Listening Challenge

at the core of the American value system.

Individual Freedom

The one value that nearly every American would agree upon is individual freedom. Whether you call it individual freedom, individualism, or independence, it is the cornerstone of American values. It permeates every aspect of our society.

The concept of an individual's having control over his or her own destiny influenced the type of government that was established here, and individual rights are guaranteed in the United States Constitution (the supreme law of the land).

These rights are so well protected in our judicial system that, even though Americans may complain that criminals sometimes «get away with murder», most people believe it is better to free a few guilty people than to imprison one person who is innocent.

While our economic system may be dominated by large corporations, the majority of American businesses are small, and many are owned by an individual or a family. It is part of the «American dream» to «be your own boss», and being an entrepreneur is one of the most appealing ways to improve one's economic future.

Privacy

Privacy is also important to Americans. The notion of individual privacy may make it difficult to make friends. Because Americans respect one's privacy, they may not go much beyond a friendly «hello». Ironically, it is usually the foreigner who must be more assertive if a friendship is to develop.

The rugged individualism valued by most Americans stems from our frontier heritage. For much of our country's history, there was a frontier. That experience greatly influenced American attitudes. Early settlers had to be self-sufficient which forced them to be inventive. Their success gave them an optimism about the future, a belief that problems could be solved. This positive spirit enables Americans to take risks in areas where others might only dream, resulting in tremendous advances in technology, health and science.

The American frontier also created our heroes: the self-reliant, strong-willed, confident individual who preferred action to words and always tried to treat others fairly. Many of these characteristics are represented by the myth of the American cowboy, and the more modern versions personified in movies by John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Sylvester Stallone. We can even look to «future» centuries and admire similar qualities in the heroes of the Star Trek and Star Wars movie series.

In addition to such basic American values as individual freedom, self-reliance, equality of opportunity, hard work, material wealth, and competition, we see a trend toward conservation with an emphasis on recycling and preserving the environment. Also there is a greater sensitivity to cooperation on a more global scale.

No matter what changes the next century brings or whether you agree with American values, the opportunity to visit the United States and to observe Americans first-hand is an experience well worth the effort.

Be careful not to be ethnocentric, but to evaluate a culture by its own standards. Be aware that you'll help shape American attitudes, just as they will influence you.

(by Thomas E. Grouling, Ph.D.),

Ex. 11

After all the snow yesterday, the weather today has been much more benign as milder air moved in from the Atlantic.

It was a cold start across northern and eastern areas with ice on some untreated surfaces, but here it was crisp and sunny. Western areas were much milder though from the word go, although there was much more cloud.

13.A new portrait might not have been painted by the artist.

14.The artist might be painted a new portrait.

15.The artist won't paint a new portrait.

16.A new portrait would have been painted by the artist.

17.The artist can't be painting a new portrait.

18.The artist had painted a new portrait before Iarrived.

19.Shouldn't the artist have painted a new portrait?

20.The artist would have been painting a new portrait.

21.A new portrait mustn't be painted by the artist.

22.Is a new portrait painted by the artist?

23.The artist can paint a new portrait.

24.Might a new portrait have been painted by the artist?

25.Can't a new portrait be painted by the artist?

26.Could the artist have been painted a new portrait?

27.The artist might not have painted a new portrait.

28.Has the artist been painted a new portrait?

29.Can't the artist paint a new portrait?

3 0 .1 suggest a new portrait is painted by the artist.

3.

What is Jet Lag?

It is nothing more than a confused body «clock». The more time zones your body crosses, the further behind your body clock lags. Some symptoms include dizziness, headaches, and sore muscles, and physiological processes are out of sync. For example, you may be wide awake at 3:00 a.m. and hungry at 3:00 in the afternoon.

What factors influence the severity of jet lag?

The direction you travel: Travelling east usually produces more severe jet lag than west.

The number of time zones you cross; each time zone you cross multiplies the effect of jet lag. Stress.

The quality of your flight: low humidity, excessive noise and vibration, turbulence, sitting for long periods, and a warm, stuffy atmosphere can compound the effects of jet lag.

How much you drink: If you drink or eat more than you normally would before, during or after your flight, you may be asking for discomfort. How much caffeine you consume; the caffeine in coffee and soft drinks can ward off the initial fatigue, but will only intensify the effects of jet lag later on.

How can Iprepare my body for jet lag?

Try to schedule your flight according to the direction you are travelling. Book an early flight if you are traveling east, an afternoon or evening flight if travelling west.

Adjust your schedule before you leave. Go to bed earlier and get up earlier three days before your trip if you are heading east, and later if heading west. Consult your physician about a jet lag diet. Also, much health food stores sell special "anti-jet lag" vitamin and amino acid products, but there is no clinical evidence that proves their effectiveness.

During your flight, you can minimize the effects of jet lag by drinking plenty of fluids, eating light meals, wearing loose-fitting clothing to reduce stress, avoiding caffeine and alcohol, doing simple isometric exercises, and, if all else fails, keeping your home schedule while travelling.

Ex. 13. The humblest love

Affection

I begin with ... the love which our experience seems to differ least from that from the animals. Let

me add at once that I do not on that account give it a lower value. Nothing in Man is either worse or

better for being shared with the beasts. When we blame a man for being «a mere animal», we mean

not that he displays animal characteristics (we all do) but that he displays these, and only these, on occasions where the specifically human was demanded. (When we call him «brutal» we usually mean that he commits cruelties impossible to all real brutes; they're not clever enough.)

Affection would not be affection if it was loudly and frequently expressed; to produce it in public is like getting your household furniture out for a move. It did very well in its place, but it looks shabby or tawdry or grotesque in the sunshine. Affection almost slinks or seeps through our lives. It lives with humble un-dressed private things; soft slippers, old clothes, old jokes, the thump of a sleepy dog's tail

on the kitchen floor, the sound of a sewing machine, a toy left on the lawn.

The especial glory of Affection is that it can unite those who most emphatically, even comically, are not; people who, if they had not found themselves put down by fate in the same household or

community, would have had nothing to do with each other.

Affection broadens our minds. The truly wide taste in humanity will find something to appreciate in the cross section of humanity whom one has to meet every day. In my experience it is Affection that creates this taste, teaching us first to notice, then to endure, then to smile at, then to enjoy, and finally to appreciate, the people who «happen to be there». Made for us? Thank God, not. They are

themselves, odder than you could have believed and worth far more than we guessed.

Friendship

Friendship is something quite marginal; not a main course in life's banquet; a diversion;

something that fills up the chinks of one's time.

Without Eros none of us would have been begotten and without Affection none of us would have been reared, but we can iive and breed without Friendship.

In early communities the co-operation of males as hunters and fighters was less necessary than the begetting and rearing of children Long before history began we men have got together apart from the women and done things. We had to. And to like doing what must be done is a characteristic

that has survival value. We not only had to do the things, we had to talk about them. We had to plan the hunt and the battle. When they were over we had to hold a post mortem and draw conclusions for

future use. We liked this even better.

In our own time Friendship arises in the same way. It may be a common religion, common studies, a common profession, even a common recreation. All who share it will be our companions; but

one or two or three who share something more will be our Friends. In this kind of love, as Emerson

said, Do you love me? means Do you see the same truth?

absurdly beautiful. So the body.

We must do the works of Eros when Eros is not present. This all good lovers know, though those who are not reflective or articulate will be able to express it only in a few conventional phrases about «taking the rough along with the smooth», «not expecting too much», «having a little common sense».

Selfless love

In words which can still bring tears to the eyes, St. Augustine describes the desolation into which the death of his friend Nebridius plunged him. Then he draws a moral. This is what comes, he says, of giving one's heart to anything but God. All human beings pass away. Don't let your happiness depend on something you may lose. If love is to be a blessing, not a misery, it must be for the only Beloved who will never pass away.

U n it 2

Ex. 13.

Rekindling Old Fires

We can resist technology's chilling effects on how we spend time together.

Last February, some friends and I spent a weekend at a resort in the Pacific Northwest - at a February price, I'm happy to say - overlooking the islands of Puget Sound and dwarfed by the splendour of Mount Baker and the Cascades. In the lobby, inviting couches surrounded a massive stone fireplace. I came in from a walk along the beach early one morning ready to warm myself by the fire. Flames were flickering behind the screen. I stood by the fire and waited for the warmth to soak in. And waited.

Eventually I realized that I was trying to warm myself at a gas-powered fireplace that was putting out less heat than a kitchen stove set to simmer. The logs burned but were not consumed. If I had been a Hebrew shepherd, I probably would have taken off my sandals and waited for a divine message.

But instead I remembered Albert Borgmann - probably the only philosopher in the world who has made a career of writing about fireplaces. Borgmann is one of those brilliant people whom almost no one has ever heard of, for some fairly good reasons. He teaches at the University of Montana, far from the chattering classes, and he writes, well, like a professor. His best-known book has a forgettable title - Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry - and between its covers is a dauntingly rigorous attempt, studded with terms like «deictic discourse,» to understand the nature of technology. But Borgmann may be the most important unknown Christian philosopher of our day, because he understands what has happened to the hearth.

The fireplace, Borgmann reminds us, used to be the hearth - the center of a home both literally and figuratively. The Latin word for hearth is focus, and the activities of premodernhomes in both Europe and America were indeed focused on the place that provided warmth, light, and sustenance all at once. The hearth demanded skills of many sorts, and almost every member of the household contributed to it in one way or another - chopping and stacking wood, carrying the wood to the fire, building and tending the fire, covering it at night so there would still be fire in the morning. It also posed dangers, especially to children, with its heat and sparks. The hearth was a powerful presence - so much so that the Romans had a goddess devoted to it.

All that changed with the introduction of modern technology, and Borgmann draws our attention to the differences between the hearth and the furnace. Unlike the hearth, my furnace sits in the basement, far from the center of our family's life. I have no idea how it works, and I don't really want to know. Thanks to thermostats, I never have to think about its setting or operation. It simply sits there, unnoticed, undemanding, providing heat whenever we need it.

Technology has given us such devices in abundance, inconspicuous black boxes that replace things that demanded skills and shaped relationships. These devices quietly, deliver one simple commodity - heat, transportation, a hot meal - without fuss or hassle. Often this is a blessing. It's no wonder the resort built an imitation fireplace instead of a hearth, saving the trouble of carting in wood, fending off liability for accidents, and ensuring a pleasing fire-like flicker day and night.

But this disengagement comes at a price, not least in family life. Families that once gathered around the hearth now gather, if they gather at all, around the hearth's dubious replacements, which glow and flicker in shades of blue on living room walls. Parents and children used to need each other - the parents had invaluable skills, from tending the fire to fixing a meal, and the children could carry wood and help stir the soup. But the parents' skills are now deployed far from home in jobs that provide the paychecks that buy the devices that displace focal things from our lives. Not that parents are missed. No one over the age of 5 needs a parent to operate a microwave. Happily, Borgmann's diagnosis is also a prescription. Real life is still available even in a device-saturated world. On the

baseball diamond or on the hiking trail, in the kitchen or in the workshop, we still encounter creation's humbling resistance to quick fixes. We cultivate the disciplines - concentration, patience, practice - that focal things require. When we swing the bat, clamber up the rocks, mix the batter just enough, plane the wood, we join the community of those who have done these things before us and those who will do them after us - those who taught us and those whom we will teach. We learn new stories and a new language. We encounter something that is not merely made to serve us, something older and bigger than ourselves.Which is why I went back outside, that February morning, to pray.

(Christianity Today.

August 5, 2002, No. 9)

Ex. 15

The number of British films produced in the UK fell 40% in 2004, with movies starring Johnny Depp and Jude Law among those affected, Screen Daily has said.

Twenty-seven British films were made in the UK last year following a drop in funding, compared with 45 in 2003, according to the Trade Weekly.

It attributed the drop to tighter tax laws and reduced funding from sources such as the National Lottery.

UK and US co-productions in Britain fell from 102 in 2003 to 81 last year.

Last year the government closed tax loopholes that many film investors had taken advantage of to fund films in the UK.

Several projects were shelved as they faced the implications of this clampdown, coupled with the reduction in movie funding from traditional sources including the lottery and Miramax Films.

Shooting on period drama Tulip Fever, which was to star Jude Law and Keira Knightley, was postponed indefinitely while shooting of The Libertine starring Johnny Depp was moved to the Isle of Man.

«There isn't anything coming in to replace (the funds)», said The Libertine's executive producer Marc Samuelson. «We are in a hiatus».

Films with «medium» budgets of up to J9m, a similar level to box office hits Vera Drake, Calendar Girls and Enduring Love, are expected to be worst hit by the tax clampdown.

The strength of the pound against the dollar is expected to have resulted in a fall in the number of US films shot in the UK during 2004, Screen International added.

Big budget co-productions, such as the Harry Potter series, continued to be shot in the UK, however.

The UK Film Council said the drop was partly due to 2003 being an especially good year for British film production, when Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, Wimbledon and Thunderbirds were all filmed in the UK.

«The drop was expected as there was no way 2003's record level of production could be bettered», the council's spokesperson said.

«The reduction in indigenous film production in 2004 was due to a variety of factors, including the continuing long-term trend towards co-production of films in more than one country and changes to financing arrangements.»

It was «too early» to predict whether the downward trend in UK production would continue throughout 2005, the UK Film Council said.

In September the government introduced subsidies worth up to J4m per film for medium budget films, under new Treasury measures.

It is also due to announce a replacement for UK film tax relief scheme Section 48 in July.