Вступительный письменный экзамен по английскому языку. Учебные материалы, методические указания и рекомендации. Пособие для абитуриентов

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The Status of Married Women

(the Middle Ages)

Although a woman was seen as subordinate to her father or her husband, and her goods were theoretically not under her own control, she was not left defenceless at the man’s mercy. The Church recognized separation in cases of gross cruelty, fornication and apostasy; while the law accepted a woman’s right to hold land, to make a will or a contract, to sue and to appear as her own or her husband’s attorney, and, if widowed, to be the guardian of her children. She could also appeal against her husband to her family when in urgent need of their help. In the case of poorer women, manorial custom would usually make allowances for her if she were having a baby: her obligations to the lord of the manor might well be waived for the time being, or she might even be sent a present, though less perhaps because the lord felt moved by compassion than because he recognized the importance of her function in providing the estate with fresh labourers.

Whatever her customary privileges or legal rights, however, the married woman was not considered to stand on the same level as her husband; and it cannot be doubted that many wives were beaten almost as often as their children. A man fined at Sporle Manor Court for thrashing his servant expressed a common sentiment when he indignantly expostulated that he did not know what the world was coming to, that the day would soon come when a man might not beat his own wife.

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Early Nineteenth Century

As the eighteenth century rolled into the nineteenth most towns and cities of England continued their slow and steady increase in size, prosperity, and comfort. A few places, especially in the West Country and East Anglia, declined into sleepy villages as their spinning and weaving trade passed elsewhere, but in the Midlands and North, and in parts of South Wales and Scotland, where the great industrial changes were taking place, a violent revolution shattered the quiet pace of town life. Here there was no gentle rise, but a sudden and uncontrollable explosion of population. Manchester, for example, which was a very large village of 22,000 in 1773, shot up to 75,000 twenty-eight years later, and by 1851 had 300,000 inhabitants — an increase of almost 1300% in less than eighty years. Oldham, a tiny village of 400 in 1760, was a town of 40,000 by 1821. Birmingham, Leeds, Blackburn, Sheffield, and Bolton, all fairly small towns in the eighteenth century, doubled their populations in twenty years.

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Feeding, clothing, organizing, and, above all, housing, this great tidal wave of people that swept over the industrial areas was quite beyond the powers of the authorities in charge, whether lord of the manor or town council. In many places decency, humanity, and order broke down and, pushed on by the ruthless greed of many of the new factory owners, the new industrial towns were dragged to a level of squalor and misery which had perhaps never been known on such a large scale before in history.

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The Edwardian Town in 1905

The first decade of the twentieth century was a great turning point in town life; much of it — the filth, the working and living conditions, and the poverty — were as they had been for centuries, yet on the other hand many aspects were similar to those we enjoy today. Trains, motor cars, and motor buses, and in London electric underground trains, were already carrying the population to and fro; gas and electricity were lighting most of the streets and shops and many of the houses; bicycles, gramophones, and the first films were helping to fill people’s leisure; hot water systems, central heating, electric fires and irons and stoves, vacuum cleaners, and primitive washing machines were available to make the wealthiest homes more comfortable. The first radio signals had crossed the Atlantic, though there was to be no general broadcasting for sixteen years; the telephone network was beginning to spread slowly in business, though rarely to private homes, and the first aeroplane had just made its first flight. From the administration point of view the town was run on much the same lines as it is today: the council, the elections, the police, taxation, and the powers over health and amenities were very similar to our own. Yet in spite of all the parallels, the world of Edwardian town in 1905 was a different world.

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Medieval England

By the beginning of the fifth century the curtains of barbarism were beginning to fall on the stage of Europe; by its end the pageant of town life was almost in complete darkness. Even the great civilization in mighty Rome, which men said would last for ever, had died down. Only a fraction of its huge population remained; the buildings began to crumble, the streets were often deserted, grass grew in the arena and the circus. If this happened in Rome, what could be expected in the towns of the distant Roman province of Britain?

Some of the cities built with such care by the Romans to teach their way of life to the whole world had already been abandoned and were

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derelict long before the Saxons broke loose in these islands. Towns in the path of the invader probably fell by fire and violence, while others, further away from the conquerors, just decayed. Baths, temples, houses, shops, and theatres crumbled and collapsed or became quarries of ready-shaped stones for the huts of the new masters. The rough Saxons, who were by nature village-dwelling farmers, were suspicious — even afraid — of the towns, so that the streets and buildings fell into ruins. Gradually nature swallowed them up. Often the very sites themselves were forgotten until, fourteen centuries later, the spades of archaeologists brought once more the columns, the marbles, and the pavements to the light and to the wondering eyes of the twentieth century.

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The Celts

During the period from the 6th to the 3rd century B.C. a people called the Celts spread across Europe from the east to the west.

More than one Celtic tribe invaded Britain. From time to time these tribes were attacked and overcome by other Celtic tribes from the Continent. Celtic tribes called the Picts penetrated into the mountains on the North; some Picts as well as tribes of Scots crossed over to Ireland and settled there. Later the Scots returned to the larger island and settled in the North beside the Picts. They came in such large numbers that in time the name of Scotland was given to the country. Powerful Celtic tribes, the Britons, held most of the country, and the southern half of the island was named Britain after them. Today the words ‘Briton’ and ‘British’ refer to the people of the whole of the British Isles.

The Iberians were unable to fight back the attacks of the Celts who were armed with metal spears, swords, daggers and axes. Most of the Iberians were slain in the conflict; some of them were driven westwards into the mountains of what is now Wales and the others probably mixed with the Celts.

We know more about the Celts than about the earlier inhabitants of the island, because of the written accounts that exist. The Celts did not write down the events themselves. Other peoples who knew them described them in their books.

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The Upper Tanana Indians

The Indians with whom this study deals inhabit the headwaters of Tanana River, the largest single tributary of the Yukon. Linguistically they are members of the Northern Athapaskan or the Dene stock.

In dealing with any Athapaskan group one is constantly faced with the problem of a suitable tribal name. The literature pertaining to

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Alaskan Athapaskans is confusingly full of a host of such names. The point is that all such terms represent the name by which other people designate the Tanana natives, and the variations are easily explainable as due to the difference in the Indian informants of the early traders. I might increase the list by adding Dluthtoltin, or ‘Dwellers among the Mountains’, the term applied to the Chisana Indians by their neighbors, and Tzuntain, or ‘Rat People’, the name by which the Upper Tanana people were known to the Indians lower down the river. It becomes evident that all such terms are simply descriptive ones used by one group of people in referring to a foreign group. One of the earliest scientists to visit Alaska summed up the whole problem, it seems to me, when he wrote: ‘The names of the various tribes of Yukon Indians are, in nearly every instance, taken from some feature of their country; or rather, I should say, each tribe bears the name of its country in most instances’. Furthermore, it should be remembered that we are dealing with people who have no tribal organization and, oftentimes, no real tribal consciousness. What have been called tribes are really little more that geographic groups distinguished by minor dialectic differences and possibly a few ethnic peculiarities.

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The Aims and Methods of Socialization

in Silwa

In this chapter it is intended to outline the procedures and methods that are adopted in this community to inculcate the norms that transform the child, who is relatively peripheral, into the adult who is central link in village social life. The transition can be considered, as one ‘from an economically passive burden into a producer, from a biological unit into a social personality, irretrievably cast in the habits, disposition, and notions characteristic of his culture’. It is obvious that in Silwa the education of children is not surrounded, as in some primitive societies, with ceremonies of initiation, elaborate ritual, or narration of totemic myths. Learning occurs mainly through children’s observing, imitating and assisting their adults in their everyday activities. The difference between an adult and a child is, on the whole, quantitative. The former knows and thus conforms to the cultural norms, while the latter does not. The commonly used word is not the classical word ‘infant’ but another word which is also classical but literally means ‘ignorant’ and thus identifies ignorance with childhood. It is because of this ignorance of expected skills, norms and attitudes that the children are considered inferior to the adult, and the younger as subservient to the elder.

Here socialization is to include its two aspects of technical training and cultural or regulatory training. There is nothing to add here

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concerning technical training, and further reference will be made in connection with its relation to cultural training. The lack of mastery in skills required from boys at a particular age is attributed to inefficient training by the parents.

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The Production of History

Like all other animals, human beings have to eat in order to live. It is widely supposed, however, that in the provisioning of humans, the means of subsistence do not pass directly from hand to mouth but take a detour through society. As Marx and Engels declared over a century ago, it is in actually producing their food, rather than simply gathering or collecting it ready-made in nature, that humans distinguish themselves from the rest of the animal kingdom. The notion of production, here, has a double connotation — of appropriation and transformation. To appropriate is to take hold of some portion of living nature in such a way as to make it the object of relations among persons; to transform it is to alter it from its naturally given state in accordance with a design or plan that issues from a superior source in society. Non-human animals may literally take hold of their quarry, whether with tooth or claw, but they do not thereby convert it into property; they may also, through their activities, wreak transformative effects on the environment, but they do not do so intentionally. They have no conception of their task. Human beings alone are said to produce, since they confront nature as a domain of raw materiality external to their socially constituted selves. In short, coached within the duality of society and nature, production figures as the work of social agency against a natural resistance.

In this confrontation, moreover, lies the dynamic of history, as conceived within the terms of the orthodox view. Thus it is commonly supposed that whereas the events of evolution ‘just happen’, those of history are intentionally authored by human beings themselves…

3.2.Материалы для подготовки к вступительному экзамену на факультеты и отделения

журналистики

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Special Effects on Television

The special effects man is recognized as a highly skilled technician with resources of imagination, artistic good taste and an experience of

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the technique of motion pictures. Broadly speaking, his task is to create an effect on the cinema screen not possible by the normal methods of studio or exterior filming. Television is already developing its own processes of special effects, and these are likely to offer increasing scope for the technician with an urge to experiment and to utilize his powers of ingenuity.

What does the term special effects mean? Do we mean a magic scene of, say, a flying carpet, a headless dancer, or do we infer an illusion of a realistic scene such as a ship in a storm, or a railway smash? All scenes of former type, which the viewer knows must be some form of trick, are best described as magical; while the latter are realistic, that is to say, the viewer should be able to accept them as the real thing. The scenes of a ship at sea in a storm or the flashing past of a landscape through the windows of a railway train, while realistic in character, are termed special effects because their production calls for special apparatus operated by specialized staff.

There are also shots which are neither magical nor realistic, being a particular way of presenting the action or story. For example, there are various forms of split-screen working. In a reality programme, one half of the picture can be a scene of Birmingham and the other half a scene in London. In a studio production the script may call for a reporter to be ringing up his news-editor from the scene of the crime; this picture on the screen might be divided into two areas so as to knit the two scenes together although taking place at locations miles apart.

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The Techniques of Radio Journalism

To grasp the essential technique of radio journalism, the beginner must pay particular attention to the ways in which it differs from that of newspaper journalism. To begin with, the appeal of broadcasting is to the ear not the eye. It has been clearly established that the average man takes in far less through the ear than he does through the eye, probably because most of us do far more reading than listening to lectures. Moreover, where the newspaper reader can glance back over anything he has failed to follow or understand, the radio listener cannot pull the announcer up and ask him to repeat what he has said. And having failed to grasp one sentence the listener, in worrying over that, will miss the next, and so on. The first rule, then, in preparing news for radio is that it must be written up in clear, simple English which can be readily understood on first hearing, for there can be no second chance. In this connection, the radio journalist will do well to

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remember that, whether we like it or not, the average intelligence of the masses of radio listeners is not high.

The second point is this. The newspaperman relies very largely on headlines, italics and general display and layout to make his impression on the reader. The radio journalist can look only to the pauses and inflections of the announcer’s voice. He must, therefore, watch his style very carefully. Sentences must be short and well broken up, for long, involved sentences with parentheses and cumbersome inversions are difficult to read and more difficult to follow.

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Writing for Television

The major problem facing any writer coming fresh to television is to understand what it is. Is it an art medium or merely a method of disseminating information? Is it simply an extension of radio, or is it just an inferior form of cinema? These are basic questions which require an answer. Before dealing with them, however, I would like to set down the three main problems which, in my belief, face any writer, new to television. They are:

1.The problem, already mentioned, of understanding the nature of the medium.

2.The problems of time and space encountered in constructing the script.

3.The problem of layout of the script.

Now to deal with these in order. Perhaps the best way to start on the first is to compare television with other media and to plot its affinities and contrasts.

Like radio, it is broadcast to a mass-audience grouped in small numbers; it forms part of a daily service; it may be produced inside the studio, outside it, or both; and each programme is consumed in one performance, or a small numbers of performances. Like the film, it employs cameras and the action is seen through lens; it is viewed on a screen; it employs simultaneously sound and vision; it employs grammatical devices such as the mix and the fade. Like the theatre it is a live medium; its actors or actualities give a continuous performance.

Now for the points of divergence. Unlike radio, television must bow to the exacting demands of vision as well as sound. Unlike the film it is principally a live, as opposed to a recorded, medium — although this may change with time; its action has only relative mobility. Unlike the stage play, its action can move swiftly from set to set; it plays to small intimate groups of people at short range.

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Text 4

The Editorial Influence

What is a good television assignment and what is not? There are many variables involved; the editorial values of a story; your resources, in terms of personnel and equipment to do the job; and the cost, in terms of money, time and effort. Also much depends on what you are trying to do, in your overall approach to the responsibility of covering news for your station.

You may not completely control this overall approach. Much depends on the basic attitudes and policies of the station management, and it is necessary to work within that framework. If your operating budget is small and your staff is limited, your coverage necessarily reflects such limitations.

There are several basic points to keep in mind about assignments. The most important one is: people are more interesting to people than inanimate things. A building may be impressive but when a person comes into the frame, your attention shifts to that person. We should exploit this natural curiosity about other people because, whether we realize it or not, all of us are constantly seeking to understand one another.

But an interest in people doesn’t mean that all interviews will be interesting. All too frequently interviewing somebody in the news is used as the easy way out. We are not covering a story if we get somebody to say on camera what has already been published in the press and broadcast on radio. Unless the interview carries the story further, provides new information or sheds new light on development, there’s little reason to use it. Of course, one cannot always know whether a film interview will carry the story one step further, so we often have to try it, and see what happens. But just because it has been shot doesn’t mean it must be used.

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How It All Began

The English newspaper began when Englishmen started to be aware of the world around them, beyond the boundaries of their own villages or towns, and when they began to understand that their lives might be affected by events abroad. England four hundred years ago had only one great city where ‘strangers’ would be found in any number and where news of happenings across the sea would be much discussed. Outside London it was a country of small communities, where everyday life followed an unchanging pattern and there was little interest in anything beyond the daily or yearly round of the countryside.

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From early times three methods of circulating news had been known: the proclamation, issued by the king or the government, to inform the people about laws or similar matters, and posted up on the church door or by the village green; the sermon, preached by the clergy; and various kinds of popular ballads, poems, songs and rhymes sold in the streets or sung in taverns and alehouses to celebrate events such as the birth or marriage of a prince or princess, victory in a battle or sensational happenings like murders, suicides and terrible accidents. In the country villages too the travelling packman would bring news of what was happening in the world outside. Their activities supplied the only real popular news in England until the second half of the nineteenth century, when the printed press for the first time began to appeal to the mass of the ordinary people.

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The First Printed Newspapers

The early and middle years of the sixteenth century were a time of great popular excitement. Wars were becoming more frequent all over Europe. These disturbances were often connected with the religious changes taking place in many parts of the continent.

Disputes over religion concerned the daily lives of ordinary people and created a public appetite for information. The earliest newspapers originated to supply that demand. By the last years of the sixteenth century several among the printers in Germany and the ‘Low Countries’ — as Holland and Belgium were then called — were producing occasional pamphlets and announcements of great battles or sensational events, often called ‘relations’. There were also pocketsize ‘newsbooks’ of 8, 16 or 24 pages, summarizing the events of the past six months. These two types, the ‘relation’ of a single event, usually on a single sheet of paper, and the general account of news collected over a period, were the two forerunners of the later newspaper. If the newssheet was one of a series of publications of ‘running’ or ‘current’ news — that is, a periodical appearing at more or less regular intervals as distinct from a single isolated publication — it might be given the name ‘coranto’ or some variation of it, from the Latin word ‘to run’.

No such English publications are known until the seventeenth century. By 1600, some of the continental newsbooks written in Latin were circulating quite widely among educated Englishmen — for example, the Mercurius Gallo-Belgicus published half-yearly after 1594 in Cologne and Frankfort. This publication introduced the name ‘Mercury’, still found in some modern local newspapers. But no news was actually printed in England for English readers before the 1620s.

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Text 7

The Newspapers Under the Republic, 1649−1660

The victory of Parliament was followed by the execution of the King on 30th January 1649 and the setting up of a Republic. But if the Parliamentarians, now led by Oliver Cromwell, had claimed to be fighting for English liberties, they soon found that the liberty of the newspaper press could be as troublesome to them as to their predecessors. The royalists set up an ‘underground’ press and within a few days of the King’s execution a royalist newsbook, Mercurius Elenticus, brought out an account of the scene. Throughout the eleven years of the Republic the secret presses continued to operate — often bearing, instead of the usual address of the printing office, such imprints as ‘Printed at the sign of ‘You may goe looke’. Cromwell’s ‘master-spy’ John Thurloe did ‘goe looke’ but he never succeeded in stamping out the royalist press. One of his most famous spies was Elizabeth Alkin, known as ‘Parliamentary Joan’, who disguised herself as a newspaper seller or ‘Mercury Woman’. She was provided with a specially printed newsbook, Mercurius Scoticus, which appeared on the outside to be a royalist paper. She would approach likely-looking royalist sympathisers in the streets of London and confidentially offer them a copy. If they were interested and bought one, she would ask if they knew of other royalist pamphlets she might sell, and sometimes the information she obtained led Cromwell’s men to a secret press. When her innocent victim got home and brought out his Mercurius Scoticus, he found the inside of the paper full of Cromwell’s praises.

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British Television and Radio

To the outsider, the aspect of the British television industry hardest to understand is the way in which the government owns broadcasting but has no editorial control over it. The BBC, for example, though state-owned, is in no way a state-broadcaster in the way that the term is understood elsewhere in the world. The government, having collected the licence fees, hands them over to the BBC to spend much as it wishes. This so-called ‘arms length’ arrangement has considerably irritated many prime ministers — particularly Harold Wilson and Margaret Thatcher in the examples given in section one — who have furiously tried to influence the Corporation over particular programmes.

The BBC difficulties with politicians are complicated by the fact that it is required by law to treat all political parties equally. The Royal Charter — the piece of legislation which establishes how the BBC will be run — states that it must be ‘impartial’ in all political matters. In

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