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Файл:Соединенные Штаты Америки. Учебное пособие
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COMPREHENSION CHECK
1. What crime did Robert Alton Harris commit? How long did it
take to put him to death?
2. How much money did the state of California spend on capital
cases since 1967? How many people have been executed
during this time?
3. What, according to the polls, is the attitude of Americans
towards capital punishment?
4. What is the ratio of white and black people put to death for
murder and their victims in the U.S.?
5. How does the execution of death penalty laws distributed
geographically?
6. How many people are there on death row in the U.S.?
7. What is nowadays more expensive for Americans — to
execute criminals or imprison them for life? Explain why.
8. Which lawyers — court-appointed or private — are more
likely to provide effective defense?
9. Do all those who are on death row deserve their punishment?
10. Comment on Williams’s case described in the story.
11. Why don’t most American politicians stand up against death
penalty?
ACTIVE VOCABULARY
to murder v — to kill somebody deliberately and illegally: He denies
murdering his wife’s lover.
to murder in cold blood — to kill somebody in a way that is
deliberately cruel; with no pity.
offense n –an illegal act, crime: to commit an offense.
drug n — an illegal substance that some people smoke, inject, etc. for
the physical and mental effect it has: drug and alcohol abuse.
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crime n — activities that involve breaking the law: an increase in
violent crime.
criminal n — a person who commits a crime: Prison is a place for
punishing criminals.
criminal adj — connected with or involving crime: criminal
behavior/damage/negligence.
to sentence to death — to say officially in court that somebody is to
receive capital punishment.
victim n — a person who has been attacked, injured or killed as a
result of a crime, a disease, an accident, etc.: murder/rape victims;
earthquake/famine victims; AIDS/ cancer victims.
to execute v — to kill somebody, esp. as a legal punishment: He was
executed for treason.
execution n — the act of killing somebody as a legal punishment.
appeal n — a formal request to a court or to somebody in authority
for a judgment or a decision to be changed: to file an appeal.
prisoner n — a person who is kept in prison as a punishment, or
while they are waiting for trail: prisoners serving life sentences.
conviction n — the act of finding somebody guilty of a crime in
court: She has six previous convictions for theft.
to confess (v) — to admit, esp. formally or to the police, that you have
done something wrong or illegal: she confessed to the murder.
confession n: He wrote and signed a full confession of his guilt.
innocence n — the fact of not being guilty of a crime: She protested
her innocence.
innocent adj — not guilty of a crime; not having done something
wrong: They have imprisoned an innocent man.
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ASSIGNMENTS
I. Translate into Russian:
1. The new law makes it a criminal offense to drink alcohol in
public places.
2. Chris does not smoke or take drugs.
3. Stores spend more and more on crime prevention.
4. He was not aware that he had committed an offense.
5. She was an innocent victim of an attack.
6. Over 200 executions were carried out last year.
7. She was a drug addict.
8. The demonstrators demanded the release of all political
prisoners.
9. He plans to appeal against his conviction.
10. He turned to crime when he dropped out of school.
11. After hours of questioning, the suspect confessed.
12. She pleaded guilty to five traffic offenses.
13. The murdered woman was well known in the area.
14. The crime rate is rising.
15. He confessed that he had stolen the money.
16. This new evidence will prove their innocence.
17. Police have appealed for witnesses to the accident.
18. He was the innocent party in the breakdown of the marriage.
19. The massacre was a crime against humanity.
20. The new legislation makes it an offense to carry guns.
21. Caroline was found innocent of any crime.
II. Paraphrase the sentences using the definitions of the
words from the active vocabulary:
1. Before the retirement from the court, he had sentenced a
defendant to death.
2. S. Gross of the University of Michigan explores the rate of
false convictions among death-sentenced inmates.
3. The court looked at the evidence and concluded Larry was
guilty of this horrible crime.
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4. Although the time between sentencing a criminal and
execution has grown longer, the size of death row has
remained relatively stable.
5. Blood and hair samples from the victim indicated that the
murderer had an accomplice.
6. Execution of criminals and political opponents has been used
by nearly all societies — both to punish crime and to suppress
political dissent.
7. A conviction is the verdict when a court of law finds a
defendant guilty of a crime.
8. The Law Review’s latest edition is focused on innocence and
death penalty.
9. Being a drug dealer, John realized that he was involved in drug
offence.
10. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital
offences.
III. Translate into English:
1. Вождение в нетрезвом состоянии — серьезное нарушение.
2. Невинная жертва была хладнокровно убита.
3. Я выяснил, что Стив сидит на наркотиках.
4. Мери обвиняется в покушении на убийство своего мужа.
5. После того как преступнику выносят приговор, суд опре-
деляет меру наказания.
6. Подозреваемый признался в преступлении.
7. Злоупотребление ал
8. Джо Грегг был приговорен к смертной казни в 1963 году.
9. Он даже и подумать не мог, что его посадят за торговлю
наркотиками.
10. Это преступное разбазаривание ресурсов.
11. Джеймс отрицает, что убил любовника своей жены.
12. Она известный автор криминальных романов.
13. Нил сказал, что бу
его признали виновным в убийстве.
14. Энн Хейл была приговорена к пожизненному заключению.
15. Поскольку это его первое правонарушение, его не посадят.
коголем и наркотиками очень опасно.
дет подавать апелляцию после того, как
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16. Преступление тратить столько денег!
17. Школы стали первыми жертвами бюджетных сокращений.
18. Она уже пять раз была осуждена за воровство.
19. Многие американцы выcтупают за отмену смертной казни.
20. Достоевского должны были казнить через повешение.
21. Джо Брауна только что приговорили к трем годам тюрьмы.
DISCUSSION
I. Answer the following questions:
1. What is appropriate just punishment for a crime? Can it be
seen as retribution? How does it compare to noble vengeance?
2. Do you think that execution is the only just punishment for
some terrible crimes?
3. The terrorists who were directly responsible for the destruction
of the World Trade Center died in the attack. Should those who
assisted in the planning of the attack be held responsible for the
deaths of almost 3000 people? Should they be convicted to
capital punishment?
4. From the moral point of view, do people have the right to kill
other human beings? Is it consistent with the value of human
life?
5. Can the fear of capital punishment stop a criminal going to
commit a crime?
6. If murderers are not put to death, can it encourage other
criminals to commit more murders?
7. Some people are sentenced to death on false charges. Is it
worthwhile saving the lives of real murderers in order to avoid
putting to death those who are innocent?
8. It is generally years before a death sentence is finally carried
out. Meanwhile some of the people on the death row go
through changes and moral growth. Is it fair to punish people
for a crime they committed during a different ‘stage’ in their
lives?
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II. Comment on the following statements:
1. Figures show that the states that do not employ the death penalty
generally have lower murder rates than the states that do.
2. When crime is planned, the criminal ordinarily concentrates on
escaping detection, arrest, and conviction. The threat of even the
severest punishment will not discourage those who expect to escape
detection and arrest.
(http://deathpenaltycurriculum.org/student/c/about/arguments/arguments.PDF)
III. Make a table which will list arguments for and against
capital punishment.
IV. Hold a debate between two teams, one of which will defend
the arguments for capital punishment and the other one against it.
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Unit 5
HOLIDAYS
PREREADING
1. What American holidays do you know?
2. How are they celebrated?
3. Have any of them become international?
TEXT 1
THE BEST AMERICAN HOLIDAY
If I am looking a little bloated and sluggish today, it is because it
was Thanksgiving here on Thursday, and I haven’t quite recovered yet.
I have a special fondness for Thanksgiving because, apart from
anything else, when I was growing up it was the one time of year we
ate in our house. All the other days of the year we just kind of put
food into our mouths. My mother was not a great cook, you see.
Now please don’t misunderstand me. My mother is a kindly,
cheerful, saintly soul, and when she dies she will go straight to
heaven, but believe me no one is going to say, ‘Oh, thank goodness
you’re here, Mrs. Bryson. Can you fix us something to eat?’.
To be perfectly fair to her, my mother had several strikes against
her in the kitchen department. To begin with she couldn’t cook. Mind
you, she didn’t especially want to be able to cook, and anyway she
couldn’t have even if she had wanted to. She had a career, you see,
which meant that she was always flying in the door two minutes
before it was time to put dinner on the table.
On top of this, she was a trifle absent-minded. She tended to
confuse similarly coloured ingredients like sugar and salt, pepper and
cinnamon, vinegar and maple syrup, cornflour and plaster of Paris,
which often lent her dishes an unexpected dimension. Her particular
speciality was to cook things while they were still in the packaging. I
was almost full-grown before I realized that clingfilm wasn’t a sort of
chewy glaze. A combination of haste, forgetfulness and a charming
incompetence where household appliances were concerned meant that
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most of her cooking experiences were punctuated with billows of
smoke and occasional small explosions. In our house, as a rule of
thumb, it was time to eat when the firemen departed.
Strangely, all this suited my father. My father had what you might
call rudimentary tastes in food. His palate really only responded to
three flavours — salt, ketchup and burnt. His idea of an outstanding
meal was a plate that contained something brown and unidentifiable,
something green and unidentifiable, and something charred. I am quite
sure that if you slow-baked, say, a loofah and covered it sufficiently
with ketchup, he would have said, ‘Hey, this is very tasty.’ Good food,
in short, was something that was wasted on him, and my mother
worked hard for years to see that he was never disappointed.
But on Thanksgiving, by some kind of miracle, she pulled out all
the stops and outdid herself. She would call us to the table and there
we would find a sumptuous spread of food — an enormous and
glistening turkey, baskets of cornbread and warm rolls, vegetables that
you could actually recognize, a tureen of cranberry sauce, a bowl of
exquisitely fluffed mashed potatoes, a salver of plump sausages, and
much else.
We would eat as if we had not eaten for a year (as, in effect, we
had not) and then she would present a golden, flaky-crusted pumpkin
pie surmounted by a Matterhorn of whipped cream. It was perfect. It
was heaven.
And it has left me with the profoundest joy and gratitude for this
most wonderful of holidays — for Thanksgiving is the most splendid
of occasions, and make no mistake.
Most Americans, I believe, think that Thanksgiving has always
been held on the last Thursday of November and that it has been going
on for ever — or at least as near for ever as anything gets in America.
In fact, although the Mayflower pilgrims did indeed hold a famous
feast in 1621 to thank the local Indians for their help in getting them
through their first difficult year and showing them how to make
popcorn and so on (for which I am grateful even yet), there is no
record of when that feast was held. Given the climate of New
England, it was unlikely to have been late November. In any case, for
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the next 242 years Thanksgiving as an event was hardly noted. The
first official celebration wasn’t held until 1863 — and then in August,
of all months. The next year President Abraham Lincoln moved it
arbitrarily to the last Thursday in November — no one seems to recall
now why a Thursday, or why so late in the year — and there it has
stayed ever since.
Thanksgiving is wonderful and for all kinds of reasons. To begin
with, it has the commendable effect of staying off Christmas. Whereas
in Britain the Christmas shopping season seems nowadays to kick off
round about the August bank holiday, Christmas mania doesn’t
traditionally begin in America until the last weekend in November.
Moreover, Thanksgiving remains a pure holiday, largely unsullied
by commercialization. It involves no greetings cards, no trees to trim,
no perplexed hunt through drawers and cupboards for decorations. At
Thanksgiving all you do is sit at a table and try to get your stomach
into the shape of a beach ball, and then go and watch a game of
American football on the TV. This is my kind of holiday.
But perhaps the nicest, and certainly the noblest, aspect of
Thanksgiving is that it gives you a formal, official occasion to give
thanks for all those things for which you should be grateful. Speaking
personally, I have a great deal to be thankful for. I have a wife and
children I am crazy about. I have my health and retain full command
of most of my faculties. I live in a time of peace and prosperity.
Ronald Reagan will never be President again. These are all things for
which I am grateful.
The only downside is that the passage of Thanksgiving marks the
inescapable onset of Christmas. Any day now — any moment — my
dear wife will appear beside me and announce that the time has come
to shift my distended stomach and get out the festive decorations. This
is a dread moment for me and with good reason, since it involves
physical exertion, wobbly ladders, and live electricity — all things
with the power to do me a serious and permanent injury. I have a
terrible feeling that today may be that day.
Still, it hasn’t happened yet — and for that, of course, I give my
sincerest thanks of all.
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NOTES
1. Pay attention to the difference in the following American
and British terms:
AmE corn — маис, кукуруза [=BrE maize] cf. BrE corn — зерно,
пшеница
AmE football cf. BrE American football — американский футбол
AmE soccer cf. BrE football — футбол
AmE plastic wrap/ Saran wrap cf. BrE clingfilm — тонкая
прозрачная полиэтиленовая пленка, в которую заворачивают
продукты
2. Pay attention to the difference in the following American
and British spellings:
AmE color cf. BrE colour
AmE flavor cf. BrE flavour
3. Pay attention to the difference in pronunciation:
ate AmE [eIt] cf. BrE [Qt]
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:
cornbread
cornflour
cranberry sauce
Lincoln, Abraham
maple syrup
Mayflower
New England
pumpkin pie
Reagan, Ronald
Thanksgiving Day
turkey
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