II. Listen to three teenagers talking about homework and answer the questions below
1. Why does the first speaker dislike doing homework?
2. What does the second speaker regret about?
3. What are the benefits of doing homework according to the third speaker?
III. Let’s talk about sport and a healthy way of life.
№ 7
I. 1. Read the magazine article and say in 2—3 sentences what it is about.
The Condemned Room1
Dear Mom,
I am working very hard on cleaning my room. But I want to go to Katy’s this afternoon to work on our Halloween costumes. Can I finish tomorrow? I would get up early and do it before breakfast and I’ll do a good job. Please, write back. Love, The Prisoner in Tower # 3
Dear Prisoner, No.
Love, Mom.
For days Sam’s mother never came up to her room. And then one day Sam would come home from school and find the Condemned sign on her door. Her mother had made the sign. It said: “The room is condemned. Its owner may not go anywhere or do anything until the area is restored”. In other words, Sam was to stay in until she cleaned her room.
It wasn’t fair. She was always getting the Condemned sign. Her brother hardly ever did. And his room was really disgusting, with posters of rock stars and basketball stars and movie stars wearing tiny bikinis covering every inch of his walls. But, her mother pointed out, his floor was clean and his desk as well. That was all she cared about.
Sam had been in her room for three hours now. She sat on the floor, looking at everything she was supposed to be putting away. It was possible she might be there all day. There were her clothes, lying high on her chair and overflowing onto the floor. Dirty shoes. An umbrella from when it rained on Tuesday. Library books. Magazines with pictures of cool teenmovie stars that Rebecca had given her. Her piano music from yesterday’s lesson. And different little things: nail polish remover, cotton balls, a tennisball, a note pad from Katy, rocks from rock collection they were making for science, pencils, chewing gum. And about twelve dirty handkerchiefs.
The thing to do, Sam decided, was sort everything into piles. A pile of dirty laundry, a pile of her dresser drawers, a pile to throw away. That was how her father, the organization man, would do it. She sighed. It was impossible to imagine she couldn’t leave her room all weekend. She decided to paint her finger nails instead.
1 condemnedroom [kənˈdemd ˈruːm] комната, признаннаянебезопаснойдляпроживания
|
|
|
2. The author tells us about her brother’s room. Find this extract and read it aloud.
3. What made Sam’s Mum write a message?
4. Is Sam going to clean the room? Why do you think so?
II. Listen to the conversation and answer the questions below.
1. Where was Tina going?
2. What happened at the airport?
3. Why was Tina scared during the flight?
III. Let’s talk about youth and society.
№ 8
I. 1. Read the article and say in 2—3 sentences what it is about.
Great grandad
It was a funny, surprising thing that brought Grandad back to me. It was algebra. I couldn’t cope with algebra in my first year at secondary school, and it made me mad. “I don’t see the point of it,” I screamed. “I don’t know what it’s for!”
Grandad, as it turned out, liked algebra and he sat opposite me and didn’t say anything for a while, considering my problem in that careful expressionless way of his.
Eventually he said, “Why do you do PE1 at school?”
“What?”
“PE. Why do they make you do it?”
“Because they hate us?” I suggested.
“And the other reason?”
“To keep us fit, I suppose.”
“Physically fit, yes.”
He reached across the table and put the first two fingers of each hand on the sides of my head.
“There is also mental fitness, isn’t there? I can explain to you why algebra is useful. But that is not what algebra is really for.”
He moved his fingers gently on my head.
“It’s to keep what is in here healthy. PE is for the head. And the great thing is you can do it sitting down. Now, let us use these little puzzles here to take our brains for a jog.”2
And it worked. Not that I fell in love with algebra. But I did come to see that it was possible to enjoy it. Grandad taught me that maths signs and symbols were not just marks on paper. They were not flat. There were threedimensional, and you could approach them from different directions. You could take them apart and put them together in a variety of shapes, like Lego. I stopped being afraid of them.
|
|
|
I didn’t know it at the time, of course, but those homework sessions helped me to discover my Grandad. Algebra turned out to be the key that opened the invisible door he lived behind and let me in.
Now I learnt that Grandad’s world was full of miracles and mazes, mirrors and misleading signs. He was fascinated by riddles and codes and labyrinths, by the origin of place names, by grammar, by slang, by jokes — although he never laughed at them — by anything that might mean something else. I discovered My Grandad.
1 PE [ˌpiːiː] физкультура
2 takeour brains for a jog [ˈteɪk əʊə ˈbreɪnz fər əˈdʒɒɡ] шевелитьмозгами
2. The author says she had problems with algebra. Find this extract and read it aloud.
3. How did Granddad help the author understand the subject?
4. What else did the author understand about her Granddad?
Дата добавления: 2018-04-04; просмотров: 276; Мы поможем в написании вашей работы! |
Мы поможем в написании ваших работ!