Dialogue

Read and translate the dialogue into Russian. Practice good reading of the dialogue. Change the names in the dialogue and learn it by heart. Act it out with a partner.

Discussing exams

Pete	Hello, Bob! Glad to see you.
Bob	Hello, Pete. It’s nice to see you too. How are you?
Pete	Thank you. Fine. Hope you are well too. By the way, I saw Victor, your room-mate, this morning. He looks very happy. I wonder why.
Bob	No wonder. He did well in his exams.
Pete	Good for him! And what about you? Did you get through?
Bob	No, I failed history.
Pete	Failed? You didn’t say so. What’s the reason?
Bob	To be frank with you, I cut lectures rather often and sometimes didn’t attend seminars. I didn’t work hard enough.
Pete	For shame! It serves you right. It’ll be a good lesson for you.

Text 2

Read and translate the text into Russian. Ask 10 questions on the text. Retell the text.

The American Family

The American family is a nuclear family, consisting usually of a husband, wife, and children who live in their own house or apartment. Grandparents rarely live in the same home with their married sons and daughters, and uncles and aunts almost never do. Americans have fewer children than in many other cultures. The typical American couple has two children, so that the average American family has four people living together as a household unit. A great value is placed on each child's having a room of his or her own.

Marriages are not “arranged” in the US. Young people are expected to find a husband or wife on their own; their parents do not help them. In fact, parents are often not told of marriage plans until the couple has decided to marry. This means that parents have little control, and generally not much influence, over whom their children marry.

Americans believe that young people should fall in love and then decide to marry someone they can live happily with. Of course, in reality this does not always happen, but it remains the ideal of marriage among young Americans.

The majority of American women value companionship as the most important part of marriage. Other values, such as having economic support and the opportunity to have children, although important, are seen as less important.

If the couple is not happy, they may choose to get divorced. A divorce is relatively easy to obtain in most parts of the United States. Some states have ”no-fault” divorce. To obtain a “no-fault” divorce, a couple states that they can no longer live happily together and that it is neither partner’s fault.

The divorce rate has risen rapidly in the United States over the last twenty years. Approximately one out of every three marriages ends in divorce, and the numbers are rising. Americans believe that unhappy couples should not stay married for the sake of the children, they do not want to sacrifice individual happiness for I the sake of the children.

The current generation thinks that unhappy marriages do not contribute to the happiness of the children.

According to the American sociologists, the institution of marriage in the USA has had four stages of development:

Stage I: Wife as Servant to Husband

Stage II: Husband – Head, Wife – Helper

Stage III: Husband – Senior Partner, Wife – Junior Partner

Stage IV: Husband – Wife – Equal Partners

In the USA today most marriages are either the husband-head or the husband-senior partner type, but the latter is becoming more typical as more and more wives take jobs outside the home.

More and more American women come to believe that they should be equal partners rather than junior partners in their marriages.

Accordingly, stage IV, although not typical of most American marriages at present will grow most rapidly in the future.

Americans are strongly attached to the idea of the family as the best of all life styles. Families are seen by many Americans as places where one can find refuge from the highly competitive world outside.