English_books / Adv_eng

1Did you have a nice time?

2He said some nice things about you.

3It was very nice of you to invite me.

k You look very nice.

5 He's a very nice man.

6It was nice and quiet there.

7Please be nice to them.

8 It was nice of you to give me a present!

Remember that there's rarely a one-to-one equivalence between 'synonyms'.

Rewrite these sentences, replacing the phrases in red with the correct form of the expressions listed below which mean the same.

1She's a difficult person to have a friendly relationship with.

2I tried phoning several times but I couldn't make contact.

3It may be difficult to communicate these ideas to everyone.

4I don't understand what you're implying.

5Try not to let it depress you if someone criticises you.

6The lecturer spoke so fast that we couldn't write everything he said.

7I don't want to take part in the show, but how can I avoid it?

8They were unable to recover from the setback.

9I hoped we could meet but we never managed to find the time.

10It may take you a while to become involved in the book.

11I haven't got time for a holiday but I hope to escape for a long weekend.

12The only way to succeed in politics is to have the right connections.

13We'd better start moving - it's nearly lunchtime.

14Leave a message and I'll return your call.

15Look, it's clear we're having no success, let's try a different plan.

16He got his revenge by letting her car tyres down.

Phrasal verbs tend to be used more in spoken English than in written English.

ft t first glance it's the usual Cambridge scene: the fight for Tl places to park the bicycle, the hasty greetings called across the courtyard, the scramble for decent seats next to your friends, the silence before the lecture begins. The difference here is that the greetings are a little cheerier, the scramble a little more intense, the silence a little more avid, and, though you may not notice it, there are more grey hairs. The students at the new Cambridge University are all aged 50 or over.

The Wednesday afternoon lecture is the main event of the week for members of the University of the Third Age, or 'U3A' as they call it. But every day there are classes going on all over town ranging from Chinese to computers. The new university now has more than 700 members, it was the first of its kind in Britain, but the idea caught on quickly and Third Age universities have started up all over the country.

Although Shakespeare chronicled Seven Ages of Man, the new university makes do with four. The Third Age comes

when the First Age of childhood and the Second Age of earning a living and bringing up a family are over, it may well last as long as 30 years, beginning in the fifties and going on into the sixties, seventies and eighties. The belief and the hope is that an active Third Age can postpone the Fourth Age of weakness and death, squeezing that into the shortest period possible.

Thirty years is a long time to feel bored, lonely and useless: it's not nearly long enough for the members of the University of the Third Age to do all the things they want to do. Barbara Taptiklis is a case in point. A widow and a grandmother, her life is still as busy and active as ever. 'We dash to classes and then we meet up for coffee. I'm learning French. I never had the time before. People say you can't learn a new language when you're old, but that's nonsense. It just depends on your drive and willingness to do it. The difference with U3A is that we feel we're using our brains.

We're not superior, not at all. We're just extending our knowledge, starting again really and it's fun.'

Students pay £10 for six months' membership of the university and for this they can go to as many or as few, classes as they wish. There are also regular social and sporting events. One of the reasons why so much activity is possible and costs so little is that the teachers give their time free and seem to enjoy it just as much. Richard Bennett a retired schoolteacher who takes one of the French classes, says the great joy is that everybody is motivated. There are none of those little boys in the back row trying to hide under their desks. 'Most of us who teach also learn. I'm doing cookery and music. We're doing areas of 20th-century music I'd never explored before and I'm finding out all sorts of things.'

Sonia Beesley

Paragraphs

Reading and Effective writing

TTO Here's the first part of a newspaper article. Decide WHY the writer has chosen to start each fresh paragraph in the places she has.

Paragraphs break a text into easy-to-manage sections, making it easier for the reader to

understand. Normally, related ideas and examples are grouped together in the same paragraph. Each new idea requires a

fresh paragraph.

Germany, which has Europe's youngest pensioners and oldest students, now has a

rebellious Grey Party claiming that "old is beautiful" and calling for a greater say for the over 60s.

The leader of the new party, Mrs Trude Unruh, aged 64, says she has decided that remaining quiet is "no good." Clubs for old people should be turned into "centres for political education and agitation."

Mrs Unruh (her name in English means "restless") spent more than two years sitting as a Green in the Bundestag. But she says the Greens used her to attract pensioners' votes without rewarding the Greys with promised constituencies.

Equipped with a cloth cap and megaphone, she is ready to take on the established political parties in next year's general election. She will campaign for a

guaranteed minimum state pension of up to DM1,500 a month (£600), and pledges to put an end to "old people being totally at the mercy of the system and the welfare mafia."

As far as possible, the Greys want to do without homes for the old, care institutions or psychiatric establishments. Old people should have a free choice of residence, where their freedom would be maintained and the necessary level of care provided.

"We want to lead autonomous lives, and move away from the concept that old people must be manageable," she said at the party's spacious headquarters in Wuppertal, which is also a "cultural centre" for pensioners.

"We need cooperation and not polarisation," Professor Lehr said. Both the economy and society had to face the enormous challenge of adjusting to the demographic changes caused by a drastic fall in birth rates, she said. But she added that a minimum pension would not solve the problems linked to ageing. "The Greys have opted for the wrong path." At present, some 90 per cent of the two million Germans who need care are looked after by their families, and 600,000 people live in homes. But staffing problems in hospitals and in the care sector have reached alarming proportions, and reports of "scandalous conditions" in old people's homes make headlines almost every week. The anger of those involved in caring for the old has recently been fuelled by a decision of a Mannheim court which, in

response to a complaint from residents in a small town in Baden-Wurttemberg, ruled that old people's homes should not be situated in "high-quality residential areas". The plaintiffs argued that they were "disturbed at night by the sound of ambulances and occasional screams from home inmates." It was high time, Mrs Unruh said, that those in power realised that Germany was fast becoming a society hostile not only to children, but also to the aged. She said her proposals for greater integration of the old and reduced dependence on the state welfare system had exposed the serious gap between private care provided by the family and the official welfare system in hospitals, homes and other institutions.

Anna Tomforde

2*

3

4*

5

IT'S SUNDAY teatime in the Turner household, and 14 people are about to sit down around the table. But this isn't a party or a special get-together. In fact, I am the only visitor. All the other 13 diners are Turners: Mike, Rowena, and their 11 children. Even around their big table it's a bit of a squeeze, but the Turners try to eat together most evenings. Even three-month- old Eleanor joins us, clamped to her mother's breast. For everyone else it's baked potatoes, a huge bowl of cheese, and a mountain of bread - one of the 10 loaves a week the family gets through.

Another time his classmates worked out that if the children continue to reproduce at the same rate as their parents, there will be billions of Turners in 10 generations' time. Everyone laughs but it could happen. Certainly the eldest of the clan, 20-year-old Sarah, a trainee accountant, thinks there's a lot to be said for big families. "There's always something going on, and people around to talk to. It's never lonely or boring." Eighteen-year-old David (who comes after Sarah), an apprentice mechanical engineer, weighs in: "Christmas is a real event when you've got this many people to enjoy the party with."

But what about the disadvantages? If you hate supermarkets, just imagine shopping for the Turners. The weekly shop involves at least two trolleys and a bill coming in at somewhere between £120 and £150. Often Rowena takes along one or two of the older children to help, but if she's alone she just fills one trolley and leaves it at the checkout before filling another. Not the customer to get stuck behind at the checkout.

"People think we're a couple with children from different marriages," says Mike, 45, an information

systems manager. "But then you see them taking in the ages, and realising it's just possible they're all ours."

Holidays are one of the biggest expenses for a family of 13. Most summers see the Turners travelling in convoy, the bulk of them in their eight-seater people carrier, with Sarah and David following behind in their cars with the remainder. Until two years ago, the Turners and their then 10 children squeezed into a four-bedroom house (with one bathroom) in nearby Didcot. Today home is a bungalow which has two shower rooms as well as a bathroom. There are two bedrooms under the eaves - one for Sarah and Hannah, the other for David and Mark. Downstairs the three youngest b6ys - Colin, Neil and five-year-old Stephen - share one room, with two-year-old Elizabeth and baby Eleanor in another. Across the corridor is Mike and Rowena's room. John and Jacob share a room above the garage, reached via the garden and connected to the house by buzzer.

Four?]? It may sound mad to the rest of us, but there's every possibility they might. Rowena, after all, is only 44. Another child would, she says, be a blessing - the first four were hard work, but since then it's been plain sailing. "By the time I had Jacob, Sarah was old enough to help, and since then there's always been plenty of help on hand." But doesn't anyone ever feel the need for a bit of privacy? The chance to be alone without being surrounded by a dozen other people and their toys, clothes, belongings, needs and requests?

Joanna Moorhead

A And then there's the expense. "It makes me laugh when someone at work who's probably earning more than I am says he and his wife have two children and would love another but they can't afford it. It's not a question of affording, it's how you choose to spend your money," he says.

В Everyone looks a bit surprised at the question. Presumably they've had to live with each other for so long that they've either forgotten the joys of being alone - or have never known them.

С Most parents are happy with two, maybe three, children in a lifetime. The more daring/foolhardy might venture to four or even five (to the probable amazement of the rest of the civilised world). The Turners of Harwell, near Didcot, Oxon, however see no such boundaries. Their 11 children range in age from 20 years to three months, and they don't appear to have any plans to stop there. John, who at 16 is the third eldest, is the most talkative. Yes, he agrees, when you see the family together it can be a bit daunting. At school he gets ribbed about it all the time. "When the pictures of the sixth form came out, someone said it was a snap of the Turner family," he says. "There are 300 people in my sixth form."

Oddly neither of them is in any hurry to move out of the family home: both say they enjoy playing with the younger ones. And they don't even mind the chores. Tonight's supper has been prepared by Sarah and her 14-year-old sister Hannah, and nine-year-old Colin and Neil, seven, have set the table. When it's over David and his 13-year-old brother Jacob will tidy up and pile the plates into the dishwasher. So there are benefits to