Методическое пособие по практике устной и письменной речи английского языка для студентов III-IV курсов

Netta faced him defiantly, a tiny figure shaking with outrage, her spirit as fiery as the colour of her copper curls.

'The feeling's mutual,' he snapped back through tight lips. 'Don't imagine I enjoy the prospect of being saddled with you for a wife, for however short a time it maybe.'

'Then let's forget the whole crazy idea.'

Cinderella's sisters were beautiful and fair of face, but because they were bad-tempered and unkind, their faces grew to look ugly. They were jealous of Cinderella because she was a lovely child, and so they were often unkind to her

I have no pity for myself either.

So let it be veronal.

But I wish Hercule Poirot had never retired from work and come here to grow vegetable marrows.

He laughed softly at the memory; and she joined in gaily. She had been wonderfully, blissfully on time. She started to tell him so, but his lips claimed her own, masterfully silencing the words that no longer needed to bespoken.

It was just a few minutes after nine when I reached home once more. I opened the front door with my latchkey, and purposely delayed a few moments in the hall, hanging up my hat and the light overcoat that I had deemed a wise precaution against the chill of an early autumn morning. To tell the truth, I was considerably upset and worried.

'Oh yes, I'm not alone, don't worry, Sarah. There's an Englishman who used to be in the British Council. He's invited me to his dacha in the country when the spring comes. When the spring comes,' he repeated in a voice which she hardly recognized - it was the voice of an old man who couldn't count with certainty on any spring to come.

She said, 'Maurice, Maurice, please go on hoping,' but in the long unbroken silence which followed she realized that the line to Moscow was dead.

What helped you to match extracts? Was it content (names, details), language, or style?

Here are the titles and authors, again mixed up. Match each book with its correct title and author.

The Himan Factor Sue Peters

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Charlie Chaplin

Cinderella Graham Greene

Marriage in Haste Agatha Christie

My Autobiography (traditional fairy tale)
READING

Read the text and do the comprehension and vocabulary tasks after it.
TEXT 2

I have known very few writers, but those I have known, and whom I respect, confess at once that they have little idea where they are going when they first set pen to paper. They have a character, perhaps, two; they are in that condition of eager discomfort which passes for inspiration; they admit radical changes of destination once the journey has begun; one, to my certain knowledge, spent nine months on a novel about Kashmir, then reset the whole thing in the Scottish Highlands. I never heard of anyone making a ‘skeleton’, as we were taught at school. In the breaking and remaking, in the timing, interweaving, beginning afresh, the writer comes to discern things in his material which were not consciously in his mind when he began. This organic process, often leading to moments of extraordinary self-discovery, is of an indescribable fascination. A blurred image appears; he adds a brushstroke and another, and it is gone; but something was there, and he will not rest till he has captures it. Sometimes the yeast within a writer outlives a book he has written. I have heard of writers who read nothing but their own books; like adolescents they stand before the mirror, and still cannot fathom the exact outline of the vision before them. For the same reason, writers talk interminably about their own books, winkling out hidden meanings, super-imposing new ones, begging response from those around them. Of course a writer doing this is misunderstood: he might as well try to explain a crime or a love affair. He is also, incidentally, an unforgivable bore.

This temptation to cover the distance between himself and the reader, to study his image in the sight of those who do no know him, can be his undoing: he has begun to write to please.

A young English writer made the pertinent observation a year or two back that the talent goes into the first draft, and the art into the drafts that follow. For this reason also the writer, like any other artist, has no resting place, no crowd or movement in which he may take comfort, no judgement from outside which can replace the judgement from within. A writer makes order out of the anarchy of his heart; he submits himself to a more ruthless discipline than any critic dreamed of, and when he flirts with fame, he is taking time off from living with himself, from the search for what his world contains at its inmost point.

John le Carré What Every Writer Wants from Harper’s

Comprehension

Answer the questions.

1. 
   What do you understand by this sentence: ‘all admit radical changes of destination once the journey has begun.’?
   
2. 
   What do you understand by the phrase ‘organic process’?
   
3. 
   Quote a sentence from the passage from which you could deduce that a writer must be a lonely person.
   

eager discomfort

passes for

skeleton

discern

fathom

winkling out

anarchy

ruthless

‘There is no such thing as an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written’

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.’

‘I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train.’

‘I can resist anything but temptation.’

1. 
   Are these statements about Oscar Wilde true or false? Discuss with a partner.
   

1. 
   He was a famous 20^th century writer.
   
2. 
   He wrote plays, poetry, and prose.
   
3. 
   His most successful plays were comedies.
   
4. 
   He never married.
   
5. 
   He was imprisoned because of his political beliefs.
   

2. 
   Listen to a scene from The Importance of being Earnest. Lady Bracknell is interviewing a young man, Jack Worthing. Answer the questions.
   

1. 
   Why is Jack being interviewed?
   
2. 
   What is his occupation? Where does his money come from?
   
3. 
   Who is Gwendolen?
   
4. 
   What pleases Lady Bracknell about Jack? What displeases her?
   
5. 
   What do you learn of Jack’s family background?
   
6. 
   Is his interview successful?
   
7. 
   What advice does Lady Bracknell give him? Which of these adjectives would you use to describe Lady Bracknell?
   

witty

aristocratic

prejudiced

haughty

earnest

overbearing

inaccurate

timid

1. 
   Give some examples to justify the adjectives you chose to describe Lady Bracknell.
   
2. 
   How did jack get the surname ‘Worthing’?
   
3. 
   What do you learn about the lives of the English upper classes in the 19^th century? What is important to them? What were their attitudes to marriage, work, and property?
   
4. 
   How does Oscar Wilde make the scene funny? Give some examples.
   

Бытует мнение, что мастером может быть только мужчина, причем не столь уж и важно в какой области — в музыке или медицине, науке или живописи, литературе или философии. Однако, это не совсем так. В первой половине XIX века творили такие великие писатели, как Бальзак, Золя, Гюго и наряду с ними — Аврора Дюдеван, создававшая свои произведения под мужским псевдонимом Жорж Санд. Серебряный век русской литературы подарил нам бессмертные стихи Марины Цветаевой, Анны Ахматовой и Зинаиды Гиппиус. Даже в жанре интеллектуального детектива есть писательница, ни на йоту не уступающая своим коллегам — Гилберту Честертону, Артуру Конан Дойлю и Жоржу Сименону.

Пожалуй, Агата Мэри Кларисса Кристи (Миллер) является одним из самых парадоксальных авторов в истории литературы. Казалось бы, что может быть общего между дамой, воспитанной в строгих викторианских традициях, и описываемыми ею темными историями, разворачивающимися вокруг загадочных убийств? Каким образом смог открыться в этом человеке столь необычный для его положения дар?

Говорят, с раннего детства и до глубокой старости Агате Кристи время от времени снился один и тот же сон: человек с пистолетом. «Ты поднимаешь глаза, чтобы взглянуть маме в лицо, — вспоминает писательница, — ты знаешь наверняка, что это — мама, и вдруг... натыкаешься на пристальный взгляд блекло-голубых глаз человека с пистолетом».

Агата Кристи о своем призвании говорила: «Я прихожу к выводу, что человек становится тем, кем ему суждено стать. Можно отдаваться фантазиям наподобие: «Если бы случилось то-то и то-то, то было бы так-то и так-то» или «Если бы я вышла замуж за Как-его-там, моя жизнь сложилась бы совсем по-другому. Но, так или иначе, вы всегда окажетесь на том пути, который предопределен вашим назначением, вашим жизненным призванием». Вот такой фатализм. Для великой писательницы создание произведений было высшим предназначением.

В жизни Агаты Кристи, как и в ее книгах, было много романтики.

Когда началась Первая мировая война, и мужа Кристи призвали на фронт, она устроилась фармакологом к аптекарю, который слыл лучшим знатоком ядов. В будущем яд стал постоянным мотивом романов писательницы.

Говорят, литература часто врывается в действительность, особенно в жизнь ее создателей — писателей и поэтов. Тогда сюжеты и ситуации фантастическим образом начинают воплощаться в реальности. Нечто подобное случилось и с Агатой Кристи, когда она... пропала без вести...

Писательницу разыскивали повсюду, ее тело искали с помощью бульдозеров и водолазов, а Агата Кристи, как выяснилось, скрывалась в санатории под чужим именем: ей хотелось отвлечься после серьезной личной драмы.

Книга, которую вам предстоит прочитать, великолепна, потому что, во-первых, ее написал искусный мастер, владеющий неповторимым слогом; во-вторых, она повествует об удивительных вре­менах и не менее удивительной жизни; в-третьих, каждая ее строка свидетельствует о добре и человечности автора, и, наконец, в-четвертых, автобиография Агаты Кристи с первой и до последней страницы пронизана тончайшим и невозмутимым английским юмором.

It is difficult to sum up British literature in a few paragraphs. After all, this is the country's greatest contribution to the world's culture. Whatever else is wrong with Britain, it has produced a large number of plays, poems and novels that are worth reading. The status of British writers around the world might seem to be connected to the spread of English as an international language. But actually much of the best writing dates from a time before globalisation, and Britain exports less literature today than ever before.

Also there is something of an identity problem for British literature: it is seen more often as just a part of worldwide literature in English. The school subject used to be called English Literature; but that term seems to exclude not only the Americans, but the Welsh and Scots too. In fact, people in this country are just as happy to read novels by the American, E. Annie Proulx, the Indian, Arundhati Roy, the Canadian, Margaret Atwood, or the Australian, Peter Carey.

Books are still popular in Britain. Publishers and bookshops are doing very good business, and reading comes fifth on people's favourite home-based leisure activities (60 per cent of men and 70 per cent of women are readers). There is lots of media attention for the Booker Prize for the best novel each year - there is even betting on the result. The election of the new Poet Laureate (the official national poet) in 1999 created massive interest, with many newspaper articles supporting one candidate or another.

The novelists who are considered for the Booker Prize are the more original or intellectual ones. The best-seller lists are dominated by books written for a mass readership. The numbers of copies sold are sometimes staggering: The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13%, the comedy for teenagers by Sue Townsend, has sold over 3 million copies, while Barbara Cartland wrote about 500 romantic novels and sold an estimated 500 million copies worldwide

Public libraries are an important part of British life. They are run by local councils, they are free, and you are never far away from one. (In the countryside there is often a library bus which comes once a week.) Old ladies take out popular novels, young children get piles of books and audio-cassettes, students find research materials and meet each other in the reference section, and lonely people go to read the newspapers; 40 per cent of people use public libraries. You might think that authors would be against free libraries, which readers can use instead of buying their books. But actually the opposite is the case for two reasons: firstly, it seems that libraries actually encourage people to buy books as well as borrow them; and secondly, there is a system called the PLR (Public Lending Right) whereby authors get a small payment each time their book is lent by a library.

These days, many libraries have videos, CD-ROMs and Internet access. There is often discussion about computer technology replacing libraries and, indeed, books. But for most purposes, a reference library is still quicker and more effective for finding information than the Internet, not to mention more pleasant to use; you can actually ask a friendly and knowledgeable assistant for help, and walk around a little as you work. As for reading novels — well, you can't curl up in bed with a computer, can you?

Romantic poetry

English Romanticism effectively begins with the publication of the Lyrical Ballads by William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and Samuel Coleridge (1772-1834). These poems demonstrate the principal concerns of Romanticism: a love of nature, and a defence of a rural way of life threatened by both the agricultural and industrial revolutions.

An important aspect of the Romantic movement was the poets' reactions to the failure of the French Revolution. Wordsworth and Coleridge gradually became more conservative. Byron (1788-1824), Shelley (1792-1822) Percy Bysshe Shelley and Keats (1795-1821) grew up in the repressive atmosphere of the Napoleonic Wars and were, to varying degrees, radicalised by the events of 1789.

The themes of Romanticism - for example, powerful warnings against tyranny and destruction of the environment - are still relevant. The poems communicate a belief in human spirituality and a desire for social justice as powerfully today as they did 200 years ago.

Verse and drama had been the dominant literary forms of previous times, but the novel, which started in the first half of the 18th century, came very quickly to maturity. In the hands of Jane Austen (1775-1817) the novel already seems exquisitely developed and sophisticated. She wrote only about the middle classes, but within that restricted area she was very realistic (which was something new) and humorous; these qualities make her just as popular today as ever.

Although women writers still had difficulty being taken on by serious publishers, Austen was followed by a line of great female novelists. The sisters Charlotte (1816-1855) and Emily (1818-1848) Bronte created two of the most perfect Romantic novels -Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. George Eliot (1819-1890), who was in fact Mary Ann Evans writing under a man's name, tackled moral issues such as women's rights and anti-Semitism with insight and satire; she is considered by some modern critics to be the greatest novelist of her time.

The most popular novelist of the century was Charles Dickens (1812-1870), who wrote in such detail about every aspect of Victorian life, including the virtues and vices of all social classes, that today we often see that period through his eyes. These great names, and many others (such as Thackeray, Trollope, Mrs Gaskell, Hardy, Stevenson) made the 19th century the golden age of the novel.

The novel became the strongest literary form in the 19th century (and it has remained so ever since), but poetry did not die out. Time and again in the last 100 years there have been bursts of poetic creativity and public interest in it. World War I put so many young men through the most extreme of experiences and emotions; and it gave rise to some wonderful verse - philosophical, nostalgic, political, hopeful and despairing. Among these young men were Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Edward Thomas.

Then T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), an American in Britain, took poetry in the direction of experimentation and intellectualism. A fiery Welshman, Dylan Thomas (1914-1953), put the passion back into poetry, and won a new audience through radio. Today, very few people actually buy books of poetry, but, through public readings and the media, there is still intense interest in original poets like Seamus Heaney, Ursula Fanthorpe and rap poet Benjamin Zephaniah. And, of course, there is the massively successful and popular world of the song lyric.

The novel, surprisingly, was subjected to extreme experimentation early in the century and then later returned to .more traditional forms. The Irish writer James Joyce (1882-1941) shocked the literary world with his extraordinary novel Ulysses; it is long but has very little plot - its powerful effect is created by the continuous interior monologue of the central character, and by endless changes of style. In his next novel, Finnegan's Wake, the experimental style becomes almost incomprehensible.

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2. 
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