ the weaver asked in surprise.

2.‘I beg you not to touch the box-tree! It’s so good for me here’, the forest spirit said.

3.‘Where are you hurrying to?’ asked the barber.

4.‘Don’t delay me’, answered the carpet maker.

5.‘Maybe, you are right,’ said the carpet maker, ‘but I’ll listen to my wife first of all’.

6.‘Don’t you know that any king is surrounded by a lot of betrayers and flatterers? His life isn’t so sweet!’ his wife said.

7.‘All right, I’ll make your wish come true’, the forest spirit said.

8.So the carpet maker thought to himself: ’Well, the forest spirit will give me a new loom’.

TEXTS FOR READING English

53

May 2013

http://www.flickr.com

5.Work in Groups

Discuss the following:

1.Why do you think the carpet maker wasn’t able to make more than one carpet a year?

2.What would have happened if he had asked the forest spirit to give him the kingdom?

3.Would you say that his wife’s words were wise enough?

4.What would have happened if the weaver had asked for a new loom that could work faster?

5.Describe the designs that were in his last carpet. If you can, draw it on a piece of paper. Compare your drawings.

6.How would you explain the words of the national wisdom: ‘The man makes his wishes come true only with the help of labour’?

6. Project Work

Idea 1. Role play the fairytale.

You will need 5 people: the narrator, the carpet-maker; his wife; his friend; the forest spirit.

Idea 2. Search for some information about South India.

Use this plan:

1.Climate and landscape

2.Cities and tourist attractions

3.Culture and traditions

Idea 3. Search for some information about carpet-making. Tell about the process of carpet-making, the paintings frequently used at the carpets.

By Alexander Derbaremdiker,

Polytechnic College No. 8, Moscow

English TEXTS FOR READING

54 THE BETRAYAL

May 2013

Our days are full of gifts. Yesterday I witnessed something wonderful. I was standing on one side of a Moscow street, waiting with eight people for the traffic lights to change. Facing us alone on the other side was a wild dog, a city dog with no collar, dusty and lean, but very fit. He approached the curb, then sat attentively observing, and when the lights permitted, he stepped down onto the road and trotted across towards us, then passed by. How could a dog learn this skill? Trial and error would surely kill or injure an animal. But somehow he had learned.

For the last week I have been thinking of an art teacher who was ‘a gift of life’ when I was twelve. Greer Twiss was a first year probationary teacher at Tamaki Intermediate School. The previous art teacher was urbane and had total control of each class and could draw naturalistically (which could impress school children). In the year before Mr Twiss, we spent each lesson watching the teacher add lines to a piece of paper pinned to the board. We would imitate each stage in absolute silence as we used sharp pencils to reproduce the teacher’s drawing as he copied from a book. Mr Twiss taught differently. He looked different. He didn’t wear a grey sports coat and tie and a neat butcher’s apron. His corduroy trousers were stained with paint and chalk where he had absent mindedly wiped his hands on his bottom. His thumb nails were long and dirty. He didn’t wait at the door for us to stand quietly behind the benches to produce the usual sing-song “Good morning Mr Twiiisss”. Talking in class was not a problem for him. Sometimes we were to sit quietly to think about our approach, or just look. Or we were asked to go straight in and develop ideas from “lucky accidents”. We worked and kept reasonable order because we were interested. On the notice board he had Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly stories: horse riders with cut-away helmets showing burning eyes as crows seemed to stop in mid-flight above dead troopers. The images were raw and stark and not at all what our teacher Miss Tierney called “artistic”. Mr Twiss had a head that looked like it was roughly hewn from a block of wood. The face was unusually narrow and the sides turned from it in abrupt angles. His hair was the regulation “short back and sides”, but he was a carrot top. The prettiest teacher in the school always had the other men teachers milling about when she was on playground duty. But she was attracted to Mr Twiss. He was shy and awkward with her. Sometimes we were able to finish our paintings at lunch time or retreat to the art room to avoid the boredom of hot cricket matches. Mr Twiss did the absolutely forbidden. At that time teachers referred to each other as Mr, Mrs or Mss. He referred to the elegant young woman as ‘Diedre’ in front of us when he asked us to help her tidy the messy table. (The pile was formidable! And it may never have decreased but for ‘Diedre’s’ efforts). He said we could call him by his first name in the breaks, but we were to call him Mr when other adults were near. For Greer it was no big deal. I once heard him advise my friend to avoid ‘malingerer’s parade’ (which he had to supervise). He suggested the boy pretend to look interested in sport as a token so he could get away with other things.

He invited two of us to visit his house one Saturday. (I had to miss out going to the Waitakariesto plant totara tree seeds as I did every second weekend).

Inside Mr Twiss’ sitting room was a tall painting of a punga tree fern. I had never seen such impasto paint on Whakatane board. The punga had power in its upthrust to reach the light throught the forest canopy.

Mr Twiss’ father helped him cast his sculptures in bronze. To a lanky boy with a head full of half formed ideas, these sculptures had so many processes. The original model, a mold, a wax cast, then another mold, intense heat, the preparation of the copper and tin, the pouring, the filing down of flow-off lines, the polishing and the patination. There were images, reversed images in the molds, wax casts, then a further mold. So Greer was organized.

Every second Saturday I caught buses from Glen Innes to Auckland City. (The joke was “Glen Innes is next to Godliness”). I’d first go to the library. On the staircase there was often a display case with an illuminated manuscript from Sir George Grey’s collection. The colours were as garish as Nolan’s! The Art Gallery was in the same building (before the Council ripped out the high glass ceilings with refracted diffused natural light). After visiting Mr Twiss I could really see sculptures for the first time. There was Arkhipenko’s Gondolier, Jacob Epstein’s Rock Drill with its Ahrimanic tense penetration into matter, Barbara Hepworth’s Torso II that outraged Tom Pearce enough to write to the Star or Herald to call it something like an £800 cow’s shin bone. Above all I looked in awe at Henri Gaudier-Brzeska’s Idiot, Self Portrait, where the doomed artist had poked his fingers in the clay to make the head cross-eyed. Mr Twiss had opened my eyes to the solidity of objects. Sculptures weren’t just forms, but a way of influencing space when they protruded into the surrounding atmosphere. As he said, “Don’t just look at the thing itself, look at what it does to the air”.

Years later I visited a basement private gallery. On table tops painted by Colin McCahon there were extraordinary

bronze sculptures of half a dozen runners joined by outstretched arms and linked hips and shoulders. With extreme effort they breasted some invisible tape. Greer had constructed life-size bronze sculptures of empty singlets twisted with an invisible athlete’s ribs and muscles, rippling with life.

I never met Greer again. When I was a student at Auckland Teachers’ College, I was fool enough to badly review his exhibition in the Barry Lett Gallery. Many of the sculptures were of feet with the shadows attached. The College studio had been given a pile of glossy Swiss and European five year old art journals. One had illustrations of a follower of Giacometti, with similar figures with connected shadows, but less extreme and distorted than those by Twiss. I followed our tutor’s view that the figures were derivative, were without a mood, and were comic bookish. (Now we’d hear students say “Why not?” but then Twiss was on the tip of the avantgarde). I’ve always regretted my silly review not because of Picasso’s dictum, “The mediocre plagiarize, but genius copies”, but because I am becoming dimly aware that there may be some nebulous evolution of collective unconsciousness, and that artists, like scientists, can discover in isolation, similar findings. The article had more of the editor’s opinion than mine in the rewriting, but even so I regret more than evidence of my ignorance, the abiding sense that it was a betrayal of a teacher who had been kind, and essential. A real teacher. The only mitigation was that my friend Hori told me that every Tohunga expects to be killed by his students.

I have always been aware that Greer Twiss had a profound influence on me in that one year. But what I remember most, other than his serious attention to our work, is his puppet theatre. In his house he had set up another world. Stage lights dimmed, music played, curtains opened. A marionette aging rock singer gyrated and strummed miniature electric guitar bellowing out:

“I haven’t got a record in the top twenty pops, (my discs are slipping) I haven’t got a record

in the TOP TWENTY POPS!”

Then a beautiful woman on a balcony looked down with boredom at a romantic young fellow with a violin below. As the lover stroked the bow over the strings his spine lengthened and he stretched rhythmically upward and seemed to curve around the maja just as Chagal painted. This was a whole world of fantasy created by one man.

Why am I telling this story?

The reason I remembered it all so clearly is an incident with a cat. When Greer turned the lights off, he switched on his tape-recorder to play the sound track. A tortoise shell cat ran in ignoring me, and sat right in front of the stage attentively looking into the little theatre, and purred as the curtains parted. This big cat had learned that little figures moving gave it great pleasure. As the curtains closed, it left. No evolutionary principles were evoked, nothing here added to its species survival. An individual cat had learned a subtle pleasure stimulant. It had entered into the world of people.

Just as the dog at the Russian pedestrian crossing had entered invisibly into the moving crowds of humanity.

TEXTS FOR READING English

55

May 2013

What is a JOURNALIST?

It so happened that I teach future journalists in the university. Once I thought what is the image of a journalist those young striving souls have? I asked my 18-year-olds to write an acrostic on JOURNALIST and here is what I got:

1) Just	Law
Optimistic	Impressive thoughts
Unusual	Severe desire
Restless	to discover the truth
Neat	Thoughtful
Amusing
Leading	5) Justified
Impressive	Open
Sensitive	Unbiased
Thoughtful	Riot in work
	National treasure
2) Joke	Alcoholic
Opportunity	Lucky
Understanding	Intrepid
Risk	Significant
News	Trendy
Analytics
Library	6) Journey
Interview	Optimistic
Style	Unusual
Time	Revenge
	Night
3) Job	Amazing
Our future	Letter
Undermining	Imagination
Right decisions	Sociable
Nation	Tolerant
Anger management
Life	7) enJoying work
Inspiration	sOciable
Sober	qUick-witted
Terrific	Realistic
	ersisteNt
4) Justice	Active
Opportunity	cLever
Unusual mind	Informed
Responsibility	Sarcastic
Necessity	Tough
Attraction

Why not ask your students about their view on things via such an enjoyable form as acrostics? Discover what your students think and feel about their future professions, subjects, people, countries and what not. It’s a small, quick and truly informative task. I wish you inspiration and insights!

Text and picture by David Wansbrough	Alyona Pavlova,
	Moscow State University of Printing Arts