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Файл:Соединенные Штаты Америки. Учебное пособие
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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:
ABC
Boeing
CNN
commercial
Disney
DuPont
Exxon
General Motors
History Channel
inner-city
McDonald’s
New Orlean
Pepsi
Sesame Street
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Tylenol
COMPREHENSION CHECK
1. What is the problem with American commercials
according to the author?
2. What should the length of a 100-minute movie be if it is
interrupted for about a 3 minute span every 7 minutes?
3. What statistics is given by Neil Postman? What does it
make you think about?
4. Explain the following statement: “…even if you aren’t
watching commercials, you’re watching commercials.”
5. Do you agree that “commercials are inescapable”?
6. What is the purpose of launching educational programs
interrupted by commercials?
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ACTIVE VOCABULARY
to occur v to somebody —
mind:
The idea occurred to him in a dream.
to interrupt v —
what they are saying or doing:
someone to see you.
interruption n —
a situation; a time when an activity is stopped:
the power supply
uninterrupted adj —
continuous:
average
on (the) average —
to broadcast v (broadcast, broadcast) — to transmit programs by
broadcast n — a act of sending sound and/or pictures by radio or
adj — 1. calculated by adding several amounts together,
finding a total, and dividing the total by the number of amounts:
an average rate / cost / price; at an average speed of 100 miles
per hour.
intelligence; £20 for dinner is about average.
special:
radio or television:
television:
to say or do something that makes somebody stop
eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.
2. typical or normal:
I was just an average sort of student.
news broadcast;
(of an idea or a thought) to come into your
Sorry to interrupt, but there’s
something that temporarily stops an activity or
an interruption to
.
not stopped or blocked by anything;
children of above / below average
3. ordinary; not
usually; typically.
The BBC broadcasts to all parts of the world.
broadcast live.
series n pl — 1. a number of related or similar objects, events, etc.,
arranged or occurring in order or succession. 2. one of a group of
programs on television or radio which are shown regularly over a
period of time. Pay attention to the translation of the following
words: series —
span n — a stretch between two limits, esp. in time:
minutes; a life span
neat and clean
network n — 1. a large system of wires, lines, tubes, etc., that cross
one another or are connected with one another:
сериал; episode — серия.
a span of five
Idiom: spick and span (
: Their house is always spick and span.
also
spic and span)
—
a railway
232
network.
2.
a computer or telecommunication system linked
to permit exchange of information.
to rely v on —
1. to trust or have faith in somebody/something:
You
can never rely on the weather. You can rely on him to help
you.
2. to depend on somebody/something:
Ted has to rely
on his parents’ support.
audience n — the people listening to or watching a performance,
speech, television show, etc.:
audience of 8 million viewers
a TV program with an
.
executive n — a person or group having administrative or
managerial authority in an organization:
a company
executive.
ASSIGNMENTS
I. Translate into Russian paying attention to the active
vocabulary:
1. I worked with him over a span of six years.
2. As babies, we rely entirely on others for food.
3. 400 people a year die of this disease on average.
4. The concert will be broadcast live tomorrow evening.
5. The audience was nearly all men.
6. It was the latest in the series of articles on the nature of modern
society.
7. These days we rely heavily on computers to organize our work.
8. The debate was televised in front of live audience.
9. Small children have a short attention span.
10. You can rely on me to keep your secret.
11. His book reached even wider audience when it was made into a
movie.
12. It didn’t occur to him that his wife was having an affair.
13.
They were interrupted by a knock at the door.
40 hours is a fairly average working week for most people.
14.
15. Adjust your language to the age of your audience.
16. Please continue—I didn’t mean to interrupt.
17. Temperatures have been above average.
233
18. I rely on you to set a good example.
19. These changes have occurred over a long time span.
20. Her music appeals to a wide audience.
II. Paraphrase the following sentences using the active
vocabulary:
1. Do you trust your friend in everything?
2. It’s impossible to learn such a great number of information in a
short period of time.
3. The programs transmitted by this radio station are beaming
education values.
4. He wished the public were more attentive.
5. It’s no use starting the project right now. We don’t have
enough money for it.
6. Mr. Thornton's transmitted talks on exotic music are widely
known.
7. Recently this journal has published a number of articles
devoted to modern farming methods.
8. It did not come to my mind to mention it.
9. After being appointed to the administrative position she got a
lot of power in the company.
10. The chairman didn’t stop me till the end of my speech.
11. An interesting idea has entered my mind! What if we go to
Disneyland this coming weekend?
III. Below are words from the active, each followed by a group
of synonyms and antonyms. Decide which is a synonym and which
is an antonym referring to the context the word is used in:
to broadcast: to transmit, to telecast
to interrupt: to sever, to break off, to encourage to speak, to cut,
to hinder, to stimulate
average: customary, unusual, typical, extraordinary, normal,
special, traditional
to occur (to somebody): to come/spring to mind, to dawn on
somebody
234
IV. Translate the following sentences into English paying
attention to the active vocabulary:
1. Недавно произошла целая серия событий, которых никто
не мог предвидеть.
2. Эта телесеть транслирует только развлекательные пере-
дачи.
3. Я с ним работал на протяжении двух лет.
4. Это не тот человек, на которого можно положиться.
5. Нам удалось посмотреть трансляцию концерта в прямом
эфире.
6. В этом году стартовал новый цикл доку
ментальных
передач о жизни животных.
7. Ее работа была ниже среднего уровня в классе.
8. Они каждый день передают программы новостей для
местного населения.
9. Следует полагаться на собственные суждения.
10. Эта программа транслируется в среднем пять раз в
неделю.
11. Тебе никогда не приходило в голову, что людям не
нравится, когда их перебивают?
12. Могу я ра
выборов?
ссчитывать на твою поддержку во время
DISCUSSION
1. Can you imagine your life without commercials?
2. What things are usually advertised? Which of them are
especially popular with commercial makers?
3. Are you an easily persuaded person? Do you buy advertised
products?
4. What is your attitude towards little known brands?
5. What images are usually used by advertisement makers to
attract the customers’ attention?
ASSIGNMENTS
I. Develop the following situations and play out dialogues:
1. You and your husband are changing channels. You want to
watch your favorite series and he prefers a soccer game.
235
2. You are an executive of a TV company. Discuss with your
colleagues an idea to create a new educational program for
children.
II. Create an advertisement of your own paying attentions to
the images and vocabulary typically used by advertisers.
TEXT 3
LOST AT THE MOVIES
Every year about this time I do a mildly foolish thing. I gather up
some of the smaller children and take them to one of the summer
movies.
Summer movies are big business in America. This year between
Memorial Day and Labor Day Americans will spend $2 billion on
cinema tickets, plus half as much again on chewy things to stuff into
their mouths while watching a movie.
Summer movies are nearly always bad, of course, but I believe
this may be the worst summer ever. I always tell myself not to set
my expectations too high, that summer movies are the cinematic
equivalent of amusement park rides, and no one ever expected a
rollercoaster to provide a satisfying plot line. But the thing is,
summer movies have become so dumb — so very, very dumb — that
it is hard to abide them.
This year we went to the new Jurassic Park movie,
Lost World.
Now never mind that it is largely identical to the last Jurassic Park
movie. No matter. The dinosaurs are terrific and a dozen or so people
get squashed or eaten in the first hour. This is what we’ve come for!
And then it all falls apart. In a culminating scene a Tyrannosaurus
escapes, in an improbable manner,
from a ship, runs rampant
through downtown San Diego, crushing buses and destroying
petrol stations, and then — suddenly, inexplicably — is in the
middle of a heavily slumbering suburban neighborhood, alone and
unobserved. Now does it strike you as remotely likely that a
prehistoric, 20-foot-high creature not seen on earth for 65 million
years could cause mayhem in a city centre and then slip off into a
residential zone without anyone’s noticing? Does it not seem a
236
trifle unsatisfactory that while downtown San Diego is full of
people doing lively, mid-evening sorts of things — queueing up at
cinemas, strolling round hand in hand — out in the residential area
the streets are silent and every last soul is fast asleep?
And so it goes on from there. While police cars are dashing
around bumping helplessly into each other, the hero and heroine
manage to find the T-rex unaided and — undetected by anyone in
this city — lure him some miles back to the boat, so that he can be
returned to his tropical island home, thus setting up the happy,
inevitable and commercially gratifying possibility of a
Park 3. Lost World
million-plus budget, contains about $2.35 worth of actual thought,
and so of course it is on its way to setting all kinds of records at
the box office. In its first weekend alone it took in $92.7 million.
However, my problem is not really with
the other summer fare. I’m way past expecting Hollywood to
provide me with a cerebral experience during the warmer months.
My problem is with the Sony 6 Theatres of West Lebanon, New
Hampshire, and the thousands of other suburban
complexes like it, which are doing to the American movie-going
experience essentially what Steven Spielberg’s Tyrannosaurus rex
did to San Diego.
Anyone who grew up in America in the 1960s or before will
remember the days when going to the pictures meant visiting a
single-screen institution, usually vast, usually downtown. In my
hometown, Des Moines, the main cinema (imaginatively called
The Des Moines) was a palatial extravaganza with spooky
lighting and a decor that brought to mind an Egyptian crypt. By
my era, it was something of a dump — I am sure from the smell
that there was a dead horse in there somewhere — but just being
there, facing a vast screen in a cubic acre of darkness, was an
entrancing experience.
Except in a few major cities, nearly all those great downtown
cinemas are gone now. Instead what you get nowadays are
suburban multiplexes with an abundance of tiny screening rooms.
Although
chamber barely large enough to accommodate nine rows of seats.
Lost World
is slack and obvious and, for all its $100
Lost World
is the hottest movie around, we saw it in a
Jurassic
or any of
cinema
237
Before it started, we had to sit through 30 minutes of
commercials. The popcorn
expensive, and the salespeople had been programmed to try to sell
you things you didn’t want and hadn’t asked for. In short, every
feature of this cinema seemed carefully designed to make a visit a
deeply regretted experience.
I’m not cataloguing all this to make you feel sorry for me, though
sympathy is always welcome, but to point out that this is
increasingly the standard experience for cinema goers in America. I
can handle a little audio-visual imbecility, but I can’t bear to see the
magic taken away.
I was talking about this to one of my older children the other day.
She listened attentively, even sympathetically, then said a sad thing.
‘Dad,’ she told me, ‘you need to understand that people don’t want
the smell of a dead horse when they go to the movies.’
She’s right, of course. But if you ask me they don’t know what
they are missing.
NOTE
Pay attention to the difference in the following British and
American terms:
and confections were outrageously
gas station
AmE
AmE to line up cf. BrE
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:
cf. BrE
CULTURAL ASSOCIATIONS
petrol station
to queue up
downtown
Hollywood
Jurassic Park
Labor Day
Memorial Day
popcorn
San Diego
— встать в очередь
— бензозаправка
238
Spielberg, Steven
amusement park
rollercoaster
COMPREHENSION CHECK
1. Prove using facts from the text that movie business is
successful in the U.S.
2. Why does Bill Bryson find the
and unsatisfying?
3. How does today’s experience of movie-going compare to
the author’s memories from his youth? Why does he think
that nowadays
4. Explain how you understand the following phrases:
“summer movies are the cinematic equivalent of amusement park
rides, and no one ever expected a rollercoaster to provide a satisfying
plot line.”
“…the thousands of … suburban
are doing to the American movie-going experience essentially
what Steven Spielberg’s Tyrannosaurus rex did to San Diego.”
the magic is taken away?
ACTIVE VOCABULARY
Lost World
cinema complexes …, which
movie illogical
terrific
residential area n — suitable for living in; consisting of houses
hot
outrageous
screen
adj
— [informal] 1. excellent, wonderful: I
terrific today.
work today. We drove along at a terrific speed.
rather then factories and offices:
adj
— [informal] new, exciting, and very popular:
of the hottest clubs in town.
scandalous:
shocking:
outrageously
n —
are shown on:
2. very large, great:
adj
— 1.very shocking and unacceptable.
outrageous behavior.
She says the most outrageous things sometimes.
adv: outrageously expensive.
1. the large flat surface that films, movies or pictures
a cinema/movie screen.
I’ve got a terrific amount of
a quiet residential area.
2. very unusual and slightly
2. films/movies or
feel absolutely
This is one
Synonym
239
:
television in general:
He has adopted the play for the screen/
some actors never watch themselves on screen. She was a star
of stage and screen.
hometown n — the place where you were born or lived as a child.
row n — a line of seats in the cinema/movie theatre:
Let’s sit in
the back row. Our seats are five rows from the front.
seat n — a place where you can sit:
He put his shopping on the
seat behind him. Please take a seat. We used the branch of an
old tree as a seat. We all filled back to our seats in silence.
sympathy n — the feeling of being sorry for somebody:
heartfelt sympathy goes on to the victims of the war. May we
offer our deepest sympathy on the death of your wife. I have no
sympathy for Bill, he is too conceited.
Russian as
сочувствие
— don’t confuse with
to miss v something — to fail to be or go somewhere:
Note:
Translated into
симпатия
!
She hasn’t
missed a game all year. You missed a good party last night.
to miss the point
missing
adj — 1.
expected place, lost:
— to fail to understand.
that cannot be found, not in the proper or
He has a finger missing from his left hand.
Hundreds of missing persons are reported to the police every
week.
WORD COMBINATIONS AND EXPRESSIONS
fast asleep
–sleeping deeply:
I waited until they were all fast
asleep.
Our
culminating scene
to fall apart
breaking off:
— the highest point or end of the movie
— 1. to be in a very bad condition so that parts are
My car is falling apart. 2.
marriage finally fell apart.
to set a record
reached:
— to achieve the best result that has ever been
She set a new world record for the high jump.
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to break up:
Their
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