Английский язык для студентов университетов. Чтение, письменная и устная практика (стр. 9 из 42)
At 2:30 p. m. he is back at his office, eager for several more hours of frantic meetings and phone calls. At 6:00 p. m. John phones out for delivery of dinner to keep him going through the next two to three hours he'll spend at his office.
John gets home at 10:00 p. m. just in time to sit down to a bowl of frozen yoghurt and a reran of this season's most popular drama series before turning in.
II. Make brief notes of John's daily routine. Use these times as a guide.
7:00 7:45 2:30 10:00
7:15 12:00 6:00 - 9:00 1:00
III. Answer the following questions:
1. What takes up most of his time?
2. What things do you dislike about his daily routine?
3. Is his daily routine always the same?
4. Is his daily routine very different from yours? How?
5. What do you think about his social life? What daily routine may his girlfriend have?
6. Is he happy? Why?
7. What problems may arise if John gets married and starts a family? Will children fit into this hectic schedule?
IV. Work in groups of two.
Student A: You are going to interview John. Ask him questions about his daily routine, and ask anything else you like. (E. g. How he feels about his life, what he likes about his work, his future plans).
Student B: You are John. Answer the interviewer's questions about your daily routine. When you are asked about other things, invent suitable answers.
Exercise 16
Pair work: Talk about your busiest day. Ask the following and more:
1. What's your busiest day?
2. What do you usually do?
3. What time do you get up?
4. Where do you usually have breakfast, lunch?
5. What do you usually do after classes?
6. What time do you usually go home?
7. What do you do at the end of the day?
8. What do you do in your spare time?
9. What time do you usually go to bed?
10. What activities do you enjoy? Which do you dislike?
Exercise 17
Imagine you can do what you like and work where you want. Plan your daily routine. When you are ready tell the class.
Exercise 18
I. Carry out a survey titled "How to Organise Your Day". Ask your fellow students:
1. how much time they spend: working, sleeping, washing and getting dressed, eating and drinking, shopping, travelling, doing housework, studying, reading, watching TV or listening to the radio, performing other leisure activities, doing nothing;
2. which activities they enjoy doing and how long they spend on them;
3. which activities they do not enjoy doing and how long they spend on them;
4. if there is something they don't have time to do or would like to spend more time doing;
5. if there is some way they could organise their time differently and how.
II. Make notes and analyse the results of the investigation. Write a short report giving the results of your survey. Use words and expressions like these:
None of... A great many of...
Hardly any of... Some of...
Very few of... A large number of.
Not many of... A lot of...
The majority of...
III. Use the following phrases for summarising or generalising:
on the whole, ... at first glance, ...
apparently, ... it seems/appears that ...
generally, ...
IV. When you have finished your report, show it to the other students in the class and discuss.
Exercise 19
Retell the following text in English.
Самое главное, подумал я, это режим. Спать буду ложиться пораньше, часов в десять. Вставать тоже буду пораньше и повторять перед школой уроки. После школы буду играть часа полтора в футбол, а потом на свежую голову буду делать уроки. После уроков буду заниматься чем захочется: или с ребятами играть, или книжки читать, до тех пор пока не придёт время ложиться спать.
Так, значит, я подумал и пошёл играть в футбол, перед тем, как делать уроки. Я решил играть не больше, чем полтора часа, от силы — два, но, как только я попал на футбольное поле, у меня всё из головы вылетело, и я очнулся, когда уже совсем наступил вечер. Уроки я опять стал делать поздно, когда голова уже плохо соображала, и дал сам себе обещание — на следующий день не буду так долго играть. Но на следующий день повторилась та же история. И стал я думать, почему же у меня так получается. Вот я думал, думал, и наконец мне стало ясно, что у меня совсем нет воли. То есть у меня воля есть, только она не сильная. Если мне надо что-нибудь делать, то я никак не могу заставить себя это делать, а если мне не надо чего-нибудь делать, то я никак не могу заставить себя этого не делать. Вот, например, если я начну читать какую-нибудь интересную книжку, то читаю и читаю и никак не могу оторваться. Мне, например, надо делать уроки, или пора уже ложиться спать, а я всё читаю. Мама говорит, чтоб я шел спать, а папа говорит, что пора уже спать, а я не слушаюсь, пока нарочно не потушат свет, чтоб мне нельзя было больше читать. И вот то же самое с этим футболом. Не хватает у меня силы воли кончить вовремя игру, да и только!
... Я решил, что мне надо развивать сильную волю ... Для этого я буду делать не то, что хочется, а то, чего вовсе не хочется. Не хочется утром делать зарядку, — а я буду делать. Хочется идти играть в футбол, — а я не пойду. Хочется почитать интересную книжку, — а я не стану. Начать решил сразу, с этого же дня. В этот день мама испекла к чаю мое самое любимое пирожное, но я решил, что раз мне хочется съесть это пирожное, то я не буду его есть.
Наутро я встал — мне очень не хотелось делать зарядку, но я всё-таки сделал, потом пошел под кран обмываться холодной водой, потому что обмываться мне тоже не хотелось. Потом позавтракал и пошел в школу, а пирожное так и осталось лежать на тарелочке, когда я пришел, оно лежало по-прежнему. Я посмотрел на него. Мне очень захотелось тут же это прикончить, но я поборол в себе это желание.
В этот день я решил в футбол не играть, а просто отдохнуть часика полтора и тогда уже взяться за уроки. И вот после обеда я стал отдыхать. Но как отдыхать? Просто так отдыхать ведь не станешь. Отдых — это игра или какое-нибудь интересное занятие. «Чем же заняться?» — думаю.— «Во что поиграть?» Потом думаю: «Пойду-ка поиграю с ребятами в футбол». Не успел я это подумать, как ноги сами вынесли меня на улицу, и пирожное так и осталось лежать на тарелке.
(Н. Носов. «Витя Малеев в школе и дома»)
Exercise 20
I. Read the list of English idioms and find their Russian equivalents in the second list.
A.
To be back on track; a whole good hour; from time to time; year in, year out; on the run; in the dead of night; day in, day out; to play the fool; to twiddle one's thumbs.
B.
Время от времени; валять дурака; изо дня в день; из года в год; глубокой ночью; на бегу; битый час; войти в колею; бить баклуши.
II. Use the English idioms in sentences of your own speaking about your daily routine.
Exercise 21
I. Match the two halves of each proverb correctly. Translate them into Russian or give their Russian equivalents.
An early bird catches Jack a dull boy
Time is two things at once
Never put off till tomorrow a virtue
Time and tide a worm
Better late money
Everyday is not what you can do today
No man can do wait for no man
All work and no play makes Sunday
Punctuality is than never
II. Make up a story to illustrate one of these proverbs.
Exercise 22
Translate the quotations and comment upon them.
'A day is a miniature eternity.'
Ralph Emerson
'Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.'
Ralph Emerson
'Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.'
Jean-Paul Sartre
'The day is for honest men, the night for thieves.'
Euripides
'Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.'
Emile Coue
Exercise 23
Role-play "Making a TV Programme".
Setting: The streets of a big modern city.
Situation: A television crew is making a programme about different lifestyles. The journalists stop people in the street and interview them. They ask questions about their daily routine. They try to find out what time they get up, whether they get enough sleep, what they have for breakfast/dinner/supper, whether they are fussy about food, how they get to work, whether they are late for work, what time they come back home, who does the cooking/cleaning/shopping/washing, etc., whether they are more awake in the morning or in the evening, what time they go to bed, what they do to keep fit, what they do to relax, whether they have any kind of social life, what puts them in a good mood, whether their daily routine is always the same.
Characters:
Card I—II — Christian and Christine, the journalists.
Card III—IV — Daniel and Diana, an actor and an actress. Famous and well-known.
Card V — Sheppard, a university student. Not very diligent.
Card VI — Shirley, a model. Willing to make a career.
Card VII — Patricia, a school teacher. Very responsible.
Card VIII — Felicia, a housewife. Has a large family.
Card IX — Raymond, a businessman. Very busy and very rich.
Card X — Letitia, a waitress in a restaurant. Young and carefree.
Card XI — Simon, a professional driver. Works hard and long hours.
WRITING
Exercise 1
Learn the spelling of the words in bold type from Introductory Reading and exercise 1 on page 68 and be ready to write a dictation.
Exercise 2
Write a short description of a) your busiest day; b) your day off; c) your favourite day in the form of diary notes. Follow the pattern:
Exercise 3
Write a composition or an essay on one of the following topics.
1. The Day Everything Went Wrong.
2. How I Organise My Time.
3. The Day Before You Came. (ABBA)
4. 'Never put off till tomorrow, what you can do the day after tomorrow.' (O. Wilde)
5. The Day of a Person Is a Picture of This Person.
Note:
Punctuation.
In writing it is very important to observe correct punctuation marks.
A full stop is put:
1) at the end of sentences;
2) in decimals (e.g. 3.5 — three point five).
A comma separates:
1) homogeneous parts of the sentence if there are more than three members (e.g. I saw a house, a garden, and a car);
2) parentheses (e.g. The story, to put it mildly, is not nice);
3) Nominative Absolute Constructions (e.g. The play over, the audience left the hall);
4) appositions (e.g. Byron, one of the greatest English poets, was born in 1788);
5) interjections (e.g. Oh, you are right!);
6) coordinate clauses joined by and, but, or, nor, for, while, whereas, etc. (e.g. The speaker was disappointed, but the audience was pleased);
7) attributive clauses in complex sentences if they are commenting (e.g. The Thames, which runs through London, is quite slow. Compare with a defining clause where no comma is needed — The river that/which runs through London is quite slow);
8) adverbial clauses introduced by if, when, because, though, etc. (e.g. If it is true, we are having good luck);
9) inverted clauses (e.g. Hardly had she entered, they fired questions at her);
10) in whole numbers (e.g. 25,500 — twenty five thousand five hundred).
Object clauses are not separated by commas (e.g. He asked what he should do).
To be continued on page 140.
INTRODUCTORY READING AND TALK
Have you ever met a woman who never touched a broom or a floor-cloth in her life? Nearly all women but a queen have to put up with the daily routine doing all sortsof domestic work. But different women approach the problem differently.
The so-called lady-type women can afford to have a live-in help who can do the housework. She is usually an old hand at doing the cleaning and washing, beating carpets and polishing the furniture. She is like a magician who entertains you by sweeping the floor in a flash or in no time making an apple-pie with one hand. Few are those so lucky as to have such a resident magician to make them free and happy.
Efficient housewives can do anything about the house. Tidying up is not a problem for such women. An experienced housewife will not spend her afternoon ironing or starching collars; she gets everything done quickly and effortlessly. She keeps all the rooms clean and neat, dusting the furniture, scrubbing the floor, washing up and putting everything in its place. She is likely to do a thorough cleaning every fortnight. She removes stains, does the mending, knits and sews. What man doesn't dream of having such a handy and thrifty wife?
The third type of woman finds doing the everyday household chores rather a boring business. You can often hear her say that she hates doing the dishes and vacuuming. So you may find a huge pile of washing in the bathroom and the sink is probably piled high with plates. A room in a mess and a thick layer of dust everywhere will always tell you what sort of woman runs the house. What could save a flat from this kind of lazy-bones? Probably a good husband.
Finally, there are housewives who do not belong to any group. They like things in the house to look as nice as one can make them. But they never do it themselves. They'd rather save time and effort and they do not feel like peeling tons of potatoes or bleaching, and rinsing the linen. It is simply not worth doing. They persuade their husbands to buy labour-saving devices — a dish-washer, a vacuum-cleaner, a food processor or... a robot-housewife. Another way for them to avoid labour-and-time-consuming house chores is to send the washing to the laundry, to cook dinner every other day, or at least make their husbands and children help them in the home.
In the end, there exist hundreds of ways to look after the house. You are free to choose one of them. What kind of housewife would you like to be?
1. Four types of a housewife have been described in the text above. The first three types have been given names — the lady-type, the lazy-bones type, the efficient housewife. What would you call the fourth type?
2. Which of the types is preferable, to your mind? Why?
3. Name the activities which you see in the pictures below.