Post-reading Activity

_{Task 1. Look through the above text again. Spot the adjectives characterizing the following nationalities.}

_{The Germans, the Italians, the Russians, the Jews, the Chinese, the Americans, the English.}

_{Task 2. State the differences and similarities in perceiving the English by the Germans and the French.}

_{Task 3. Comment on the American and English opinions about themselves and each other.}

_{T E X T 5}

_{Pre-reading Activity}

_{Here is a list of typical features of character of different nationalities. Choose the ones belonging to the English to your mind.}

_{Conservative, tolerant, reserved, open-minded, easy-going, hospitable, trustworthy, undisciplined, too money minded, diligent workers, hidebound, good sense of humor, lazy, thrifty, vivacious, superior.}

Reading Activity

_{(!) Read the text. See if the given characteristics corresponds to the list you’ve made.}

The english

_{Almost every nation has a reputation of some kind. The English are reputed to be cold, reserved, rather haughty people who do not yell in the street, make love in public or change their governments as often as they change their underclothes. They are steady, easy-going, and fond of sport.}

_{The English are a nation of stay-at-homes. There is no place like home, they say. “The Englishman's home is his castle”, is a saying known all over the world; and it is true that English people prefer small houses, built to house one family, perhaps with a small garden.}

_{The fire is the focus of the English home. What do the other nations sit around? The answer is they don’t. They go out to cafes or sit round the cocktail bar. For the English it is the open fire, the toasting fork and the ceremony of the English tea.}

_{Foreigners often picture the Englishman dressed in tweeds, smoking a pipe, striding across the open countryside with his dog at his heels. This is a picture of the aristocratic Englishman during his holiday on his country estate. Since most of the countryside is privately owned there isn't much left for the others to stride across. The average Englishman often lives and dies without ever having possessed a tweed suit.}

_{Apart from the conservatism on a grand scale, which the attitude to the monarchy typifies, England is full of small scale and local conservatism, some of them of a highly individual or practical character. Regiments in the army, municipal corporations, schools and societies have their own private traditions, which command strong loyalties. Such groups have customs of their own, which are very reluctant to change, and they like to think of their private customs as differentiating them, as groups, from the rest of the world.}

_{Most English people have been slow to adopt rational reforms such as the metric system, which came into general use in 1975. They have suffered inconvenience from adhering to old ways, because they did not want the trouble of adapting themselves to new. All the same, several of the most notorious symbols of conservatism are being abandoned. The twenty-four hour clock was at last adopted for the railway timetables in 1960s - though not for most other timetables, such as radio programs.}

_{(Habits and Ways in Great Britain and in the USA.}

_{I.A.Tenson, G.A.Voitova, 1978)}