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Учебно-методическое пособие по английскому языку для подготовки студентов к интернет-тестированию Уфа 2007

Вид материалаУчебно-методическое пособие

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Literature and film
Visual art
Educational System
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Culture

Great Britain has the rich and ancient culture. Its capital London is a cultural centre of the country.


Literature and film

London has been the setting for many works of literature. Two writers closely associated with the city are the diarist Samuel Pepys, famous for his eyewitness account of the Great Fire, and Charles Dickens, whose representation of a foggy, snowy, grimy London of street sweepers and pickpockets has been a major influence on people's vision of early Victorian London. James Boswell's biographical Life of Johnson mostly takes place in London. The earlier (1722) A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe is a fictionalisation of the events of the 1665 Great Plague. William Shakespeare spent a large part of his life living and working in London; his contemporary Ben Jonson was also based in London, and some of his work - most notably his play The Alchemist - was set in the city. Later important depictions of London from the 19th and early 20th centuries are the before-mentioned Dickens novels, and Arthur Conan Doyle's famous Sherlock Holmes stories. A modern writer pervasively influenced by the city is Peter Ackroyd, in works such as London: The Biography, The Lambs of London and Hawksmoor. Along with Bloomsbury, the hilly area of Hampstead has traditionally been the liberal, literary heartland of London.

London has played a significant role in the film industry, and has major studios at Pinewood, Shepperton, Elstree and Leavesden, as well as an important special effects and post-production community. Many films have also used London as a location and have done much to shape international perceptions of the city.

The city also hosts a number of performing arts schools, including the Central School of Speech and Drama, whose past students include Judi Dench and Laurence Olivier, the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (educators of Jim Broadbent and Donald Sutherland among others) and the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (past students including Joan Collins and Roger Moore).

The London Film Festival is held in the city each October.




Music

London is one of the major classical and popular music capitals of the world and is home to one of the five major global music corporations, countless bands, musicians and industry professionals.




Classical music

London is home to many orchestras and concert halls, including:

Barbican Arts Centre (London Symphony Orchestra), Cadogan Hall (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra), Royal Albert Hall (BBC Promenade Concerts), Royal Festival Hall (Philharmonia Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Sinfonietta), Wigmore Hall.




Opera

London has two main opera houses - the Royal Opera House and the Coliseum Theatre.




Ballet

The Royal Ballet and English National Ballet are based in London and perform at the Royal Opera House, Sadler's Wells and the Royal Albert Hall.




Rock/Pop music

London has numerous venues for rock and pop concerts, most notably Earls Court and Wembley Arena, as well as the smaller ones such as Brixton Academy and Hammersmith Apollo. The area around the northern part of Charing Cross Road in Westminster is famous for its shops that sell modern musical instruments and audio equipment.

London and its surrounding Home Counties have spawned iconic and popular artists. London is home to the first and original Hard Rock Cafe and the famous Abbey Road Studios.

As Britain's largest urban area, London has played a key role in the development of most British-born strains of "urban" and electronic music, such as drum and bass, UK garage, grime and dubstep, and is home to many UK hiphop artists.

In 2006, according to DJ Magazine in a poll of over 600 international DJs, London is home to the three best nightclubs in the world, Fabric, The End and Turnmills.

Composers William Byrd, Thomas Tallis, John Taverner, John Blow, Henry Purcell, Edward Elgar, Arthur Sullivan, William Walton, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten and Michael Tippett have made major contributions to British music, and are known internationally. Living composers include John Tavener, Harrison Birtwistle, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Oliver Knussen.

Britain also supports a number of major orchestras including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philharmonia, the London Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Because of its location and other economic factors, London is one of the most important cities for music in the world: it has several important concert halls and is also home to the Royal Opera House, one of the world's leading opera houses. British traditional music has also been very influential abroad.

The UK was, with the US, one of the two main countries in the development of rock and roll, and has provided bands including The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Pink Floyd, Queen, Elton John, David Bowie, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Status Quo, The Smiths, the Sex Pistols, The Clash, the Manic Street Preachers, Duran Duran, The Cure, Oasis, Blur, Radiohead and Coldplay. It has provided inspiration for many modern bands today, including Kaiser Chiefs, Bloc Party, Babyshambles, The Libertines, Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand. Since then it has also pioneered in various forms of electronic dance music including acid house, drum and bass and trip hop, all of which were in whole or part developed in the United Kingdom. Acclaimed British dance acts include Underworld, Orbital, Massive Attack, The KLF, The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers and Portishead.


Literature

The earliest native literature of the territory of the modern United Kingdom was written in the Celtic languages of the isles. Anglo-Saxon literature includes Beowulf, a national epic, but literature in Latin predominated among educated elites. After the Norman Conquest Anglo-Norman literature brought continental influences to the isles.

Geoffrey Chaucer is the first great identifiable individual in English literature: his Canterbury Tales remains a popular 14th-century work which readers still enjoy today.

Following the introduction of the printing press into England by William Caxton in 1476, the Elizabethan era saw a great flourishing of literature, especially in the fields of poetry and drama. From this period, poet and playwright William Shakespeare stands out as the most famous writer in the world.

The English novel became a popular form in the 18th century, with Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719), Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740) and Henry Fielding's Tom Jones (1745).

After a period of decline, the poetry of Robert Burns revived interest in vernacular literature, the rhyming weavers of Ulster being especially influenced by literature in Scots from Scotland.

The following two centuries continued a huge outpouring of literary production. In the early 19th century, the Romantic period showed a flowering of poetry with such poets as William Blake, William Wordsworth, John Keats, and Lord Byron. The Victorian period was the golden age of the realistic English novel, represented by Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters (Charlotte, Emily and Anne), Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy.

World War I gave rise to British war poets and writers such as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves and Rupert Brooke who wrote of their expectations of war, and/or their experiences in the trench.

The English novel developed in the 20th century into much greater variety and was greatly enriched by immigrant writers. It remains today the dominant English literary form.

Other well-known novelists include Arthur Conan Doyle, D. H. Lawrence, George Orwell, Salman Rushdie, Mary Shelley, J. R. R. Tolkien, Virginia Woolf and J.K. Rowling.

Important poets include Elizabeth Barrett Browning, T. S. Eliot, Ted Hughes, John Milton, Alfred Tennyson, Rudyard Kipling, Alexander Pope, and Dylan Thomas.


Theatre

The United Kingdom also has a vibrant tradition of theatre. Theatre was introduced to the UK from Europe by the Romans and auditoriums were constructed across the country for this purpose.

By the medieval period theatre had developed with the mummers' plays, a form of early street theatre associated with the Morris dance, concentrating on themes such as Saint George and the Dragon and Robin Hood. The medieval mystery plays and morality plays, which dealt with Christian themes, were performed at religious festivals. The reign of Elizabeth I in the late 16th and early 17th century saw a flowering of the drama and all the arts. Perhaps the most famous playwright in the world, William Shakespeare, wrote around 40 plays that are still performed in theatres across the world to this day. They include tragedies, such as Hamlet (1603), Othello (1604), and King Lear (1605); comedies, such as A Midsummer Night's Dream (1594—96) and Twelfth Night (1602); and history plays, such as Henry IV, part 1—2. The Elizabethan age is sometimes nicknamed "the age of Shakespeare" for the amount of influence he held over the era. Other important Elizabethan and 17th-century playwrights include Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, and John Webster.

During 1642—1660 English theatres were kept closed by the Puritans for religious and ideological reasons. The London theatres opened again with the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. It was the time of the introduction of the first professional actresses (in Shakespeare's time, all female roles had been played by boys). New genres of the Restoration were heroic drama, pathetic drama, and Restoration comedy. The Restoration plays that have best retained the interest of producers and audiences today are the comedies, such as William Wycherley's The Country Wife (1676), The Rover (1677) by the first professional woman playwright, Aphra Behn, John Vanbrugh's The Relapse (1696), and William Congreve's The Way of the World (1700).

In the 18th century, the Restoration comedy was replaced by sentimental comedy, domestic tragedy such as George Lillo's The London Merchant (1731), and by an overwhelming interest in Italian opera.

In the late 19th century appear the plays of the Irishmen George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde and the Norwegian Henrik Ibsen, all of whom influenced domestic English drama and vitalised it again.

Today the West End of London has a large number of theatres, particularly centred around Shaftesbury Avenue. A prolific composer of the 20th century Andrew Lloyd Webber, has dominated the West End for a number of years and his musicals have travelled to Broadway in New York and around the world, as well as being turned into films (Jesus Christ Superstar, Chicago, Cats).

The Royal Shakespeare Company operates out of Shakespeare's birthplace Stratford-upon-Avon in England, producing mainly but not exclusively Shakespeare's plays.

Important modern playwrights include Alan Ayckbourn, John Osborne, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, and Arnold Wesker.


Broadcasting

Britain has been at the forefront of developments in film, radio, and television.

Many important films have been produced in Britain over the last century, and a large number of significant actors and film-makers have emerged. Currently the main film production centres are at Shepperton and Pinewood Studios.

Broadcasting in Britain has historically been dominated by the BBC, although independent radio and television (ITV, Channel 4, Five) and satellite broadcasters have become more important in recent years. BBC television, and the other three main television channels are public service broadcasters who, as part of their license allowing them to operate, broadcast a variety of minority interest programming. The BBC and Channel 4 are state-owned, though they operate independently.

Britain has a large number of national and local radio stations which cover a great variety of programming. The most listened to stations are the five main national BBC radio stations. BBC Radio 1, a new music station aimed at the 16-24 age groups. BBC Radio 2, a varied popular music and chat station aimed at adults is consistently highest in the ratings. BBC Radio 4, a varied talk station, is noted for its news, current affairs, drama and comedy output as well as The Archers, its long running soap opera, and other unique programmes. The BBC, as a public service broadcaster, also runs minority stations such as BBC Asian Network, BBC 1xtra and BBC 6 Music, and local stations throughout the country.


Newspapers

Traditionally, British newspapers could be split into "quality", serious-minded newspaper (usually referred to as "broadsheets" due to their large size) and the more populist, tabloid varieties. The Sun has the highest circulation of any daily newspaper in the UK, with approximately a quarter of the market; its sister paper, The News of The World similarly leads the Sunday newspaper market and traditionally focuses on celebrity-led stories. The Daily Telegraph, a right-of-centre paper, has overtaken The Times as the highest-selling of the "quality" newspapers (former broadsheets). The Guardian is a more liberal (centre to left-wing) "quality". The Financial Times is the main business paper, printed on distinctive salmon-pink broadsheet paper. Scotland has a distinct tradition of newspaper readership. The Belfast News Letter is the oldest known English-speaking daily newspaper still in publication today. It’s fellow Northern Irish competitor, The Belfast Telegraph and holds the title as the "best regional newspaper in the United Kingdom".


Visual art

Notable visual artists from the United Kingdom include John Constable, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, William Blake and J.M.W. Turner. In the 20th century, Francis Bacon, David Hockney, Bridget Riley, and the pop artists Richard Hamilton and Peter Blake were of note.

More recently, the so-called Young British Artists have gained some notoriety, particularly Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.

Notable illustrators include Aubrey Beardsley, Roger Hargreaves, and Beatrix Potter.

Notable arts institutions include the Allied Artists' Association, Royal College of Art, Artists' Rifles, Royal Society of Arts, New English Art Club, Slade School of Art, Royal Academy, and the Tate Gallery.


Vocabulary notes


broadcaster - диктор; (радио- или теле-)вещательная компания

broadsheet - большой лист бумаги с печатным текстом на одной стороне; листовка; плакат (зд. серьёзная пресса)

contemporary – современник; современный

fictionalization - рассказ о событиях, с изменениями и добавлением некоторых деталей; использование реальных событий в качестве сюжетной основы для литературного или драматического произведения

grime - грязь ( тж. перен. )

grimy - запачканный, покрытый сажей, углем; чумазый; грязный

identifiable - опознаваемый

medieval - средневековый

morality plays - миракль

Morris dance - моррис (народный театрализованный танец; исполняется во время майских празднеств [May games]; мужчины в средневековых костюмах с колокольчиками, трещотками изображают легендарных героев, Робин Гуда [Robin Hood I]) от Moorish - мавританский, по предполагаемому происхождению танца

mummers' play – шутовское представление

mystery play - мистерия

notoriety - дурная слава, известность; знаменитость; человек, пользующийся дурной славой

outpouring - излияние (чувств)

performing arts - исполнительный вид искусства ( танец, драма и т.д. )

pervasively - проникающий

pickpockets - вор-карманник

playwright - драматург

relapse - повторение; рецидив

Restoration – Реставрация, реставрация монархии (1660; после Английской буржуазной революции)

rhyming - рифмующий (ся)

The Rover - морской разбойник, пират; вор, грабитель, похититель, разбойник

(to) spawn - порождать, вызывать

tabloid - малоформатная газета со сжатым текстом, иллюстрациями и броскими заголовками; бульварная (низкопробная) газета

vernacular - народный; национальный

venue - место сбора, встречи

vibrant - живой, энергичный; трепещущий

visual arts - изобразительные искусства (включая кино и телевидение)

weaver - ткач; ткачиха; вязальщик; паук

Abbreviations

BBC – British Broadcasting Corporation

rep. – report

rev. – review


Educational System


Public education in Great Britain consists of primary, secondary and further education. Primary and secondary education is compulsory for all children. Further education is voluntary. The primary school includes nursery school (age 2-5), infant school (age 5-7) and junior school (age 7-11).

English children must go to school when they are 5. First they go to infant school, where they learn to read, write and count.

At the age of 7 they go to junior schools until they are 11 years old. Their school subjects are English, arithmetic, history, geography, music, art, religious instruction and so on. They study 5 years there. Then they have to take exams and after that go to a secondary school.

The full secondary school age ranges from 11 to 18. There are different types of secondary schools. Among them are the secondary technical schools. It is not specialized one. It teaches many general subjects.

The grammar school offers a full theoretical secondary education including foreign languages. Students can choose the subjects they wish to study. Children can get the General Certificate of Education at the ordinary level after 5 years of study. They also can obtain it at the advanced level if they study 2 or 3 years more, which allows to enter the university.

The comprehensive schools combine in one school the courses of all types of secondary schools.

There are many non-state schools in Britain and you must pay (high fees) to study there.

Among them are private schools in the UK, separate for boys and girls. The biggest and the most important of them are public schools. They train young people for political, diplomatic, military or religious service.

Less than ten percent of the UK school age population attends independent fee-paying schools. Many prominent independent schools, often founded hundreds of years ago, are known as public schools of which Eton, Harrow and Rugby are three of the better known.

After finishing secondary school it is possible to enter institute or university to get the higher education. You can get the bachelor degree or the master’s degree there.


Vocabulary notes

bachelor - бакалавр

comprehensive school - общеобразовательная школа; единая, комплексная школа

compulsory education — обязательное обучение

fee - плата за обучение ( в школе, университете и т.д. )

grammar school - средняя школа; классы с 5 по 8 средней школы

infant school - дошкольное учреждение; детский сад; ясли

junior school - младшие классы (средней школы)

master – магистр

nursery school - детский сад

primary school - начальная школа

public school - привилегированное частное учебное заведение для мальчиков (в Англии); (бесплатная) средняя школа ( в США и Шотландии )

secondary school - средняя школа

voluntary - добровольный


Abbreviations

univ. – university


Universities


British universities can be divided into three main groups: the old universities, the redbrick universities (made of red brick), which include all the provincial universities of the period 1850-1930, as well as London University; the new universities, founded after the Second World War.

The United Kingdom contains some of the world's leading seats of higher education. These include the so-called Oxbridge universities (Oxford University (1167) and Cambridge University (1209) which are amongst the world's oldest universities and are generally ranked at or near the top of all British universities. A number of well known scientists and writers, among them Newton, Darwin and Byron, were educated in Cambridge. Until the 19th century, Oxford and Cambridge were the only universities in England, and there was no place for girls. At present there are five women’s colleges. These two universities differ greatly from all the others in general organization, methods of instructions, syllabuses, traditions, history, etc. They are based on colleges (law, music, natural, science, economics, agriculture, engineering, commerce, education, etc.), each college having about 300 students.

Some institutions are world-renowned in specialised and often narrow areas of study, such as Imperial College London (science and engineering) and London School of Economics (economics and social sciences) and University College (UCL) of the University of London.

Other universities include the University of St Andrews, the oldest university in Scotland. There are 112 universities/university colleges in the UK. This amount to 138 university-level institutions of the distinct constituent colleges of the University of London and University of Wales are defined as separate universities. Most of the UK's major cities are home to two or more universities.

All British universities are private non-state controlled institutions. Students have to pay fees and living costs, but every student may receive a personal grant from the local authority of the place where he lives.


Vocabulary notes

(to) amount to - достигать, составлять; равняться, быть эквивалентным

authority – власть, руководство

сonstituent - компонент, компонента, составная часть

fee-paying - платный

redbrick university - новые университеты Англии, "краснокирпичные" университеты ( так названы потому, что построены из красного кирпича)

syllabus - расписание; учебный план; программа ( курса, лекций и т.д. )

world-renowned - мировой (известный во всем мире)


Abbreviations

Oxf. - Oxford

Oxbridge - Oxford University and Cambridge University

UCL - University College