английский для гуманитариев. Учебное пособие
 Скачать 115.77 Kb.
|
|
An encyclopedia entry. The Taj Mahal (pronounced /ˌtɑːdʒ mə'hɑːl/) is a famous mausoleum next to the river Yamuna in the Indian city of Agra. A mausoleum is a building where people bury the dead. The name Taj Mahal means 'the crown of palaces'. 1. The most famous part of the Taj Mahal is the large white dome in the centre. It is 35 metres high and is surrounded by four smaller domes. The rooms inside the building are decorated with beautiful archways and precious stones in the walls. The buildings are surrounded by gardens with pathways, pools, fountains and green gardens. 2. The construction of the Taj Mahal began in 1632 and finished in 1653. It was built with materials from all over India and Asia, but the main material is white marble. Historians believe that the materials were transported by over 1,000 elephants for the construction. 3. The emperor Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal as a burial place for his wife, Mumtaz Mahal. According to legend, he wanted to build another Taj Mahal in black on the other side of the river, but this never happened. During the Indian Rebellion of 1857, many parts of the Taj Mahal were damaged by British soldiers, who took some of the precious stones from its walls. Over the years, the Taj Mahal has suffered from environmental damage, and there have been many government attempts to conserve its beauty. 4. The Taj Mahal is one of India's most famous landmarks. There are millions of visitors to the mausoleum every year. The Taj Mahal is almost always included in lists of famous buildings to visit and is considered one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. It is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 5. Encyclopedia Britannica article on the Taj Mahal: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Taj-Mahal Official site of the Taj Mahal: https://www.tajmahal.gov.in/ UNESCO Profile of the Taj Mahal: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/252 C) 1. Read the text “The Pantheon” and filled it from a to f with sentences from 1 to 7. Built more than 1800 years ago, the magnificent Pantheon still stands as a reminder of the great Roman Empire. The name “Pantheon” refers to the building’s original function as a temple for all gods. With its thick brick wall and large marble columns, the Pantheon makes an immediate impression on visitors. But the most remarkable part of the building is its dome. It was the largest dome in the world until 1436, a _____________. At the top of the dome is a large opening, the oculus, b __________. The front portico has three rows of columns: the first row has eight columns c _________. A huge bronze door gives access to the cylindrical building. The portico’s sixteen huge columns were extracted in Egypt. They were transported all the way to Rome using barges and vessels. The columns, each one with a diameter of 1.5 meters, support a pediment with an inscription attributing the Pantheon to Marcus Agrippa d ____________. The most important problem e __________ of the Pantheon was the massive weight of the large dome. In order to support it without proper reinforcement as is common today, the thickness of the walls was gradually decreased f ___________ respectively during its construction. As a result, the Pantheon still boasts the world’s largest unreinforced solid concrete dome. 1. which was the only source of light 2. while the other two have four each 3. when the Pantheon was constructed 4. even though it was built by Hadrian 5. as the height of the building increased 6. when the Florence Cathedral was constructed 7. that the Romans faced during the construction 2. Match the paragraphs (1–5) with the best paragraph headings (a–f). One heading is not needed. Paragraph Heading
3. Are the sentences true, false or not mentioned? 1. Mausoleums are always constructed in white marble. 2. There are water features in the gardens of the Taj Mahal. 3. The construction of the Taj Mahal never finished. 4. The materials for the Taj Mahal are not all from India. 5. There was a black Taj Mahal on the other side of the river. 6. The British destroyed the Taj Mahal in the 20th century. 7. The Indian government is trying to protect the Taj Mahal. 8. The Taj Mahal is the most visited building in India. IV Read the text and mark the sentences T (true), F (false) or N (not said) Elizabeth I. A queen with “the heart and stomach of a king”. Elizabeth I was the daughter of Henry YIII and Ann Boleyn and reigned from 1558 until her death in 1603. Elizabeth was loved by her people and her forty-give reign was in many ways “a golden age” for England. It was the age of Shakespeare and the discovery of the New World. When the Spanish Armada, the fleet sent by the Catholic King of Spain King Philip II to invade England in 1588, was approaching the English coast, Elizabeth made a passionate speech to encourage her soldiers. She said, “I know I have a body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have a heart and the stomach of a king, a a king of England too”. The Spanish invasion was unsuccessful and Elizabeth was confirmed as one of the most popular monarchs Britain has ever had. But Elizabeth was anything but weak and feeble. In fact, writers of the time recorded many incidents of her being extremely strong and aggressive. One day when she got angry with her secretary she threw a slipper at him and hit him in the face, and on another occasion she hit one of her ministers who had offended her. Elizabeth must have been very vain. A French visitor to England when she was old said, “When anyone speaks of her beauty she says she was never beautiful but she speaks of her beauty as often as she can”. However, it is difficult to know what Elizabeth really looked like, because she did not personally pose for many of her portraits. She banned the showing of any portraits which showed her as ugly. Elizabeth was one of the cleanest woman in England at that time. She was proud of the fact that she had a bath once every three months! One of her ministers was amazed to discover that she had four baths a year “whether she needed it or not”. Although she had admirers Elizabeth never married or had children. When people suggested that she should marry she answered, “I have already joined myself in marriage to a husband, namely the kingdom of England. Do not blame me for the lack of children, for every one of you are children of mine”. 1. Britain was defeated by the Spanish. ____ 2. Elizabeth was loved by her people. _____ 3. She was physically strong. ____________ 4. She didn’t care whether she was beautiful or not. _______ 5. Most of her portraits were painted from life. ___________ 6. She didn’t like some of her portraits. _________________ 7. At that time people didn’t use to wash often. ___________ 8. Elizabeth never wanted to get married. ________________ V Read the text and fill in the word that best fits each gap. Archaeology: the bare of bones? If we want to find 1____ what happened in the past, we 2_____ read history books. Another 3____ to learn about the past is archaeology: the study of the past through the things people have left 4____ . The written word and archaeological remains are very different from 5____ other, of course, but is one more reliable than the other? You might 6____ tempted to say that something written down is 7____ dependable than a pile of old bones, say, or weapon from a prehistoric period. But stop a minute and think: is this really the case? On an archaeological dig, excavation involves uncovering artefacts and structures that have been buried for a 8____ time. Things literally “come to light”. Modern scientific techniques enable archaeologists 9____ get detailed information on what they have discovered, like 10____ different foods have been cooked in a clay pot, for example, 11____ the sex, age and size of a human skeleton. It is probably almost impossible to be completely objective 12____ writing history, whatever period one is writing in. Reading history, therefore, and doing historical research, is also a process of uncovering: the objective truth 13____ to be separated from the subjective falsehood. 14____ is, the evidence from a clay pot or a pile of bones may be just 15___ reliable as a written historical account. VI Translate the text with the help of a dictionary. 1. Heraclitus the Philosopher Covered Himself in Poop, and Was Eaten Alive by Dogs. Heraclitus of Ephesus (535 – 475 BC) was a pioneering Ancient Greek philosopher who advanced the notion that the essence of the universe is constant change, and coined the phrase “no man ever steps into the same river twice“. He also advanced the notion of a “unity of opposites”, whereby the universe is a system of balanced exchanges in which all things are paired in a relationship with those things exhibiting contrary properties. On the downside, Heraclitus was a misanthrope, and his misanthropy led him to avoid contact with other people for long stretches, during which he wandered alone through mountains and wilderness, surviving on plants and what he could scavenge. When he came down with dropsy – a painful accumulation of fluids beneath the skin – doctors could offer no relief. So Heraclities decided on a self-cure, by covering himself in cow dung. He reasoned that the warmth of the manure would dry and draw out of him the “noxious damp humor”, or the fluids accumulated beneath his skin. Covered in cow dung, Heraclitus lay out in the sun to dry, only to get immobilized when the dun dried the dung around him into a body cast. He was thus unable to shoo off a pack of dogs, which came upon him and ate him alive. 2. The King Who Thought He Was Made of Glass French king Charles VI (1368 – 1422) started his reign well, and was known as “Charles the Well-Loved”. By the time he died over four decades later, he had earned the nickname by which he is best known to history: “Charles the Mad”. His crazy episodes included hacking and killing his knights in a manic fit, imagining that he was Saint George, and going into prolonged bouts of amnesia in which he was able to recognize his courtiers, but not his wife and children. The weirdest manifestation of his mental illness might have been his delusion that he was made of glass. It made him extremely frightened of shattering if he fell or was jostled, so he tried to avert the danger by inserting iron rods in his clothes. Going to the opposite extreme, he would abandon all fears of fragility, and run wildly at top speed on the streets or in the halls of his palace. It got so bad, that to keep him inside his Parisian residence, its entrances were bricked up. The unfortunate king kept slipping in and out of insanity until his death in 1422. 3. Winston Churchill Wanted to Attack the Soviets Soon as WWII Ended. As WWII drew to a close, Winston Churchill grew exasperated by Stalin’s intentions to subjugate Eastern Europe. Britain had joined the war to defend Polish independence, but here was Stalin, riding roughshod over the Poles, reducing them to Soviet clients, and extinguishing their freedom and independence. Churchill saw it as a matter touching British honor, so he ordered his generals to draw up plans for an attack on the Soviets soon as Germany surrendered, with the nebulous aim of pushing them back to the USSR’s borders, or at least forcing them to treat Poland fairly. The generals presented him with Operation Unthinkable, whose title indicates what they thought of the idea. An offensive version envisaged a surprise attack on the soviets in July, 1945, intended to force Stalin to give Poland a “fair deal”. A defensive version envisaged a British defense of Western Europe after America withdrew from the continent. In either scenario, Churchill was told, it would probably end with the Red Army conquering all of continental Europe, instead of getting chased back to the USSR. The prime minister grudgingly let the matter drop, and Operation Unthinkable was archived. UNIT 4 Literature WHAT IS LITERATURE? WRITTEN BY Kenneth Rexroth Poet, writer, and painter. Special Lecturer, University of California, Santa Barbara. Author of Classics Revisited and others. Literature is a body of written works. The name has traditionally been applied to those imaginative works of poetry and prose distinguished by the intentions of their authors and the perceived aesthetic excellence of their execution. Literature may be classified according to a variety of systems, including language, national origin, historical period, genre, and subject matter. For historical treatment of various literatures within geographical regions, we can find African literature; Western literature; Central Asian arts; South Asian arts; and others. Some literatures are treated separately by language, by nation, or by special subject (e.g., Arabic literature, Celtic literature, Latin literature, French literature, Japanese literature, and biblical literature). Definitions of the word literature tend to be circular. The 11th edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary considers literature to be “writings having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest.” The 19th-century critic Walter Pater referred to “the matter of imaginative or artistic literature” as a “transcript, not of mere fact, but of fact in its infinitely varied forms.” Deriving from the Latin littera, “a letter of the alphabet,” literature is first and foremost humankind’s entire body of writing; after that it is the body of writing belonging to a given language or people; then it is individual pieces of writing. But already it is necessary to qualify these statements. To use the word writing when describing literature is itself misleading, for one may speak of “oral literature” or “the literature of preliterate peoples.” The art of literature is not reducible to the words on the page; they are there solely because of the craft of writing. As an art, literature might be described as the organization of words to give pleasure. Yet through words literature elevates and transforms experience beyond “mere” pleasure. Literature also functions more broadly in society as a means of both criticizing and affirming cultural values. Tasks for the text 1. Give the Russian equivalents to the words and word-combinations, learn the vocabulary: 1. apply 2. intention 3. perceive 4. aesthetic excellence 5. execution - зд. исполнение, реализация 6. genre 7. subject matter 8. historical treatment 9. biblical literature 10. infinitely varied forms 11. humankind’s entire body of writing 12. reducible 13. affirming cultural values 14. transcript 2. Find the following English expressions in the text: - жанр - с исторической точки зрения - с точки зрения языковой принадлежности - литература делится по - бесконечно разнообразные формы - сводиться к - все письмена человечества - утверждение (провозглашение) культурных ценностей - не просто факт - запись, письменная история - эстетическое совершенство - предмет - намерение - сосредоточение письменных произведений - основ - совершенство форм 3. Find close synonyms to the words. 1. execution -_______________ 2. classify - ___________, ___________, ___________ 3. transcript – ______________ 4. imaginative literature - _____________ 4. Find close antonyms to the words. 1. written literature - ________________ 2. work - ________________ 5. Fill in each blank with a suitable preposition: 1. Some literatures are treated separately ___ language, ___ nation, or ___ special subject. 2. One may speak __ “oral literature” or “the literature __ preliterate peoples.” 3. The art __ literature is not reducible ___ the words on the page. 4. Literature may be classified according ___ a variety ___ systems, including ___ language, ___ national origin, ___ historical period, ___ genre, and ___ subject matter. 5. As an art, literature might be described ___ the organization ___words ___ give pleasure. 6. ____ words literature elevates and transforms experience ___ “mere” pleasure. |