Unusual festival

Secondary school # 1 named after Abjalbek Cholponkulov Talas city

Subanalieva Farida Joldoshovna

Unusual festivals

Aims:

• To develop integrated skills: reading, speaking and writing around the topic of festivals
• To learn and practice vocabulary for describing festivals

Exercise 1 on page 105

Look at the pictures. Which festivals do they represent? Where do they take place?

a statue

a hot air balloon

tomatoes

1. Each October, people from all over the world come to New Mexico, USA to celebrate the International Balloon Festival. People and companies make all kinds of hot air balloons. They fill them with hot air, so the balloons rise in the sky. They attach baskets to the balloons. People ride in the baskets. Other people come to watch beautiful balloons of different shapes and sizes float in the air. People have picnics while they watch, film the balloons with their cameras or take pictures. They also buy T-shirts and other things to remind them of the festival

2. The festival of La Tomatina takes place in a small town Bucol, Spain on the last Wednesday of August every year. During the week before that day, parades, fireworks, music and dancing take place in the town. The highlight of festival is a tomato fight. People throw about 120 tones of large tomatoes at each other. Anyone can join in the fight. Participation costs € 10.

3. The Las Fallas Festival also takes place in Spain, in Valencia. It is an old festival, from 500 years ago, and it lasts one week. People create statues to poke fun at others. They often make statues of famous people they don’t like. The statues are made of cardboard. They are really huge and colorful. They are in the streets of the city for a week. People look at them and take pictures. They are also parades, fireworks, music and dancing every day. On March 19, people set of fireworks to burn the statues. Las Fallas is a very noisy festival.

Answer the questions:

• What do people do at the Balloon Festival?
• How does a hot air balloon work?
• What can people do before the tomato fight starts?
• Who can take part in the tomato fight?
• How old is Las Fallas?
• Why do people make statues?
• Who do the statues represent?
• What happens to the statues at the end of the Las Fallas?