Supplementary reading. Учебное пособие

Section 3. Intermediate

4.Choose the right variant

1. What was the girl’s name?

5.Answer the questions

1.What did the girl hear first?

2.Did the girl’s farther helped her? Why?

3.Who decided to call the police? Why?

4.Did they dig the woman out?

5.Why did her father finally decided to help?

HOW WE TRIED TO BUY SHOES by Jerome K. Jerome

We stopped at a little shoe shop in Astley street that looked like the place we wanted. It was one of those shops that the moment they are open in the morning put their goods all round them. Boxes of boots stood near the door. Boots hung over the doors and windows. Inside the shop boots stood on the

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Supplementary reading

shelves and on the floor all around. The shopkeeper, when we came in, was busy with a chisel and hammer opening a new large box full of boots.

George raised his hat, and said “Good-morning.” He hoped, in answer to his politeness, to hear the polite “Welcome to our shop,” as this was the answer in the conversation book.

But the man did not even look at us.

George said: “ Mr. X., my friend, has recommended your shop to me”

To these words the conversation book gave the answer: «Mr. X is a very fine young man. I’ve known him for years, and I’ll be happy to be useful to his friends.»

But the man said: “Don’t know him; never heard of him.”

George chose the one about “Mr. X,” as being the politest. At first you should talk with the shopkeeper about this “Mr. X,” and then, after coming to the better understanding, you begin to talk naturally about the object of your coming, namely, that you want to buy boots, “cheap and good.”

But it seemed that the man didn’t know anything about the niceties of trade business. He didn’t want to understand George. So, George stopped talking about “Mr. X,” and looked into the conversation book again. He chose some sentence on the page. It was an unlucky choice in this place, because it says: “They say that you have here boots for sale.”

For the first time the man put down his hammer and chisel, and looked at us. He said slowly: “What do you think I keep boots for – to smell them?”

He began quietly and grew more and more angry as he continued.

“What do you think I am,” he asked, “a boot collector? Do you think I love the boots, and can’t part with a pair? Do you think I hang them around here to look at them? Where do you think you are – in a museum of boots? Have you ever heard of a man who has a boot shop and does not sell boots? What do you take me for – an idiot?”

I have always said that these conversation books are never of any real use.

“We had better leave,” said Harris and started for the door. But George suddenly found the answer in the book, the best sentence he could find at the moment. He said: “We will come again, when, perhaps, you will have some more boots to show me. Till then, adieu!”

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Section 3. Intermediate

With that we came out, took the cab and drove away, leaving the man standing in the doors of his shop. What he said, I did not hear, but the passers-by found it very interesting. https://englishstory.ru/jerome-k-jerome-how-we-tried-to-buy-shoes-in-english- adapted.html

1.Choose the right variant

1.Where did they stop at?

5. What were the reasons the shopkeeper gave he had those boots for? Tick all possible answers.

2.Answer the questions

1.What did George use to speak to the shopkeeper?

2.What was Mr. X?

3.What did the customers take the shopkeeper for? From the shopkeeper’s point of view.

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4.What did George promise the shopkeeper in the end?

5.What did the passers-by find very interesting?

3.Give Russian equivalents to the following words

1.cab

2.chisel

3.polite

4.goods

5.nicety

6.passer-by

7.namely

4.Match the phrases

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of silence grew longer, the delays became maddening. The sounds increased in strength and sharpness and hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife. What he heard was the ticking of his watch.

He opened his eyes and saw again the water below him. «If I could free my hands,» he thought, «I might throw off the noose and jump into the stream. By diving I could escape the bullets and, swimming quickly, reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home. My home, thank God, is outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond their reach.»

These thoughts were flashed into the doomed man’s brain. Meanwhile the captain nodded to the soldier. The soldier stepped aside.

To read the second and the third part, please, follow the link: https://englishstory.ru/easy-reading-in-english-online.html#ixzz71p4hkbOL

1. Match the phrases

2. Match the words with opposite meanings

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Section 4. Upper-Intermediate

3. Replace the words and phrases in bold by the words from the box

10. The water, the banks, the forests, the distant bridge, fort and men – all were blurred.

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Supplementary reading

4.Guess the words by their definition

1._ r_d_ _ – a construction that is built across the river to help people cross it.

2.E__qu_ _ _ _ – rules that show some type of behaviour accepted in a particular group.

3._ e_p_ _ t – to feel and show that you admire something because you strongly believe that it is right.

4.M_ _ s_ _ _ _ e – hair that grows on a man’s face in the space between his nose and upper lip.

5._ _ pa_ _ _ _ ce – inability to wait for something that you are eager to have.

6._h _ _ ek – a loud scream caused by a person’s being frightened or surprised.

7.E _ _ _ y – a person who tries to do you harm.

8._ or_ _ _ _ – a line that marks the place where the sky and the earth seem to meet.

9._ _ h_us_ _ _ – extremely tired.

10.S _ _ _ r _ _ m _ n – possessing qualities that are greater than an ordinary person can have.

5.Say if the statements are true or false

1.A man stood under a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking up into the sky.

2.The man who was to be executed was about forty-five years of age.

3.The man who was going to be punished was a military man.

4.The man had a wife and a kid.

5.The captain stood with folded arms, silent, watching two soldiers making the last preparations, because he respected his soldiers.

6.The face of the man on the bridge had not been covered and his eyes were not bandaged.

7.While standing on the bridge the man was dreaming of the possibility to free his hands and to escape.

8.Peyton Farquhar was a soldier and a politician and did everything what he could to aid the South.

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Section 4. Upper-Intermediate

9.Mrs. Farquhar was happy to serve a grey-clad soldier a drink of water with her own hands.

10.An hour later, after nightfall, the soldier repassed the plantation, going northward in the opposite direction from which he had come.

6.Answer the questions

1.What kind of punishment was planned for the man?

2.What metallic-like sound disturbed the man while he was standing on the bridge?

3.What did the soldier ask Farquhar one evening?

4.What was suffocating the man when he fell in the water?

5.How much time did the man spend under the water?

6.When the man’s head appeared above the water, he could feel that something in his organic system had changed, and he started to notice things he had never paid attention before. Why?

7.“The grains of sand looked like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble”. Why did he see the sand in this way?

8.What motivated the man to move towards his home although he was exhausted and starving?

9.What did he see on arriving home?

10.Were you surprised at the end of the story? Or did you guess earlier?

7.Fill in the gaps in the summary

There was a man who was going to be hanged. There was a 1) _____ around his neck. A few military man, his executioners, were waiting for the signal from their captain, but he didn’t hurry, as he 2) _____ death. The man closed his eyes and was thinking about his 3) _____ and kids. He was dreaming that he could free his 4) _____ and be able to escape in the wood and then reach his home.

Peyton Farquhar was a planter of an old and respected family and a 5) _____

owner. One evening a soldier came to their house to ask for some water and told Farquhar and his wife about an order that every civilian who would come close to a fortified bridge would be 6) ______.

When Peyton Farquhar fell down the bridge, he felt as if he was already dead. But he could finally 7) _____ his hands with superhuman efforts. He dived as

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8) _____ as he could and no shots of the soldiers from the bridge could reach him. The man managed to swim to the opposite bank of the river and fell to the ground exhausted. He travelled all day towards his home. And when he was ready to hug his wife after all his sufferings, the reader understands that Farquhar died immediately and all the events in the last part were just his imagination before death.

A RETRIEVED REFORMATION

By O. Henry

A guard came to the prison shoe-shop, where Jimmy Valentine was stitching uppers, and escorted him to the front office. There the warden handed Jimmy his pardon, which had been signed that morning by the governor. Jimmy took it in a tired kind of way. He had served nearly ten months of a four year sentence. He had expected to stay only about three months, at the longest. When a man had as many friends on the outside as Jimmy Valentine did it is hardly worthwhile to cut his hair.

“Now, Valentine,” said the warden, “you’ll go out in the morning. Make a man of yourself. You’re not a bad fellow at heart. Stop cracking safes, and live straight.”

“Me?” said Jimmy, in surprise. “Why, I never cracked a safe in my life.” “Oh, no,” laughed the warden. “Of course, not. Let’s see, now. How was it

you happened to get sent up on that Springfield job? Was it simply a case of a mean old jury that had it in for you? It’s always one or the other with you innocent victims.”

“Me?” said Jimmy. “Why, warden, I never was in Springfield in my life!” “Take him back, Cronin!” said the warden, “and fix him up with outgoing

clothes. Unlock him at seven in the morning, and let him out. Better think over my advice, Valentine.”

At a quarter past seven on the next morning Jimmy stood in the warden’s outer office. He had on a suit of the terribly fitting, ready-made clothes and a pair of the stiff, squeaky shoes.

The clerk handed him a railroad ticket and the five-dollar bill with which the law expected him to rehabilitate himself into good citizenship. The warden even gave him a cigar, and shook hands. Valentine, 9762, was chronicled on the

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