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Файл:Соединенные Штаты Америки. Учебное пособие
.pdf
Волгоград Volgograd
Издательство VSPU
ВГПУ Publishing House
«ПЕРЕМЕНА» «PEREMENA»
2009 2009
Olga Leontovich
Tatyana Dyakova
The United States
Explained
Volgograd
VSPU Publishing House
«Peremena»
2009
2
О. А. Леонтович, Т. В. Дьякова
Соединенные
Штаты
Америки
Учебное пособие
Волгоград
Издательство ВГПУ
«Перемена»
2009
3
ББК 81.432.1–923
Л 477
Леонтович, О. А., Дьякова, Т. В.
7
Л 47
ISBN 978-5-9935-0146-8 ББК 81.432.1–923
Со
единенные Штаты Америки : учеб. пособие / О. А. Леонтович, Т. В. Дьякова. — Волгоград : Изд-во ВГПУ «Перемена», 2009. — 244 c.
ISBN 978-5-9935-0146-8
Учебное пособие основано на книге Билла Брайсона “Notes
from a Big Country” и включает аутентичные тексты, посвященные
актуальным проблемам жизни и культуры США, систему
упражнений, направленных как на преподавание американского
варианта английского языка, так и на развитие у студентов
культурной грамотности и коммуникативной компетенции.
The textbook is based on Notes from a Big Country by Bill Bryson.
It includes authentic texts devoted to important aspects of U. S. life and
culture. The book contains a system of exercises intended for the study of
American English, as well as the development of the students’ cultural
literacy and communicative competence.
© О. А. Леонтович, Т. В. Дьякова, 2009
© Издательство ВГПУ «Перемена»,
оформление, 2009
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CONTENTS
About Bill Bryson’s book “Notes from a big country”...............6
Unit 1. Introduction ..............................................................................7
Unit 2. U.S. Geography ......................................................................17
Unit 3. The State.................................................................................41
Unit 4. Law and Order........................................................................ 63
Unit 5. Holidays.................................................................................. 87
Unit 6. Food......................................................................................105
Unit 7. American Life Style..............................................................135
Unit 8. Education..............................................................................152
Unit 9. Sports....................................................................................175
Unit 10. The People .......................................................................... 194
Unit 11. Mass Media ........................................................................223
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ABOUT BILL BRYSON’S BOOK
“NOTES FROM A BIG COUNTRY”
Bill Bryson is a famous American journalist whose books and
articles are very informative and filled with humor. In Notes from a
Big Country he describes how, after spending nearly two decades in
the UK, he returns to the U.S. bringing along his English wife and
four children. The country has changed a lot, and the author discovers
it together with the reader.
The book is actually a collection of the weekly columns written by
Bryson for a British magazine, which accounts for the British
spellings and terms used in the texts, as well as the fact that they are
addressed to British readers.
The texts are very enjoyable, it is only important to grasp the
author’s humor and follow him through the world of American
culture.
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Unit 1
INTRODUCTION
PREREADING
Answer the questions:
1. How would you define the notion “home”? What does it imply
for you?
2. Name things which are “native” and which are “foreign” to
you.
3. Can you feel at home when abroad? Why/Why not?
TEXT 1
COMING HOME
A year ago last May, after nearly two decades in England, I moved
back to the States with my wife and children. Returning home after
such an absence is a surprisingly unsettling business, a little like
waking from a long coma. You quickly discover that time has wrought
changes that leave you feeling mildly foolish and out of touch. You
proffer hopelessly inadequate sums when making small purchases.
You puzzle over vending machines and payphones, and are quite
astounded to discover, by means of a stern grip on your elbow, that
gas station road maps are no longer free.
In my case, the problem was intensified by the fact that I had left
as a youth and was returning in middle age. All those things one does
as an adult — take out mortgages, have children, accumulate pension
plans, develop an interest in household wiring — I had only ever done
in England. Things like furnaces and screened windows were, in an
American context, the preserve of my father.
So finding myself suddenly in charge of an old New England
home, with its mysterious pipes and thermostats, its temperamental
garbage disposal and life-threatening automatic garage door, was
both unnerving and rather exhilarating.
Moving home after many years away is like that in most respects —
an odd blend of the comfortingly familiar and oddly unknown. I can
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enumerate all kinds of things that mark me out as an American —
which of the fifty states has a unicameral legislature, what a squeeze
play is in baseball, who played Captain Kangaroo on TV. I even know
about two-thirds of the words to The Star-Spangled Banner, which is
more than some people who have sung it publicly.
But send me to the hardware store and even now I am totally
lost. For months I had conversations with the sales clerk at our
local True-Value that went something like this:
‘Hi. I need some of that stuff you fill holes in walls with. My
wife’s people call it Polyfilla.’ ‘Oh, you mean spackle.’
‘Very possibly. And I need some of those little plastic things
that you use to hold screws in the wall when you put shelves up. I
know them as Rawlplugs.’
‘Well, we call them anchors.’
‘I shall make a mental note of it.’
Really, I could hardly have felt more foreign if I had stood there
dressed in Lederhosen. All this was a shock to me. Although I was
always very happy in Britain, I never stopped thinking of America as
home, in the fundamental sense of the term. It was where I came
from, what I really understood, the base against which all else was
measured.
In a funny way nothing makes you feel more like a native of your
own country than to live where nearly everyone is not. For twenty
years being an American was my defining quality. It was how I was
identified, differentiated. I even got a job on the strength of it once
when, in a moment of youthful audacity, I asserted to a senior editor
of The Times that I would be the only person on the staff who could
reliably spell Cincinnati. (And it was so.)
Happily, there is a flipside to this. The many good things about
America also took on a bewitching air of novelty. I was as dazzled as
any foreigner by the famous ease and convenience of daily life, the
giddying abundance of absolutely everything, the wondrous unfillable
vastness of an American basement, the delight of encountering
waitresses who seemed to be enjoying themselves, the curiously
astounding notion that ice is not a luxury item.
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As well, there has been the constant, unexpected joy of reencountering those things I grew up with but had largely forgotten:
baseball on the radio, sudden run-for-your-life thunderstorms, really
big snowfalls, Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July, insects that glow,
air-conditioning on really hot days, Jell-o jelly with chunks of fruit in
it (which nobody actually eats, but it’s nice just to have it there
wobbling on your plate), the pleasingly comical sight of oneself in
shorts. All that counts for a lot, in a strange way. So, on balance, I was
wrong. You can go home again. Just bring extra money for road maps
and remember to ask for spackle.
CULTURAL ASSOCIATIONS
Look up the following entries in the Dictionary of U. S. Life and
Culture (Жизнь и культура США: Лингвострановедческий
словарь) or other dictionaries and encyclopedias:
adult
Captain Kangaroo
Cincinnati
Fourth of July
garbage disposal
Jell-o jelly
Lederhosen
New England
payphone
Thanksgiving
The Star-Spangled Banner
vending machine
READING
Get ready to read the text aloud in class. Make sure you know
the pronunciation of all the words. Express the meaning of each
sentence clearly.
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COMPREHENTION CHECK
Answer the following questions:
1. Who is the story-teller? What do you get to know about him
from the first lines of the story?
2. What problems did the author encounter when he came home
to the U.S.A. from England?
3. What expressions does the author use to show his feelings?
4. Retell the episode in the hardware store and comment on it.
5. Did the author find life in the U.S.A. the same as when he had
been a boy or different?
6. Describe the author’s attitude towards the changes that he
discovered.
7. In what tone (serious, humorous, ironical, sarcastic) is the story
written?
ACTIVE VOCABULARY
decade n — a period of ten years; a group or set of 10.
to puzzle v — to mystify, baffle: What puzzles me is why they didn’t
take her advice.
puzzle n — 1. a toy, game or problem designed to amuse by
presenting difficulties to be solved. 2. [usu. sing.] something which
one cannot understand or explain.
to purchase v — to buy: to purchase a new car.
purchase n — an act of buying: She made several purchases in the
supermarket.
adult adj — a fully grown person or animal, esp. a person over an age
stated by law: This film is for adults only.
abundance n — a great quantity, plenty: At the party there was food
and drink in abundance.
abundant adj — more than enough, plenty.
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