Step 2: Spelling and Vocabulary

Exercise 1: Developing spelling skills. Fill in the blanks with missing letters. Remember the spelling and the pronunciation.

C - ar - es Di - - ens, Ch - - les Da - - in, Vi - t - r Em - an - el, Ka - ser Wil - - lm, Cl - - de M - net, Pie - - e A - gu - te Ren - - -, M - ry Ca - - att, Vi - ce - t Van G - - -, P - - l G - - g - in, Pa - lo Pica - - o, Ja - - son Po - - ock, Pau - Céza - - e.

Exercise 2: Pronounce the words below. Match a word with a picture (not all the pictures have their names!)

Plate 6

Historical Costumes

a) lady [ca. 1880] ___

b) bustle ___

Exercise 3:

Word formation: adjectives ending with –ing and –ed.

What’s the difference between interesting and interested? Shocking and shocked?

Which	describes the person’s reaction?
	is passive?
Which	describes the action?
	is active?

Some verbs which describe people’s feelings have two adjectival forms.

Example

to interest/interested/I was interested in architecture.

to interest/interesting/The architecture of Ancient Greece was interesting.

Find other words like this in the text “The Pre-Modern Era” and make sentences of your own to illustrate the difference in the meaning of the adjectives.

Exercise 4: Guess the word from its definition and the first letter.

1. of the present time, modern – c_____________________;

2. a particular way of doing smth. – t__________________;

3. allowing no freedom, causing smb. to feel very uncomfortable – o__________________;

4. a picture that shows a view of the countryside – l___________________;

5. the effect that a person or thing produces on smb. else – i_______________;

6. connected with the sense of sight – o___________________;

7. a series of actions that you do for a particular purpose, a series of changes that happen naturally – p_____________;

8. coming before smth. else that is more important – p_____________;

9. not showing friendly human feelings, cold in feeling or atmosphere, not referring to any particular person – i____________________;

10. the art of drawing on a flat surface so that some objects appear to be farther away than others – p____________________;

11. to love or admire smth./smb. very much – w___________________.

Exercise 5: Put one of the linking words or phrases from the box into each gap.

and with which which

but but inside thus

and now which as

actually moreover even more than

also such as what

• The Pre-Modern Era began about 1865 _____ was a period of sweeping change.

• _________________________ in the Enlightened eighteenth century, men were now trying to control the world around them.

• _____________, they had the advanced tools of science and technology __________________ to work.

• By the end of the nineteenth century it was industry __________ produced much of what is now considered art.

• The engineer Eiffel constructed his famous tower to commemorate the great Paris Exposition of 1889, ______ he had earlier made his reputation as a builder of bridges.

• ________________, Romantic Byzantine domes were made of sheet metal, a product of the new industrial age.

• ________ prefabricated with interchangeable parts, the whole Exhibition Hall was put together in only a few weeks' time.

• ____ man increasingly concerned himself with the technical world, the subject matter of painting moved away from these emotion-filled Romantic scenes, _________ had predominated in the first half of the century.

• _______________, the art world was even more upset by Manet's technique.

• ________________, the paint on the canvas was itself becoming as important as the subject.

• The eye of the spectator was obliged to fill in __________ was missing.

• Artists were fighting to free themselves from the artificial conventions and rules of academic art, __________ the exact duplication on canvas of every detail in the scene they were painting.

• ________, the pursuit of literally capturing the external and objective world had inspired scientific and technological minds like Daguerre's to the invention of the photographic process.