Ballroom dancing in the UK is making a comeback. For the past five years the popularity of ballroom dancing has grown thanks to the TV show 'Strictly Come Dancing'. In the show a professional ballroom _________DANCE_________ has a celebrity for a partner. They learn ________DIFFER__________ ballroom dances and perform them live on TV. Four judges and the public decide who stays in the _________COMPETE_________ and who leaves. The show demonstrates how glamorous ballroom dancing is. The celebrities wear _________COLOUR_________ dresses and suits and the show looks very ________IMPRESS__________. According to the ratings, the ________PERFORM__________ is becoming more and more popular with TV audiences.
What is the largest animal on the planet? My uncle says that it’s the blue whale. He is a ______SCIENCE______ and knows a lot about them. The blue whale is an endangered animal, nowadays, people protect whales. ______FORTUNATE______, They study these ______BEAUTY______ animals instead of killing them. Blue whales are not ______DANGER______ to people. It’s ______BELIEVABLE______ but these huge whales eat plankton – small plants and animals.
Dolphins are ______WONDER______ animals.
They are clever and ______FRIEND______, and they don’t mind playing with people.
My father is a ______SCIENCE______ and he has heard how dolphins speak their own language.
Dolphin ______COMMUNICATE______ differs from ours, but scientists hope that soon we’ll be able to understand each other.
The dolphins are ______PROBABLE______ studying us too!
Have you heard of a Tadeus Bodnar? He is a _________FAME_________ Hungarian hairdresser. Not long ago he stopped using the _________TRADITION_________ scissors and comb. Now his instruments are axes, irons and vacuum cleaners. Now he is very _________SUCCESS_________ and happy because with his innovative techniques he can express himself better. He cuts hair in his shop in Budapest by chopping it with an axe. Then he styles the hair using a vacuum cleaner, or straightens it with an iron. It’s difficult to believe but the extravagant hairdresser is very popular. Many people find him very _________CREATE_________. Every day there’s an ________END__________ line of people streaming to his shop. They wish to change their ________APPEAR__________ and have a thrilling, new experience.
1. The scientific explanation 2. The real shape
3. A lucky sign 4 . Some tips
5. Places without rainbows 6. A personal vision
7. A bridge between worlds 8 . Impossible to catch
A. Two people never see the same rainbow. Each person sees a different one. It happens because the raindrops are constantly moving, so the rainbow is always changing, too. Each time you see a rainbow it is unique and it will never be the same! In addition, everyone sees colours differently according to the light and how their eyes interpret it.
B. A rainbow is an optical phenomenon that is seen in the atmosphere. It appears in the sky when the sun’s light is reflected by the raindrops. A rainbow always appears during or immediately after showers when the sun is shining and the air contains raindrops. As a result, a spectrum of colours is seen in the sky. It takes the shape of a multicoloured arc.
C. Many cultures see the rainbow as a road, a connection between earth and heaven (the place where God lives). Legends say that it goes below the earth at the horizon and then comes back up again. In this way it makes a permanent link between what is above and below, between life and death. In some myths the rainbow is compared to a staircase connecting earth to heaven.
D. We all believe that the rainbow is arch-shaped. The funny thing is that it's actually a circle. The reason we don’t see the other half of the rainbow is because we cannot see below the horizon. However, the higher we are above the ground, the more of the rainbow’s circle we can see. That is why, from an airplane in flight, a rainbow will appear as a complete circle with the shadow of the airplane in the centre.
E. In many cultures there is a belief that seeing a rainbow is good. Legends say that if you dig at the end of a rainbow, you'll find a pot of gold. Rainbows are also seen after a storm, showing that the weather is getting better, and there is hope after the storm. This is why they are associated with rescue and good fortune. If people happen to get married on such a day, it is said that they will enjoy a very happy life together.
F. You can never reach the end of a rainbow. A rainbow is all light and water. It is always in front of you while your back is to the sun. As you move, the rainbow that your eye sees moves as well and it will always ‘move away’ at the same speed that you are moving. No matter how hard you try, a rainbow will always be as far away from you as it was before you started to move towards it.
G. To see a rainbow you have to remember some points. First, you should be standing with the sun behind you. Secondly, the rain should be in front of you. The most impressive rainbows appear when half of the sky is still dark with clouds and the other half is clear. The best time to see a rainbow is on a warm day in the early morning after sunrise or late afternoon before sunset. Rainbows are often seen near waterfalls and fountains.
My mum enjoys gardening and I like helping her. Mum says that my grandfather was a ______FARM______ and that he loved working with the earth. He was a nice and ___FRIEND___ person, because nature always makes people better. ______FORTUNATELY______, I didn’t know him as he died before I was born. We grow ______BEAUTY______ flowers and fruit trees. We have some garden furniture – a wooden table and four ______COMFORT______ chairs. The neighbours often come round, and we have outdoor tea parties.
When I was a small child, we often went to the circus. I loved the ______FUN______ clowns and the motorbike ride in the globe.
The boy who did the riding seemed only a bit older than me. He performed the trick very ______CAREFUL______.
I certainly thought that it was extremely ______DANGER______, anyway. I applauded the ______BIKE______ loudly and dreamt about riding my own motorbike.
______FORTUNATELY______, my parents had a different opinion about getting a motorbike and refused to buy one for me.Teenagers often buy something just because their friends have it, and this thing comes into fashion. If teenagers didn’t imitate their friends’ behavior, there would be fewer social problems: smoking, crime and so on.
Dolphins are ______WONDER______ animals.
They are clever and ______FRIEND______, and they don’t mind playing with people.
My father is a ______SCIENCE______ and he has heard how dolphins speak their own language.
Dolphin ______COMMUNICATE______ differs from ours, but scientists hope that soon we’ll be able to understand each other.
The dolphins are ______PROBABLE______ studying us too!
Have you heard of a Tadeus Bodnar? He is a _________FAME_________ Hungarian hairdresser. Not long ago he stopped using the _________TRADITION_________ scissors and comb. Now his instruments are axes, irons and vacuum cleaners. Now he is very _________SUCCESS_________ and happy because with his innovative techniques he can express himself better. He cuts hair in his shop in Budapest by chopping it with an axe. Then he styles the hair using a vacuum cleaner, or straightens it with an iron. It’s difficult to believe but the extravagant hairdresser is very popular. Many people find him very _________CREATE_________. Every day there’s an ________END__________ line of people streaming to his shop. They wish to change their ________APPEAR__________ and have a thrilling, new experience.
Peer pressure
Peer pressure* is very strong, especially among young people. Almost everyone can remember a moment when they did something because their friends were doing it.
On the other hand, peer pressure can also produce positive results. Youth crime and vandalism in one of the districts of Bristol, a city in England, fell by 20% last year. Why? Because young people stopped doing stupid and anti-social things. Now they are trying to keep out of trouble. And it's all the result of a new project.
Two Bristol policemen organised a football league for teenagers in one of the poorest parts of the city. The idea is to prevent teenagers from committing crimes. They want to show teenagers how they can spend their free time in a better way.
The policemen introduced a system in which football results are connected to young people's behaviour outside the football grounds. Teams get points for winning their matches, but lose points if any team-member does anything he shouldn't on the football field or off it! For example, teams get ten points for winning a match, but if any player is arrested, the team loses ten points. If a member is caught doing an act of vandalism, such as spraying graffiti, the team loses five points. Three points are lost for less serious crimes.
The results in Bristol are great. None of the teenagers playing in the football league has been arrested by the police. Instead of doing antisocial things and causing problems these teenagers are trying to behave properly!
The idea is already getting popular in other parts of Britain, and similar programmes will be started in other cities. Social workers are also trying to use “peer pressure" to get other positive results. If some more original ways are found, levels of crime among young people will soon be falling quickly.
Some people also think that a similar system should be used for professional footballers. If a professional player gets into a fight on the football ground, his team loses points. In this way footballers will try to behave with more respect to other players.
Another example of positive peer pressure is that there are fewer teenagers who smoke or take drugs. This is the result of the growing popularity of mobile phones. A mobile has become a new symbol of growing up. Teenagers no longer need to smoke to show that they are adults. Now they want to get a phone as cool as their classmates have.
*Peer pressure – the strong influence of a group, especially of children, on the members of that group to behave as everyone else does.
1.The Bristol football league was started by a social worker.
2. The results of football matches are sent to school.
3. The football team loses points when its member commits a crime.
4. Teenagers try to follow their friends’ habits.
5. The aim of the project is to prepare professional footballers.
6. Mobile phones make teenagers give up bad habits.
7. Social workers are against using “peer pressure” method.
Helen Keller
Life is not always easy. Sometimes it presents us with serious problems that make us sad and even depressed. When it comes to this, you may remember the example of Helen Keller, born in a small American town in 1880.
The illness struck Helen Keller when she was a baby and left her deaf and blind before she learned to speak. As a child Helen was wild and disobedient. She seemed not to understand what was going on in the world around her. In spite of Helen’s illness her parents decided that she should have some education and started looking for a teacher.
Helen Keller's new life began on a March day in 1887 when she was seven years old. On that day Anne Mansfield Sullivan, a 20-year-old graduate of the Perkins School, came to the town to be her teacher. From that day, the two of
them – teacher and pupil – were inseparable.
Miss Sullivan began her first lesson by handing Helen a doll and pressing
d-o-l-l into the child's hand. In this way she hoped to teach Helen to connect objects with letters. Helen quickly learned to form the letters correctly and in the correct order. In the days that followed, she learned to spell lots of different words.
Helen Keller was a talented pupil and quickly learnt how to read and write. She enjoyed reading books written for blind children. In 1890, when she was just 10, she decided to learn to speak. Somehow she had found out that a little deaf-blind girl in Norway managed to do it.
At first Helen had difficulty with speaking, but with the time and help from Anne she developed a clear voice. Later, she was able to speak in public for large crowds which came to her whenever she gave her lectures. There was usually a storm of applause after her every lecture.
After school Helen went to college and graduated it with honours. She got a Bachelor of Arts degree. Throughout those years and until her own death in 1936, Anne Sullivan was always by Helen's side. She pressed book after book and lecture after lecture into her pupil's hand.
One of Helen’s professors was so deeply impressed by her essays in English that he suggested the girl writing the story of her life. Helen followed the advice and wrote the book while still at college. It was a cheerful account of how a young girl was able to live a happy life in spite of her terrible misfortunes. Later she wrote several books more. In her books and lectures Helen did everything possible to help and encourage those who were blind. For the rest of her life, Helen Keller worked for improving education for the blind and deaf.
Helen Keller lived in many different places – Alabama; Cambridge and Wrentham, Massachusetts; Forest Hills, New York, but perhaps her favorite residence was the house in Easton, which she called Arcan Ridge. She moved to that white house in 1936, after her beloved teacher's death. And it was Arcan Ridge she called home for the rest of her life. She died in 1968.
Helen Keller was born deaf and blind. T, F, N\S
Helen’s parents found a young teacher for their daughter.
First Miss Sullivan taught Helen to count.
Helen’s favourite books were about animals and nature.
Helen’s lectures were popular.
Helen Keller finished college successfully.
Helen’s book about her life was translated in many languages.
1. Generation gap 5. Conflicts with friends
2. Attractive but unhealthy 6. Parents’ ambitions
3. Youth movements and societies 7. Are teenagers happy?
4. Always busy 8. They want to earn and spend
A. The age between 14 and 17 is often considered to be one of the best periods in a person’s life. Grown-ups remember it with excitement and happiness. The wish they were teenagers again. However, most teenagers won’t agree with this point of view if they were asked. They're sure that they are facing a lot of difficult problems and that's quite true.
B. Smoking has become one of the most important problems for modern teenagers. About 40 percent of teenagers are attracted by the bright cigarette advertisement. It seems they just don't realize the harm it does to their health, because advertisements show smoking as something positive. They really believe that smoking will make them look like they're cool and grown-up.
C. In fact, teenagers have got a lot of work. They're busy with their studies, household chores, some of them have jobs. They can’t even find a moment to entertain themselves at times. It’s a more serious problem especially for those who are responsible and want to be successful students and good children.
D. The problem number one for most young people is between fathers and sons. All young people want to be independent, they want their parents to listen to their opinion. As for parents, they want to control their children’s lives. At the same time some parents can’t find a common language with their kids and simply don’t pay enough attention to them.
E. They say that all teenagers want to have a lot of money to dress well, to go to theatres, to visit foreign countries, to eat what they want and to buy books. But how can they do all these things? They have to get some money and it’s possible to do it. Some teenagers wash cars, others sell newspapers, help elderly people and babysit.
F. School ages are also very difficult. Children are always stressed because of their marks at school. It seems to teenagers that they do a lot of homework, but mothers and fathers are never satisfied. They want their children to have the highest marks at school. Teenagers do their best, but adults are never happy. They always want more.
G. There are many organizations which unite young people. Teenagers get together because of common interests and beliefs. Members of every organisations have their own attitudes to the world. There are some informal clubs, for example: emos, hippies, punks, and so on. However, some teenagers choose to join more serious groups like Greenpeace.
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