UNIT 6. YOUR NEAREST AND DEAREST

Task 1. Discuss the following questions with your partner:

1. Have you got a family? Is it big or small? Who are they? Who is the head of your family?

2. What are your parents? Where do they work? How long have your parents been married?

3. Have you got any brothers or sisters? Are they older or younger than you?

4. What relatives have you got? Which relative did you like best as a child and why? And who do you love most of all now? Why?

5. What does family mean for you? / What is the family in your understanding? / What associates with the word “Family”?

6. How often does your family get together? How close are you as a family? Do you spend a lot of time with your family? What sort of things do you do together? What are your family traditions?

7. How long should people live with their parents in your opinion? What advantages and disadvantages of living with parents and alone?

8. What is more important in your opinion: a family or a career?

9. Who is a family more important for: for a woman or a man?

10. Is it possible for a woman to combine a successful career and a happy family life?

Task 2. Rewrite the text filling the blanks with suitable words.

A Family

When two persons are married, the man is called …, the woman becomes his … . When a child is born in the family, the man becomes … and the woman becomes … and they both are called … . A family generally consists of … . The parents of the parents are called … . The first born child is …, the last born is … . Two children that are born together are called … . The father and mother of the wife or husband become … . The husband is …, the wife is … . The other members of the family are … . The brothers and sisters of any of parents become … of the children. The son of the brother or sister is called …, the daughter is … . The children of married brothers or sisters are … to each other. In case of the second marriage, we speak of … .

Task 3. In each line choose one word that doesn’t belong to the group and explain why you think so.

1) father, mother, sister, brother, cousin

2) mother-in-law, father-in-law, step-father, sister-in-law, son-in-law

3) friendly, efficient, generous, selfish, punctual

4) slim, tall, nervous, broad-shouldered, plump

5) skiing, swimming, sitting, reading, knitting

Task 4. Write at least 5 words under each category:

1) blood relatives; 2) ancestors; 3) relatives by marriage; 4) distant relatives; 5) close relatives; 6) male relatives; 7) female relatives.

Task 5. Fill in the gaps with the suitable words: uncles; nieces or nephews; typical; established a very close relationship with; only; keep in touch with; on my father’s side; distant; split up; cousins; relatives; spinster; great-aunt

I grew up in a (1) … family – my parents and I. I was an (2) … child in the family. During my early childhood I spent almost all my time with my grandmother (3) … . She was really lovely! I’ll never forget her soft hands, calm voice, and fabulous pies! But I never met my mother’s father; he died before I was born. I only know that he (4) … with his wife and lived with his sister, who was my (5) … . She never married; she was really an old (6) … . Sometimes I visited her; I still remember the smell of her house that was a little bit old. It was very strange for me to go round the old rooms looking at the photos of some of my (7) … . I gazed at them for hours: my (8) … in old-fashioned suits, my (9) … in funny caps and other (10) … relatives. We didn’t (11) … most of them. But later we (12) … my mother’s sister. We wrote letters to each other and exchanged Christmas presents. Unfortunately, I’ll never have (13) … , but I hope when I get married I’ll have a close family.

Task 6. Read and translate the texts.

A Typical British Family

A typical British family used to consist of mother, father and two children, but in recent years there have been many changes in family life. Some of these have been caused by new laws and others are the result of changes in society. For example, since the law made it easier to get a divorce, the number of divorces has increased. In fact one marriage in every three now ends in divorce. This means that there are a lot of one-parent families. Society is now more tolerant than it used to be of unmarried people, unmarried couples and single parents.

Another change has been caused by the fact that people are living longer nowadays and many people live alone following the death of their partners. As a result of these changes there are many households which consist of only one person or one adult and children.

You might think that marriage and the family are not so popular as they once were. However, the majority of divorced people marry again, and they sometimes take responsibility for a second family. Members of a family keep in touch, but they see less of each other than they used to. This is because people often move away from their home town to work, and so the family becomes scattered. In general, each generation is keen to become independent of parents in establishing its own family unit, and this fact can lead to social as well as geographical differences within the larger family group.

There are about ten million old-aged pensioners in Britain. At the present time, more than half of all old people are looked after at home. Many others live in old People’s Homes, which may be private or state-owned.

Relationships within the family are different now. Parents treat their children more as equals than they used to, and children have more freedom to make their own decisions. The father is more involved with bringing up children, often because the mother goes out to work. Although the family holiday is still an important part of family life, many children have holidays away from their parents, often with a school party or other organized group.