Comprehension

Exercise 1.Make up 5–7 multiple choice questions or true or false statements about the text to check comprehension.

Exercise 2. Sum up the main points of the text in your own words.

Language practice

Exercise 3.Give the meanings of the words and phrases below, com­ment on their register and expressiveness and suggest synonyms of various degrees of formality. Think up appropriate contexts with them:

resplendent / to hoist a point / undoing, n / to work against the grain / to clinch a deal / demeanour / to maroon smb. / one-upmanship, to be one up on smb. / there is more to it than that / to be world-weary (with experience) / to earn Brownie-points / bent on sth. / to have mixed emotions (feelings) about sth. / docile, supine / to give smb. an even break / teensy / supplicant/ rattled / acolyte / (industrial) close-out / to slosh / to be on one’s own turf / seediness, seedy / down-at-heel / to underplay one’s hand.

Exercise 4.Identify the cultural things, stereotypes and topics in the text and comment on them. An up-to-date dictionary on language and culture or any reference book will help you do it better.Note: you are expected to be able to sort out factual information from the author’s emotional attitude and evaluation.

Exercise 5. Phrasal Verbs Practice.

Write out all the sentences with phrasal verbs, look them up in a recent dictionary and write out more sentences with them. Translate the sentences in writing, possibly with a number of options for different speech situations.

Exercise 6.Choose and use:

SALARY / PAY / WAGES // TEA / SUPPER / DINNER / LUNCH

1. The executive was dissatisfied with his … 2. Workers demand higher … 3. A … usually comes with an office job, and is paid once a month. 4. A blue-collar job is usually paid for weekly, with either a … or … 5. ‘I must get him his …’ is a common working-class expression about the biggest meal of the day. 6. … in a working-class set-up can often be eaten in the middle of the day and would be described as … by other social groups. 7. … is the usual name to describe the evening meal in middle-class and upper-class families, for … in this case tends to sound slightly more pretentious. 8. … can also be a more formal meal, possibly with some people coming round.

Exercise 7.What other language from the text would you like to select for intensive study and why?

Speaking

Exercise 8.Use your outside reading, personal experiences, TV and video-watching, etc. to support, expand on or question the points and observations made in the chapter.

Writing

Exercise 9.Re-write the text above so that it could be used by intermediate learners. Decide which points should be kept as essential and which ones could be left out. Edit the style of your new text.

Exercise 10. Write a 300-word commentary explaining the cultural things and stereotypes involved.

Unit 5. Brits and yanks at home Home as backdrop

AMERI-THINK: The home is the ultimate expression of Me. It is one area over which I have perfect control; a place to display aspirations and live out fantasies ... however eclectic these may be. Home is a multi-faceted Me.

There’s a ‘tropical’ room with whirling ceiling fans and plenty of rattan; an English Tudor dining-room with hammered beams in the ceiling; an apricot-and-gilt bedroom where I’ve indulged my taste for Louis XVI, and a hi-tech post-modernist media room with fauxmarbled walls. What matter if the exterior is red brick neo-Federalist, or Cape Cod shingle? If America is a cultural melting-pot, so is its domestic architecture ... as a quick drive through Beverly Hills will confirm. Forget consistency. It’s impact we’re after.

Members of the aspirational middle classes will have ‘an interior decorator’ as surely as they will have hairdressers, gynaecologists and ‘day-workers’ (cleaning ladies). The role of the decorator is not to impose’ taste (surely not), but to ‘interpret’ the client’s life-style. Ameri-clients will gladly pay the heftiest fees in return for the assurance that theyhave life-styles.

A good decorator can do much to mask personal shortcomings. Shaky taste can be ‘re-edited’ into something acceptable; even a client who is a real slob can be cunningly re-packaged as ‘California casual’. This means lots of scatter-cushions on the floor and Navajo blankets thrown casually over the backs of chairs so the mess looks intentional.

Yanks enjoy creating domestic scenarios (‘home as backdrop’) and are accustomed to shelling out proportionately. $5,OOO per room, counting furniture and labour, is considered quite average. They redecorate houses from top-to-bottom every time they move ... and they move often. It’s a rare Yank who’s prepared to live with someone else’s carpet or wallpaper. Not only does it cramp his style, but ‘you never know what they’ve done on it’.

Ameri-home is the obvious physical expression of the American Dream. By Euro-standards, even your average shack is ‘super-equipped’. It has Kleenex in every room. It has air-conditioning, micro-waves, media centres, computerized security systems and automatic ice-cube dispensers. It has intercoms, piped gas barbeques, water-and-air purifiers, sprinkler systems and remote-controlled garage doors. Americans are probably the only people in the world who can’t contemplate life without a built-in garbage compactor.