Vocabulary notes

a steel-reinforced door	стальная дверь
Mace	баллончик с газом
to disguise	зд. изменять
marital status	семейное положение
to soar	взлетать
the throng	толпа
to smoke pot	курить марихуану
to loiter	слоняться без дела
to swear	клясться
the change	мелочь

Task 3. Read the text again and make sure you know all underlined parts of the text. Give their Russian equivalents

Task 4. Answer the following questions:

1. What is the main idea of this passage?

2. Why are many Americans changing the way they live their lives?

3. What portrait does a Reader's Digest/Gallup Survey present?

4. Who worries about personal safety and why?

5. Where are crime rates highest?

6. What precautions do people take in order to cope with crime?

Task 5. Make up your own questions. Use the following words and word combinations from the text

Property crime, to install a steel-reinforced door, to leave the lights on, on the increase, the number of, in-person interviews, yo be particularly worried, to harm, the change, to cut sb up

Task 6. Explain in English what the words and word combinations mean:

Household, mugging, to burglarize, Mace, to reside in, crime rate, low-cost housing project, elegant, to push one’s way through, to go for, to teach sb a lesson

Task 7. Practice the speech patterns given below. Make up two sentences of your own on each pattern

1. The result: many Americans are changing the way they live their lives.The jurors mustn’t discuss the way the judge disposes of the case. We disapprove of the way she treats her relatives. I don’t like the way she talks about her friends.

2. Endia London will not leave her New York City apartment house, even to buy groceries, unless her husband drives her in the car. He will not give a divorce, he won’t hear of it. I will not leave you whatever you say.

3. Particularly worried are those people who reside in central cities. Especially surprised were the people who have never seen anything of this kind.

4. Residents hesitate to push their way through the throng of pot-smoking youths loitering around the entrance. She hesitated to accept that invitation though the temptation was very strong.

5. A Reader's Digest/Gallup Survey presents a portrait of a nation afraid, with the fear cutting across geographical boundaries, ethnic divisions, income levels, age groups, sex, and marital status. . Local government and private organizations have followed suit, with several states now requiring the number for drivers' licenses, and schools and colleges demanding it for records.

Task 8. Make the summary of the text. Use the key words and word combinations

Text 2

Task 1. Answer the questions:

1. Are you afraid to walk in your own neighborhoods any time?

2. Are you sure your neighbors w ill come to your aid in time of crisis?

3. Do you know what “a siege mentality” means?

Task 2. Read the text to get the main idea paying special attention to the underlined parts of the text (key words and word combinations

Thirteen percent of all Ameri­cans (31 percent of women living in central cities) are afraid to walk even in their own neighborhoods in daylight, and about half (43 percent of whites and 38 percent of non­whites) would be afraid to walk the streets at night within a mile of their homes. The figure rises to 76 percent among women living in heavily urbanized areas. Sixteen percent of the people interviewed in the survey admit to being fearful at night even in their homes. (Sig­nificantly, however, this figure is unchanged from ten years ago.)

College student Antonelia Catalozzi will leave her house in Provi­dence, R.I., at night only if she is accompanied by friends—"the more, the better," she says. But fear is by no means confined to cities. "People get robbed here too," says Lewis Kimbrell, a resident of a rural area in South Carolina.

"The way of life is vastly dif­ferent from what it was when I was growing up," says Theresa Thompson, 34, a white woman who was raised in the largely black ghetto of Watts in Los Angeles. "People helped one another then. My family and I never worried about our safety even during the race riots. We knew our neighbors would come to our aid in time of crisis." Now she lives with her husband and children in the relatively affluent suburb of Canoga Park, Calif., but feels she can no longer depend on her neighbors. "They keep their doors locked and blinds down," she says. "I doubt they'd come out even if they heard you screaming."

Fear has created a siege mentality. Public-opinion polls, such as The Figgie Report on Fear of Crime: America Afraid, reveal that nine of ten Americans will not open the doors of their homes until callers have identified themselves and stat­ed their business; six often make a point of dressing plainly to discourage muggers; 60 percent call back after they leave friends' houses to say they got home safely; 46 percent leave lights and radios on when they go out; and 11 percent carry weapons, Mace or other instruments of defense. In a Washington, D.C., poll, crime was ranked above unemployment as the most important problem facing city government.

Are these fears justified? Indeed they are, the Reader's Digest/Gallup Survey indicates. Of every 100 American households, 8 had been broken into during the preceding 12 months, or at least a break-in attempt was made; 12 had money or property stolen from family members; 11 had property vandalized.

Despite the popular impression that older citizens are the favored prey of criminals, our survey found that younger people in the 18-to-24 age bracket suffer the highest rate of victimization (38 percent). The figure falls with each successively older age group, reaching its lowest point (15 percent) among those aged 65 and older.