Card # 28

LISTENING (7 minutes)

Task 1. Listen to the text [T. 28] ‘Inventions’ and complete the test

(listening- 2 minutes, time for fulfillment – 1 min., for checking – 1min.)

#		true	false
1	Lincoln’s photo after he had been assassinated included the ghostly image.
2	Grandma, mother and the sister were born on the same date.
3	There are 400 billion stars in the Milky Way.
4	Hiccupping is the same as sneezing.

Task 2. Give a short content of what you have listened to. (time for preparation - 2 min., time for answer - 1 min.)

SPEAKING (10 minutes)

Task 1. Discuss on the following statement (time for preparation -2 min., time for answer – 2 min.)

What are the particular stresses and dangers of city life? Would you really avoid these by living in the country?

Task 2. Describe something you do to keep fit. (time for preparation - 5 min.,time for answering – 1 min.)

You should say:

1. what this activity is

2. when you do it

3. and how often you do it and explain why do you think it’s a good way to look after your health.

READING (9 minutes)

Task 1. Read the text (silent reading – 1 min., reading aloud – 2 min.)

Make a plan to the text (time for preparation- 1 min., time for answering- 1 min.).

Eating Out

Americans love eating out. This is true just for business people, whose stressed high speed lives are punctuated with “power breakfast”, business lunches, and expensive dinners with important clients paid for with corporate credit cards. They also frequently go out to eat on their own. A dinner in a restaurant is most Americans’ idea of keeping in touch with friends or entertaining relatives, including parents and grown-up children. People are sometimes prepared to drive for hours to get a particular fashionable place: it gives them an extra opportunity to discuss the experience later with other friends, or colleagues at the office. In fact, Americans love talking about restaurants: the food, the service, the prices. Big cities, full of emigrants from all over the world, offer an enormous choice of ethnic cuisines to suit all tastes and wallets. There’s always some exotic or fancy place you can go to, and then recommend to others.

For many US families eating out are a part of their weekly routine, typically on Friday or Saturday night, or on Sunday right after the church service. All the restaurants offer facilities for disabled people and young children; it’s not uncommon to see parents bring in babies in bassinettes and toddlers who are placed in high chairs to eat the meal with the rest of the family. Food courts are meant as a place where exhausted shoppers can relax before they drive home loaded with their purchases, but you can often see young suburban wives and mothers with babies in strollers using them as a place to enjoy a quiet chat with a friend while the older children are at school. Teenagers and young families that don’t have a lot of money to spend can go to fast-food places like McDonalds, Burger King, or Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). These restaurants belong to huge chains, and can be found all over America, and the world. Everywhere chain restaurants offer identical food and service. It is predictability – and the low prices – that customers like about such places, although their critics describe the food there as “junk”.

Task 2. Translate the 1-st paragraph of the text (time for preparation- 3 min., time for answering - 1 min.).

WRITING (14 minutes)

Write an essay to the given topic ‘Education is the single most important factor in the development of a country’. (time for preparation -13 min., time for answer -1min.)