Unit I. Family. Hobbies. Lesson 1. My family. Pre-reading

Task 1. Discuss the following questions with your group-mates:

1. What is a large/ small family for you? Was it the same in the past?

2. How many relatives do you have? How often do you see them?

3. Do you think all generations of the family should live together or separately?

Task 2. Read the text and say how the author of the text could answer the questions from Task 1:

My family

Hello! My name is Tanya Ivanova. I am seventeen. I live in Tambov. I finished school number twenty two. My favourite subjects at school were Biology and Social Sciences. Now I study at the Institute of Psychology of Tambov State University named after G.R. Derzhavin. I am a first-year-student. My future profession is psychologist. I want to understand people better and help them in difficult situations.

I have a large family. There are five people in it: my father, mother, two brothers and me. My father’s name is Andrey Victorovich. He is a physician. He works at a hospital. He is very calm and hard-working. My mother’s name is Ludmila Michailovna. She is a teacher of music at school. She is very communicative and open-hearted.

My elder brother’s name is Aleksey. He is twenty-three. He is a lawyer. He has his own family and lives separately. He is very strong because he goes in for weight-lifting. His wife is Elena, she is my sister-in-law. She is twenty years old and she is a graduate student at Economy department of our University. They have a daughter, a two-year-old girl Irina who is my niece.

My younger brother is a school-boy. His name is Oleg. He is ten. He is a bit naughty sometimes but on the whole he is easy-going and clever. He wishes to be a photographer and travel around the world.

There is one more member of our family. It is a cat Boris. We like him very much.

Our family is very friendly. We have a lot of friends and relatives. I love my family very much.

Vocabulary

Task 3. A. Pick out English equivalents for the Russian words and phrases:

1) учиться; 2) студент(ка) первого курса; 3) психолог; 4) врач; 5) общительный; 6) младший; 7) путешествовать.

B. Write down your own sentences using the English words from Task A.

C. Give Russian equivalents for the following English words and word combinations from the text:

1) to live; 2) to finish school; 3) subject; 4) calm; 5) hard-working; 6) elder; 7) to live separately; 8) niece; 9) easy-going; 10) relatives.

D. Think of your own sentences using the words and word combinations from Task C. Read your sentences to your group-mates.

Task 4. In the table match the synonyms (the words with similar meaning). Consult the dictionary if necessary:

1. large	a. smart, intelligent
2. physician	b. freshman
3. communicative	c. big
4. clever	d. sophomore
5. to love	e. to like
6. first-year-student	f. junior
7. second-year-student	g. doctor
8. third-year-student	h. graduate student
9. fourth-year-student	i. easy-going, sociable, good-mixer
10. fifth-year-student	j. senior

Task 5. Find antonyms to the following words in the text. Antonyms are the words with the opposite meaning:

1) to start; 2) easy; 3) small; 4) nervous, naughty; 5) lazy; 6) younger; 7) weak.

Task 6. A. Read the definitions and guess the words:

1. A person who understands people’s characters.

2. My mother’s son to me.

3. A person who treats diseases with medicines.

4. My sister’s daughter to me.

5. My mother’s mother.

6. My father’s sister.

7. A person who trains pupils at school.

8. The science of numbers, including Algebra, Geometry and Arithmetic.

9. My sister’s husband.

10. The study of events in the past.

B. Define the following words in English:

1) my sister; 2) hard-working; 3) lawyer; 4) nephew; 5) grandfather; 6) uncle; 7) mother-in-law; 8) psychology; 9) Economy.