Improve your English. Учебное пособие по английскому языку

Court of the UK of his appeal against enforcement of the European Arrest Warrant, Assange has failed to surrender to his bail, and has been treated by the UK authorities as having absconded. Since 19 June 2012, he has been inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has since been granted diplomatic asylum. The British government intends to extradite Assange to Sweden under that arrest warrant once he leaves the embassy, which Assange says he fears may result in his subsequent extradition to the United States to face charges over the diplomatic cables case.

While on bail in England during 2012, Assange hosted a political talk show The World Tomorrow which was broadcast on the Russian RT TV channel.

Assange has announced his intention to launch a political party and run a campaign for a Senate seat representing either New South Wales or Victoria in the Australian federal election, 2013.

1.Read and translate the text.

2.Give Russian equivalents of the following words and make up the sentences of your own.

Anonymous news sources and whistleblowers; freedom of the press, censorship, and investigative journalism; arrested on suspicion of; request for questioning in relation to; final dismissal; he has since been granted diplomatic asylum; to launch a political party.

3.Let us discuss.

1.What is your attitude to Assange and to his website?

2.How do you think if mass media can be really free from censorship? Why?

3.Do we need the full information about everything? Why?

UNCYCLOPEDIA

Search is one of the first functions that appeared on various web sites. Today, one can say that everything and anything can be found in the Internet. If you ever posted anything on any site, try typing your own name into the SEARCH line, and some links are sure to pop up. One can use such popular search engines as Wikipedia, Google, Yahoo, Yandex to find the data they need. Inevitably, alongside these serious web pages, some humorous ones are now in existence.

Uncyclopedia is perhaps the best-known unsource, or “the content-free encyclopedia”, among them. It is a satirically-themed wikipedia founded in 2005. Essentially, it is a humorous parody of Wikipedia. Originally an English-language wiki, the project currently spans over 50 languages. The English version has over

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23,000 pages of content. Like Wikipedia, Uncyclopedia has guidelines regarding what is and is not acceptable content, and these guidelines have become progressively stricter as the site has expanded over time. The site has gained negative attention due to its articles on places and people. Its logo is a hollowed potato, named Sophia after the Gnostic deity, that serves as a spoof of Wikipedia’s globe logo.

Uncyclopedia was launched on January 5, 2005 by Jonathan Huang, known under his nickname Stillwaters. The idea for Uncyclopedia came from the English pages of Wikipedia, where jokes and nonsense pages used to be published. The editors of Wikipedia decided that these pages clashed with the serious content, and deleted them as a category. Uncyclopedia became so popular that within a very short space of time, all the allotted domain space was used up. The creators started to look for a new host, with bigger web space. In a surprise move, the editors of Wikipedia decided to host their weird cousin.

Today, approximately half of the Uncyclopedia collection is hosted by Wikia. There are various pages and whole categories, as well as sites in other languages than English, which are hosted by other domains. As with all other Wikia sites, the whole article database is freely available for online download.

Uncyclopedia’s stated goal is to “provide the world’s misinformation in the least redeeming and most sarcastic and humorous way possible, through satire”. One of its usual features is quotations, which are in truth either misquotes, or inventions attributed to famous people like Oscar Wild or Bernard Shaw. Many articles about places, celebrities and important events were criticized in the press as being too sarcastic or unfair to their subjects. Educators around the world express their concern about Uncyclopedia’s influence on young people, who may see the world as an object of satire only. The site creators insist that people should be more relaxed about this site, whose chief aim is to provide entertainment and relaxation.

Glossary

pop up — неожиданно возникнуть; span — охватывать;

Gnostic deity — древнее божество; spoof — розыгрыш;

clash — сталкиваться;

allot — распределять, раздавать; redeem — спасать, избавлять.

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1.Read and translate the text.

2.Answer the questions.

1.Have you ever used Uncyclopedia? Did you like it?

2.Have you ever used Wikipedia? What for?

3.What kind of information can you find in Wikipedia?

4.What other sites do you use to get any information?

FACEBOOK

Facebook is a social networking service launched in February 2004, owned and operated by Facebook, Inc. As of September 2012, Facebook has over one billion active users, more than half of them using Facebook on a mobile device. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups, organized by workplace, school or college, or other characteristics, and categorize their friends into lists such as “People From Work” or “Close Friends”.

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and

name for the book given to students at the start of the academic year by some university administrations in the United States to help students get to know each other. The website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, andStanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high school students, and eventually to anyone aged 13 and over. However, according to a May 2011 Consumer Reports survey, there are 7,5 million children under 13 with accounts and 5 million under 10, violating the site's terms of service. Facebook allows any users who declare themselves to be at least 13 years old to become registered users of the site.

A January 2009 Compete.com study ranked Facebook as the most used social networking service by worldwide monthly active users. Entertainment Weekly included the site on its end-of-the-decade "best-of" list, saying, "How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers' birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?" Critics, such as Facebook Detox, state that Facebook has turned into a national obsession in the United States,

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visitors in May 2011. According to Social Media Today, in April 2010 an estimated 41.6% (129.5 million) of the U.S. population had a Facebook account. Nevertheless, Facebook's market growth started to stall in some regions, with the site losing 7 million active users in the United States and Canada in May 2011.

1.Read and translate the text.

2.Give Russian equivalents of the following words and make up the sentences of your own.

A social networking service; a mobile device; a personal profile; commoninterest user groups; a national obsession.

3.Let us discuss.

1.Have you got your personal profile in Facebook? How long?

2.How often do you use Facebook?

3.Why do you use it?

4.Do you communicate with people from other countries in Facebook? What problems do you discuss with them?

5.Do you use any other social websites for communication? Which ones?

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LITERATURE

1.Агабекян И.Б. Английский для менеджеров. Серия «Учебники Феникса» — Ростов н/Д: Феникс, 2003. — 416 с.

2.Адамия Н.Л., Бондарчук Г.Г. Английский язык: Учебник для неязыковых вузов. — 3-е изд. — М.: Изд-во «Реал-А», 2004. — 352 с.

3.Глушенкова Е.В. Английский язык для студентов экономических специальностей: Учебник / Е.В. Глушенкова, Е.Н. Комарова. — М.: ООО

«Издательство Астрель», 2002. — 352 с.

4.Кисунько Е.И., Музланова Е.С. Английский язык: устные темы для подготовки к ЕГЭ / Е.И. Кисунько, Е.С. Музланова. — М.: АСТ: Астрель; Владимир ВКТ, 2008. — 479 с.

5.Коваленко П.И., Агабекян И.А. Английский для экономистов. Серия «Учебное пособие». — Ростов-на-Дону; «Феникс», 1999. — 352 с.

6.Кравченко Н.В. Английский язык: устные темы для подготовки к экзамену: для выпускников и абитуриентов / Н.В. Кравченко. — М.: Эксмо, 2009. — 464 с.

7.Речевая практика английского языка: Учебное пособие. — М.: Воен. ун-т, 2003. — 280 с.

8.Рыжков В.Д. Деловой английский: Менеджмент: Пособие по изучению англ. яз. — Калининград: Янтар. сказ, 1999. — 256 с.

9.Шевелева С.А. и др. Основы экономики и бизнеса: Учебное пособие. — М.: ЮНИТИ, 1999 — 515 с.

10.Хрестоматия для изучающих экономику / Сост. М.А. Савоничева: Учебное пособие на англ. яз. — М.: Издательство «Менеджер», 2002. — 176 с.

11.Федорова Л.М. Английский язык для экономистов. / Л.М. Федорова, Н.Н. Немчинова, С.Н. Никитаев. — М.: Издательство «Экзамен», 2002. — 128 с.

12.English. — Издательство «Первое сентября» — 2009. — № 14.

13.Murphy R. English grammar in Use. A self-study reference book for intermediate students. — Cambridge University Press, 2005.

14.Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab — http://esl-lab.com.

15.Wikipedia — www.en.wikipedia.org.

16.Using the Web & Search — Lifewire — www.webtrends.about.com.

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