Лингвострановедение. Английский язык. Учебно-методическое пособие для самостоятельной работы студентов

3) Выберите название национального гимна Великобритании.

a)God Save Us and the Queen.

b)God Save the Queen

c)God Save Us and Our Country.

4) Какие три направления характерны для англиканской церкви?

a)evangelical, Anglo-Catholic, liberal wing.

b)‘low church’, ‘high church’, ‘middle church’.

c)conservative wing, democratic wing, liberal wing.

5) Выберите верное толкование реалии ‘keeping the sabbath’.

a)the influence of the Calvinist tradition relating to Sundays: shop opening hours, gambling and professional sport on this day are restricted in small ways, in some places in Wales Sundays are dry.

b)the influence of the Calvinist tradition relating to Sundays: shop opening hours, gambling and professional sport on this day are prolonged in small ways, in some places in Wales pubs are open day and night on Sundays.

c)the influence of the Quaker tradition relating to Sundays: shop opening hours, gambling and professional sport on this day are restricted in small ways.

6) Выберите верное толкование реалии the Presbyterian Church.

a)a trend of belief within Anglican Church.

b)a church within the Puritan / Calvinist tradition, the national church of Scotland.

c)the national church of Wales.

7) Выберите верное толкование реалии Quaker.

a)a member of the society of Friends, a Christian group that holds informal meetings instead of formal church services and is opposed to the use of sermons.

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b)a member of a nonconformist religious group which is comparatively strict both in the interpretation of the Bible and in their dislike of wordly pleasures.

c)a member of the society of Friends, a Christian group that holds informal meetings instead of formal church services and is opposed to the use of violence or resort to war under any circumstances.

8)Где находится официальная резиденция главы английской национальной церкви.

a)Westminster Abbey

b)Lambeth Palace, London

c)Canterbury

9)Как называется аналогичная англиканской, но находящаяся за пределами Англии церковь?

a)Calvinistic Methodist

b)Episcopalian Church

c)the Mormon Church

10) Какое утверждение верно в отношении католицизма?

a)Catholics are still under-represented at the top levels of society.

b)it has a marginal status.

c)religious instruction is taken less seriously in Catholic schools than in Anglican ones.

2.Объясните возникновение идиомы “as quiet as a church mouse”. К какой культурно обусловленной социальной модели поведения британцев она может быть отнесена?

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The USA

3. Read the text about religion in America and give definitions of the words in bold. What’s your attitude to the basic principle of church and government separation? What does the variety of religious groups result in (from the viewpoint of crosscultural communication)?

Religion in America

A basic American principle is separation of church (region) and state (government). The U.S. Constitution says that people have the right to worship as they choose and that no religion can be made the official religion. In keeping with this principle, government money cannot be used to support church activities and prayers may not be said in public schools. (The U.S. Congress, however, opens each year with a prayer.)

Studies show that about 9 in 10 Americans identify with a religion and that about 6 in 10 belong to a church.

About 94 per cent of Americans who identify with a religion are Christians, there are more Protestants than Catholics. However, there are many different Protestants denominations, or groups. For example, Protestants include, among others, Baptists,

Methodists, and Lutherans, and each of these groups is divided into smaller groups. So Catholics although outnumbered by Protestants, are the single largest religious group.

Jews are the largest non-Christian group, with about 4 per cent of the population. About 2 per cent of the population is Moslem, and smaller numbers are Buddhists and Hindus. Native Americans often preserve their trivial religions.

There are some differences among the regions when it comes to religion. In part these differences are related to where different immigrant groups settled. For example, the Lutheran religion was strong among Germans and Scandinavians. Many Germans and Scandinavians settled in the Midwest. So today there are many Lutheran churches in the Midwest.

The Baptist religion really developed in the South. Today there are still many Baptists in the Southern states. The state of Utah, in the West was settled by Mormons. Sections of the South and. to some extent, the Midwest are sometimes called the “Bible belt”. In these areas there are many Protestant fundamentalists, who believe that the Bible is literally true and that its message should be ant the centre of a person’s life.

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Russia

4. Read the texts about religion in Russia and say whether the information was taken from a tourist leaflet, tourist internet portal, book on history, TV documentary, or a newspaper article? What would you add? Under what circumstances would you discuss the question of religion with a foreigner? What would facilitate or ruin the discussion?

Religion in Russia

Religion plays a prominent role in the public and spiritual life of today's Russia. The majority of believers belong to the Orthodox Christian denomination.

Russia adopted Christianity under Prince Vladimir of Kiev in 988, in a ceremony patterned on Byzantine rites. Russia's baptism laid the foundations for the rise of the Russian Orthodox Church.

After the 1917 upheavals, the Russian Orthodox Church has traversed a hard and tragic road. The early years of the Soviet regime were particularly trying for it. The Land Decree of October 26, 1917, deprived the Church of the bulk of its lands. The worst hit were the monasteries. In another decree, made public on January 26, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars (the government) separated the church from the state and school. As a result, all church organizations lost the powers of legal entity and the right to own property. To have the decree put into effect, a special liquidation committee was set up to evict the monks from their monasteries, many of which were destroyed, not without acts of vandalism, in which church utensils and bells were melted down and shrines containing relics were broken open.

In the late 1980s, with attempts launched to restructure the country's economic and political system, major changes were made in the relationship between the state and the Church in the hope of revival. The millennium of Christianity in Russia in 1988 was celebrated on a grand scale. In that year, 1,610 new religious communities, most of them of the Orthodox belief, were registered in the country.

In 1990, a series of laws were passed on the freedom of religion, under which many of the existing restrictions were removed from religious communities, following them to step up their activities.

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Religion in Russia Today

With nearly 5,000 religious associations the Russian Orthodox Church accounts for over a half of the total number registered in Russia. Next in numbers come Moslem associations, about 3,000, Baptists, 450, Seventh Day Adventists, 120, Evangelicals, 120, Old Believers, over 200, Roman Catholics, 200, Krishnaites, 68, Buddhists, 80, Judaists, 50, and Unified Evangelical Lutherans, 39. Some statisticians estimate the percentage of believers at 40 per cent of the entire Russian Federation. Close to 9,000 communities belonging to over forty confessions had been officially registered in the country.

The majority of religious Russians are Christians. The country has over 5,000 Russian Orthodox churches. Many are built anew or under repair on parish and local budgets money. Among the several more ambitious projects is the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan, erected in Red Square to commemorate the liberation of Moscow by Minin and Pozharsky's militia, pulled down in 1936, and recently rebuilt from scratch. The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, demolished in 1931, is restored. Patriarch Aiexis II described its rebirth as "a sublime act of piety and penitence."

The nineteen million Muslims, the second largest religious community in Russia, have over 800 parishes and mosques, mostly in Bashkortostan, Daghestan, Kabarda-Balkaria, North Ossetia, Tatarstan, Ingushetia, and Chechnya. The Muslim Board for Central European region has been re-established. The Moscow Muftiyat, an independent ecclesiastical body, is responsible for the Moscow, Vladimir, Ivanovo, Kostroma, Tula, Tver, Nizhny Novgorod, Kaluga, Yaroslavl and Kaliningrad regions, and Sochi, the renowned seaside resort in the Krasnodar Territory.

Buddhism is widespread in Buryatia, Kalmykia, Tuva, and the Irkutsk and Chita regions. The Russian Federation currently has ten datsan monasteries, with the total monastic body approaching 200. Another ten monasteries are under construction.

The Russian Federation has 42 Jewish communities. Moscow accounts for over 10 per cent of Russian Jews, and has three synagogues, one of which is Hasidic.

Дацан – храм поклонников ламы, калмыков, бурят и пр.

Хасидизм – в иудаизме широкое народное религиозное движение с сильными мистическими элементами, возникшее в Восточной Европе в конце XVIII в. как протест против излишней талмудической учености.

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5.Переведите, обращая внимание на фразеологизмы.

-‘Ugliness is one of the seven deadly sins, then?’ cried the Duchess (O. Wilde)

-What do you suppose it’s about? – God knows (J. Steinbeck).

-‘She’s been a great help…’ – ‘You are preaching to the converted… I don’t know what I should have done without her’ (C.P. Snow).

-I thought Mrs Erlynne was a woman more sinned against than sinning… I believed what she told me – I was mistaken in her (O. Wilde).

6.Подберите эквиваленты русским пословицам

7.Questions to discuss

In what ways and to what extent, can different churches and religions in the countries be associated with particular geographical areas and particular social classes?

How can you characterize the relation between religion and politics in the countries?

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6. Национально-маркированная лексика систем социального

обеспечения и здравоохранения

Introduction

Сравните содержание переводных эквивалентов «public welfare system» и «система социального обеспечения». К какой группе национально-

маркированных единиц их можно отнести?

Изучите

предложенный O’Driscoll J. Britain. The country and its people: an introduction for learners of English. OUP, 2001 (Ch.18).

материал и выполните данные ниже задания.

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4.Questions to discuss.

Would you say that the balance in Britain and America between welfare provided by the state and welfare offered by charities is different from that in Russia? Does the balance appear to be a stable one, or is it shifting in favour of one or the other?

Do you think that the British and American welfare states are successful in giving help to everybody who needs it? How many and what kinds of people do you think ‘slip through the net’ of care? Is it different or the same in Russia?

What are the main problems of the welfare systems in all the three countries? What are possible solutions?

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