13. Ответьте на вопросы.

1. Has English become the world's most important language? Why?

2. How many people speak it as a mother tongue?

3. In what countries do people use English as native language?

4. Can you name any English words that have entered the Russian language?

5. What is English to you?

14. Прочитайте диалог. Расскажите о своих достижениях в области изучения иностранных языков в форме диалога.

LINGUISTIC TALENT

Betty Why weren't you at the German class last night, Joan? Have you given up?

Joan Well, no... I came back late yesterday and found Simon asleep in the chair.

He'd been writing reports all day long and he was too worn out to go out

again, so we gave the lesson a miss.

Betty You've missed quite a lot of lessons lately, haven't you? Are you losing your

enthusiasm?

Joan Yes, I'm afraid so. Neither Simon nor I have a gift for languages. People just

laugh at us when we attempt to speak German. How did you and Eric pick it

up so quickly and easily? You've hardly been in Germany a month.

Betty It was neither quick nor easy, I assure you. We'd both studied the language

before we came, and we only needed to brush it up a bit.

Joan Anyway, all our friends here speak English fluently so we don't really need

to learn German.

Betty Well, Eric and I have been both learning and teaching languages for years

and we enjoy it immensely.

Joan Well, keep it up! I'm all for teaching foreigners English, if it saves me the

trouble of learning foreign languages myself.

15. Работа в парах. Составьте диалог, ответив на вопрос и выбрав варианты ответа из предложенного списка. Подтвердите Ваш выбор примерами из собственного опыта.

Which of the activities of learning English do you find the most useful?

• Practicing speaking in pairs or groups

• Doing written work of you own

• Listening to the teacher

• Listening to the cassette recorder

• Using a dictionary or a grammar book

• Reading texts / newspapers / literature

• Doing written grammar exercises

16. Работа в парах. Обсудите с коллегой шутливые предложения о «реформе английского языка». Ответьте на вопросы и выскажите свое мнение.

1. What do you like English for?

2. What are the most difficult things in the English language for you?

3. Does English need to be inproved?

4. What would you like to improve in the English language?

5. Do you believe in possible reforming the English language according to the preposals given below?

EUROENGLISH

The European Commission have just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's govt conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5 year phase in plan that would be known as "EuroEnglish".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c".. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favor of the "k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with the "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.

Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"'s in the language is disgraceful, and they should go away.

By the 4th yar, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaiining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer.

ZE DREM VIL FINALI KUM TRU!!!