Vocabulary and Speech Exercises

Find the English equivalents in text 1.

 воспринимать с восторгом; неважно, как выглядит город; нельзя не обращать внимание; показаться скучным и угрюмым; общеизвестно, что; воспринимают Британию как страну, окутанную пеленой тумана; по собственному опыту; утверждать; периоды по-настоящему великолепной погоды; общие рассуждения; живут несколько лет; пользуются всеми возможностями; нанять такси; разговорить водителя; общительный; в отличие от; сдержанность; была поражена его акцентом; не могла понять, что он говорит; говорил в нос; но никто в действительности не переехал; стиль жизни; бездельники; не соответствует действительности

Find the English equivalents in text 2.

произвел благоприятное впечатление; попались на глаза; аккуратно подрезанные живые изгороди; зеленый тон; в целом; господствующий; специфический; ее история восходит; хорошо спланированный старый город; тем не менее; сохраняет неповторимую красоту; витражи; высокий резной потолок; узор; по всей Британии; глашатай; убийство лица, которому убийца должен быть предан; поддерживать; собственно говоря; средневековый; по закону; жить; лишайник; оконная рама; замысловато украшены; претендуют на изысканность; таблички с именами; звучат старомодно; придают пикантность; в отличие; то же самое относится к; выглядит внушительно; черепица; подробно остановиться; во всяком случае

Find the English equivalents in the dialogue.

жива и здорова; мягко приземлился; пролетали мимо меня; не обращая внимания на города и деревни; я так хотела увидеть; достопримечательности, на которые стоит посмотреть; во всем мире; особые музыканты; все помешаны на их музыке; ты зашел слишком далеко; садиться в машину; не принесет вреда; мне очень хочется новых впечатлений; плющ, пробивающийся в щелях между камнями; в конечном счете; взлетать; после того, как загорится зеленый свет; не более, чем в пяти ярдов отсюда

Express the following in one word.

1. a long rubber or plastic tube which can be moved and bent to put water onto fires, gardens, etc. 2. a railway that runs under the ground 3. a set of stairs that move and carry people from one level within a building to another 4. a bus with two levels 5. someone whose job is to show a place to tourists 6. to go past a moving vehicle or person because you are going faster than them and want to get in front of them 7. a bus with comfortable seats used for long journeys 8. a structure built over a river, road, etc. that allows people or vehicles to cross from one side to the other 9. a wide wall of stones or earth built to keep the water in a river from flowing over its banks, or to support a road or railway over low ground 10. special lights at a place where roads meet, that control the traffic by means of red, yellow, and green lights 11. a house or an area of a city that is in very bad condition, where very poor people live 12. a public show where you put things so that people can go to see them 13. a hard level surface or path at the side of a road for people to walk on 14. bent, twisted or not in a straight line 15. a wide road in a town, usually with trees along the sides 16. someone who is walking, especially in a street or other place used by cars 17. someone who is walking past a place by chance 18. the time of day when the roads, buses, trains etc. are most crowded, because people are traveling to or from work 19. the parts of a town that are furthest from the centre (outskirts)20. a very tall modern city building 21. to make someone pay money as punishment 22. someone who sees a crime or an accident and can describe what happened 23. the distance along a city street from where one street crosses it to the next 24. to cause physical harm to someone or to yourself, for example in an accident or an attack 25. a large vehicle for carrying heavy goods.

Arrange the following in pairs of synonyms.

 apartment house, to restore, broad, by-street, road, way, pavement, advertisement, sidewalk, bush, lorry, town, truck, incident, to reconstruct, accident, suburbs, block of flats, outskirts, street, wide, thoroughfare, booth, lane, queue, city, subway, stall, to go sightseeing, underground, escalator, announcement, shrub, amoving staircase, line, to make a tour of

Arrange the following in pairs of antonyms.

town, to build, careful, broad, passenger, to pull down, driver, to board a tram, occupied, narrow, to get off a tram, vacant, careless, a car, a lorry, suburb

It's an interesting place

READING: Famous cities

1 Read these descriptions of cities and circle the correct city

The city:   Paris   Venice   Rome

#1

This beautiful city in northeastern Italy is built on 100 small islands. This city has no roads. Instead, people use gondolas to travel along the canals. The most famous place to visit is St. Mark's Square, with its wonderful Renaissance buildings and its busy cafes.

The city:   New York   San Francisco    Chicago

#2

This American city is the main business and cultural center in the Midwest. It is famous for its music, opera, and theater as well as for its excellent museums and architecture. The world's tallest building, the Sears Tower, is there.

The city:

Mexico City Havana

Rio de Janeiro

#3

Travelers use many words to describe this South American city: beautiful, glamorous, sunny, friendly, and exciting. People love to visit its fabulous beaches and mountains. It is the city of the Carnival, when everyone dances the "samba" in the streets.

Now answer these questions.

Paragraph #1

Why do people use gondolas in this city?

What do tourists do there?

Paragraph #2 Where is this city? What's it famous for?

Paragraph #3

What do visitors do there?

What do people do there at Carnival time?

Supplementary Reading

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and a chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodge-keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the lodge was unin­habited.

No smoke came from the chimney, and the little lattice windows gaped forlorn. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me. The drive wound away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always done, but as I advanced I was aware that a change had come upon it; it was narrow and unkept, not the drive that we had known. At first I was puzzled and did not understand, and it was only when I bent my head to avoid the low swinging branch of a tree that I realized what had happened. Nature had come into her own again and, little by little, in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long, tenacious fingers. The woods, always a menace even in the past, had triumphed in the end. They crowded, dark and uncontrolled, to the borders of the drive. The beeches with white, naked limbs leant close to one another, their branches intermingled in a strange embrace, making a vault above my head like the archway of a church. And there were other trees as well, trees that I did not recog­nize, squat oaks and tortured elms that straggled cheek by jowl with the beeches, and had thrust themselves out of the quiet earth, along with monster shrubs and plants, none of which I remembered.

The drive was a ribbon now, a thread of its former self, with gravel surface gone, and choked with grass and moss. The trees had thrown out low branches, making an impediment to pro­gress; the gnarled roots looked like skeleton claws. Scattered here and again amongst this jungle growth I would recognize

shrubs that had been landmarks in our time, things of culture and grace, hydrangeas whose blue heads had been famous. No hand had checked their progress, and they had gone native now, rearing to monster height without a bloom, black and ugly as the nameless parasites that grew beside them.

On and on, now east now west, wound the poor thread that once had been our drive. Sometimes I thought it lost, but it appeared again, beneath a fallen tree perhaps, or struggling on the other side of a muddied ditch created by the winter rains. I had not thought the way so long. Surely the miles had multi­plied, even as the trees had done, and this path led but to a labyrinth, some choked wilderness, and not to the house at all. I came upon it suddenly; the approach masked by the un­natural growth of a vast shrub that spread in all directions, and I stood, my heart thumping in my breast, the strange prick of tears behind my eyes.

There was Manderley, our Manderley, secretive and silent as it had always been, the grey stone shining in the moonlight of my dream, the mullioned windows reflecting the green lawns and the terrace. Time could not wreck the perfect symmetry of those walls, nor the site itself, a jewel in the hollow of a hand.

The terrace sloped to the lawns, and the lawns stretched to the sea, and turning I could see the sheet of silver placid under the moon, like a lake undisturbed by wind or storm. No waves would come to ruffle this dream water, and no bulk of cloud, wind-driven from the west, obscure the clarity of this pale sky. I turned again to the house, and though it stood inviolate, un­touched, as though we ourselves had left but yesterday, I saw that the garden had obeyed the jungle law, even as the woods had done. The rhododendrons stood fifty feet high, twisted and entwined with bracken, and they had entered into alien mar­riage with a host of nameless shrubs, poor, bastard things that clung about their roots as though conscious of their spurious origin. A lilac had mated with a copper beech, and to bind them yet more closely to one another the malevolent ivy, always an enemy to grace, had thrown her tendrils about the pair and made them prisoners. Ivy held prior place in this lost garden, the long strands crept across the lawns, and soon would en­croach upon the house itself. There was another plant too, some half-breed from the woods, whose seed had been scattered long ago beneath the trees and then forgotten, and now, marching in unison with the ivy, thrust its ugly form like a giant rhubarb towards the soft grass where the daffodils had blown.

Nettles were everywhere, the vanguard of the army. They choked the terrace, they sprawled about the paths, they leant, vulgar and lanky, against the very windows of the house. They made indifferent sentinels, for in many places their ranks had been broken by the rhubarb plant, and they lay with crumpled heads and listless stems, making a pathway for the rabbits. I left the drive and went on to the terrace, for the nettles were no barrier to me, a dreamer. I walked enchanted, and nothing held me back.

Moonlight can play odd tricks upon the fancy, even upon a dreamer's fancy. As I stood there, hushed and still, I could swear that the house was not an empty shell but lived and breathed as it had lived before.

Light came from the windows, the curtains blew softly in the night air, and there, in the library, the door would stand half open as we had left it, with my handkerchief on the table beside the bowl of autumn roses.

The room would bear witness to our presence. The little heap of library books marked ready to return, and the discarded copy of The Times. Ash-trays, with the stub of a cigarette; cushions, with the imprint of our heads upon them, lolling in the chairs; the charred embers of our log fire still smouldering against the morning. And Jasper, dear Jasper, with his soulful eyes and great, sagging jowl, would be stretched upon the floor, his tail a-thump when he heard his master's footsteps.

A cloud, hitherto unseen, came upon the moon, and hovered an instant like a dark hand before a face. The illusion went with it, and the lights in the windows were extinguished. I looked upon a desolate shell, soulless at last, unhaunted, with no whisper of the past about its staring walls.

The house was a sepulchre, our fear and suffering lay buried in the ruins. There would be no resurrection. When I thought of Manderley in my waking hours I would not be bitter. I should think of it as it might have been, could I have lived there without fear. I should remember the rose-garden in summer,

and the birds that sang at dawn. Tea under the chestnut tree, and the murmur of the sea coming up to us from (he lawns below.

I would think of the blown lilac, and the Happy Valley. These things were permanent, they could not be dissolved. They were memories that cannot hurt. All this I resolved in my dream, while the clouds lay across the face of the moon, for like most sleepers I knew that I dreamed, in reality I lay many hundred miles away in an alien land, and would wake, before many seconds had passed, in the bare little hotel bed­room, comforting in its very lack of atmosphere. I would sigh a moment, stretch myself and turn, and opening my eyes, be bewildered at that glittering sun, that hard, clean sky, :;o dif­ferent from the soft moonlight of my dream. The day would lie before us both, long no doubt, and uneventful, but fraught with a certain stillness, a dear tranquility we had not known before. We would not talk of Manderley, J would not tell my dream. For Manderley was ours no longer. Manderley was no more.

Liverpool

Liverpool takes the watery part of its name from the Pool, a mile long tidal inlet which once flowed in a curve from where the Mersey tunnels now begin down to meet the river in the area now covered by the restored Albert Dock. The origins of 'liver' are obscure. Two possibilities are the Old English word liefer meaning 'thick in a muddy sense, or the Danish word lid or lithe meaning an inlet by the marsh.

The first official reference to Liverpool is in documents of 1192. when John, Count of Mortain (later to become King John) granted lands that included Liverpool to Henry, son of Warin de Lancaster. But 1207 John took the land back, realizing t Pool’s potential as a safe harbour and supply port for his planned conquest of Ireland. By Letters Patent in that л ear, he invited people from all over the country establish a community by accepting plots of land to the west of the Pool. Some 200 families responded to his call and a Royal Borough was established.

Soon the church of St Nicholas was built and a castle followed, wiith seven small streets around. But during the next five centuries Liverpool remained a back water. Few merchant ships came, for most of England's commerce was in London and most of its trade was with Europe. Besides, the mouth of the Mersev with its many sandbanks and vicious currents held nasty surprises for the unwary mariner. The town's 500 inhabitants continued to make their living mainly from agriculture and fishing.

The Civil War (1641-4 8} is regarded as the point in history when Liverpool began to play a national role. Royalist soldiers besieged the town and its castle for 18 day s in 1644 before forcing it to capitulate and razing the castle to the ground. But the hardship suffered for the parliamentary cause was not in vain, for Liverpool’s later advancement was due in no small part to the preferment it received from Parliament over previously Royalist strongholds such as the rival port of Chester.

Other factors also started to work in the city's favour. Merchant families fleeing from the plague in London brought extra entrepreneurial skills and capital. Rock salt was discovered in Cheshire and an industrial base grew, founded on coal, salt and glass. In addition the French navy was threatening the ports of the south coast, and Chester had begun to choke on the mounting silt in the River Dee.

The world's first commercial wet dock, designed to overcome the difficulties of fluctuating tidal levels, was built around the existing Pool in 1715. This marked the beginning of the modern port as we know it. Enclosed docks spread along the waterfront. Rivers were made navigable, canals dug and roads constructed. Wealthy local families began to pour money and land into shipping, commerce and port industries. The slave trade opened up lucra­tive overseas markets and soon coal, salt, sugar and other exports were being loaded here for destinations all over Europe, the Americas and the West Indies

The town grew with the burgeoning trade Its population rose from 5,000 m 1700 to over 50,000 a hundred years later. Fine new streets were laid out. Elegant buildings included a new Town Hall, replacing the one destroyed by fire in 1795. Progressive urbanization brought many good things: hospitals, schools, libraries, water supply - and some bad overcrowd­ing, disease and poor sanitation amongst them Despite the social problems which inevitably accompany rapid growth, the city was thriving. The 19 th century was to bring even greater fame and fortune.

Between the wars, the Port of Liverpool strove hard to keep pace with demand, by constant modernization and the provi­sion of excellent new facilities. The new Gladstone Dock complex of 192.7 was a brave investment in the future that was to pay off handsomely over the next 30 years. Tonnage grew, but the rise in foreign competitiveness meant that the port's share in world shipping declined. Poverty, hunger and slum conditions were to be found in many suburbs.

The Second World War blitz was to have an even more dramatic effect on Liverpool than the Great War. The U-boat attacks of 1917 had taught us the necessity of sending ships in convoys. Since the most important and numerous of these were those from Canada and the USA, Liver­pool became very much a front-line port, square in the sights of Hitler's Luftwaffe. Waves of bombers became a frequent sight over the city, illuminated by the fires from the destruction wrought below. The first week of May 1941 saw the heaviest attack on any English city, a sustained attempt to destroy the-port. Eight successive nights of bombing left nearly 4,000 people dead,

4,000 injured and over 10,000 homes reduced to rubble. But Hitler's objective remained unrealized. True, ships were destroyed, damaged and diverted, but the work of the port went on, a genuine British victory in the Battle of the Atlantic.

Despite the city's defiant survival, Liver­pool's economic life m the post-war years suffered several blows. The textile industry that had fuelled the port's success was in steep decline, the days of sheltered trade with the British Empire were over and the location, formerly such an asset, became a handicap as links with Europe grew. New

facilities were needed to handle modern bulk roll-on-roll-off and container traffic, but potential investors were deterred by spiralling labour costs and bad industrial relations.

However, in the 1960s things started to improve. There was a growing realization amongst the authorities that the large ships of today would require virtually a new port - and this is what has come about. Outdated central and upstream dock closed and new deepwater facilities at Gladstone and Royal Seaforth dock opened.

The Beatles

In the post-war years Liverpool has become more famous the world over than it ever was at the height of its colonial trade. Each year many thousands of tourists visit the city for just one reason -to see the birthplace of The Beatles.

The music world has never seen any­thing before or since like the 1960s phe­nomenon of these four young men from Liverpool. John, Paul, George and Ringo were and are the world's biggest selling group with more No.l hits, more weeks at No 1 and more consecutive No.1s than any other band. No musicians have ever inspired such devotional hysteria or become such a household word in so many parts of the world. Listening, even thirty-odd years on, to the freshness, flair and variety of The Beatles' music it is not hard to understand why.

The four were born in the war years and brought up in very ordinary homes in the city suburbs, Dingle, Wavertree, Speke, Woolton. In 1957, after seeing them play at Woolton parish hall, Paul McCartney joined John Lennon's group The Quarry-men, to be joined shortly after by a school friend, George Harrison As the 'Silver Beatles' they performed in local clubs before going to Hamburg as resident group m various night clubs. Here, living in harsh conditions and playing before critical audi­ences, they polished their act, returning to Liverpool m 1960 as an exciting and professional rock 'n' roll group. They were soon signed to play three times a week, lunchtimes and evenings, at The Cavern, an atmospheric basement club in the city centre. The Beatles were to play here 292 times. Their raw electric sound and dynamic style of vocals soon guaranteed them a large and devoted following.

It was the constant demand for The Beatles’ record My Bonnie (recorded in Hamburg and unavailable in Liverpool at the time) that led Brian Epstein, a local record-shop owner, to call in The Cavern to hear them play. He soon saw their potential and, on condition that they smartened up, became their manager. For months Epstein touted demo tapes round London trying to secure a recording con­tract. A chance suggestion led him to EMI and in June 1962 an audition was arranged at Abbey Road.

The Beatles impressed producer George Martin and the elusive contract was signed. Just days before the first Beatles hit, Love Me Do, was recorded in September 1961, drummer Pete Best was replaced by Ringo Starr. Love Me Do made the Top Twenty. Please Please Me which followed made-No. 1. The rest, as they say, is history . . .

Why Liverpool?

The phenomenon that became known as the Mersey Sound could not have happened anywhere else in Britain but Liverpool, for the music had its roots directly in the city's maritime traditions. In the 50s, the port still had a thriving transatlantic passenger and cargo trade. Many of the young Liverpudlians who worked the boats used to come back laden with American goods to sell - 'Lucky Strike' cigarettes, 'Marvel' comics, flashy clothes and, above all, armfuls of the latest US rock V roll records. These inevitably found their way into the basement beat clubs and dance halls of the city, to be avidly absorbed by those who were destined to set the trend of world music a decade later.