Nature and man: Environmental Protection

Many centuries ago people lived in harmony with nature because industry was not much developed. There was no ecological problem until people built lots of plants and factories which sent wastes into the air, water and land where they didn't disappear but lasted forever in one form or another. Nowadays people live only according to their wants and requirements; they ignore the laws of nature. That's why today the contradictions between man and nature are dramatic. People are slowly destroying the nature environment around them. Another reason why there is such high level of air pollution in large cities is because of car exhaust fumes from very intensive transport. A great number of plants get used to dump poisonous chemical wastes in rivers, lakes and seas that has led to polluting water and killing fish life. At present time pollution from sinking ships and tankers with oil is increasing and there is a strong destruction of sea life. We face the fresh water supply problem today because of the depletion of water resources and the disruption of water cycle.

Speaking about atmosphere we should mention ozone holes which are result of air pollution and their increase can lead to the destruction of the whole great chain of life of our planet. The pollution of the air, oceans, seas, rivers and lakes and the destruction of the ozone layer could lead our planet to a global catastrophe. But the most terrible catastrophe of our age is the Chernobyl disaster which has resulted not only in atomic explosion but has brought death to 300 thousands hectares of farm lands and has affected the lives of millions of people. The radiation doses have affected and will continue to affect the health of people living in contaminated areas.

 The Earth is our home that's why we must take measures to fight land pollution and keep our environment clean; we must plant trees and flowers and take care of animals, we must not throw our wastes into the rivers. In many countries environmental

National Portrait Gallery

       The National Portrait Gallery has a collection of portraits of famous British men and women, from the 16^th century to the present day. The portraits are both paintings and photographs. The National Portrait Gallery is near Trafalgar Square, five minutes from the National Gallery, London’s most important art gallery. It is open daily and entrance is free.

Read and listen to three audio guide extracts. Check your answers to II.

1 Henry Vill was born in 1491. He was King of England from 1509 to 1547 and is famous for separating the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church, and for his six wives. When he was young, as in this picture, he was very strong and good-looking. He was an excellent sportsman, and was also a good musician and poet. However, in his old age he was very fat and always in pain.

2 The Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, were born between 1816 and 1820 in a small village in the north of England. They were all writers. But only Charlotte, with her novel Jane Eyre, was famous in her lifetime. Their brother Branwell, the painter of this portrait, was originally in the picture between Emily and Charlotte. He wasn’t happy with his self-portrait and now the painting shows only the three sisters.

3 Helena Bonham Carter, the actress, was born in London in 1966. Her mother is half Spanish and her father, who died in 2004, was the grandson of Herbert Asquith, the British Prime Minister from 1908 to 1916. Her first big role was as Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with a View, and her other roles include The Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, Bellatrix Lestrange in the Harry Potter films, and Queen Elizabeth in The King’s Speech. She has two children with her partner Tim Burton, a film director.

Famous painter

Frida Kahlo was born in Coyoacan, Mexico in 1907. However, she claimed her birth date as 1910, the year of the Mexican Revolution, saying that she and modern Mexico had been born together.

When she was six years old she contracted polio and spent nine months confined to her room. As a result, her right leg was very thin and made her walk in a strange way. When she returned to school, the children teased her. From then on, she always concealed her right leg.

When she was eighteen, she was seriously injured in an accident between a streetcar and a bus: a metal handrail pierced her body. Over the years she underwent thirty-two major operations and suffered enormous pain for the rest of her life.

She was her father’s favourite daughter, and he called her his dove. She married a famous muralist, Diego Rivera, when she was twenty. He was forty-two and had been married twice before.

She told a journalist, “When I was seventeen (subtracting three years from her age) Diego began to fall in love with me. My father didn’t like him because he was a communist and because they said it was like an elephant marrying a dove.

They had a stormy relationship. Her husband was often unfaithful and even had an affair with Cristina, Frida’s younger sister.

In January 1939 she travelled to Paris where she met Picasso. He bought one of her self-portraits.

In April, on her return to Mexico, Frida and Diego began divorce proceedings. Frida was devastated and for a while stopped wearing the traditional Mexican dresses that Diego loved so much. Ironically, she painted some of her most powerful works during her separation from Diego. The couple remarried in December 1940.

In 1946 she had surgery on her spine, and in 1953 her right leg was amputated below the knee.

Frida was never able to have children. She said, “My painting carries within it the message of pain.” And when asked why she painted herself so often, she replied “Because I am all alone.”

She died in July 1954, barely two weeks after taking part in a communist demonstration. 

Famous writers

Kazakhstan gave the mankind a lot of talented people – poets, writers, musicians. Among them are Abay, Shakarim, Auezov, Baitursynov.

Abay Kunanbayev is a famous writer and poet. He was born in 1945 in Abay region. Grandmother Zere told him tales and sang songs. He went to school in Semipalatinsk. Abay wrote many books and poems. His main book is The Book of Words. He translated Pushkin, Krylov and Lermontov into Kazakh. He lived a long life and did a lot for people. Many streets, squares, theatres are named after Abay. People in many countries know Abay and his works. There are monuments to Abay in many cities.

Shakarim was a son of Abay’s eldest brother and, left without a father at the age of six, was brought up by his great uncle. Before the death Abay sent his nephew on a journey about Turkey, Arabia, Egypt. Shakarim visited Mecca, Alexandria and Paris. He learned Turkish, Arabic, Persian, had a perfect knowledge of Russian. He was in correspondence with the great Russian writer L. Tolstoy, translated Pushkin’s novel “Dubrovsky” into Kazakh, the prose of L. Tolstoy, verses, written by Lermontov, Nekrasov and Byron. He wrote a novel “Chronicle of Kazakh Khans” and philosophical treatise “Mohammedanism”.

Mukhtar Auezov is a distinguished Kazakh writer, playwright and statesman. He was born in Semey region of Kazakhstan. His writing career began with the play “Enlik-Kebek” (1917), based on the folk legend of tragic love. In the course of his life Mukhtar Auezov wrote over 20 plays and many short stories, novels. His best work is the epic novel “Abay”. It has had an enormous influence on Kazakh literature and has been translated into many languages. For his creative activity this prominent Kazakh poet, educator and philosopher was awarded with State and Lenin Prizes.

Baitursynov was born in what is today Kostanay Province, and was educated at the Orenburg Teachers' School. After graduating in 1895, Baitursynov held teaching positions in a number of cities in Kazakhstan, including Aktobe, Kostanay and Karkaralinsk.

The same year as his graduation, Baitursynov published his first article, "Kirgizskie primety i poslovitsy" ("Kazakh Omens and Proverbs") in a regional newspaper. While living in Ural city in 1905, he collaborated with other Kazakhs to form the Kazakh wing of the Constitutional Democrat Party. His involvement in politics probably led to his 1909 arrest and exile from the Steppe regions. After being exiled, he went to Orenburg.

Another of Baitursynov's significant accomplishments was his adaptation of Arabic script for the Kazakh alphabet.

A museum in honour of Baitursynov was established in one of his former residences in Alma-Ata, and a number of streets were renamed in his memory across Kazakhstan. A statue of the thinker is also to be found in the town of Kostonay.

Baitursynov's work is part of the curriculum for high school education system of Kazakhstan.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in 1756. From the very beginning of his life in Salzburg» Austria, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a master of music. His father, Leopold Mozart, sacrificed his own career as a respected composer and theorist so he could concentrate on fostering his prodigy son's talents. He taught Mozart the violin, piano and musical theory, all of which Mozart excelled at. At the age of four, Mozart was writing piano concerts and he completed his first opera, when he was eleven.

Mozart spent most of his childhood touring Europe with his sister and he got his first job at the age thirteen for the Archbishop of Salzburg. He worked here for twelve years until the archbishop dismissed him. Mozart moved to Vienna, the musical capital of the world at the time. He had been successful there as a child prodigy but as an adult had difficulty in finding work.

It was in Vienna that Mozart met Haydn, who took Mozart under his wing and nurtured Mozart' talents like a second father. To make a living, Mozart wrote operas which were becoming very popular. Musical ideas sprang from Mozart's mind. His only task in composing was actually writing the music down on paper. Around this time he fell in love with a woman called Aloysia Weber. He asked her to marry him but she declined and so he married her sister Constanze instead. For their wedding, Mozart wrote his great C-minor composition.

Mozart had more success as a composer when he visited Prague. He was commissioned to write several operas and he enjoyed a successful career.

Mozart was convinced while he was writing Requiem commissioned by an unnamed stranger that it was his own requiem and he was right. He raced to finish it but in the end only completed a few movements and a sketchy outline of the rest of the piece. He died probably from poor health when he was just thirty five years old. The Requiem was completed by one of Mozart's pupils, Sussmayr.

Mozart was apolitical. He was very classical. He appreciated Bach and had a large output: 49 symphonies and 18 operas.

Mass media

Bill Gates, Drew Berrymore, Shakira, Madonna, Britney Spears. Do you know them? Why are they so popular?

Mass media is a correct answer! Newspapers, TV, radio, internet are the mass media. Everybody uses it. Mass media informs us in different directions. It is a great world source of information. Nowadays you can’t live without information. Because if you show that you don't know something very popular and discussed, people will think that you are silly, non-educated and uninformed.

Let’s speak about the Internet. It is a really great thing. You can find there all information that you want. Even if you talk with your friends and they speak about the person, unknown for you, you always can use Google and learn who that person is. And you can do it very quickly just using you cell phone.

The level of world development is shown by the mass media.

Mass media (that is, the press, the radio and television) play an important role in the life of society. They inform, educate and entertain people. They also influence the way people look at the world and make them change their views. Mass media direct public opinion. Millions of people in their spare time watch TV and read newspapers.

Everybody can find there something interesting for him. On the radio one can hear music, plays, news and various discussions or comments of current events. Multiple radio or TV games and movies attract a large audience.

There is a lot of advertisement on mass media. Some of the TV and radio stations and newspapers are owned by different corporations. The owners can advertise whatever they choose.

But it is hardly fair to say that mass media do not try to raise cultural level of the people or to develop their artistic taste. Mass media brings to millions of homes not only entertainment and news but also cultural and educational programs.

The British press, for example, consists of several kinds of newspapers.

The national papers are the ones sold all over the country, with a large circulation, giving general news.

There are two main types of national papers - the "popular" papers and the "quality" papers. The popular papers are smaller in size (they are tabloid size), with lots of pictures, big headlines and short articles. They are easy to read and often contain little truthful information. They give much space to opinions. They usually have "human interest" stories - stories about ordinary people and events. Examples of this type of newspapers are "The Daily Mail", "The Sun", etc.

"Quality" papers appeal to the more serious reader, who wants to read about politics and foreign affairs. These papers such as "The Daily Telegraph", "The Guardian" are bigger in size (they are called "broad-sheets"), with longer articles and a wider coverage of events. They have different pages for home news, foreign affairs, feature articles, fashion, business, sport and so on.

People in Britain buy more papers on Sunday than on weekdays. The Sunday papers have a higher circulation than the dailies. As with the dailies, there are both popular and quality Sunday newspapers. The quality ones have different sections and a color magazine (usually full of advertisements).

Living without a TV

Almost every family today have a TV, in fact probably more than one, and people everywhere spend hours watching it. But a few families choose to live without a TV because they think there are advantages.

The first advantage is that families spend more time talk to each other. Secondly, they spend more time doing more creative things like reading or painting. Thirdly, they spend more time outdoors, and are usually more fit.

But on the other hand, there are also disadvantages. For example, children who don’t have a TV may feel differents from there school friends, and often won’t know what they are talking about. Also, it is not true that all TV programes are bad. There are good ones, like documentarys, and people who live without a TV may know less about whats  happening in the world.

In conclusion, althought living without a TV has some advantages, I think today it’s unrealistic and that we should just try to turn the TV out when there’s nothing good on.