Англійська

English-Speaking Countries

Some native lords swore loyalty to the new king and started learning French. Despite this, most of the highest offices were occupied by Normans. The oppressed AngloSaxons fought against their cruel rulers, either secretly (like the legendary Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest) or openly like the participants of the Peasant Uprising of 1381, which put an end to serfdom.

Then followed turbulent times in the history of the country: the series of wars against the kings of France, known as the Hundred Years War (1337-1453), was fol­ lowed by the Wars of the Roses (1455-1485) between the supporters of the House of York and those of the House of Lancaster. The victorious Henry Tudor, a Lancastrian, was the first king of the Tudor dynasty. Under Tudor rule (especially that of Elizabeth I) England laid the foundations of its maritime and commercial greatness, and consid­ erably expanded its overseas possessions. The Stuarts, who succeeded them on the throne, united the crowns of England and Scotland, but they had continual conflicts with Parliament and were intolerant of Protestantism. This resulted in the mass migra­ tion of Puritans to America, the outbreak of civil war, the execution of Charles I, and the proclamation of the Commonwealth, with Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector, in 1649. Eleven years later the monarchy was restored, but Parliament has remained the supreme power in the state since the adoption of the Bill of Rights in 1689.

This opened the way to the development of democracy and capitalism. Great scien­ tific discoveries and inventions stimulated the Industrial Revolution. By the end of the 19th century, Great Britain had become the leading capitalist state in the world, its colonial possessions covering more than 30 million square kilometres in all five conti­ nents. Britain’s triumphant development was disturbed in 1914 by World War I. Then followed the world-wide economic crisis of 1929 and World War П in 1939. After the Second World War, the British Empire disintegrated, and the British Commonwealth of Nations was created instead, as a free union of independent states. Britain has lost its position as the world’s super-power, but it is still one of the most influential indus­ trially developed countries in the world.

Exercise 2.

Each of the following, expressions could serve as a title for one of the paragraphs. Put them in their correct order, as they occur in the text:

1.United we stand, divided we fall.

2.The White Rose and the Red Rose.

3.The Celts are coming!

4.The sun never sets on the British Empire.

5.The Romans do their best to feel at home in Albion.

6.The English study French to survive.

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Exercise 3.

Correct thefollowing false statements, using information from the text:

1.Stonehenge was erected by the Romans.

2.The ancient Greeks used to come to the British Isles for cotton and tea.

3.The Romans left Britain in 1066.

4.The Normans spoke German.

5.The Tudors succeeded the Stuarts on the throne.

6.In the 17th century many British Puritans emigrated to Spain.

Exercise 4.

Find in the text the English equivalents o f the following Ukrainian words and phrases:

1.Ніхто не знає, коли точно він був споруджений.

2.Вони, бувало, приїжджали сюди по олово.

3.Римське правління закінчилось досить раптово.

4.Деякі лорди поклялися на вірність новому королю.

5.Повстання... що поклало кінець кріпацтву.

6.Великі наукові відкриття та винаходи.

7.Належати до числа найвпливовіших країн.

Exercise 5.

Say whether the following statements are true or false. If a statement is false, cor­ rect it using information from the text:

1.There were no towns in Britain before the Roman invasion.

2.The Romans had to leave Britain because they were defeated by the AngloSaxons.

3.The British peasants didn’t resist serfdom.

4.The crowns of England and Scotland were united under the rule of the Tudors.

5.Britain became a republic in 1649.

Exercise 6.

Write down all the international words you can find in the text.

Exercise 7.

Find in the text the places where the following expressions are used and translate the whole of the relevant sentence into Ukrainian:

1.to be driven into the mountains

2.to display an interest in...

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English-Speaking Countries

3.to follow suit

4.to be easy prey for...

5.to swear loyalty to...

6.to put an end to...

7.to lay the foundations of..

8.to be intolerant of...

9.to lose one’s position

Exercise 8.

Give an oral summary of the text.

Exercise 9.

Write an essay of approximately 300 words on the history of Great Britain.

Exercise 10.

Re-arrange the following jumbled sentences toform a coherent text:

A.In 597 the Roman Pope sent about forty monks to Britain, and the conversion of the British to Christianity began.

B.After Queen Mary’s death, her younger step-sister Queen Elizabeth headed the Anglican Church, but at the same time she remained tolerant of Roman Catholi­ cism, this policy being the best example for future monarchs.

C.The Pope refused, and Henry VIII, having broken off contacts between England and Rome, established the Church of England.

D.Since the restoration of the monarchy, British monarchs have been tolerant of any religion.

E.Until the end of the 6th century, the inhabitants of the British Isles were pagans, as they believed in many gods representing nature.

F.Roman Catholicism was restored as the official religion during the short reign of Henry’s elder daughter, Queen Mary.

G.In 1525 King Henry VIII asked the Pope for permission to divorce his queen Catherine of Aragon.

H.Furthermore, the rebellious King Henry ordered the Bible to be translated into English, and this stimulated the spread of Protestantism in England.

I.Until the 16th century, British kings were Roman Catholics and they main­ tained friendly relations with Rome.

J.Unfortunately, some of Elizabeth’s successors didn’t follow her example, and treated Protestants very cruelly, which led to the outbreak of a civil war in Eng­ land, the execution of King Charles I, and the proclamation of a republic.

K.This queen encouraged the persecution of Protestants and so she was nicknamed “Bloody Mary”. -

10 362-8

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Unit 5

Exercise 11.

Read the following text and divide it into logical parts, suggesting a subtitle for each of them, selectedfrom this list:

1.An empty, treeless, icy land stretching all the way from Alaska to Greenland.

2.The land of the Eskimo, or Inuit.

3.Then the white hunters came.

4.Now things have changed.

Text 2. THE LAND OF THE ESKIMO

Few places are more windswept or bitterly cold than the Canadian Arctic, an empty, treeless, icy land stretching all the way from Alaska to Greenland. From Sep­ tember until June, everything lies buried beneath snow and ice. This Arctic land is called the tundra. It is the land of the Eskimo, or Inuit, as they prefer to be called. In their own language, ‘Inuit’ means ‘the people’, whereas ‘Eskimo’ is an Indian word meaning ‘eaters of the raw flesh’. They slept in tents made of caribou skins. They were a peaceful people who lived their lives cheerfully. Then the white hunters came and shot caribou and polar bears and musk oxen and wolves and the government had no control over them. Other white men came in search of minerals beneath the tundra and found oil and natural gas. The arrival of the white men with their guns and machinery changed the lives of the Inuit.

But now things have changed once more. The Inuit have started hunting again - with guns and snowmobiles. The hunters still live in tents, but they keep a store of canned food in case they cannot get enough to eat from their hunting. The government has built towns for them, like Inuvik, where they can get training for many kinds of jobs, and where their children can go to school. Their health is looked after.

Some years ago, oil and natural gas was found beneath the sea not far from the Mackenzie River. The search for oil and gas in these frozen regions is a dangerous adventure. The oilmen have only one link with civilisation, the aeroplane, and their lives depend on the skill of the pilots. There have been some bad accidents.

Between the Queen Elizabeth Islands and the North Pole there is no land, only snow and ice which never melts in summer or winter.

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English-Speaking Countries

Exercise 12.

Discuss thefollowing topics:

1.The Canadian Arctic - an icy land stretching all the way from Alaska to' Greenland.

2.Who are the Inuit?

3.The life of the Inuit today.

Exercise 13.

Answer the following questions:

1.What is the name for the land which lies between the last trees and the Arctic Ocean?

2.Why do the Eskimos prefer to be called the ‘Inuit’ ?

3.How did the Inuit traditionally live?

4.What do the Inuit do in the towns the government has built for them?

5.What difficulties face those searching for oil and gasin these frozen regions?

Exercise 14.

Correct thefollowingfalse statements, using informationfrom the text:

1.From September to June it’s very hot.

2.They slept in big modem houses.

3.To this day, nothing has changed.

Exercise 15.

Find in the text the English equivalents of the following Ukrainian words and phrases:

Exercise 16.

Say whether the following statements are true or false.If a statement is false, cor­ rect it using information from the text:

a)In their own language, ‘Inuit’ means ‘the people’, whereas ‘Eskimo’ is an Indian word, meaning ‘eaters of mutton’.

b)They slept in two-storeyed houses.

c)White men came in search of minerals beneath the tundra and found oil and natural gas.

d)The government has built towns for them, where they can get training for many kinds of jobs.

e)Some years ago the oilmen found oil and also gold.

f)The oilmen have only one link with civilization, the aeroplane.

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Unit 5

Exercise 17.

Copy down all the international words in the text.

Exercise 18.

Find the places where the following expressions are used in the text and translate into Ukrainian the complete sentence in each case:

1.who lived cheerfully

2.men came in search of...

3.they keep a store of canned food

4.they get enough to eat

5.they get training in...

6.health is looked after...

7.their lives depend on the skill of...

Exercise 19.

Give an oral summary o f the text.

Exercise 20.

Write an essay in approximately 200 words on the Canadian Arctic.

Exercise 21.

Re-arrange the following jumbled sentences toform a coherent text:

A.The arrival of the white men with their guns and machinery changed the lives of the Inuit.

B.The Arctic land is called the tundra.

C.Then the white hunters came and shot caribou, polar bears, musk oxen and wolves.

D.It is the land of the Eskimo, or Inuit, as they prefer to be called.

E.But now things have changed once more.

F.They were a peaceful people who lived their lives cheerfully.

G.The government has built towns for them, like Inuvik, where they can get train­ ing for many kinds of jobs, and where their children can go to school.

Exercise 22.

Complete the following texts, adding ideas of your own:

1.It’s about as far north as you can go. You can only get there by plane. We don’t see the sun for most of the year. It’s an awful place. The temperature sometimes stays at 60 below zero....

2.Severe fog is common, and polar bears are a danger here too. But there’s plenty of gas up there. The problem is getting it back to civilization. But the company reckon they can do it by pipeline... .

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English-Speaking Countries

Text 3. A DIALOGUE

S:It was rather dull, just after the war, but it isn’t now, not since many new Euro­ pean immigrants have settled here.

P:Still, don’t you find Toronto rather provincial?

S:Provincial? You’re joking. It has a population of three million,you know. Canada is an exciting place to be in these days, because it’s building up a culture of its own. Lots of Canadians are very keen on music and the theatre.

P:By the way, do you agree when Canadians say that they have two races, two lan­ guages, two systems of religious belief, two sets of laws, two systems of everything?

S:Well, it’s actually true.

P:What would happen if Quebec declared itself independent?

S:That’s what a lot of French Canadians want, but I don’t think it’ll ever happen.

P: Why do they want to secede from Canada?

S:Because Quebec is much more French than Canadian. The way of life of Anglo­ phone (English-speaking) Canadians is American, with some British mixed in.

P:French and British Canadians get on all right, don’t they?

S:Well, Montreal is a bit of a problem. It’s Francophone and the second biggest city in Canada. There are a lot of Anglophone businesses there, and they usually em­ ploy Anglophone workers. But more and more Anglophones are moving to On­

tario, where mostly English is spoken.

P:To my mind Canada is a good example of the way peoples of different ways of life and different languages can live side by side under one government. There are many Ukrainians, Indians, Pakistanis and Chinese and also black people from the US among the immigrants who are pouring into Canada now. All Canadian chil­ dren learn both French and English at school.

[Source: Richard Musman. Background to English Speaking Countries. Macmillan, London and Basingstoke, 1987.]

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we did not share the European experience of the mid-century. While I’m naturally glad that we didn’t suffer invasion and occupation in two world wars, finally the country worries itself into a living death from which, we must hope, it will rise in re­ vulsion and call at last on all its hidden and ignored imaginative resources.

Text 2. AMERICA REVISITED

I had been to New York twenty years ago and I remembered it as a place where, when you looked out of the tenth storey window of a large apartment block at two o’clock in the morning, you felt so overwhelmed at the sight of a city which never stopped roaring and partying and buying and selling and burning off its superfluous energy that you wanted to throw yourself out and end it all. It hadn’t changed much when I visited it last June, 1997, though I was more aware, this time, of a sense of lightness and pleasure and charm.

We were staying in Greenwich Village with some old friends of mine. Suze is an artist and her husband, Enzo, works at the UN in the film production department. They live in a large and leafy loft - that is, a section of an old industrial building converted into flats - and in one direction you look up Broadway and in another towards the old brownstone houses of Washington Square. The loft was dark and cluttered and full of pictures and strange sculptures, but there were tall windows on two sides below which all the life of the Village rattled on. We had a lot of news and memories to exchange, mainly of Italy where we had first met in another life. After a generous plate of pasta we went out into the streets and wandered for hours, stopping at pubs or to browse around bookshops which never seemed to close. I remembered then how Americans always smile and say hello in that amazingly frank and almost intimate way if they pass you in a doorway. I felt - absurdly ~ that New York had realised that / had ar­ rived and was warmly making me welcome.

During the next week we did a lot of wandering and, whenever we could, chatting to people we met. New Yorkers always want to know where you come from and are very proud to tell you that their father is Turkish and their mother Italian but they are New Yorkers. We talked to a young Middle Eastern waiter who wanted us to guess where he came from. Eventually he had to tell us that he was from Iran. He was working in the restaurant and going to college at the same time. We could see that he had accepted the American Dream as reality and was full of delight at the endless pos­ sibilities that he believed were spread before him. And no doubt he was right. New Yorkers are actually New Yorkers before they even arrive because they are simply the sort of people - to be found in all countries - who have a huge belief in themselves and give every experience a warm but cunning embrace, amused at what use they will be able to make of it.

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Of course, we did our best to see everything and often became so exhausted that we irritated and annoyed each other and sometimes wished we had never gone there. But then there were other wonderful times like the boat trip we took round Manhattan, chugging slowly up the west side and then turning round the northern tip. There was one moment when the buildings of New York completely disappeared behind a vast forest of trees and I knew how Henry Hudson must have felt all those centuries ago when he sailed up here and saw nothing on either side of him but dark, secretive, wooded shores in whose darkest places, perhaps, the members of strange tribes stood silently watching his approach.

After a week we left our hosts and took a train to Washington. Not such a charac­ terful city as New York, Washington has plenty for tourists - galleries, museums, the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam Wall among much else. However, by this time we were tired of cities and decided to hire a car and drive down into Virginia, the state named after Queen Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen. We saw some of the Civil War sites and drove up into the Blue Ridge mountains, but most magical of all was when we drove down into the green valley below the mountains and through some of the richest, greenest countryside I have ever seen until we came to what was perhaps the jewel of the whole holiday, Monticello, the Palladian villa built by Thomas Jefferson, third President of America. This magnificent place is set on a hillside in a fine garden, in­ cluding a well-stocked vegetable garden of which Jefferson was particularly proud and where he built a gazebo to write in and survey several hundreds of square miles of Virginian forest. The interior of the house was described to us by the guide as a re­ flection of the owner and architect himself, a man fascinated by the geography of his country, deeply interested in science and philosophy and education, an astute lawyer, a skilled architect, a maker of small and practical devices, a man who prided himself, not on having been for a time president of his country but on his creation of the Uni­ versity of Virginia and his achievement in writing the Declaration of Independence. Politics he wearily described as no more than ‘the constant losing of friends’.

The United States is such a huge experience that it will be different for everyone. I didn’t see its darker side, though I had a sense of it at times in some distant view or some beggar with a haunted face sitting on a pavement in the rich Washington suburb of Georgetown. But, in spite of this, I feel grateful for the enormous vitality of New York, the huge, fertile landscape of Virginia and that sense of something still wild and primitive that lurked about the dark shores of New York and the Potomac River in Washington.

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