Exercise 2. Find in the text the words and word combinations according to the following definitions
1. an offer of marriage
2. an unmarried woman
3. just married
4. place where small children go before school
5. to support the family earning money
6. misunderstanding between adults and teenagers
7. to break the marriage by law
8. to go to cafes, cinema or anywhere else with your partner
9. the ceremony before wedding
10. the period when a woman is pregnant
Exercise 3. Match the English idioms in the left column with their Russian equivalents in the right column. Use them in a proper context.
1. a maiden name А. маменькин сынок
2. extremes meet В. быть под каблуком
3. a mother's boy С. с глаз долой, из сердца вон
4. to be out of hand D. строить глазки
5. to be under smb.'s thumb Е. блудный сын
6. out of sight, out of mind F. плоть и кровь
7. to make eyes at smb. G. жить как кошка с собакой
8. the prodigal son Н. отбиться от рук
9. one's own flesh and blood I. девичья фамилия
10. to lead a cat and a dog life J.противоположности сходятся
Exercise 4. Translate the Sentences from Russian into English.
1. Если ты спросишь их, они расскажут тебе о Греции. Неделю назад вернулись из свадебного путешествия.
2. Когда я пришла домой, я увидела, что сестра уже принялась за домашнее задание.
3. Он шёл домой, когда его жена позвонила ему и сказала, что она ждёт ребёнка.
4. После того как я быстро перекусил, я поспешил в кафе, где меня ждала моя невеста, чтобы назначить день свадьбы.
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5. Привет! Я знаю, что на прошлой неделе вы объявили о помолвке. Поздравляю!
6. Том очень много работает, чтобы содержать семью.
7. Если вы увидите Питера, сообщите ему, что его ждёт его мачеха.
8. Я ищу себе жену. Какой она должна быть?
9. Смотреть на супругов, проживших вместе пятьдесят лет — это трогательное зрелище.
10. Когда люди подают брачные объявления в газету, они чаще всего ищут партнёров подходящего возраста.
Text 2
Read a few lines from the story told by an English teacher and say what the story is about.
Our families are unique. All families have their stories, their dramas, their private jokes, nicknames and phrases. They are the place where our personalities are made.
Read and translate the definitions of the word “family”. Define which of them suits the idea of the family expressed in the passage above.
٧ The servants of a house or establishment; the retinue of a nobleman etc.
٧ The descendants of a common ancestor; a house, a lineage.
٧ A race; a people assumed to be descended from a common stock.
٧ A group of people living as one household, including parents and their children, boarders, servants, etc.; such a group as an organizational unit of society.
٧ A group of individuals or nations bound together by political or religious ties or other ties of interest.
٧ The group of people consisting of one set of parents and their children, whether living together or not; any group of people connected by blood or other relationship; a pair of animals and their young.
٧ A group of things significantly connected by common features.
٧ A group of languages consisting of all those ultimately derived from one early language.
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Study the glossary before reading the whole text.
adventurous soul (n): a person who likes adventure.
affectionately (adv): in a friendly or loving way.
exotic (adj): unusual and romantic.
fortune (n): a lot of money.
genealogist (n): a person who researches their family history.
generation (n): e.g. children, parents and grandchildren make three generations of a family.
heirloom (n): an object kept in a family and passed down from parents to children.
mystery (n): something you don’t know all the facts about.
nickname (n): a name given to someone which is not their real name.
nut (n) (slang): a mad person.
personality (n): character.
relations (n): family members.
siege (n): a situation in war when an army surrounds a city and stays there for a long time.
talent (n): something which you a good at, e.g. a talent for music.
turn into (v): become.
unique (adj): different, special, not like anything else.
I’m an English teacher working in Russia, and for some reason I really don’t like that classroom topic - Talk About Your Family. Perhaps it’s because everyone studied English from the same book at school. So all the students say, “My family consists of five members. Me, my mother, my father, my brother and my dog…” And so on. As if all families are exactly the same.
It’s such a shame, because our families are unique. All families have their stories, their dramas, their private jokes, nicknames and phrases. They’re the place where our personalities were made. How often have you heard someone complain “Oh no, I think I’m turning into my parents…”?
The other day I found myself turning into one of my grandparents. I was trying to get my daughter (1 year and 8 months old) to eat her dinner and I said “That’ll make your hair curl.” Now, I don’t think that green vegetables give you curly hair, or even that curly hair is a great thing to have. It’s just a phrase I heard from my Granddad a hundred times when I was small. It had stayed in my mind, half-forgotten, until the time I could use it myself.
When we have to talk about our families we consider them to be so ordinary to us that we even think they’re boring. Not a bit of it! Families are the most exotic things on earth. If you dig enough in your own family, you’re sure to come up with all the stuff you could want for a great novel. Surprising characters, dramatic or funny stories passed down for generations, or a face from the past you recognize – maybe in your own. Someone or something unique to your family. Or, as genealogists like to say, “Shake your family tree - and watch the nuts fall out.”
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My mother started tracing our family tree a few years ago, not expecting to get far. But, digging in old records and libraries she got back three hundred years. She turned up old stories and a few mysteries. What happened to the big family farm? Where did the family fortune go in the 1870s? More to the point – where is it now?
I’m the traveller in my family, and I like to think I got it from a great-grandfather on my Dad’s side. He was an adventurous soul. My two favourite family heirlooms are a photo of him on a horse in a desert landscape (1897 in Patagonia) and a postcard home from Portugal complaining that his boat was late because of the Revolution in Lisbon. “Dreadful business, they seem to have arrested the King...” he says. If you look at your family, you open a window on the past.
Start someone talking about their family stories and they might never stop. You’ll find the whole history of your country there, too. When my mother, still putting the family tree together, asked me for a few names from my Russian wife’s family, my wife got on the phone to her own mother. Just to check a name or two. But they were still talking an hour later, and she’d filled 5 pages of A4 paper. And so I was introduced to: someone who lived through the siege of Leningrad (but forgot how to read in the process), a high official in the Communist Party, and some rich relations who used to go to Switzerland for their holidays before the Revolution. There was also a black sheep of the family (or “white crow” as they say in Russian) who left his wife and children and disappeared in the Civil War – though nobody in the family knows which side he fought on. All these people seemed impossibly exotic to me.
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To go back to that English class then, let’s get rid of the phrase “my family consists of…” and look at some more interesting ways to talk about families. English is rich in idioms to talk about family life. We’ve mentioned the black sheep of the family – that’s someone who didn’t fit in, or caused a family scandal. If you’re loyal to your family, you can say blood is thicker than water or keep it in the family. If you share a talent with another family member, you can say it runs in the family. You might have your father’s eyes or your mother’s nose. If you’re like one of your parents, you can say like father, like son or you can be a chip off the old block. Who wears the trousers in your family? (Who’s the head of your family?)
If you want to get more technical, you can discuss the benefits of the nuclear family : a small family, just parents and children living in the same house. If grandparents or other relatives live there too, then you have an extended family.
Then there are idioms about the children that have left the family (flown the nest) and gone on to have a life of their own. You can’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs. It means you can’t tell your elders anything they don’t know already. Now here’s a really strange one. A Londoner is telling someone how to get a new passport. “Get four pictures taken, pick up a form in the post office, hand it in with your old passport and …Bob’s your uncle.” It means “the problem is solved”.
Exercise 1. Write out all the idioms from the text which correspond the following Russian translations.
Все прекрасно. ___________________________________________________
В семье не без урода. _____________________________________________
Кровь не вода, голос крови не заглушить, свой своему поневоле брат. ________________________________________________________________
Яйца курицу учат. _________________________________________________
Кто верховодит в доме? ___________________________________________
Покинуть родной дом. ____________________________________________
Быть в роду/ в крови; быть характерной семейной особенностью/ чертой. ________________________________________________________________
Каков отец, таков и сын. _____________________________________________
Весь в отца; пошел в нашу породу. __________________________________
Exercise 2. Read the text once again and complete the following statements.
1. I do not like the classroom topic “Talking about my family” because…
2. All families have their stories, their dramas…
3. If you dig enough in your family…
4. My two favourite family heirlooms are…
5. The black sheep of the family is someone who…
6. If you are loyal to your family you can say…or…
7. If you share a talent with another family member, you can say…
8. If you are like one of your parents, you can say…or you can be a …
9. If you want to know who is the head of your family, you can ask….
10. You can’t teach your mother to suck eggs, means...
11. If you say “Boy’s your uncle”, it means…
Exercise 3. Answer the questions.
1. With what phrase do students usually start talking about their families?
2. Family is the place where our personalities are made, isn’t it?
3. Are there any old-fashioned phrases like the one from the text “That’ll make your hair curl” in your family?
4. Are families the most exotic or boring thing on earth?
5. Do you have any family heirlooms?
6. Is it possible to find the whole history of your country when you talk about family stories? Prove it according to the text.
7. What idioms from the text will help you tell about your family members?
Exercise 4. Study the following phrases and their meaning to talk about relations with people.
We get on well with each other. We have a friendly relationship.
We don’t get on. We don’t have a friendly relationship.
He gets on my nerves. I find him irritating.
We get on like a house on fire. We have a lot in common and really enjoy each other’s company.
We are like chalk and cheese. We are completely different.
We are like two peas in the pod. We are really alike.
We have fallen out. We have had an argument.
We have made up. We had an argument but now we are friends again.
I take after my father. I have his personality or features.
☺Ask your partner these questions:
1. Do you get on well with all the members of your family?
2. What about your friend’s/boy-friend’s/girl-friend’s family, do you get on well with them?
3. Do you have nice neighbours?
4. What are your groupmates like?
5. Do you have any difficult relations?
6. What kind of person do you find most hard to get on with?
Text 3
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