Министерство образования Российской Федерации
Петрозаводский государственный университет
Кольский филиал
Кафедра иностранных языков
В.С. Сидоренко
АНГЛИЙСКИЙ ЯЗЫК
Сборник текстов для индивидуального чтения для студентов I – II курсов специальностей “Социология”,
“Социальная работа”
Апатиты
Сборник текстов для индивидуального чтения утвержден и рекомендован к печати на заседании кафедры иностранных языков «25» февраля 2003 года.
Составитель: преподаватель кафедры иностранных языков Кольского филиала Петрозаводского государственного университета Сидоренко В.С.
СОДЕРЖАНИЕ
Методические пояснения …………………………….
1. Television Exposure Damages Child Speech.....................
2. Are Today’s Teenagers Victims of Fashion?.....................
3. The Ugly Duckling...........................................................
4. Homeless are Run Out of Town......................................
5. When a Drunk with Dad Turns Kids into Drunks.........
6. School-Age Drunks - a Fresh Worry...............................
7. Why Kids Drink?.............................................................
8. Can We Teach Kids to Stay Sober?.................................
9. Living with a Stranger......................................................
10. Is Your Friend Hard Work?..........................................
11. No Getting Around It: English Is Global Tongue.........
12. Communicating Without Words:
Is There a Body Language?............................................
Different Customs...........................................................
13. Trends.............................................................................
14. To Tell the Truth, You’re a Liar!..................................
15. Panoramas of People.......................................................
16. The Family....................................................................
17. “Throwaway Marriages”- Threat to the
American Family................................................................
18. Adultery. A New Furor over an Old Sin....................
19. The Monster Children..................................................
20. Collapse of the Father’s Authority.............................
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21. What’s Happening to American Morality?.................
22. Defining the Right to Die..............................................
23. Violence in Schools. Now, A Crackdown....................
24. Death in a Dumpster...................................................
25. With Billions to Spend, A Big Market for US Business......................................
26. Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female.................
27. Working Nine to Five: Types of Bosses.............................................................. Types of Employees........................................................ Office Situation.................................................................
28. Why 65? The Case Against Mandatory Retirement.....
29. Who Says Who Is Mad?.............................................
30. On the Brink of Tranquillity............................................
Литература………..…………………………………….
МЕТОДИЧЕСКИЕ ПОЯСНЕНИЯ
Вашему вниманию предлагается сборник специально отобранных текстов для индивидуального чтения, который может сопутствовать нормативному курсу английского языка для студентов I – II курсов специальностей “Социология” и “Социальная работа”. В основном тексты данного сборника взяты из современной англо-американской литературы и подобраны так, что они знакомят студентов с тематикой их будущей специальности. В конце каждого текста представлено количество печатных знаков. Материал сборника рассчитан на самостоятельную работу студентов.
Развитие умения самостоятельно читать литературу на иностранном языке является важнейшей составной частью обучения иностранному языку. Чтение на иностранном языке имеет практическое значение, оно не только способствует углублению знаний по грамматике и лексике языка, но и расширяет общий кругозор.
Следующие рекомендации помогут Вам в дальнейшем развитии и усовершенствовании навыков самостоятельного чтения литературы на иностранном языке:
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ü Читайте систематически и внимательно.
ü Поставьте перед собой задачу уловить общий смысл прочитанного. Старайтесь понять все предложение, а не отдельное слово, целый абзац, а не отдельное предложение. Не оставляйте непонятым ни одного абзаца. Повторное чтение помогает выяснить содержание ранее не понятого текста.
ü Постарайтесь раскрыть значение незнакомого слова по контексту.
ü Не делайте дословный перевод текста, так как одной из целей индивидуального чтения является понимание прочитанного на иностранном языке без помощи родного языка в качестве посредника.
ü Выписывайте из каждого прочитанного рассказа наиболее часто встречающиеся слова и выражения в специальную тетрадь.
ü Не останавливайтесь перед трудностями, продолжайте систематически и тщательно работать над текстами. Понимание прочитанного улучшается с накоплением лексического запаса. Чтение становится доступным и принесет Вам много полезного и приятного. Помните также, что навык чтения вырабатывается не тогда, когда прочитывают огромное количество страниц без достаточного понимания, а тогда, когда читают много и действительно полностью понимают прочитанное.
TEXT 1. TELEVISION EXPOSURE DAMAGES
CHILD SPEECH
Dr Sally Ward, the country’s leading authority on the speech development of young children, believes that babies under one year old should not watch TV or videos at all. Children of two or three should watch for no more than an hour a day.
Dr Ward’s ten-year study of babies and toddlers in inner-city Manchester showed television was delaying speech development in children. The background noise from televisions stopped them learning to talk as early as they should. At eight months, they neither recognised their names nor basic words like “juice” and “bricks”. At three, they had the language of two-year-olds.
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Now she has found that children from well-to-do families are being handicapped in the same way. “The television is being used as a babysitter, with nannies particularly. Some of these middle-class children are spending far too much time watching television and videos.
“They get very fixed on the colours and flashing lights. We found in our study it was quite difficult to get them interested in toys”.
Parents or minders had stopped talking to them. They were not being taught a basic vocabulary through one-to-one conversations with adults.
All the evidence showed, said Dr Ward, that children whose language was below standard at the age of three could be set back for life.
“The Guardian”
(1120)
TEXT 2. ARE TODAY’S TEENAGERS
VICTIMS OF FASHION?
A survey among the 1300 pupils at Caldiсot Comprehensive School, near Newport, Wales shows that teenage girls and boys are deeply affected by the images presented by the fashion industry in magazines.
When we asked whether superslim fashion models influence anorexia - the eating disorder in which people go without food - 100 per cent of our sample replied “Yes”.
It’s not just our schoolmates who hold these views. We interviewed psychologist Dr Glenn Waller of London’s Royal Holloway College, an expert on the influence of fashion on adolescents. He told us that fashion photographs in magazines make a huge impact on young people’s self-image, particularly females aged 13-19.
“Young people are guided by media standards while they are looking around for an identity”, he said. “Magazines provide ideas and these can affect vulnerable people”.
“If women look at supermodels who are beanpoles, they may imagine that they themselves are fatter than they really are. If the media used a wider range of female shapes it would be better”.
Fortunately, many Caldicot students are not victims of the image-makers. Here’s what some of them said:
“If you’re constantly dieting, you can’t enjoy life”.
“Fashion is something kids can control. It is a path many teenagers take to break free and have fun”.
“I find nothing attractive about six-foot models who are two stone underweight; they just look ill”.
“Friends shouldn’t write you off for wearing unfashionable clothes; if they do, they aren’t very good friends”.
“The Daily Telegraph”
(1320)
TEXT 3. THE UGLY DUCKLING
I realised how cruel life can be for an unattractive child when everybody in my class was invited to a tenth birthday barbecue on the beach. Everybody, that is, except for me. At first I thought there had been a mistake and that my invitation had been lost. But when I made inquiries to the hostess, she didn’t beat about the bush: “Sorry, Susie. You are too fat to wear a swimsuit on the beach and you can’t see without those horrible glasses anyway”.
I went home and cried for hours. My mother was ready with comforting cuddles, yet even she couldn’t bring herself to reassure me I was lovely. I used to spend a long time staring at my brother and twin sisters and feeling extremely hard done by.
The chip that was developing on my shoulder became obvious in my aggressive manner. This, of course, only made things worse. Tea invitations stopped, I walked home from school alone and often found drawings that looked like me in the classroom wastepaper bin. I hated everyone because everyone seemed to hate me.
When I was 14, my mother decided that I should go to the church youth club. I stood alone watching the dancing, feeling embarrassed, ugly and awkward. Then a miracle happened.
A skinny boy called Peter, with glasses and spots, asked me to dance. He also had a brace on his teeth. We didn’t talk much but he asked if I would be there the following week. I have to credit Peter with changing my life. He stopped me feeling hideous.
Encouraged, I put myself on a diet, begged my mother for contact lenses and grew my hair. Then another miracle occurred. I grew taller and, as that happened, I started looking slimmer. The brace was finally removed and my teeth were even. I was never going to be a beautiful swan, but I was going to try.
“The Sunday Times”
(1450)
NOTES:
beat about the bush – waste time before saying something important.
TEXT 4. HOMELESS ARE RUN OUT OF TOWN
In the USA, the number of people with no home - the homeless - has increased a lot in the last few years.
Every night an army of invisible people disappear into the alleys and abandoned buildings of Austin, Texas. They are the city’s homeless. But here and in more than 40 cities across the United States, the homeless are facing new laws banishing them from the streets. Critics see the movement as proof of the growing hardheartedness of America. There are about 700000 homeless people in the USA.
In Austin the city council is nearing final approval of a law to ban camping in any public place.
In New Orleans, an anti-camping law has just been proposed, to control the homeless youths who swarm the French Quarter. “The general public is fed up”, said New Orleans city council president Peggy Wilson. “People should be able to use public spaces. When other people come in and build cardboard tents and so on, the area becomes inaccessible for everyone else. Particularly in Lafayette Square, there’s a group that feeds people on weekends, and they make no effort to clean up; they dump the garbage, and there’s the presence of enormous rats”.
In Austin, the city’s estimated 6000 homeless can be found near the drinking clubs of Sixth Street, near the University of Texas campus and in tents in corners of the city parks.
It is the business community who wants rid of them most. “Austin is known as an easy city. It provides a lot for the homeless”, said Jose Martinez of the Downtown Austin Alliance, which favors the anti-camping bill.
The city’s new anti-camping law is expected to carry fines as high as $500. At the same time, the council’s homeless task force, is proposing a $3.5 million “campus” for the homeless. Task force member Tom Hatch, an architect, said: ”It’s insane to make not having a home a crime”.
“The Guardian”
(1540)
TEXT 5. WHEN A DRINK WITH DAD TURNS KIDS
INTO DRUNKS
Another morning, another hangover. Sarah Watson does not enjoy the experience. “It’s not very nice being drunk”, she says. “You get full of yourself and then you get a headache”.
But Sarah is not an adult recovering from a heavy night in the pub. She is 12 and one of a growing number of young children who know the taste - and the effects - of alcohol.
Sarah is one of the lucky ones. She says her experience is relatively limited. But by the time they reach 14, most children have tried alcoholic drinks, according to a nationwide survey on young people and drinking.
Seventy-three per cent of 13- to 14-year-old children interviewed said they had had an alcoholic drink. As many as 55% of 10- to 12-year-olds said they had tried alcohol, and 45% of seven to nine-year-olds.
Experimentation with alcohol begins at an early age, typically in the form of a glass of wine shared with parents.
Drinkline, the national helpline for people with drink problems, said the dangers of alcohol were being overlooked because of concerns about drugs.
Sarah Watson said: “Many people act as though cigarettes can do more damage, and they take time to talk about drugs, but never about alcohol. When adults do talk about it, they just say it’s really bad, and that’s the end of the conversation”.
“I could live without alcohol”, said Sharon O’Dea, 15. “But if you go to the party, it is better than taking drugs”.
More English teenagers drink alcohol than their contemporaries in France and Spain, according to a report this year.
“The Observer”
(1300)
TEXT 6. SCHOOL-AGE DRUNKS - A FRESH WORRY
Schools that weathered the apparent peak of pill popping and heroin shooting a few years ago now are trying to cope with growing numbers of drunks in the public schools. Educators increasingly are concerned about bottles in school lockers, youngsters cutting class to guzzle beer in school parking lots, fights spilling over from week-end beer busts, and high absenteeism on "hangover" Mondays.
Dr. Morris Ch., director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, warns: "All of the signs and statistics over the past couple of years have pointed to the fact that the switch is on among young people—from a wide range of other drugs to alcohol."
The findings from a recent federal study include: nearly 1 out of 7 twelfth-grade boys admits getting drunk at least once a week, and more than 1 out of 3 gets "tight" at least four times a year. Half the tenth graders surveyed reported drinking at night in cars, and 60 per cent of traffic fatalities among youth involve alcohol. The number of high-school students who have ever used alcohol is up 90 per cent in three years.
School-age tipplers are nothing new, experts say, but today's youngsters are starting to drink at an earlier age and are hitting the bottle harder than those in their parents' generation. A New York study shows that almost 10 per cent of that city's juniors and seniors "are already or potentially alcoholics". And a "drying out" program in Houston has seen its teen-age clientele soar from 6 to 1,200 in only three years.
Lowering to 18 the legal age limit for drinkers is blamed for the rise of teen-age alcoholism in some States, where 16-year-olds find it easy to pass for 18 or to get an older companion to buy their liquor. But the real problem, says Dr. Ch., is the attitude of adults. In his view: "Parents think it is cute or funny when their son returns home from a party drunk and assume that he is just learning to hold his liquor. A call from the local police station asking a parent to pick up a drunk youngster is likely to evoke a sigh of relief that he is not off somewhere using 'drugs'."
(1750)
TEXT 7. WHY KIDS DRINK?
1. “Adults do it. Why can't we?” When teens see their adult role models drinking, they don't understand why that privilege should be denied to them. The rebuttal, however, should be clear: although it's true that most adults do drink, except for an estimated 10 percent who are alcoholics, they drink responsibly. Statistically, kids don't.
2. Appealing ads. Government surveys on all aspects of underage drinking found that close to 40 percent of teenagers named something they found appealing in advertisements for alcohol. They said things like: “Makes you look like you're accepted” and “The girls in the ads are skinny, and I want to be like that.”
Advertising also draws kids to the newer, more dangerous, high potency malt beers that come in 40-ounce bottles instead of the regular 12-ounce size. Congress has responded with proposed legislation — “The Sensible Advertising and Family Education Act” — calling for warning messages in all alcoholic-beverage advertisements. The beverage alcohol industry has responded by offering free educational materials, most of which are excellent.
3. All stressed mil. John Gavin, chairman of the Century Council, a not-for-profit organization funded by the alcohol industry and dedicated to reducing alcohol abuse in the United States, argues that kids today are under more pressure than any generation before them. “They're being hit from all sides,” he says. “It's more important than ever that kids receive strong guidance from their parents.” Rose Ann Rasic, also of the Century Council, says, “I'm a mother myself, and your heart just goes out to these kids. Many have been latchkey children since grade school. They hear all the doomsday talk about war and the environment and AIDS.”
Supporting this view are data from the Inspector General's report, showing that 58 percent of young binge drinkers do so when they're upset. Another recent report, based on a study of 4,962 youngsters in San Diego and Los Angeles, said that students who were unsupervised for 11 or more hours a week were at twice the risk for substance abuse as those who were not. Experts agree that the latchkey phenomenon as well as financial pressures from the recession, unemployment, the rise in disfunctional families and the stress of getting into college may push kids to ask, “Where's the party?”
4. Nothing to do. Twenty-five percent of the Inspector General's respondents said they drink because they are bored. In the words of Erin Olson, the Washington teenager, “There is just nothing to do. Oh, sure, we have tons of homework, and most of us have jobs, too, but what about fun? In Kirkland there's the mall during the day and the parties at night.”
Even though sporting events offer kids “something to do,” they've unfortunately become just one more place to get drunk, says John Heeney, special projects coordinator for Target, the substance-abuse-prevention arm of the National Federation of State High School Associations. “We go to the preseason meetings with our materials in order to reach the coaches as well as the kids,” says Heeney. “The idea we want to get across is that boozers are losers. I wish I could say we’re successful, but often we’re not.”
Ginger, a high school senior who is captain of her dicer-leading squad, says she’s been to those meetings, but that “It’s hopeless. There were parties everywhere the night before the homecoming game. We were supposed to do our routines at the pep rally, but everybody was already drunk, falling out of their cartwheels and messing up. I’m not saying I wasn’t involved. I’m just telling you the truth.”
(3020)
TEXT 8. CAN WE TEACH KIDS TO STAY SOBER?
Experts and the alcohol industry alike say that the time to begin talking with your youngsters is when they're in grade school and to continue these talks right through their teen years. In other words, don't assume you've permanently inoculated your kids against future alcohol abuse.
The following set of strategies is adapted from Straight Talk About Alcohol, a booklet based on advice from the US Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration:
• Evaluate your own drinking before talking to your children.
• Be honest about your feelings, values and preferences. Encourage the same from your kids.
• Be calm, firm and consistent. You're sharing ideas and information: don't put your youngsters on the witness stand.
• Let them know you want to hear what they have to say about drinking. (Since many schools now have alcohol-education programs, your children may have a lot of information.)
• Keep to the point. Don't be led into other discussions.
• Emphasize that your children's lives are precious to you.
Also be sure to be a good example. Say, “No thanks, I'm driving,” when offered that extra drink. And when entertaining, follow recommended practices such as always serving food along with alcohol and preventing an intoxicated guest from driving home. Make sure your children understand you do these things because you care about your friends' lives.
Even if you follow all this advice, however, your children may drink too much on one occasion or another. That's why it's vital to assure them that you'll always pick them up, or arrange a ride home, if they call you. As one teenager put it, “I mean, when you know your parents really care, you've got something to live for. I wish every kid in America had parents like that. Then maybe they wouldn't go get wasted.”
(1530)
TEXT 9. LIVING WITH A STRANGER