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

and asked them to dinner to try ‘tea’. When her friends came, the old woman brought in a dish and put it on the table. There were brown leaves on it, they were boiled. The guests began to eat those boiled leaves. Of course, nobody liked them.

At that moment the sailor came in. He looked at the table, smiled and said. ‘Mother, what have you done with those tea-leaves?’

‘I’ve boiled them as you told me to do.’ ‘And what have you done with the water?’ ‘I threw it away, of course.’

‘Now you may throw away the leaves, too,’ said her son. Perhaps, this story never took place, but it shows that people in

England at that time knew very little about tea.

The Chinese were the first people in the world to grow tea. More than 2000 years ago Chinese people knew about tea and liked it.

Nowadays most people in the world like tea very much.

Text 12

The Nobel Prize

Alfred Nobel, a Swedish scientist, left 3.5 million dollars. It was his will that the money made the prize after his death.

Five Nobel Prizes are given every year to people who make the greatest contribution to physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and world peace.

The first prizes were given in 1901. The prizes are given on the recommendation of three Swedish scientific institutions, and a Norwegian one. Each prize consists of a diploma, a gold medal and money (from 20,000 to 40,000 dollars).

Five committees sit in secret to decide the winners of the prize. Only a peace prize can be won by a group of people. All the other prizes can be given only to individuals. The prizes are open to men and women of any nationality. The peace prize is given in Oslo on December 10 (on that day in 1896 Nobel died). The others are given in Stockholm.

Text 13

What TV Does to Children

Only in recent years scientists and doctors began serious study of the influence of television on children and young people.

Some psychologists say that after parents, television has the greatest influence on children today.

Of course, watching TV has its good and bad sides. From TV children get information about the world, they learn new words and begin to use them in their speech.

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But TV also influences the development of a child in a negative way. When children spend all day in front of TV sets they cannot usually find time to read, to play games in the yard, to talk to their parents and friends.

Some teachers say that children who watch TV every day talk too much at school at the lessons. They cannot talk at home while watching TV and so they begin to talk at school.

TV influences the creative abilities of pupils. In America there was such an experiment. 250 good pupils could watch TV for many hours every day. After three weeks the pupils were tested. The results were unusually low.

Pupils who watch TV very much cannot understand an easy story without pictures, tables or illustrations.

When a child watches TV, everything seems very easy to him. And real life begins to seem easy. He cannot work hard, because watching TV does not need hard work.

Text 14

The First Language in the World

Nobody knows what the first language was. But scientists feel sure that nobody speaks it today, because all languages change and keep on changing as long as people use them. One language may change in different ways and grow into several languages.

Children don’t always use words exactly the way their parents do. They make small changes in the sounds or in the meaning. In time these little changes add up to big changes. If we could meet the people who spoke English five hundred years ago, we probably couldn’t understand much of what they said.

People invent words, for example, radium, when new things come into our life.

English itself is a mixture of several languages. Scientists believe that these languages and many others all grew out of the same language which they call Indo-European. Nobody speaks it now. But some of its descendants are English, German, Latin, French, Greek, Russian and many of the different languages spoken in India.

Text 15

English Names

Most northern European countries have the same system of surnames, that is the man gives his surname to his wife and children. In Great Britain the same system is used. Sometimes the husband and wife’s surnames are combined into a long name which the family has

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for several generations. In other families the children may be given the mother’s or grandmother’s surname as a middle name. This becomes a Christian, or the first name, and not a surname (Winston Spencer Churchill).

In America they often use the initial of the middle name (John F. Kennedy).

Everyone must be registered with a Christian name during the period of twelve months after the birth, but you can change your name at any time if you do not like it.

Text 16

Gardening

English people like gardening. They talk about it in their offices, factories and at home. In the evening they work in their gardens, large and small, and they do it in any weather. They grow flowers, vegetables and fruit there.

If an Englishman has no garden he grows something in a window box outside his kitchen.

If you want to please an Englishman, be very polite about his garden. Perhaps, he will show you his garden and tell you about it. So you will listen to it and say, ‘How nice!’ or ‘How interesting!’

Text 17

Fireplaces

In the English home a fireplace has always been the center of interest in a room. People may like to sit at a window on a summer’s day, but for many months of the year they prefer to sit round the fire and watch its dance.

Many, many years ago the fireplaces in the halls of rich castles were very large. In the XVIII century English people began to make a special place over the fireplace for a picture or a portrait. By those fireplaces there was also a place for people to sit.

Later fireplaces became much smaller. Above the fireplace there is usually a shelf, on which there is often a clock and some photographs.

Text 18

Character Through Handwriting

More and more psychologists and handwriting experts begin to think that your handwriting can tell a lot about your character. So every time when you take a pen you must know that you give yourself away.

You may think that you can deceive the experts by changing your handwriting. But you will still give yourself away, they say.

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Everybody writes in different ways at different times. For example, if you write a note to say thanks-for-the-party, it will be different from the one you write to tell the boss you are sorry to be leaving. Your shopping list will be written differently from the long letter to your mother. Still you can’t deceive the experts. Whether you write fast, slowly and carefully, left-handed or right-handed, they can tell the sort of person you are.

It is size, pressure and slant that give you away.

These three factors can reveal your intelligence, your imagination and your strength of personality. And how good you would be for this or that work.

Text 19

The Story of Hindu Figures

We say 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0 are Arabic figures but they are Hindu figures. This system of writing numbers uses signs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0 and then 0 on the right-hand side of 1 to make 10 and other numbers (a hundred, a million and others). This system is one of the greatest treasures of people. If you do not believe it, try multiplying XVIII by XXIII in Roman figures. In Hindu figures it is much easier.

The Roman system of numerals is very old. It was used many, many years ago when people counted on their fingers and toes. The Roman sign for five (V) really means five fingers; it is a picture of a hand with five fingers. The sign X for ten means two hands, one above the other. The Romans made their numbers with the help of strokes. They put them before or after these signs and each stroke stood for a finger. The sign IX, with a stroke before the X meant two hands of fingers minus one finger.

The Roman system of numerals was once used in Europe, and now we sometimes use the Roman figures.

The Hindu system of figures was used by the Arabs, and first came to Europe in 1202. It was known in England by about 1300, and began to be used there by about 1500.

Text 20

From the History of the Postal Service

In the XVIII century in England letters were delivered by post-boys and stage coaches, which belonged to rich people. A post-boy could ride five miles an hour. At that time the roads were so bad that stage coaches rode only four miles an hour. When the roads became better the stage coaches began to run faster, but post-boys still rode only five miles an hour.

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In 1764 an official paper appeared in England. It read, ‘Post-boys must ride six miles an hour.’ But it could not make slow horses fast. And the post-boys still rode very slowly.

Now people did not want to use post-boys. They sent their letters by stage coaches which ran seven miles an hour. So people stopped paying money to the state for this. They paid money to the owners of these stage coaches. The state began to lose a lot of money.

The first state stage coaches were introduced by John Palmer. In 1784 he organized fast coaches, which ran along the main roads. These coaches were guarded by soldiers. The first coach ran between London and Bristol. Along the road there were five places where the coaches could change horses. Horses ran from six to eight miles and then they were changed. So they could run very fast. The first state stage coach was a success. And already in 1800 there was a good state stage coach system in England.

2.2.Тексты для начального уровня

Text 1

Ancient Greece

No ancient civilization had such a lasting impact on our world as Ancient Greece. The style of Greek buildings is still widely copied today. Greek thinkers laid the basis of mathematics and science and posed questions about life that still occupy us. The idea of democracy (government by the people) had its roots in Grecian Athens. So too did modern theatre. Even many of our words were originally Greek.

Greek Science and Philosophy

By looking at the world and asking questions, ancient Greek thinkers such as Thales and Aristotle made many important scientific discoveries. Pythagoras and Euclid, for instance, discovered basic mathematical rules which are still used today. Archimedes worked out why ships float. And Anaxagoras realized that eclipses occur when the Sun, Moon and Earth are all in a straight line. Indeed, many ideas we think of as new were first thought of by the Greeks. We only became sure all matter is made up of tiny atoms this century — yet the Greek scholar Democritus suggested it 2500 years ago. Greek thinkers such as Plato and Socrates also thought about how people should behave and what is the best political system. Their ideas laid the basis of modern philosophy.

Greek Art

Few ancient civilizations created such rich and varied works of art as the Greeks. Not only are there beautiful buildings such as the

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Parthenon, there are also many graceful statues. The most famous sculptor was Praxiteles, who made the first nude statue of a woman, portraying the goddess Aphrodite. Ancient Greece was also famous for its theatre, and plays written by Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes are still performed today.

Text 2

Languages of the World

Most of the world’s languages are grouped into families like IndoEuropean, although linguists often disagree about how they should be grouped.

Indo-European includes nearly all of the languages spoken in Europe. The Basque tongue of north east Spain is an exception, unrelated to any other known language. Gaelic and English, French and German, Russian and Bulgarian, Hindi and Bengali, and many others are all Indo-European.

In southern India, people speak Dravidian languages such as Telugu and Tamil. In China and Tibet, billions of people speak the many hundreds of Sino-Tibetan languages, including Chinese, Burmese and Tibetan. Africa is the home of more languages than any other continent — about 1300 altogether, spoken by 400 million people. 1000 of them belong to the Niger-Congo family, including 500 Bantu languages like Swahili, spoken in Kenya, and Zulu in South Africa. In the Americas, Indian languages belong to many different families.

Changing Sounds

Philologists long ago noticed similarities between words in many different languages that could not be simply coincidence. Notice, for instance, the similarities of the words for father, mother and brother for languages as far apart as Irish and Sanskrit. In the early 1800s, Jacob Grimm (1785−1863), now best known for his fairy tales, realized that the words always differed in exactly the same way. The words father and fish in English are pater and piscis in Latin. In other words, the ‘p’ in the Latin word becomes a softer ‘f’ in English. Similarly, pater, mater and tres in Latin become father, mother and three in English, with the ‘t’ softening to a ‘th’. Grimm found nine sound shifts altogether, showing how languages evolved.

Text 3

English — a World Language

About the time Columbus was exploring the coast of the ‘New World’, William Caxton was producing the first books ever printed in the English

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language. Of course, English had been spoken and written for many centuries before this — in England. But in the time of Columbus and Caxton hardly anyone outside England used the English language.

Now, though, less than five hundred years later, English is used by at least some of the people in almost every country in the world. English is the native language of about 250,000,000 people (mostly citizens of Australia, Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand and the United States). About 50,000,000 others are fluent in English as a second language, and 100,000,000 or more others understand or can use English to some extent.

Of course, the English used in different parts of the world differs in many ways. For example, look at the differences between the British and American terms for the same things: subway — underground; drugstore — chemist’s; sweater — jumper; private school — public school.

There are differences in pronunciation and spelling, too. For instance, Americans and Englishmen will pronounce differently the words clerk, dance, necessary, etc. Americans write labor, the British write labour; Americans write center, the British write centre. And, in the many countries where English is used, the slang and idiomatic expressions are different, too.

The English language is interesting because it varies from place to place, and because it is a living, ever-changing language. Nevertheless, Americans, Englishmen, Canadians and people from many other parts of the far-spread English-speaking world have little or no difficulty in understanding one another.

Text 4

What is the Average Briton Like?

The average Briton is a woman (51%).

The average Briton lives in a house, not a flat (80%). She (or he) has a bathroom (95%), a refrigerator or a freezer (99%), a car (69%) and a telephone (90%), a TV-set (98%), a central heating system (83%), a video-recorder (73%), a washing machine (92%), a computer (20%).

The average Briton is between 16 and 64 years old. The average British man will die at 73 years old, while the average woman will live until she’s 78.

The average Briton is married (60%) and more Britons than ever before are getting married. Men get married at the age of 28, while British women marry at 26. About 20% of marriages end in divorce, though about half will marry again.

The average age for divorce, if you’re thinking of marrying a Briton, is 36 for women and 38 for men.

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The average Briton works 35−40 hours a week, and has a 4-week holiday a year. At present 40% of holidays are spent staying with relatives or friends and a quarter are spent camping. British residents take about 23 million holidays abroad every year. The most popular foreign countries are Spain, France, the USA and Greece.

What does the average Briton do in his/her free time? Well, he/she watches television. Every Briton over the age of 5 watches television an average of 27 hours a week. Other popular pastimes are listening to the radio or to CDs, gardening, and of course the pub.

(from ‘Britain 1996’)

Text 5

The Earliest Men

In some parts of Britain one can see a number of huge stones standing in a circle. These are the mountains left by the earliest inhabitants of the country. The best-known stone-circle named Stonehenge dates from between 1900 and 1600 B.C. It is made of many upright stones, standing in groups of twos, 8,5 metres high. They are joined on the top by other flat stones, each weighing about 7 tons. No one can tell how these large stones were moved, or from what places they were brought. Stonehenge is still a mystery to scholars. What was it used for? — As a burial place or a sacred place where early men worshipped the sun?

About three thousand years B.C. many parts of Europe, including the British Isles, were inhabited by a people, who came to be known as the Iberians because some of their descendants are still found in the north of Spain (the Iberian Peninsula). We do not know much about these early people because they lived in Britain long before a word of their history was written, but we can learn something from their skeletons, their weapons and the remains of their dwellings which have been found. The Iberians used stone weapons and tools. The art of grinding and polishing stone was known to them, and they could make smooth objects of stone with sharp edges and points.

Text 6

Cattle-breeding

Besides arable-farming, the Anglo-Saxons continued their old occupations of cattle-breeding, hunting and fishing. Oxen, sheep and goats belonging to the villagers grazed on the common pastures, and poultry (hens, geese, ducks) would feed there also. Pigs were turned into the woodland to feed on nuts and acorns.

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The animals were much smaller than those of today, and they did not weigh as much. They lived by grazing during the summer, and after the harvest they were allowed to roam over the arable land also. But in winter they could get little from the common pasture (nothing at all when it was covered with snow). The Anglo-Saxons had no rootcrops and the only fodder in winter was hay, which was obtained from the meadow during the summer. The crop of hay was divided among the villagers. As a rule there was not very much hay, and it was not easy to keep the animals alive and healthy through the winter. In autumn the Anglo-Saxons had to kill most of their animals and salt the meat.

Text 7

Knights

Who were the most important people in Europe at the time of the Norman Conquest? Kings, priests or peasants? Nobles or knights? Kings provided leadership, priests guided their people, and peasants grew food. Nobles helped to govern, and led armies into battle. But everyone depended on knights to defend their land. And the picture of a dashing knight on horseback, wearing splendid armour, is still one of our favourite images from medieval times.

Fighting for Money

Over the centuries, the system of knighthood changed. Some nobles and knights preferred to pay money, rather than go to war. Kings used this to pay for professional (‘mercenary’) soldiers, or to equip a national army of volunteers. Fighting for profit was hardly noble or heroic, and the Church taught that it was wrong. And, although medieval poets made knights the heroes of their ‘romances’ — songs about love, bravery and death — it is perhaps not surprising that real-life knights could not always live up to their own glorious image.

A Noble Career

Knights originated as the armed followers of great noble families. When summoned by the king, nobles were meant to leave their estates and families and ride off to war, bringing all their knights with them. In that way, kings were sure of a well-trained fighting force. Knighthood was considered a great honour, usually restricted to the upper, wealthier, ranks of society. Knights were often the sons of nobles or of other knights, but a very brave soldier might be rewarded on the field of battle by being made a knight.

Love and War

To poets, painters and songwriters, including those living in the Middle Ages, knights were romantic figures. The ideal knight — or

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‘the flower of chivalry’ (a French word meaning ‘horseman’) — was meant to be bold and daring, but also good and gentle. He fought only to defend his lord, his lady-love, and the Church.

Text 8

Colonial Times. The Need for an Empire

This mighty empire grew for two reasons, neither of them political: the need to reach new markets, and the need to find new raw materials. During the 19th century, many countries (such as China and Japan) that had banned European merchants now welcomed them. The Industrial Revolution had given British traders many new goods to sell. This created wealth which could be invested in new machines. But machines needed raw materials, such as tin and rubber, that were found only overseas. Consumers at home had more money to spend on imported goods such as tea, ivory, diamonds and silk. For Britain to remain prosperous, it had to control these supplies. It had also to stop other European nations taking them for themselves.

Victorian Values

The British Empire was established by a strong army and maintained by well-trained colonial staff. Queen Victoria’s personal qualities were mirrored in the way the British treated their colonies. Politicians used the image of the queen to inspire devotion. And British administrators treated conquered nations like Victorian children — to be praised for obedient behaviour and punished when they were bad.

Cruel Trade

European slave traders shipped about nine million slaves from the west coast of Africa to the Caribbean between 1648 and 1815. They were taken to work on sugar plantations. Some people thought that this ‘trade in human misery’ was wrong, but others preferred to think about its profits. In 1791, slaves in Haiti rioted. This rebellion was put down, but the slaves’ plight could no longer be ignored. Reformers in Europe campaigned against slavery and the slave trade. Britain banned slave trading in 1807; but slavery was not abolished in the British Empire until 1833. America finally abolished slavery on 14th April 1865.

Text 9

The Edwardian Town in 1905

All through the nineteenth century towns and cities grew in number and in population as industry and trade demanded more factories, more transport, more equipment, more services, and more people. With the very high birthrate — Victorian families of twelve or more

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