It is a festival of merrymaking, superstitious spells, traditional games and pranks. Halloween is a time for fun.

Топик/тема по английскому языку

Christmas

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Christmas is a joyful religious holiday when Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. The Christmas story comes from the Bible. An angel appeared to shepherds and told them that a Savior had been born to Mary and Joseph in a stable in Bethlehem. Three Wise Men from the East (the Magi) followed a wondrous star which led them to the baby Jesus to whom they paid homage and presented gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

To people all over the world, Christmas is a season of giving and receiving presents. In Scandinavian and other European countries, Father Christmas, or Saint Nicholas, comes into houses at night and leaves gifts for the children. Saint Nicholas is represented as a kindly man in a red cloak and long white beard. He visited houses and left gifts, bringing people happiness in the coldest months of the year. Another character, the Norse God Odin, rode on a magical flying horse across the sky in the winter to reward people with gifts. These different legends passed across the ages to make the present-day Santa Claus.

Immigrant settlers brought Father Christmas to the United States. Father Christmas's name was gradually changed to Santa Claus, from the Dutch name for Father Christmas, which is Sinter Claas. Although he has origins in Norse and pre Christian mythology, Santa Claus took shape in the United States. Americans gave Santa Claus a white beard, dressed him in a red suit and made him a cheery old gentleman with red cheeks and a twinkle in his eyes.

American children believe that Santa Clause lives at the North Pole with his wife. All year he lists the names of children, both those who have been good and those who have been bad. He decides what presents to give to the good children. He oversees the manufacturing and wrap¬ping of the presents by his helpers.

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Топик/тема по английскому языку

My favourite holidays

В данном разделе вы можете ознакомиться с билетами по различным предметам, школьными и экзаменационными топиками по английскому и немецкому языку, конспектами, а также материалами по педагогической практике.

They say only children love holidays but that is not true. Everybody in Russia loves holidays because they make our life more beautiful. My favorite holidays are the New Year's Day, birthdays, St. Valentine's Day, Easter and Shrovetide.

New Year is the most loved holiday of the year. The old year finishes and loses its power, while the new one comes into power and is ready to bring something new into our lives. There is a belief that you will live the coming year the way you see the New Year in. That's why since pagan times people have been preparing lots of food and drinks for the holiday, trying to do no work on the eve. People dance and play, they are busy with merrymaking. Everyone gets a lot of presents. There are fireworks and parades.

But birthdays are also great holidays for everyone 1 like my birthday parties. There are many traditions connected with birthdays. I think the tradition to celebrate it with friends is a great one. We usually invite and receive many guests who are my classmates and other friends and my parents' friends.

An important feature of the holiday is cooking. We have a lot of fun cooking food. It is a tradition in my family to cook many salads and to decorate them, I cook many of them myself, for example, the cucumber and tomato salad. I like to stuff tomatoes with the filling of garlic, ham and eggs. Another important feature is great cleaning. Everything has to be washed, dusted, cleaned, tidied and polished. It is done to create a special holiday atmosphere. The third feature is a new dress or another article of clothing to be put on. It is usually a present from my parents or from my grandparents.

It is always given on the eve to give me time to prepare it for the holiday. In the morning I get up and see many presents on the table. These are presents from my family. They usually give me clothes, books, records, sometimes money. My little sister always draws nice pictures for me. When the guests come, they give me their presents and we sit down to the table to have the holiday meal. Then we dance, sing songs, play games and act out small scenes. Adults take part, too. We divide into two teams. One team shows a scene without saying any names. The other team is to guess the title of the book, the author and the characters. Sometimes we play charades. That's more difficult, but it is fun as well. After that we may go for a walk. At about 11 o'clock it is time to part. The guests usually help to clean after the holiday.

I also like St. Valentine's Day. This holiday became popular just a few years ago, but has many fans now, especially among the young. It is celebrated on the 14th of February. Numerous generations of young people honoured St. Valentine as the holy patron of love and lovers. There are many legends about St. Valentine. Some people say he was a priest who married lovers against the Roman laws. Others don't agree with this. They say that this day, February, 14, was the day when young Romans chose their sweethearts for the year and exchanged the tokens of love. Since then the day has become very popular. There are two types of gifts and congratulations given on the day — love ones and humorous ones. Lovers exchange postcards saying «Be my Valentine!» and other sweet words, red roses, boxes of chocolates and sweet little toys. Children, colleagues and friends exchange humorous gifts. I like to send letters and postcards to my friends and relatives wishing them all their dreams to come true. I make postcards myself cutting out a piece of cardboard in the shape of a heart, drawing a picture on it and writing a message on the other side.

I also like Shrovetide. It had been the most loved Slavic pagan holiday, but after Russia was baptized its meaning slightly changed. After the October Revolution it was prohibited and forgotten. Now it becomes more and more popular and we learn about the traditions of Shrovetide. It is celebrated during a whole week and so its complete name is butter-week or cheese-week. These are the meanings of the days of this week:

Monday - seeing in

Tuesday - making advances

Wednesday - delicacies

Thursday — big Thursday

Friday — mother-in-law evening

Saturday - daughter-in-law gathering

Sunday - seeing off.

This week is followed by Lent. That's why people wanted to eat and drink at pleasure. The traditional dish is pancakes with different fillings such as jams made of all imaginable berries and fruit, butter, meat, cottage cheese, sour-cream and even caviar. People spend time tobogganing, riding sledges, watching skomorokhs and merry-making. The last day of Shrovetide, Sunday, is the day when Winter is seen off. The most important act of the day was burning of the guy of Winter. You can see the celebrating in the film of Nikita Mikhalkov «The Siberian Barber». It is a wonderfully acted scene. Now it is celebrated the way it was celebrated years ago - with out-door parties, shows and the guy of Winter burnt in the end. It was a breath-taking experience for me to ride in a sledge!

Топик/тема по английскому языку

Mass media

В данном разделе вы можете ознакомиться с билетами по различным предметам, школьными и экзаменационными топиками по английскому и немецкому языку, конспектами, а также материалами по педагогической практике.

Mass media play an important role in the modern society. We live in the era of information, nowadays information can be more valuable than money. We live in the era of information explosion. Every day we learn more facts than a man of the XlX century learnt in a week or in a month. This information is necessary for our life, work and entertainment.

Mass media are considered to be fourth branch of power because they influence the society and all the three branches of power. Mass media express people's opinions and can show and describe the smallest and the least important details of any juridical case or event. Journalists take their own investigations and write about their discoveries. They bring forward various versions and search proofs for them. Mass media publish information about the plans of the government and the President. That sometimes makes G-men give up their plans.

Mass media give us all kinds of information. The most important mass media are newspapers, radio, television and the Internet.

Newspapers appeared the first of the listed. The first Russian newspaper was issued in 1702 on the initiative of Peter the Great. It was entitled «Gazette» («Vedomosty»). Now we have all kinds of newspapers - tabloids, sports papers, business papers, kids' papers and political papers.

There are a lot of magazines to all tastes. Both newspapers and magazines are sold in the streets all around the city, but you can also subscribe to any papers and magazines you like at the post-office.

There are daily and weekly papers, weekly, monthly and quarterly magazines. Some of the Russian newspapers are issued in two formats: daily (from Monday to Friday) and weekly (Sunday issues).

My family does not subscribe to any newspapers, we can buy them in any kiosk. My father likes «Sport» and «Sport weekend». There he finds a leading article dedicated to the main event of the week, articles describing football, hockey and other matches. My mother buys women's magazines, especially those describing the lives of celebrities and events of the world of Art and Fashion. She also likes magazines for those who sew and knit.

I don't read newspapers often. I like «Cool» and also «Five corners». There are a lot of things for the young there, I can read about pop stars and letters of other young people there. The headings are written in the slang of the young. It is cool!

I must also mention political newspapers, such as "Pravda", "Limon-ka", etc. They are sold in Rusii for those who want to be informed about the peculiarities of the political life of the country.

Radio appeared much later than the first Russian newspaper. It was invented by A.S. Popov in 1895, but the term started being used in the first decade of the XXth century. In Russia regular radio broadcasting began in 1924. Now we can not imagine our life without radio. To switch on the radio is the first thing in the morning, and it wakes us in the morning with the national anthem. There are dozens of radio stations in Russia, everyone can choose a station to listen to. Most of them broadcast music, but ofdifferent styles. Music attracts listeners. You can also listen to weather forecasts, sports news, radio theatre, agricultural, political, economical pro¬grammes, talk shows, advice of lawyers, news, daily horoscope, the his¬tory of our city, you can take part in an intellectual quiz and win a prize. My grandparents love radio, they do not switch it off. They say it is a custom of their youth, when there was only one radio station in their town. My parents also like to listen to the radio. I am happy that now we have many channels, for example, Radio Maximum, Radio Hit, Europa+. It was dull, I think, to have only one channel.. Radio has another advantage. You can do something and listen to it at the same time.

The principle of television is as old as that of radio broadcasting. It was offered at the end of the XIX"' century by A. di Paiva and the Russian scientist P.I. Bakhmetyev independently. But only in the 30-ies of the XX"1 century regular TV broadcasting began in Moscow and St.-Petersburg and in the 50-ies all over the USSR. The first TV sets' screens were as big as a pocketbook, and they were black-and-white. By and by TV sets changed: the screen became larger, flatter, colour TV sets appeared. Now having a colour TV set is normal. Many families have several TV sets, in the living-room and in the kitchen, for example.

Many families have VCRs. Television now gives people a great chance to learn about the world. Some people like to travel, yet you can not visit all places on the Earth. But television offers you a wide range of programmes about wild life and other countries. Such films as «Walking with Dinosaurs» and «Wild Lite» are television masterpieces. The first one is the reconstruction of the life on the Earth and what it was like in the era of Dinosaurs. The other portrays wild animals in their habitat. '(Then there are news programmes, talk shows, quizzes and other kinds of programmes. What I like about TV is watching films. Т like science fiction: «Star troopers», «Robocop», and «X-files», but I also watch films about Russian history by Parfyonov, Kiselyov, and alike. I would watch MTV if we had it. " But if you spend too much time in front of your telly, it can ruin your eye-sight. Then you can become a couch potato, a person who lies on the sofa and watches TV. This person does not socialize, does not go in for sports. Some people call TV set «a boob tube» because they think that watching television turns a man into a booby (a fool). I can not agree with this point of view. I believe there are many useful things on TV.