II. Read these texts. Be ready to discuss them. Bill Gives Advice

- Hello, everybody!

- Hello, Bill. Come in and sit down.

- We are planning our week-end. Can you give us a piece of advice?

- Well, there are dozens of ways of spending a week-end. It depends on the season, your character and your mode of life.

You can go to the country to ski, to fish, to pick berries and mushrooms, to bathe, to boat, to walk in the forest, to lie in the sun, to watch birds, to hunt butterflies, etc.

You can stay in town and go to the cinema, theatre, to an exhibition, a museum, to a dancing party or a discotheque, a café or a restaurant, you can visit your friends, drop at your old aunt’s to borrow money.

If you prefer to stay indoors you can: watch TV, read newspapers, and magazines, sleep till 2 p.m, do the flat, quarrel with your folks at home, listen to music, do nothing, etc.

But if you`ve got a car there are only two ways to spend the week-end. You either enjoy a pleasant car drive in the country or spend the week-end in your garage repairing the car.

It’s really a pleasure to live in a large city and to be able to escape from it whenever you feel like that.

Last week-end the weather was fine and my friends and I went on a picnic to the country. We found a nice place in the forest on the bank of the river. We did not lie in the sun and swim as it is late autumn and it is cool enough. We played different games. Some of us were wandering along the paths in the forest picking up beautiful yellow and red leaves. Then we made fire and cooked meat. We enjoyed eating food in fresh air sitting by the fireplace, playing the guitar and singing songs. We had fun and were in touch with nature and came back to town refreshed and happy.

I advise you to go to the country next week-end.

Text vocabulary

dozens	множество
mode of life	образ жизни
to pick berries and mushrooms	собирать ягоды и грибы
to boat	кататься на лодке
to hunt butterflies	ловить бабочек
to borrow money	одалживать деньги
to quarrel with the folk	ругаться, ссориться с родственниками
to repair	чинить
to escape	избежать, отделаться

Leisure time. Hobby

What is a hobby? It is a favourite occupation of a person in his free time. There are hundreds of personal interests and ways of spending one’s free time.

Some people are very interested in dancing. They attend classes of classical or modern ballet, or they like folk-dancing. So they devote their leisure time to this kind of occupation.

Quite a lot of people are great cinema- or theatre-goers. It’s their hobby not to miss a film or a play which they consider to be worth seeing.

Thousands of people are passionate readers. They think it is a very useful pastime as it gives them a lot of information, broadens their mind and enriches their life experience.

Young people are mostly fond of pop- or rock-music. They collect records or tape-recordings of their favourite groups or singers. They go to concerts, to discotheques, they can listen to the music from morning till night. Many boys and girls take musical classes where they learn to sing or to play different musical instruments.

Young girls and lots of women spend much time knitting or sewing. Some women and men take up cooking, gardening or planting flowers.

But perhaps one of the most popular ways of spending leisure time is collecting things. People collect various things: stamps, coins, postcards, stones, shells, dolls, badges and so on and so forth.

As for me, when I was a schoolboy I collected coins. I took up this hobby with great pleasure. And my collection of coins was big. And I often went to the cinema, I did not miss any new film.

Now I don’t have much time to spare but in the rare hours of leisure I listen to music or read books.

My mother is fond of planting flowers. She turned our living-room into a sort of green-house. My father is in the habit of reading newspapers or watching TV. Sometimes, however, he can repair something in the house or his car when he has free time.