1. You sent me a present. Thank you very much for it. (Thank you very much for...)
2. She was dancing with a student. He had a slight limp.
3. I am looking after some children. They are terribly spoilt.
4. The bed has no mattress. I sleep on this bed. (The bed I...)
5. Romeo and Juliet were lovers. Their parents hated each other.
6. There wasn't any directory in the telephone box. I was phoning from this box.
7. This is Mrs Jones. Her son won the championship last year.
8. I was sitting on a chair. It suddenly collapsed. (The chair...)
9. Mr Smith said he was too busy to speak to me. I had come specially to see him.
10. The man was sitting at the desk. I had come to see this man.
11. I missed the train. I usually catch this train. And I had to travel on the next. This
was a slow train. (Make into one sentence.)
12. His girl friend turned out to be an enemy spy. He trusted her absolutely.
III. TRANSLATE INTO ENGLISH.
Демократия
Основой демократии является развитый публичный диалог (коммуникация) представителей разной политической ориентации. Такой диалог происходит в обществе и концентрируется в парламенте. Важным фактором в деятельности многих парламентов является оппозиция (от лат. oppositio - противопоставление), включающая депутатов парламентского меньшинства, расходящегося по определенным вопросам с политикой парламентского большинства и правительства. Оппозиция критикует деятельность правительства, пользуется случаем поставить вопрос о доверии правительству.
Наличие оппозиции считается неотъемлемым компонентом демократического общества, правового государства. Пока в обществе существует разница интересов, будет существовать и оппозиция.
Конституции, которые создавались в Нидерландах, Бельгии, Норвегии, Швейцарии и других странах в Х1Х-ХХ вв., содержали идею защиты прав меньшинства. Меньшинство получило возможность действительной парламентской борьбы с беззаботным отношением большинства к законодательной работе, которое имело место в прошлом. В наши дни конституции Франции, ФРГ, Испании, Японии и других стран предусматривают гарантии прав человека и меньшинства. В Англии оппозиция (меньшинство) составляет непременную часть государственного механизма. Начиная с 1800 года, лидер оппозиции «его величества» получает жалование, равное жалованию премьер-министра. В ФРГ право парламентских расследований, состоящее в обеспечении парламента информацией о работе правительства и в осуществлении контроля над правительством, - одно из прав меньшинства. Оно впервые было закреплено в одной из статей Веймарской Конституции, и эта первоначальная функция права меньшинства сохранилась до сих пор.
CORE READING 4
PRE-READING TASKS:
Answer the questions:
a) Who is Martin Luther King?
b) When and where was his famous I have a dream speech given?
Excerpt from Martin Luther King’s speech:
“I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day…”
POST-READING TASKS
a) What makes this speech memorable? Discuss with your partner.
b) Write an “I have a dream…” speech. What are your wishes and expectations as for the future of this country? Or the world?
ADDITIONAL READING
Read the article below and render it in Russian.
Why Do Democracies Need Unlovable Press?
So says Michael Schudson, one of America’s foremost media scholars, in his new book, and most people, and certainly most journalists, would agree. After all, the idea of the press as a Fourth Estate or watchdog over the powerful has a long and noble pedigree, stretching as far back as the origin of newspapers themselves, and forms an integral part of journalism’s own cherished self-image. But what does unlovable really mean, and how well does the British press measure up to the task of using its unlovability to hold power to account?
Certainly Britain’s press is not greatly loved. For example, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport has recently launched a new inquiry into the press which asks some key questions: does the fact that every single popular British newspaper has faced libel actions arising from the Madeleine McCann case indicate a serious weakness with the self-regulatory regime run by the Press Complaints Commission? Should financial penalties for libel or invasion of privacy be exemplary rather than merely compensatory? Is press reporting of police investigations and court trials infringing the contempt of court laws?
Of course, some might argue that if the press is annoying government into investigating its actions, it must be doing something right. However, it also appears to be unloved by much of the general public as well. A report published in February by the Media Standards Trust, A More Accountable Press, shows that 75 per cent of people agreed with the statement that ‘newspapers frequently publish stories they know are inaccurate’, and only 7 per cent thought that national newspapers behave responsibly. More specifically, only 43 per cent of those questioned trusted journalists on the up-market papers, falling to 18 per cent in the case of the mid-market tabloids and 15 per cent when it comes to the red-tops. But for those concerned with press freedom, the worrying aspect of this survey is that lack of public trust in the press goes hand in hand with support for government intervention. The research shows that 60 per cent of respondents wanted the government to intervene to protect privacy, and 73 per cent would like it become involved in correcting inaccuracies.
So, if the press has become unlovable in such a way that large numbers of those whose interests it is supposed to represent want to see it muzzled by government, does this suggest that many people simply see it as no longer playing a democratic role? Has British newspapers’ longstanding love affair with celebrity, tittle-tattle, scandal and prurience finally reached such a pitch that most people regard it as simply no longer interested in ‘getting in the face of power’? In a speech to the Society of Editors last November, Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre partially addressed this question when he argued that: ‘If mass-circulation newspapers, which, of course, also devote considerable space to reporting and analysis of public affairs, don’t have the freedom to write about scandal, I doubt whether they will retain their mass circulations with the obvious worrying implications for the democratic process … If the News of the World can’t carry such stories as the Mosley orgy, then it, and its political reportage and analysis, will eventually probably die’. However, this argument – namely, that newspapers need to ‘subsidise’ stories which are genuinely in the public interest by means of stories which certain sections of the public find merely interesting – has not generally found favour with the judiciary, and is in fact seriously flawed.
Firstly, the extent to which papers such as the News of the World and other such tabloids carry serious political reportage and analysis is actually pretty minimal. Second, while it may indeed be the case that the middle-market tabloids do carry a certain amount of journalism of this kind, this is frequently so coloured by those papers’ editorial lines that it is quite impossible to tell fact from comment (and indeed from fiction) and thus cannot really be counted as serious journalism, or what we might call public interest journalism. Finally, Dacre’s argument is contradicted by the fact that up-market newspapers do actually manage (for the most part) to publish a good deal of public interest journalism without resorting to the ‘subsidy’ mechanism. The real problem, however, is that the intrusive and sensationalist antics of the popular press have, over the years, so antagonised many people that they have come increasingly to regard the notion of press freedom as largely self-serving and hypocritical and to support the statutory regulation of newspapers. This could equally well curtail serious journalism as the more egregious forms of popular journalism, quite apart from the fact that such a degree of popular disaffection from the press is hardly the sign of a healthy democratic spirit.
In his analysis of what makes the US press unlovable, Schudson argues that many critics of US journalism ‘have attacked just those features of the press that, for all their defects, best protect robust public discussion and promote democracy’, such as a focus on events as opposed to trends and structures, a fixation on conflict, and a scepticism towards politics and politicians. In his view however: ‘These are precisely the features that most regularly enable the press to maintain a capacity for subverting established power’. Thus, as he sees it, events are important for journalists because they cannot be anticipated and easily managed by those in power, conflict likewise ‘provides a recurrent resource for embarrassing the powerful’, and a sceptical attitude towards politics and politicians has enabled journalists to report not only on the ‘show and the dazzle that the politician wants foregrounded, but the efforts that go into the show and the calculations behind them’ – in other words, to unmask ‘spin’.
These features are, of course, observable in the British press too, but what makes it extremely difficult to apply Schudson’s analysis wholesale to UK newspapers is that it is rooted in a very American concept of press journalism which sees news as a ‘professional balanced resource for an informed citizenry’, as progressive and liberal, as a source of ‘fair and full information so citizens can make sound political choices’, as providing ‘coherent frameworks of interpretation to help citizens comprehend a complex world’, and as a means of telling people about ‘others in their society and their world so that they can come to appreciate the viewpoints and lives of other people, especially those less advantaged than themselves’. Schudson quotes approvingly Herbert Gans’ suggestion that the ideal model of press journalism is the ‘rural town meeting – or rather … a romanticised version of it’, and also adds that one of journalism’s key functions should be publicising representative democracy: journalism should be democratic but not populist, respect constitutional and liberal virtues, and champion a strong role for the protection of minority rights.
These are most emphatically not the values of the bulk of British newspapers (although they are not far removed from those underlying public service broadcasting, and for that matter those of the Guardian, Observer and Independent, which constitute Britain’s rump liberal press). While many American newspapers strive to be objective, the entirety of the British popular press is stridently partisan. While American newspapers rigorously check facts (much to the derision of most British editors), across most of the British press the distinction between fact and comment has largely collapsed. If liberalism is the hallmark of much of the American press, its British counterpart is defined largely by its thoroughgoing illiberalism (from a seemingly endless list, take, for example, its predominant attitudes to penal policy, human rights, refugees, asylum seekers, ethnic minorities, drugs, and sex education). If American papers attempt to educate and enlighten, most British ones tell their readers what they think they want to hear and make a particular specialism of appealing to their prejudices (coverage of what the papers habitually refer to as ‘Europe’ furnishing a particularly glaring example). Where American papers at least try to uphold democratic values, most British newspapers represent populism writ large; if the model of American press journalism is the rural town meeting, that of much of the British press is the lynch mob – think paedophiles, social workers and bankers.
WRITING: ESSAYS
Basic essay structure:
I. Introduction
a. Introduction of any essay should be no longer than 1/10 of its length. If the essay itself must be of a significant size the introduction may have several paragraphs; in the rest of the cases it consists of one solid paragraph.
b. Introduction has a deductive nature, as it leads the reader from the general views or positions on the analyzed topics to the specific narrow theme of the essay.
c. A good introduction requires several elements:
· Opening sentences introducing to the topic of the essay
· Background information on it (gradually leading to the analyzed aspect of the theme).
· Literature techniques to grab the reader’s attention.
· A strong thesis statement defining and statingthe point the author is making in the essay, the paper’s main argument.
II. Body paragraphs
Body paragraph 1
Body paragraph 2
Body paragraph 3, etc.
a. The body of a basic essay may have as many body paragraphs as it is necessary to prove the author’s argument of the thesis statement.
b. It is vital to keep in mind that each paragraph is supposed to have one main argument to analyze and has to reveal it in one solid thought in a sentence called the topic sentence. Therefore the amount of the body paragraphs equals the amount of topic sentences.
c. Each body paragraph must be connected to following one with a logical link (transition phrases).
III. Conclusion
a. It is usually written in one solid paragraph.
b. The conclusion sums up the essay’s arguments revealed in the topic sentences, thus proving the thesis statement.
c. It is also important to mention the importance of the general conclusion of the essay.
---------------------------
Choose a topic for your essay:
a) What is Democracy
c) The Role of Journalism in Democracy
d) Democracy: Fact or Fiction?
