2. Pay attention to the following word combinations and make up 3 sentences of your own with each of them:

Decline to participate, decline to agree, decline the offer, fall into a decline; enable the continuation, enable to participate, enable to get hold of, enable an escape, enable an easy outcome; go through trials and ordeals, emerge from an ordeal, a day or ordeals, to pass through a terrible ordeal.

Phrases and Word Combinations

• take reasonable care

• a day of subtle trials and ordeals

• courteously decline

• to save sb from smth (such a fate)

• acute and clairvoyant

• overclouded somewhat by pedantry

• brisk, bustling, unimaginative

• efficiency

• to don

• preach from the pulpit

• a sermon of babbling meekness

• affable

• to rag

• Take my tip.

• inaudible

• from very close quarters

• be ignorant

• remark reminiscently

• much obliged to everybody

Reading comprehension exercises

1. Consult a dictionary and transcribe the following words from the text. Practice their pronunciation paying attention to stresses. Listen to your partners’ reading of the above exercise. Correct their mistakes.

Enviable, eloquent, wizened, morbidly ashamed, show no malice for the incident, rag, peaceable, contrite, suffered, additional handicap.

2. Find English equivalents to the following synonyms in the text. Restore situations \ sentences they were used in:

Wise, sensible

Trap, snare

Clear-sighted

Discerning

Treasurer

Expressive, telltale

Entrust

Effectiveness, efficiency, efficacy

Desirable

Energy

Get on, gown, put on

Gentleness, humbleness, mildness

Spite, rage

Repentant

Refuse, repudiate, turn down, reject

Flood

Arduous, hard

To row

Devise, invent, think out

A rostrum

Obstacle, hindrance

Ill-mannered, uncouth

Area, place, location, district

Trial

Humorous

Peaceful

Guy

3. Read out the following word combinations paying attention to the phonetic phenomena of connected speech (assimilation, the linking “r”, the sonorant between two vowels, lateral and nasal plosions, the loss of plosion).

Take reasonable care, subtle trials and ordeals, hindered by a peculiar type of nervousness, be inundated immediately with pots of jam, instinct rather than prevision, save sb from such a fate, to some extent, acute and clairvoyant, overclouded somewhat by pedantry, more eloquent, being caught in possession of, remark fiercely, a sporting man of great vigour, practically inaudible, suffer an additional handicap, pour ink over smth.

4. Find in the text equivalents to the following definitions. Restore the situations these words and word combinations were used in:

• a difficult or painful experience, especially one that severely tests character or endurance.

• a state of pain or anguish that tests patience, endurance, or belief

• characterized by gracious consideration toward others, Syn. to polite.

• overwhelmed as if with a flood

• a knowing in advance; foresight, a prediction; a forecast

• the supposed force, principle, or power that predetermines events

• in some ways; in some measure; somewhat; in some degree

• prattle, idle talk, jabbering

• susceptibility; impressionability, sentimentalism;

• unheard, unintelligible; indistinct;

• ominous, oracular, portentous, vaticinator

• a comptroller, which is often synonymous with auditor, generally has specific duties including the supervision of revenue, the examination and certification of accounts, and the inspection, examination, or control of the accounts of other public officials

• the habit or an instance of being a pedant, esp in the display of useless knowledge or minute observance of petty rules or details

• competence; effectiveness

• (of speech, writing, etc.) characterized by fluency and persuasiveness;