Unit 1. Personality

READING

1. P re-reading task. What is personality? Read different sayings and give your opinion.

• An ugly personality destroys a pretty face.

• Personality begins where comparison ends.

• Personality can open doors, but only character can keep them open.

• Personality is to a man what perfume is to a flower.

• Your body is what makes you sexy. Your smile is what makes you pretty. But your personality is what makes you beautiful.

• Beauty attracts the eye but personality captures the heart.

• A beautiful appearance will last a few decades, but a beautiful personality will last a lifetime.

2. Paraphrase sayings from exercise A following the rules:

1. Save the original idea, but do not introduce any fresh ideas.

2. Deal with a sentence as a whole, do not paraphrase word by word.

3. Find synonyms. If a synonym cannot be found, repeat the original word.

4. Save the same person and the same tone as in the original.

5. Render figures of speech literally in plain language.

3. Discussion. Chose a mate you like best (worst) in your group. Question him/her, let him/her ask a mate he/she likes best (worst) and so on. Are most of your group mates pleasant and cooperative? And you?

1. Do you agree that people with stable temperaments are boring?

2. If family is not important, what is the most important thing for you?

3. In what ways do you take after members of your family, in appearance, character?

4. Is charisma important for success and what other qualities are important?

5. It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are. Do you agree?

6. What are the advantages and disadvantages of having a strong personality?

7. What is a personality clash? Have you had a personality clash with someone?

8. What nicknames have you had? What did you get it for?

9. What tells you more about a person’s personality – appearance, voice, attitude?

10. Who was an important person in your family background?

4. Read the text about Walt Disney’s personality.

Wa lter Elias "Walt" Disney was born on December 5, 1901, in Hermosa, Illinois. His father was Elias Disney, an Irish-Canadian, and his mother, Flora Call Disney, was German-American. Disney was one of five children, four boys and a girl. He lived most of his childhood in Marceline, Missouri, where he began drawing, painting and selling pictures to neighbors and family friends. Disney attended McKinley High School in Chicago, where he took drawing and photography classes and was a contributing cartoonist for the school paper. At night, he took courses at the Chicago Art Institute. When Disney was 16, he dropped out of school to join the Army but was rejected forbeing underage. Instead, he joined the Red Cross and was sent to France for a year to drive an ambulance. He and his brother Roy co-founded Walt Disney Productions, which became one of the best-known motion-picture production companies in the world. Disney was an innovative animator and created the cartoon character Mickey Mouse. He won 22 Academy Awards during his lifetime, and was the founder of theme parks Disneyland and Walt Disney World.

Walt Disney is a legendary man. He contributed some amazing things to society. Not only did he entertain people, create iconic characters and inspire innumerable artists, he also had a personality that everyone can learn from. Walt Disney was creative and passionate about his work. His creativity doesn’t exactly have a parallel. His passion too is unchallenged. But Walt Disney personality traits transcend the obvious attributes of the great man.

One of the most talked about Walt Disney personality traits is his approach towards his craft. He was passionateabout his work but he was not too indulgentin it. He could spend hours creating something, drawing up sketches, penning down characters and thinking, but he did not obsess about them. He was open to criticism, albeit the constructively objective ones and not the cynical ones. His personality made room for everyone’s opinions. Great men are not always receptive of other peoples’ thoughts, ideas or critiques but he was not one of them. He was great indeed and he was also a tough taskmaster but he knew when one must listen to others and then alter the course or approaches accordingly.

One little known fact about Walt Disney personality traits is that he was extremely gentle and caring. Many researchers and biographers have termed him as a workaholic, as a man with only his way or the highway approach and extremely rigid when it came to his work. But what many don’t know is that Walt Disney was very caring. He cared for his family, friends and people in general. He also cared for animals. When Walt was a little boy and lived on a farm, he did not like hunting. He never went out to hunt animals, which was pretty much a custom in his family and very normal in those times. He attended to the needs of the animals on his farm and never hurt any animal, either on the farm or beyond it in the wilds. It is possibly this gentle and caring attitude that made him popular not just among his loved ones but in his company and also propelled him to create unforgettable characters and moments in his work.

Walt Disney also had ferocious tenacity. His pursuit for something better drove him to all echelons so he could accomplish what he had in mind. His vision was almost always realized because of his tenacity apart from passion and creativity.(www.healthresearchfunding.org)