Пояснительная записка

Настоящее пособие является продолжением пособия по домашнему чтению Reading can be fun (Part 1) и предназначено для студентов 2 курса факультета иностранных языков по специальностям «033200.00 – Иностранный язык с дополнительной специальностью – второй иностранный язык», «031201 (022 600) – Теория и методика преподавания иностранных языков и культур», «031202 (022 900) – Перевод и переводоведение», а также для студентов 3 курса факультетов ИВТ, культурология, экономика и менеджмент и др., изучающих английский язык как дополнительную специальность.

Основная цель пособия – организация самостоятельной и активной аудиторной работы студентов, на основе использования текста оригинального неадаптированного произведения на английском языке “Why didn’t they ask Evans” и целого ряда разнообразных упражнений и заданий к предложенному тексту.

Пособие направлено на формирование и развитие умений и навыков аналитического чтения, расширение запаса слов у студентов, развитие и автоматизацию навыков устной и письменной речи, правильное употребление грамматических структур (особенно тех, которые изучаются в рамках программы 2 курса: видо-временные и неличные формы глагола, артикль), предупреждение и преодоление типичных ошибок, возникающих вследствие интерференции родного языка. Особое внимание уделяется формированию умений и навыков использования различных форм сжатого пересказа прочитанного (gist, summary).

Представленный в пособии текст художественного произведения предлагает богатый вокабуляр и широкий спектр языковых и речевых единиц (идиоматические и разговорные выражения, стилистически окрашенная речь героев), отражает некоторые реалии страны изучаемого языка, затрагивает интересные и важные темы, которые могут служить основой для обсуждений и дискуссий.

Учебное пособие предлагает большое количество разнообразных заданий и упражнений. В него включены аналитические упражнения на идентификацию и дифференциацию лексических и грамматических явлений, тренировочные – на выработку автоматизма употребления изучаемых явлений, творческие – на использование их в речи в конкретных ситуациях, контрольные упражнения и тестовые задания – на проверку остаточных знаний студентов.

Материалы пособия апробированы на кафедрах английской филологии и теории языка факультета иностранных языков КГУ.

Авторы выражают благодарность рецензенту и коллегам за ценные советы в подготовке пособия и надеются, что данное пособие найдет широкое применение на аудиторных занятиях по домашнему чтению, а также будет способствовать развитию навыков самостоятельной работы студентов.

Авторы - составители

Lesson 11

 Chapter Twenty: council of two

For a moment the bold simplicity of the question quite took their breaths away. Both Frankie and Bobby started to speak at once.

"That's impossible —" began Bobby, just as Frankie said, "That would never do." Then they both stopped dead as the possibilities of the idea sank in.

"You see," said Moira eagerly, "I do understand what you mean. It does seem as though Roger must have taken that photograph. But I don't believe for one moment that he pushed Alan over. Why should he? He didn't even know him. They'd only met once — at lunch down here. They'd never come across each other in any way. There's no motive."

"Then who did push him over?" asked Frankie bluntly.

A shadow crossed Moira's face. "I don't know," she said constrainedly.

"Look here," said Bobby, "do you mind if I tell Frankie what you told me? About what you're afraid of?"

Moira turned her head away. "If you like. But it sounds so melodramatic and hysterical. I can't believe it myself this minute."

And indeed the bald statement, made unemotionally in the open air of the quiet English countryside, did seem curiously lacking in reality.

Moira got up abruptly. "I really feel I've been terribly silly," she said, her lip trembling. "Please don't pay any attention to what I said, Mr. Jones. It was just — nerves. Anyway, I must be going now. Good-bye."

She moved rapidly away. Bobby sprang up to follow her, but Frankie pushed him firmly back.

"Stay there, idiot, leave this tome."

She went rapidly off after Moira. She returned a few minutes later.

"Well," queried Bobby anxiously.

"That's all right. I calmed her down. It was a bit hard on her, having her private fears blurted out in front of her to a third person. I made her promise we'd have a meeting — all three of us — again soon. Now that you're not hampered by her being here, tell us all about it."

Bobby did so. Frankie listened attentively. Then she said, "It fits in with two things. First of all, I came back just now to find Nicholson holding both Sylvia Bassington-ffrench's hands — and didn't he look daggers* at me! If looks could kill, I feel sure he'd have made me a corpse then and there."

"What's the second thing?" asked Bobby.

"Oh, just an incident. Sylvia described how Moira's photograph had made a great impression on some stranger who had come to the house. Depend upon it, that was Carstairs. He recognizes the photograph, Mrs. Bassington-ffrench tells him that it is a portrait of a Mrs. Nicholson, and that explains how he came to find out where she was. But you know, Bobby, I don't see yet where Nicholson comes in. Why should he want to do away with Alan Carstairs?"

"You think it was he and not Bassington-ffrench? Rather a coincidence if he and Bassington-ffrench should both be in Marchbolt on the same day."

"Well, coincidences do happen. But if it was Nicholson, I don't yet see the motive. Was Carstairs on the track of Nicholson as the head of a dope gang? Or is your new lady friend the motive for the murder?"

"It might be both," suggested Bobby. "He may know that Carstairs and his wife had an interview, and he may have believed that his wife gave him away somehow."

"Now that is a possibility," said Frankie. "But the first thing is to make sure about Roger Bassington-ffrench. The only thing we've got against him is the photograph business. If he can clear that up satisfactorily —"

"You're going to tackle him on the subject? Frankie, is that wise? If he is the villain of the piece, as we decided he must be, it means that we're going to show him our hand."

"Not quite — not the way I shall do it. After all, in every other way he's been perfectly straightforward and aboveboard. We've taken that to be super-cunning — but suppose it just happens to be innocence? If he can explain the photograph — and I shall be watching him when he does explain — and if there's the least sign of hesitation or guilt, I shall see it — as I say, if he can explain the photograph, then he may be a very valuable ally."

"How do you mean, Frankie?"

"My dear, your little friend may be an emotional scaremonger who likes to exaggerate, but supposing she isn't — "that all she says is gospel truth — that her husband wants to get rid of her and marry Sylvia. Don't you realize that in that case, Henry Bassington-ffrench is in mortal danger, too? At all costs, we've got to prevent his being sent to the Grange. And at present, Roger Bassington-ffrench is on Nicholson's side."

"Good for you, Frankie," said Bobby quietly. "Go ahead with your plan."

Frankie got up to go, but before departing she paused for a moment.

"Isn't it odd?" she said. "We seem somehow to have got in between the covers of a book. We're in the middle of someone else's story. It's a frightfully queer feeling."

"I know what you mean," said Bobby. "There is something rather uncanny about it. I should call it a play rather than a book. It's as though we'd walked onto the stage in the middle of the second act, and we haven't really got parts in the play at all, but we have to pretend, and what makes it so frightfully hard is that we haven't the faintest idea what the first act was about."

Frankie nodded eagerly. "I'm not even sure it's the second act — I think it's more like the third. Bobby, I'm sure we've got to go back a long way. And we've got to be quick because I fancy the play is frightfully near the final curtain."

"With corpses strewn everywhere," said Bobby. "And what brought us into the show was a regular cue — five words, quite meaningless as far as we are concerned."

" 'Why didn't they ask Evans?' " Isn't it odd, Bobby, that though we've found out a good deal, and more and more characters come into the thing, we never get any nearer to the mysterious Evans?"

"I've got an idea about Evans. I've a feeling that Evans doesn't really matter at all — that although he's been the starting-point as it were, in himself he's probably quite unessential. It will be like that Story of Wells's where a prince built a marvelous palace or temple round the tomb of his beloved. And when it was finished there was just one little thing that jarred. So he said, 'Take it away' — and the thing was actually the tomb itself."

"Sometimes," said Frankie, "I don't believe there is an Evans."

Saying which she nodded to Bobby and retraced her steps toward the house.

 Questions and Tasks

1. Restore the situations in which the active vocabulary is used.

That would never do

to come across smb

to mind smth/ doing smth

a coincidence

to be on smb’s track

a valuable ally

a scaremonger

to go ahead with smth

as far as smb/smth is concerned

2. Give the beginning of a situation described in the chapter and let your fellow students finish it.

3. Choose an abstract as long as 25 lines for perfect reading and literary translation.

4. Retell the chapter in turn, each student pronouncing one sentence at a time. Try to make the retelling as closer to the chapter as possible.

5. Choose any episode from the part of the book that we have read and draw a picture illustrating it. Let your group mates guess what is described in the picture. You can give some prompts.