Солнцева Практический курс английского языка Ч.2 2011

Grammar: Reporting people's exact words

1. Read the unfortunate quotes that people have given in the media. Which ones do you like best? Do you know any other quotes like this?

That wasn't what I meant!

When people speak to the media, sometimes the words don't come out quite right. Here are some of our favourite 'stupid quotes'.

1.'We are unable to report the weather this evening, because we depend on weather reports from the airport, which is closed due to the bad weather. We don't know whether we will be able to give you a weather report tomorrow, it depends on the weather.' TV weather forecaster

2.'Traffic is very heavy at the moment, so if you are thinking of leaving now, you should set off a few minutes earlier.' UK radio traffic report

3.'Do you run the risk of failure if you don't succeed?' Journalist interviewing UK Prime Minister

4.'Smoking kills - if you're killed you've lost a very important part of your life.' Anti-smoking campaigner

5.'For every fatal shooting, there are roughly three non-fatal attacks. Folks, this is unacceptable in America - we're going to do something about it.'

US President speaking about gun crime

6.'Our main strength is that we don't have any weaknesses. Our main weakness is that we don't really have any strengths.' American football coach

7.'Most cars on our roads have only one occupant who is usually the driver.' BBC news reporter

8.'Mao Tse-tung‘s health is now failing, so many matters have been passed to Wan Li

who, despite his age, is still alive.' TV News Report about China

9.'The streets of Philadelphia are safe, it's only the people that make them unsafe.' Police Chief of Philadelphia

10.'The word genius isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.' American footballer

11.'If history repeats itself tonight, we can expect the same thing to happen again.' England football manager

12.'Sometimes journalists write what I say and not what I really mean.'

Baseball player

2. Look at the reported versions of the direct speech in ex.1. Underline the

differences between the direct and reported versions.

1. The weather forecaster told viewers that they were unable to report on the

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weather, because they depended on weather reports from the airport, which was closed due to bad weather. He said they did not know whether they would be able to give a weather report the next day, as it depended on the weather.

2.The newsreader said that traffic was heavy, and that if people were thinking of leaving home at that moment they should set off a few minutes earlier.

3.The journalist asked the Prime Minister if he ran the risk of failure if he didn't succeed.

4.She said that smoking kills, and that if you are killed, you have lost an important part of your life.

5.The President said that for every fatal shooting in America there were roughly three non-fatal attacks. He said that this was unacceptable in America, and that they were going to do something about it.

6.The coach told reporters that the team's main strength was that they did not have any weaknesses. However, he added that their main weakness was that they didn't have any strengths.

3.Look at the reported speech in ex.2 and answer the questions.

1.What generally happens to verb tenses in reported speech?

2.In which quote above do verb tenses stay the same? Why?

3.Which verbs are used to introduce reported speech?

4.Which conjunctions follow the reporting verbs? Why is that repeated in the 5th sentence?

5.What is the difference in the use of say and tell?

6.What happens to pronouns and time words in reported speech?

7.What happens to interjections like 'folks' in reported speech?

8.What is the difference in word order between direct and reported questions?

4.Report sentences 7-12 from ex.1.

Reading and Speaking: Death by Tourism

1. Work in groups and discuss the following questions.

As a tourist, have you ever: - been on a package holiday?

- bought souvenirs? (What? Where?)

- taken lots of photographs? (What of? Who of? Where?)

- filmed your holiday with a camcorder? (What? Who? Where?)

- written a name in a visitors‘ book or on a wall or building? (What? Where?)

2. Work in pairs. Read the text quickly and discuss these questions.

-What do you understand by the title of the article?

-Is the writer optimistic or pessimistic about the future of tourism?

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3. Use the matching task to help you with the unknown words.

Death by Tourism

Does tourism ruin everything that it touches? by Arnold Baker

At the entrance to one of the ruined temples of Petra in Jordan, there is an inscription chiselled into the soft red rock. It looks as if it has been there for centuries. It could have been carved by one of King Herod's soldiers, when they were imprisoned in the town in 40 BC. But closer inspection reveals that it is not so ancient after all. It reads: Shane and

Wendy from Sydney were here. April

16th 1996.

The ruins of Petra were discovered in 1810 by a Swiss explorer, and a recent report has just concluded that 'they are in grave danger of being destroyed by the unstoppable march of tourism'. More than 4,000 tourists a day tramp through Petra's rocky tombs. They wear away the soft red sandstone to powder and (occasionally!) scratch their names into the rock.

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It is not just Petra that is under threat of destruction. More than 600 million tourists a year now travel the globe, and vast numbers of them want to visit the world's most treasured sites: the Parthenon, the Taj Mahal, Stonehenge, the national parks of Kenya. The tourist industry will soon be the largest industry in the world, and it has barely reached its 50th birthday. Many places that once were remote are now part of package tours. Will nothing put a stop to the growth of tourism?

A brief history of tourism

The Romans probably started it with their holiday villas in the Bay of Naples. In the 19th century, the education of the rich and privileged few was not

complete without a Grand Tour of Europe's cultural sites.

Things started to change for ordinary people in 1845 when Thomas Cook, of Leicester, England, organized the first package tour.

By 1939, an estimated one million people were travelling abroad for holidays each year.

It is in the last three decades of the 20th century that tourism has really taken off. Tourism has been industrialized: landscapes, cultures, cuisines, and religions are consumer goods displayed in travel brochures.

Tourism today

The effects of tourism since the 1960s have been incredible. To take just a few examples:

The Mediterranean shores have a resident population of 130 million, but this swells to 230 million each summer because of the tourists. This is nothing. The United Nations projects that visitors to the region could number 760 million by the year 2025. In Spain, France, Italy, and most of Greece, there is no undeveloped coastline left, and the Mediterranean is the dirtiest sea in the whole world.

In the Alps, the cable cars have climbed ever higher. More and more peaks have been conquered. It is now an old Swiss joke that the government will have to build new mountains because they have wired up all the old ones. There are 15,000 cable car systems and 40,000 kilometres of ski-runs.

American national parks have been operating permit systems for years. But even this is not enough for the most popular sites. By 1981, there was an eight-year waiting list to go rafting down the Grand Canyon's Colorado River, so now there is a lottery once a year to select the lucky travellers.

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In Notre Dame in Paris, 108 visitors enter each minute during opening hours. Thirty-five buses, having put down their passengers, wait outside, their fumes eating away at the stonework of the cathedral.

Poor Venice with its unique, exquisite beauty. On one hot, historic day in 1987, the crowds were so great that the city had to be closed to all visitors.

In Barbados and Hawaii, each tourist uses ten times as much water and electricity as a local inhabitant. Whilst feeling that this is unfair, the locals acknowledge the importance of tourism to their economy overall.

The prehistoric cave paintings at Lascaux in France were being slowly ruined by the breath and bacteria from 200,000 visitors a year. The caves have now been closed to the public and a replica has been built. This is much praised for its likeness to the original.

The future of tourism

Will there be more replicas like in Lascaux? There already are. Heritage theme parks (mini-Disneylands!) are springing up everywhere. Many of the great cities of Europe, such as Prague, Rome, and Warsaw, are finding that their historic centres are fast becoming theme parks - Tourist ghettos, filled with clicking cameras and whirring camcorders, abandoned by all local residents except for the souvenir sellers.

Until recently, we all believed that travel broadened the mind, but now many believe the exact opposite: ‗Modern travel narrows the mind‘.

4. Are the following statements true or false? Correct the false ones with the right information.

1.An ancient inscription has been discovered at the entrance of a ruined temple in Petra.

2.Nearly 1.5 million tourists a year visit Petra.

3.The stone in Petra is so soft that the tourists' feet are destroying it.

4.Tourism has been the world's largest industry since the 1960s.

5.It is now possible to go everywhere in the world on a package holiday.

6.In the 19th century, Thomas Cook organized tours of Europe's cultural sites for rich people.

7.g The number of foreign tourists has been growing gradually since 1939.

8.There will be a huge increase in the numbers of tourists to the Mediterranean.

9.The Swiss are considering ways of creating new mountains for skiers.

10.Nowadays, you can only go rafting down the Colorado River if you win a lottery.

11.The caves of Lascaux are going to be closed to the public and a replica is going to be built in Disneyland.

12.Local people are moving away from many historic city centres

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5. What do the following numbers refer to?

40 BC 1810 600 million 1845 1939 230 million eight-year 108 1987 ten times

6. Try to guess the meaning of the following words from the text.

7. Find a word in the text that has the same or similar meaning to the

following:

1. shows (v)

2. reached a decision (v)

3. serious (adj)

4. hardly (adv)

5. distant and far away (adj)

6. having special rights and advantages (adj)

8. Work in groups. Compare this text with “Paradise Lost”. What information was the same? What was different? Do you agree with the opinions of the authors of the articles? Why or why not?

Reading and Speaking: The tourist trade contributes absolutely nothing to increasing understanding between nations

1. Read the text and choose the best answer to the following questions:

a.What is the author‘s attitude towards tourism?

[A]apprehensive.

[B]negative.

[C]critical.

[D]appreciative.

b.The purpose of the author‘s criticism is to point out that:

[A]conducted tour is disappointing.

[B]the way of touring should be changed.

[C]when travelling, you notice characteristics which confirm preconception.

[D]national stereotypes should be changed.

The tourist trade is booming. With all this coming and going, you’d expect

greater understanding to develop between the nations of the world. Not a bit of it! Superb systems of communication by air, sea and land make it possible for us

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to visit each other‘s countries at a moderate cost. What was once the ‗grand

tour‘, reserved for only the very rich, is now within everybody‘s grasp. The package tour and chartered flights are not to be sneered at. Modern travellers enjoy a level of comfort which the lords and ladies on grand tours in the old

days couldn‘t have dreamed of. But what’s the sense of this mass exchange of

populations if the nations of the world remain basically ignorant of each other?

Many tourist organizations are directly responsible for this state of affairs.

They deliberately set out to protect their clients from too much contact with the

local population. The modern tourist leads a cosseted, sheltered life. He lives at international hotels, where he eats his international food and sips his international drink while he gazes at the natives from a distance. Conducted tours to places of interest are carefully censored. The tourist is allowed to see only what the organizers want him to see and no more. A strict schedule makes it impossible for the tourist to wander off on his own; and anyway, language is always a barrier, so he is only too happy to be protected in this way. At its very worst, this leads to a new and hideous kind of colonization. The summer

quarters of the inhabitants of the are temporarily reestablished on the island of Corfu. Blackpool is recreated at Torremolinos where the traveler goes not to eat paella, but fish and chips.

The sad thing about this situation is that it leads to the persistence of

national stereotypes. We don‘t see the people of other nations as they really are, but as we have been brought up to believe they are. You can test this for yourself. Take five nationalities, say, French, German, English, American and Italian. Now in your mind, match them with these five adjectives: musical, amorous, cold, pedantic, naive. Far from providing us with any insight into the national characteristics of the peoples just mentioned, these adjectives actually act as barriers. So when you set out on your travels, the only characteristics you notice are those which confirm your preconceptions. You come away with the

highly unoriginal and inaccurate impression that, say, ‘Anglo-Saxons are

hypocrites’ or that ‘Latin peoples shout a lot’. You only have to make a few foreign friends to understand how absurd and harmful national stereotypes are. But how can you make foreign friends when the tourist trade does its best to prevent you?

Carried to an extreme, stereotypes can be positively dangerous. Wild generalizations stir up racial hatred and blind us to the basic fact - how trite it sounds! – that all people are human. We are all similar to each other and at the same time all unique.

2. Look through the text carefully and find equivalents to the following words and word combinations: умеренная цена, путешествие молодого аристократа по Франции, Италии, Швейцарии и др. европейским странам после окончания учебного заведения, чартерный рейс, насмехаться над чем-л., положение дел, пить маленькими глотками, омерзительный,

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подтверждать заранее составленное мнение.

3. Translate the italicized sentences into literary Russian.

4a. Use the information from the texts “Paradise Lost”, “Death by Tourism”, “Tourist Trade” and your own ideas to complete the following chart:

4b. Discuss your notes with your partner. Do you agree with what they have written?

5. Use your notes from ex.4 to write an essay on the topic “Travel Broadens the Mind”. Write 200-250 words.

Grammar: Reported Speech

What are the people in the pictures angry about? Finish the reported sentences.

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Speaking: Travelling Light

c. In small groups discuss the following:

1.How do you prefer to travel (buy a package tour, go backpacking, etc.)?

2.Do you think visiting many places (countries, cities) at one go is a good idea? Why or Why not?

3.How much luggage do you take with you when you travel? What does it depend on?

4.What was your best / worst experience while travelling?

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Reading and Speaking: The Grand Canyon

1.Look at the photo and read the story of what happened when the Brown family visited the Grand Canyon. Which way of seeing the Grand Canyon does Mrs Brown think is best?

Grand Canyon is a popular tourist destination in north-west Arizona, USA, known for its amazing rock formations.

They say there are three ways to experience the Grand Canyon: on foot, on mules or by air. We chose the first. Up early, my husband Dave and I and our three kids - teenagers Matt and Liam and little Laura, aged six - couldn't wait to get started, we decided to walk along a lovely path named Bright Angel Trail. My husband had spoken to a park ranger who told him that walking to the first water station would be no problem. As the five of us set out, I was shocked at how narrow the path was - there seemed to be no more than thirty centimetres between us and falling hundreds of metres to our deaths. And I couldn't help noticing that the other hikers weren't dressed like us. They had heavy backpacks and water bottles, strong leather boots and hats, in our shorts, T-shirts and trainers we felt very under-dressed.

We walked and walked ... but unfortunately the beauty of the Canyon was lost on us. As the sun rose higher, Arizona's famous heat seemed to roast us. There was no shade and our legs were aching. We decided to go back, with

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