Reading practice

T E X T 1

Pre-reading Activity

Share your opinions with your group mates on the following.

1. What do you understand by the word “society”?

2. Why does each society establish a political system?

3. What are the basic types of government?

Reading Activity

(!) Read the text and say why no individual can be totally independent of other people.

We learn from history that prehistoric man first lived and hunted alone. Later, he realized that he was more successful if he hunted with a group of other men. Eventually, men built their home together, and began to farm the land. These men came together because they had something in common – in this case, hunting and farming – and they found that they could achieve more by helping each other. In this way, first primitive communities were formed. Since then, these communities have expanded and joined together, into villages, towns, cities and nations. The people who live in them have developed a relatively fixed way of life. In the course of time they have evolved their own laws, customs, beliefs and institutions. An organized and permanent group of individuals living together in this way make up a society.

Nowadays, we usually think of societies as national, and even international communities. For example, when we talk of “Western Society” we mean the ways of life of people in Western Europe, in North America, and even in Australia and New Zealand. Within every national society, however, there are many smaller communities, social groups and “societies” in which individuals with common interests live or work or play together.

Everyone today belongs to one or more of these kinds of society. Certainly, no individual can ever be totally independent of other people. Everyone is greatly influenced by the society he lives in: at the same time, the individual person can play a responsible part in the creation and the development of that society.

Before the 18th century, few people ever looked seriously at the make-up of the various social groups in which they lived. Since that time, however, the study of society has developed into the important science of sociology. It is indeed by means of the sociological study of the relationships that exist between the individual and that it is hoped to create a better society in the future.

(“The Individual in Society”

Izolda Geniene, Liongina Miseviciena, 1997)

Post-reading Activity

Task1. Decide which of the statements below are true and which are false. Read aloud the part of the text that you think gives you the answer.

1. The people who live in communities have developed a relatively unstable way of life.

2. Prehistoric man first lived and hunted in a group.

3. An unorganized and nonpermanent group of individuals living together makes up a society.

4. No individual can ever be totally independent of other people.

5. The prehistoric men came together because they had something in common.

6. In a short period of time the people have evolved their own laws, customs, beliefs and institutions.

7. Society is a system in which people live separately in organized communities.

Task 2. Match the words with their definitions. Give your own examples where these terms can be applied.

1.	a monarchy	a) a system of complete governmental control over all aspects of social and political life in a society;
2.	an oligarchy	b) a government in which one person has nearly total power;
3.	a dictatorship	c) a form of government in which a few individuals rule;
4.	totalitarism	d) a form of government headed by a single member of a royal family;
5.	democracy	e) a particular large group of people who share laws, organizations, customs etc.;
6.	society	f) a government of people;
7.	sociology	g) the scientific study of societies and the behavior of people in groups.

Task 3. Explain the meaning of the following. Decide if these notions are associated with an individual, a group, a community or a society.

1. an assembly f) crowd

2. a political party g) a protest group

3. the government h) a mob

4. “a pressure group” i) a picket

5. a hooligan j) a ring-leader

Task 4. Comment on the following quotations.

1. Society moves by some degree of parricide, by which the children, on the whole, kill, if not their fathers, at least the beliefs of their fathers, and arrive at new beliefs. This is what progress is. (Men of ideas, BBC TV programme)

2. The good is better than the best, else what does society mean? (Alan Bennett)

3. Our civilization ... has not yet fully recovered from the shock of the birth – the transition from the tribal or “closed society”, with its submission to magical forces, to the “open society” which sets free the critical powers of man. (Sir Karl Popper)

4. I write about violence as naturally as Jane Austene wrote about manners. Violence shares and obsesses our society, and if we do not stop being violent, we have no future. (Edward Bond)

T E X T 2

Pre-reading Activity

1. Can you explain the origin and the meaning of the term “democracy”?

2. What are the most characteristic features of a democratic society to your mind?

3. Having read the text see if your ideas correspond to the given information.