Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013)

She was born above a shop in the small English town of Grantham. Her father, Alfred Roberts, was a grocer. He worked very hard for little money. Margaret also worked hard, and she went to Oxford University, where she studied chemistry. In 1951 she married Denis Thatcher, a rich businessman. They had twins, a girl and a boy. The love of her life was politics. She didn’t have much time for other interests. She said she only needed four hours’ sleep a night.

She became a politician in 1959, leader of the Conservative Party in 1975, the Prime Minister of Britain four years after that. She had a strong personality. A lot of people were afraid of her, and she was called “The Iron Lady”. In 1984 Irish terrorists bombed her hotel, but she survived. She was Prime Minister for eleven years. She finally resigned in 1990, but she didn’t want to, and she was in tears when she left 10 Downing Street.

Study the following notes:

1. In some words letter u in a closed syllable is pronounced [ ʊ ] as in put.

2. Very often letter o before n, m, v, th is pronounced [ ʌ ] as in love.

3. In words ending in -nd , -ld some vowels are pronounced according to the 1^st type as in kind.

4. Letter a before s, f is usually pronounced [ a: ] as in class, after.

5. Letter a before l is usually pronounced [ ɔ: ] as in walk, hall.

Exercise 13. Practice reading the words using the rules from the notes above.

u [ ʊ ] put, pull, push, bull, full;

o [ ʌ ] son, ton, won, done, none, front, month, money, honey, tongue, come, become, some, company, stomach, love, dove, above, glove, mother, brother, other, another, nothing, onion;

i [ aI ] find, kind, mind, blind, remind, behind, mild, wild, child;

o [ əʊ ] cold, gold, fold, told, retold;

a [ a: ] ask, task, past, pass, grass, last, fast, after.

a [ ɔ: ] all, call, tall, wall, mall, hall, ball, talk, walk, chalk, stalk, false;

Type 3 – a vowel + r (+ a consonant)

English vowels before r are pronounced in the following way:

a [ a: ] part e pert

i ( y ) [ 3: ] girl

o [ ɔ: ] sort u burn

Exercise 14. Practice reading the words.

a [ a: ] сar, bar, star, far, farm, sparkle, part, scar, lard, bark, park, starve, target, arm, army;

o [ ɔ: ] or, nor, for, port, normal, sort, form, order, cord, pork, corn, afford, short, fork, torn;

e [ 3: ] her, serve, germ, alert, stern, term, verse, herb, refer, prefer;

i / y [ 3: ] sir, girl, firm, first, bird, birth, birthday, third, thirty, thirsty, dirt, dirty, Byrd;

u [ 3: ] fur, turn, hurt, burst, burn, burnt, surf, curl, curly, curtain, purse, murder.

Exercise 15. Read and transcribe the words. Do not forget to put the stress mark if a word has two or more syllables.

Sparkle, force, first, report, starve, serf, thirsty, herb, Byrd, skirt, corn, torn, dirt, murder, girl, her, curtain, curl, large, terms, support, birds, target, army, birthday, party, hurt, purpose, formal, shirt, farm, concern.

Exercise 16. Read the text. Explain the reading of the words in bold.