12 Speak on one of the following topics.

1. Latest news and recent events from the President’s web site.

2. Latest news and recent events from the Prime Minister’s web site.

3. The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS): status, structure, powers, current policies.

4. Regional and local governments: the powers and structures. (examples)

5. The system of checks and balances in Russia.

6. Some historical aspects of the relations between the UK and Russia.

7. Some historical aspects of the relations between the USA and Russia.

8. News coverage of the government and the President activities in the Russian media.

9. News coverage of the government and the President activities in the foreign media.

Make use of the following sites www.kremlin.ru www.premier.gov.ru www.themoscowtimes.com

Unit 8: The Parliamentary and Presidential Elections in the Russian Federation.

The Judicial Branch

Glossary

Study the following words and word combinations and use them when answering the questions.

the Central Election Commission of the RF партийные списки федеральные списки иметь право выдвинуть федеральный избирательный округ преодолеть 7-процентный избирательный барьер субъект федерации

Центральная избирательная комиссия РФ party lists federal candidate lists be entitled to nominate federal constituencies to pass/ to clear the 7% threshold for eligibility the subject, the constituent territory

Конституционный Суд Верховный Суд Высший Арбитражный Суд Генеральный прокурор противоречить Конституции

the Constitutional Court the Supreme Court the Supreme Arbitration Court Prosecutor General contravene the Constitution

Answer the following questions.

Strategy Points: how to provide the best answer to the question

• Make use of various sources of information (text-books, multimedia materials, the Internet, etc) to obtain necessary data, facts, information

• Use appropriate vocabulary when answering a question (refer to Glossary)

• Use a variety of vocabulary and grammatical structures.

• Make sure you keep to the topic.

1. How is the President elected?

2. Who is eligible to the office of President?

3. How does the Duma electoral system work?

4. What are the sources of election campaign financing?

5. Who can become a member of the lower chamber?

6. What is the structure of courts in the Russian Federation?

PRESENTATION SKILLS

Strategy Points: how to make the best presentation

• Make use of various sources of information (text-books, multimedia materials, the Internet, etc) to obtain necessary data, facts, information

• Avoid making your presentation purely factual or theoretical, make references to present actual situations, people, events, etc

• Use appropriate vocabulary (refer to Glossary)as well as a variety of vocabulary and grammatical structures.

• You must not read your source material when reporting the ideas in discussion,.

• Focus on getting the main idea across clearly.

• Check that you have made yourself clear, an eye-contact with the listeners is a must.

• Involve the audience in the topic through your own questions, examples, jokes, etc

• Arrange the information in the written form.

Speak on one of the following topics.

1. The Political Parties in Russia.

2. More information about the election to the Federal Assembly: recent changes, new appointments, by-elections etc.

3. Judicial system in Russia.

4. The jury: a constitutional right or a heavy responsibility. How is it selected? What are their duties?

5. The analysis of different approaches of foreign mass media towards covering news and facts about Russia.

6. Capital punishment: history of the issue, current situation, opponents and proponents.

7. Russia and the European Union.

Make use of the following sites www.themoscowtimes.com www.cikrf.ru http://www.supcourt.ru/

UNIT 9: america, AMERICA …

Reading: BILL CLINTON – MY LIFE

1 Read the extract from the book THE EARLY YEARS by Bill Clinton.

Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book. Ronald Reagan, 40th president of US (1911 - 2004)

October 3 was a beautiful autumn morning in Arkansas, crisp and clear. I started the day that would change my life in the usual way, with an early-morning jog. When I headed for home, I saw a newspaper vending machine. Through the glass, I could read the headline: "Hour Arrives for Clinton." On the way home, several passersby wished me well. Back at the mansion I took a last look at my announcement speech, where I put out a strong statement reaffirming my com­mitment to run for the presidency.

The rest of the year was full of the frantic activity: getting organized, raising money, reaching out to specific constituencies, and working New Hampshire.

Then there was the media. The big papers had been camping out in Arkansas for weeks, looking for whatever they could find on my record and my personal life!

I tried to keep things in perspective. The press had an obligation to examine the record of someone who might be President. Most reporters knew nothing about Arkansas or me when they started. Some of them had negative precon­ceptions about a poor, rural state and the people who lived there. I had also been identified, as 1992's "character prob­lem" candidate; that made the media vulnerable to what­ever dirt they were handed to support the preconception.

Intellectually, I understood all this, and I remembered and appreciated the positive coverage I had received earlier in the campaign. Nevertheless, it felt more and more as if the investigative stories were being prepared on the basis of "shoot first, ask questions later." Reading them felt like an out-of-body experience. The press seemed determined to prove that everyone who thought I was fit to be President was a fool: the Arkansas voters who had elected me five times; my fellow governors, who had voted me the most effective governor in the country; the education experts who had praised our reforms and progress; lifelong friends who were campaigning for me all over the country. In Arkansas, even my honest adversaries knew I worked hard and wouldn't take a nickel to see the cow jump over the moon. Now it seemed I had snookered all these people from the age of six on. At one point, when things got really bad in New York, Craig Smith, finance director of my campaign, told me he didn't read the papers anymore, "because I don't recognize the person they're talk­ing about."

Near the end of March, Betsey Wright, who was at Har­vard doing a stint at the Kennedy School, came to my res­cue. She had worked hard for years to build our progressive record and to run a tight ethical operation. She had a prodi­gious memory, knew the records, and was more than willing to fight with reporters to set the record straight. When she moved into the headquarters as director of damage control, I felt much better. Betsey stopped a lot of factually incorrect stories, but she couldn't stop them all.

On March 26, the smoke seemed to clear a little when Senator Tom Harkin endorsed me. I was also helped when Governor Cuomo and New York senator Pat Moynihan criticized Jerry Brown's 13 percent flat-tax proposal and said it would hurt New York. It was a rare day in the campaign; the news was dominated by people concerned with issues and their impact on people's lives.

On March 29, I was back in the soup again, with a problem of my own making. Jerry Brown and I were in a televised candidates' forum on WCBS in New York when a reporter asked me if I had ever tried marijuana at Oxford. This was the first time I had ever been asked that specific question directly. In Arkansas, when asked generally if I had ever used marijuana, I had given an evasive answer, saying I had never broken the drug laws of the United States. This time, I gave a more direct answer: "When I was in En­gland, I experimented with marijuana a time or two and I didn't like it. I didn't inhale and I never tried it again."

My answer hit the roof, and the press found another character issue. As for the "didn't inhale" remark, I was stating a fact, not trying to minimize what I had done, as I tried to explain until I was blue in the face. What I should have said was that I couldn't inhale. I had never smoked cigarettes, didn't inhale with the pipe I occasionally smoked at Oxford, and tried but failed to inhale the marijuana smoke. I don't know why I even mentioned it; maybe I thought I was being funny, or per­haps it was just a nervous reaction to a subject I didn't want to discuss. My unfortu­nate account of my marijuana misadventures was cited by pundits and Republicans throughout 1992 as evidence of my character problem. And I had given late-night TV hosts fodder for years of jokes.

As the old country song goes, I didn't know whether to "kill myself or go bowling." New York was suffering from severe economic and social problems. The Bush policies were making things worse. Yet every day seemed to be punctuated by television and print reporters shouting "character" questions at me. Radio talk-show host Don Imus called me a "redneck bozo." When I went on Phil Donahue's television show, all he did for twenty minutes was ask me questions about marital infidelity. After I gave my standard answer, he kept on asking. I rebuffed him and the audience cheered. He kept right on.

Whether I had a character problem or not, I sure had a reputation problem, one I had been promised by the White House more than six months earlier. Because the President is both the head of state and the Chief Executive of the govern­ment, he is in a sense the embodiment of people's idea of America, so reputation is important. Presidents going back to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson have guarded their reputations jealously: Washington, from criticism of his expense accounts during the Revolutionary War; Jeffer­son, from stories about his weakness for women. Before he became President, Abraham Lincoln suffered from debilitat­ing episodes of depression. Once he was unable to leave his house for a whole month. If he had had to run under modern conditions, we might have been deprived of our greatest President.

Jefferson even wrote about the obligation of a Presi­dent's associates to protect his reputation at all costs: "When the accident of situation is to give us a place in his­tory, for which nature had not prepared us by correspon­ding endowments, it is the duty of those about us carefully to veil from the public eye the weaknesses, and still more, the vices of our character." The veil had been ripped from my weaknesses and vices, both real and imagined. The pub­lic knew more about them than about my record, message, or whatever virtues I might have. If my reputation was in tatters, I might not be able to be elected no matter how much people agreed with what I wanted to do, or how well they thought I might do it.

In the face of all the character attacks, I responded as I always did when my back was against the wall—I plowed on. In the last week of the campaign, the clouds began to lift. On April 1, during a meeting with President Bush at the White House, President Carter made a widely reported comment that he supported me. It couldn't have come at a better time. No one had ever questioned Carter's character, and his reputation had continued to grow after he left the presidency, because of his good works at home and around the world.

Some people in the press were coming around. Maybe the tide was turning; I even got a cordial reception on Don Imus's radio show. Newsday columnist Jimmy Breslin wrote, "Say what you want, but do not say that he quits." Pete Hamill, the New York Daily News columnist whose books I'd read and enjoyed, said, "I've come to respect Bill Clinton. It's the late rounds and he's still there." The New York Times and the Daily News endorsed me. Amazingly, so did the New York Post, which had been more relentless in its attacks than any other paper. Its editorial said: "It speaks strongly to his strength of character that he has already survived a batter­ing by the press on personal questions unprecedented in the history of American politics. ... He has continued to cam­paign with remarkable tenacity.... In our view, he has manifested extraordinary grace under pressure."

2 Develop the following points using the information and the vocabulary from the text:

1. Pre-President record of Bill Clinton was full of deeds and short of misadventures.

2. Both adversaries and allies of Bill Clinton contributed to his success.

3. The press and Bill Clinton had an uneasy mix of cooperation and conflict.

4. American Presidents were careful to hold their records in check.

5. Bill Clinton was gaining both fame and notoriety during his election campaign.

6. Bill Clinton was skillful in facing the music in the awkward “marijuana” matter?

7. Comment on the quotation preceding the text.

3 Comment on the following lines from the text. Explain the underlined words.

1. … full of frantic activity: …. working New Hampshire (Par 2)

2. … negative preconception about a poor, rural state (Par. 4)

3. … even my honest adversaries … wouldn’t take a nickel to see the cow jump over the moon. (Par.5)

4. … as director of damage control. (Par.6)

5. … a problem of my own making. (Par 7)

6. … the press found another character issue. (Par 8)

7. … was cited by pundits and Republicans (Par 8)

8. … every day seemed to be punctuated by … “character” questions … (Par. 9)

9. He kept right on. (Par 9)

10. If my reputation was in tatters… (Par. 11)

11. … the clouds began to lift. (Par. 12)

12. It’s the late round and he’s still here. (Par. 13)

13. … continued to cam­paign with remarkable tenacity. (Par. 13)

SUMMARizing skills

Strategy Points : When writing a summary sentence

• study the suggested variant and the paragraph it is based on

• avoid using exact words from the text, use your own words to express the ideas .

• always try to paraphrase the information, using synonymous phrases and different structures.

4 Think of and write down at least 7 summarizing sentences to cover the extract:

1. Bill Clinton announced his candidacy for the office of President.

2. ……………………………………………….

3. ……………………………………………….

4. ……………………………………………….

5. ……………………………………………….

6. ……………………………………………….

7. ……………………………………………….