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СодержаниеChoosing a career Education in Britain Shopping: the world of money Space exploration The world of jobs. |
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Демонстрационная версия разговорных тем для итоговой аттестации учащихся 8 класса, обучающихся по учебнику для 8 класса школ с углубленным изучением английского языка, лицеев и гимназий; О.В.Афанасьева, И.В. Михеева «Английский язык».
TOPICS
People’s hobbies and interests
People spend their spare time in different ways. It depends on their age, tastes, preferences, likes and dislikes. Little children are fond of rattles, nursery rhymes, soft toys, tricycles and fairy tales. They also like to play with buckets and spades in the sandpit. When children grow older their tastes change and they get interested in keeping pets, skipping ropes, hide - and – seek on the pavement. Teenagers are usually adventurous and restless, so they give preference to roller-skating and skate-boarding. New technology provokes their curiosity and as a rule teenagers are keen on computers and video games.
Many adults are interested in politics and like to discuss political events which take place in their country and abroad. Men take up either hunting or fishing as a hobby. Women are skillful in knitting, sewing and cooking, they like to use unusual recipes to cook something tasty and special to treat their family members.
People advanced in years often take up gardening; they like to take care of plants to grow vegetables, fruit and flowers.
There are people who like to get more adrenaline into their blood and they go in for exreme sports or start gambling. It’s really a thrill for them to risk their life or money to get fresh emotions.
The most popular hobby is, perhaps, collecting things. People can collect stamps, coins, pictures, antique things. Such a hobby can be very expensive as collectors sometimes spend a fortune to buy a rare stamp, coin or a book. On the other side, when hard times come collectors may sell their collections to earn money to provide for living.
Another hobby, which is wide spread, is photography. People like to take photos of the relatives, friends, places they visit while tavelling to look through their albums later to remember happy moments of their life. It’s not a problem nowadays because there are a lot of photo shops where your film can be developed and photos can be printed.
Making miniature houses is not as common as collecting stamps but we can find people who are really enthusiastic about it. They never throw things away as almost everything can be used in their miniature houses. They use cardboard, creamer containers, beads, straw, pieces of paper
and metal, matches and stones to make their houses. The work starts with choosing the theme, planning and deciding what items will go into the scene. They make a sketch and a paper model of a future house and use a special type of adhesive plaster to glue the items. It allows them to move the objects if they change ideas or redecorate with another theme. People who take up this hobby should be imaginative if they want to create something really original. They make miniature food out of clay and bake it for effect, use Styrofoam for bath bubbles, and sea shells for lavatory basins. This hobby develops patience and love of handwork because it takes a lot of time to deal with tiny objects and to arrange them properly. It also develops designer’s skills and ability to coordinate colours. These skills can be very useful in further life in case people choose a profession, connected with architecture, design, painting and sculpture.
In conclusion, I want to say that hobbies people take up, can become not only a way of spending their past time but a way of preparing for their future career.
Choosing a career
Choosing your future career is not an easy matter. It can really be a problem to find the most suitable jobs among 2000 jobs existing in the world. Outlining your career prospects you should always remember that your choice will have great influence on your life. If your choice is wrong you will meet a lot of problems in future and your life can turn failure.
To be on the safe side you should always ask yourself if you have necessary personal qualities and knowledge to be successful in the profession you are going to choose.
If you dream to become a mechanic, a driver or an engineer decide for yourself whether you are interested in working with machines, cars, tools and other sort of equipment. These jobs involve not only particular skills but physical labour and night shifts, so it will be quite a problem to adjust your pattern of life to such work especially if you have to take care of children.
Nowadays a lot of young people want to become economists and accountants, as these professions are considered to be prestigious or under the pressure from their parents. But are these people really sure that they have a bent for such professions? It may turn rather boring to deal with endless figures. Besides, economists and accountants work nearly 8 hours a day using computers and it will lead to eye strain and bad eyesight.
Some people are under the spell of the world of fashion. It is always changeable because fashion alters every season and designers have to create new clothes to please various tastes. This job seems to be very attractive because it is exciting to produce something original; however it is not as easy as one may think. To reach the top in this profession a person must be talented and hardworking let alone his creative abilities.
There are boring professions when one and the same operation is repeated a lot of times and there are jobs which seem to be very exciting as they are risky and adventurous. One of such jobs is a profession of a bodyguard. It has been romanticized through American films and for a long time it has been primarily associated with American lifestyle and it is not surprising if we remember that four American presidents were assassinated and the attempts were made on the life of the others. Nowadays the protection of presidents is a matter of vital importance and Secret Service guards follow the president wherever they goes. All these guards tend to look similar – the unsmiling men with short haircuts and sunglasses. It is easy to recognize them in the crowd. Their training as agents takes place at a training centre in a little town called Beltsville, Maryland. This job requires a lot of experience and courage, so all the prospective agents are carefully selected and their training includes learning to shoot pistols, rifles and how to drive at high speed and in minimum space. Agents always examine the area of a proposed visit, decide what equipment to use, produce details of escape routes and plans for emergency evacuation. Their operations are kept top secret, nevertheless they are of great interest to the general public and it explains a great number of films and books about the Secret Service work.
However bodyguards can be employed not only by the government or a company but also by some celebrities whose privacy or life may be endangered.
People can work full - time or part – time, it depends on their wish or necessity. Most people, who are eager to make a successful career prefer jobs which involve financial reward, perks and bonuses and give a good chance for promotion.
To sum it all up, there are lots of jobs to satisfy all tastes, so people should be careful to choose the one which suits them best.
Education in Britain
British children start schooling at the age of 5, when they go to infant primary school. Only very few go to nursery schools where they learn such things as numbers, letters and colours.
Infant schools are for pupils between the ages of 5 to 7. In fact, these schools are not real schools. Classes there are informal and the pupils don’t follow a regular timetable. At the age of 7 or 8 , children go to junior primary schools where they learn English, Mathematics, computer science, Geography, History, PE, Arts and some other subjects.
Compulsory secondary education lasts 5 years. Traditionally secondary schools are divided into 5 forms. In the 5th form at the age of 16 pupils both take their GCSE exams and leave school to choose some practical courses to be trained for a job, or continue their education till they are 18. At the age of 18, after their 6th form lasting two years they take their “A” level Exams. Good “A” level results in two-to-five subjects are necessary to get a place at one of British Universities.
Until 1965 all British schoolchildren had to take the 11 plus examination and according to the results of this exam they were sent to Grammar schools, Technical schools or Modern Schools. Grammar schools gave children academic education and they could continue their education at universities or colleges. Technical schools gave good knowledge in sciences and prepared their pupils for technical colleges. Secondary modern schools gave secondary education only in name and didn’t prepare children for universities as pupils were mainly prepared for practical jobs. Parents and teachers considered such selection to be unfair and protested against it. As a result of these protests a new type of secondary schools – comprehensive schools - was introduced.
Nowadays over 80% of pupils in Britain go to state comprehensive schools that provide secondary education free of charge. These schools offer a wide choice of subjects from art and craft to sciences. Pupils at comprehensive schools are very often put to “sets” for such subjects as Mathematics or languages. “Sets” are small groups of children formed according to their ability in each subject, so some may be in the highest set for Maths but in the lowest for French. They can also take electives if they like.
Alongside with state schools there are private schools and parents pay fees to send their children there. A special type of private schools is public schools. They are very expensive and only 5% of all the pupils can afford to study there. In a lot of public schools children live as well as study, they are called boarding schools. Among public schools there are single-sex schools where only boys or only girls study and co-educational (mixed) schools.
School curriculum at state and public schools is not much different. Most pupils have to study at least one foreign language. There are 4 compulsory science subjects: Maths, Chemistry,
Physics and Biology. All pupils study design technology and information technology, besides, they can take some optional science subjects, such as geography. The compulsory arts subjects are English, literature and religious education. Physical education is also obligatory.
The most famous British public schools include Harrow, Winchester and Eton which date back to the 15th century. A lot of public schools are known for their high academic standards and are considered prestigious.
Shopping: the world of money
Life in the modern world is unthinkable without shops where we can buy food, clothes or other things we may need.
We buy white and brown bread, rolls, buns and pastries at the baker’s and go to the butcher’s for sausages, bacon, ham and all sorts of meat: beef, pork, mutton and chicken.
Greengrocers supply us with vegetables, such as carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, peas, cucumbers and also with fruit: grapes, pears, plums, tangerines.
Confectionary shops are the most popular with children because they provide chocolate, caramels and all kinds of sweets.
At the beginning of a school year, stationeries are full of children and their parents who buy copy-books, paper, pens, pencils, paints, brushes, glue and other things children may need at school.
A lot of women are fond of shopping at department stores as they have a great variety of goods in stock: ready-made clothes, fashion clothes, footwear, children’s wear, jewelry, cosmetics, perfume, souvenirs, electrical appliances, hi-fi and what not.
Shop-assistants will help you to choose the right thing and show you the fitting rooms, where you can try on a dress, a suit or any other article of clothes. They will accept your payment and wrap a purchase for you. Customers can pay for their purchase in cash, by cheque or by a bank card. It’s very convenient especially in case you buy something expensive.
If people don’t have enough money to buy a thing they want they can borrow money from the bank. Of course, if a bank lends you money, it checks your credit and asks for guarantees. It charges some money for its services as well. On the other hand, a customer has an opportunity to choose a bank where the charge is reasonable.
Some people prefer to open a bank account and put their money in the bank to save the sum which is necessary to make a purchase.
Modern shopping centres combine shopping and fun. They often look like a city under one roof where you can find cinemas, restaurants, cafes, theme parks with rides, amusements and games. Customers can do their hair at beauty salons, send a telegram or a letter at a post-office and choose a holiday abroad at a travel agency.
However, there are people who prefer to do their shopping at a corner shop. These shops are usually situated in the neighbourhood and work long hours, so a customer can go there even at
night. Certainly, a range of goods is not as wide as in supermarkets, but the service here is more personal because the shop-assistants who work there usually know their customers very well and can sell things on credit. There is one more advantage – you don’t have to spend your time and money on transport to go to the city centre where the most popular supermarkets and department stores are often located.
So any person can choose a place to go shopping to but it sounds like a good idea to go window-shopping first to find the thing you really need at a reasonable price.
Space exploration
Space exploration has been one of the most essential problems of our time. The race to space began in 1957 with the Russian satellite Sputnik 1. It was less than 1 metre long and remained in space only for three weeks, but it was the first satellite to orbit the Earth.
After the satellite came the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin. His spaceship Vostok 1 orbited the Earth just once; however this flight paved the road to space for other cosmonauts. On July 20, 1969, American spaceship Apollo 11 landed on the Moon and the American astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon.
In 1971, people watched the first space station Salyut 1 from Russia fly into space. The American rockets 1 Voyagers 1 and 2 started their journeys to find out about the planets in our solar system. Both Voyagers carried pictures, natural sounds and music from Earth.
These achievements would have been impossible if it hadn’t been for the hard work of engineers and scientists who did their best to design up-to-date spaceships, satellites, space shuttles and equip them with engines powerful enough to take these vehicles beyond the Earth’s atmosphere.
New kinds of fuel, modern systems of control alongside with necessary instruments and proper suits help astronauts to survive in critical situations and land safely.
Nowadays space programmes from different countries work together. The first result was the International Space Station (ISS), a space city the size of a football field. The first part of the ISS was launched in 1998. The ISS has been visited by astronauts from twelve different countries and it was the destination for the first four space tourists. The austronauts’ mission usually includes exploring outer space and other planets, observing objects in outer space, making experiments in a weightless environment and producing new materials in zero gravity to use them in further experiments.
In 2003 a robot-vehicle called Mars Rover landed on Mars and in the near future the mankind may carry out the projects which now seem incredible: building space stations suitable for scientific research, colonizing other planets including the Moon, making interplanetary flights to Mars and sending probes to Venus and Mercury.
Space presents an unlimited field for further exploration and challenges peoples’ inquiring mind and creative abilities.
The world of jobs.
.It is believed that there are more than 2000 jobs in the world. Some of them require physical labour, others demand mental work. There are traditional professions and professions which appeared not so long ago. We have prestigious jobs, such as managers, lawyers, businessmen and jobs that are considered to be not so prestigious though they can be necessary, let’s take a job of a teacher as an example.
All professions related to arts are supposed to be creative and as cinema is a kind of art, all designers, directors, cameramen and actors are the people of creative professions. These jobs are attractive for people as they usually involve popularity and wealth.
However, even when we speak about such simple things as food and the process of making meals we will see that this work is no less creative. Chefs do more that just using recipes from different countries; they compose their own recipes adding some new and often unexpected ingredients. A good cook must have an unmistakable sense of taste, skillful hands and rich imagination, especially if he works at big restaurants and has to feed a great number of people; he should be inventive and searching to be successful.
Many people are under the spell of the world of fashion. It is always changeable as fashion alters every season and designers have to create new clothes to please various tastes. Designers produce new items of clothes using new fabrics. Naturally, they take risks, because if their experiments fail they will lose their customers.
There are boring professions when one and the same operation is repeated a lot of times and there are jobs which seem to be very exciting as they involve risk and adventure. One of these jobs is a profession of a bodyguard. It has been romanticized through American films and for a long time it has been primarily associated with American lifestyle, and it is not surprising if we remember that four American presidents were assassinated and attempts were made on the lives of others. Nowadays the protection of presidents is a matter of vital importance and Secret Service guards follow the president wherever he goes. All these guards have a tendency to look very similar – the unsmiling men with short haircuts and sunglasses and it is easy to recognize them in the crowd.
Their training as agents takes place at a training centre in a little town called Beltsville, Maryland. This job requires a lot of experience and courage, so all the prospective agents are carefully selected and their training includes learning to shoot pistols, rifles and how to drive at high speed and in minimum space. Agents always examine the area of a proposed visit, decide what equipment to use, produce details of escape routes and plans for emergency evacuation. Their operations are kept top secret, nevertheless,
they are of great interest to the general public and it explains a great number of films and books about the Secret Service work.
So, we have lots of jobs to satisfy different tastes but people should be very careful to choose the one which is most suitable for them.