И. А. Фомченкова, Н. А. Шайдорова
|
Скачать 0.65 Mb.
|
|
The conversations you are about to read present two different situations. While reading pay attention how the mood of the speakers is changing and what words and phrases are used to show it. Use these dialogues as examples to compose your own conversations resulting either in disagreement or mutual comfort: Dialogue # 1 BARBARA: Hey, Bob, have you looked through the ads section in the paper yet? BOB: No, not yet. You know I'm interested only in the sports and business. I rarely reach the ads. BARBARA: That's because I buy everything. And it seems you don't realize that most of what we've got we buy on sale through ads. If we paid the money they want in stores at regular prices, we would have gone bankrupt long ago! It's because I keep looking for discounts that we buy things comparatively cheaply. BOB: (distracted, loosely) Yes, yes, you're right (continues to read). BARBARA: What I mean is the ads for 100% cotton towels, the crystal stemware and the love seat — all on sale now. BOB: (raising his head from the paper) Do you mean to say we really need all that stuff? The shelves're just bursting with towels already. And what's this about a love seat? We don't really need a love seat to express our feelings. We're suffocated with furniture! What a strange habit — buying things just to sell them in a garage sale in a couple of years literally for pennies. BARBARA: Don't forget I also work and want to have not just things but the things I like. I'm not even telling you about the jackets and sweaters and chiffon separates that're on sale. I just want to buy something for the home to make it more comfortable. BOB: These ads will bleed us dry. We'd better have a nice meal tonight. I'm famished and all this kind of talk is making me hungrier. BARBARA: (muttering to herself) That's what it always comes to! You want to share your ideas with your husband and all he can think about is feeding his face. In the future I'll just have to act on my own! Dialogue # 2 SUSAN: I didn't hear you come in. You're so quiet! Is anything wrong? TIM: Yes and no. I haven't got the pink slip yet, but there are a lot of people being let go at work. I'm a bit scared. All this is very unexpected. SUSAN: The company seemed so much on the make! TIM: Yeah, but the competition is very tough, and the company is likely to be taken over by a bigger one. It may result in... SUSAN: Don't think about it now. Here's some supper for you. Or would you rather go out to eat tonight? TIM: I don't think there's much to celebrate. But to take off some pressure let's have a drink. SUSAN: I'd rather go for a brisk walk or have a swim. You'll feel like a new man. TIM: My boss told me today not to worry, but still I'm nervous about what's going to happen. SUSAN: You're again thinking about the future. If worst comes to worst, we can always move up north where they offered you a position more than once. It's not the end of the world. TIM: OK. You know how to comfort. Let's just wait and see what happens. The situation is far from desperate, so let's have a nice workout! “pink slip” means you are fired VIII. Discuss the following questions: 1. It isn't always easy for us to keep our tempers when things go wrong. What do you say to let off steam? 2. There are different degrees of anger and different ways of showing it. Comment on the following text: If we could listen in on classrooms without being seen, we would hear many kinds of anger being expressed by teachers. One teacher frequently screams and yells at her children. Another furiously bangs on her desk. A third teacher throws an eraser across the room. Another sarcastically insults a child. One teacher grabs a child furiously and shakes him. One teacher slaps a child; another raps children on the knuckles. Many angry threats are heard: "I'll show you who's boss. Don't talk to me that way." One teacher is furiously tearing up papers, another charges back and forth across the front of the room, letting off steam.
IX. Imagine yourself in the following situation and compose a short monologue: 1. Your “friend” has been talking about you behind your back. Confront him/her about this. 2. Your friend is rude to everyone but she thinks she is being funny. Tell her that you think that kind of behavior is inappropriate. 3. Your friend is getting married soon. You have heard a lot of bad things about her fiancé. Tell your friend what you’ve heard. 4. Your friend is always bossing you around. Tell him/her that you want to make your own decisions. 5. Tell your friend that you feel she/he’s changed and you have decided no to be her/his friend anymore. 6. Your best friend wants you to get a tattoo. You are afraid to do this, but you don’ want your friend to know that. What do you say to your friend? 7. A parent of one of your friends has just died. Try to console your friend. 8. A friend of yours has told you that you are whiny and obnoxious. Tell your friend that you are just being what you are. 9. Your friend never shows any emotion. Tell her that you think this is unhealthy. 10. Tell your friend why you are feeling so lately. X. Work in pairs to compose a dialogue which could take place in one of these situations: 1. Your grandmother is having a difficult time living alone and taking care of herself. Talk to her sympathetically. 2. You and your friend are supposed to be doing a project together. You have done a lot of work, but your friend has done nothing. Tell you friend how you feel. 3. Your friend is very shy and nervous when there are new people around. Talk to him/her about ways to conquer his/her fears. 4. You have a very bad temper. Ask your friend what she/he does when angry. 5. Ask your partner what things frighten him/her. Find out what he/she does when he/she is afraid. 6. Your friend seems very nervous about something. Find out what the problem is. 7. Many of you friends were invited to a perty, but you were not. You are feeling left out. Ask one of your friends who was invited why you were not. 8. You have a friend who always seems to be happy. Find out how he/she does it. LOVE AND DATING Before you read
Reading tasks
It is impossible to discuss ways to recapture love or ensure the growth of love without first speaking about the nature of love. Exactly what is love? Although great writers throughout history have failed to agree on a definition of this elusive emotion, we find it necessary to add to the discussion. This is because so many married people have truly unrealistic expectations, not only of marriage, but of what actually constitutes love. Perhaps it is easier to say what love is not. Love is not infatuation or passion. It is not what makes the heart beat faster. Infatuation is a wild, ecstatic feeling of having ‘fallen in love’. Although the feeling may be wonderful, it is not based on reality. The object of an infatuation is idealized or overvalued. Faults are denied or literally not seen. Thus the saying, ‘Love is blind’. Infatuation is never permanent! Because the feelings are so intense, they can’t be sustained. Love is also not lust. Lust is pure sexual desire, and this is obviously self-directed. Lust can function separately without infatuation or love. But when lust is mixed with infatuation or love, as it often is, there is a synergistic effect. This means one effect enhances the others, making it difficult to distinguish one from the other. Because love usually starts with infatuation and lust, many marriages fall apart because people confuse the inevitable setting-in process – the shift from infatuation – with a lessening of love. Love is not a feeling. Feelings are never constant. They come and go. If you overemphasize the feeling of infatuation, when you ‘fall out of love’ you may think that your marriage is over! But that doesn’t mean you just settle for ‘companionship’. True love offers much more. You can keep the spark of intense love alive. The first step is differentiating the spark from the flames. When you first light charcoal in grill, there is a great burst of flame. That’s the infatuation. But you can’t cook on it. It’s not until the flames are gone and you have a bed of white-hot coals that you can do any cooking. True love is more an active process than an emotion. You do not ‘fall into’ true love. Both you and your spouse create it, because it has to be reciprocal. Neither infatuation nor lust has to be reciprocal. Love is characterized by a deep commitment not only to each other, but to the relationship itself. It is based on mutual purposes and shared goals. It is this emotional commitment itself. Love is a decision! Love should not be thought of as a permanent concrete solid that is either visibly there or not. It is more like a gas, coming and going in varying strength, maybe visible, may be not. During the course of a long marriage couples will experience many cycles – good times, bad times, times of closeness, times of distance. Unless you realize that this is normal, you may mistake a time of distance as the end of love. Maybe one advantage of marriage is that when you fall out of love, it keeps you together until you perhaps fall in again! At least those of us whose marriage have lasted many years know that time is on our side. infatuate – affect (sb) with great folly; inspire (sb) with wild and foolish passion lust – violent desire to possess smth; have strong sexual desire synergism – the joint action of agents that when taken together increase each other’s effectiveness lessen – make or become less 1. What is the difference between love and infatuation? 2. What is the difference between love and lust? 3. How can you explain the saying ‘love is blind’? 4. What is a synergistic effect? 5. How does the author explain that love is not a feeling? 6. Do you share the author’s point of view on love?
III. Explain how you can understand that you’ve fallen in love. IV. Read the interview of Catherine Johnson condensed from Lucky in Love, learn the words below, and be ready to discuss the main points of the text. Secrets of Lasting Love I interviewed 100 couples from across the country, ranging in age from their 20s to their 80s. The shortest marriage was seven years old; the longest-married couple had celebrated their 55th anniversary. Regardless of length, however, I heard similar things over and over again, common threads that have kept the marriages successful. Here are eight characteristics these couples share. 1. Happy couples felt at home with each other from the start. They felt a sweeping sense of connection, of shared values. Sometimes this sense of fit was sexual; sometimes it was emotional; frequently it was both. This rapport includes a delicate balance of friendship, which is based in sameness, and passion, which is based in difference. The tension creates and sustains a vital marriage. One wife offered an interesting perspective. “Happy marriages,” she told me, “come from two people who are opposite in personality but identical in background.” 2. Happy couples share routines and dreams. One partner makes the morning coffee, one walks the dog, both read the paper over breakfast. Routines in and of themselves do not produce happiness, but they instill confidence and trust in the natural existence of the marriage. From these day-to-day comforts, happy couples can move to the deeper realm of shared dreams. They strive to be more than just the “Wilsons”; they work together to become some kind of Wilsons - the Wilsons-who-bought-their-own-ranch or the Wilsons-who-run-their-own-business. Whatever the content, working together to make a dream come true makes a couple glow. 3. Happy couples don’t hold a grunge. Many of the couples I spoke to rarely quarrel at all. But when a conflict arises, they become angry, storm about – and then move on. A capacity for resolution was the common thread running through these couples’ lives. How they resolved arguments varied enormously. Some partners set a policy of never going to bed angry; one couple told me they always went to bed angry, in order to sleep it off. Some couples shouted; some sulked. Some couples dealt with issue as they arose; others would let a problem go for days until they felt the time was right to address it. 4. Happy couples look for the best. Couples thrive when spouses focus on what is good and true in the other. That doesn’t mean both need to be optimists. I interviewed many couples in which one partner was chronically anxious, quick-tempered or depressed. But the marriage held strong in the face of these temperaments because the partner did not focus his or her dark thoughts on the mate. In spite of the anxiety, anger or sadness a troubled spouse might harbor within, each believe in the other. Positive expectations exert a tremendous force. The married people I talked to had learned to see the best, develop the best, expect the best in their spouses. 5. Happy couples learn to change. Most couples told me they had changed a great deal throughout the course of their marriages. All felt they had changed for better – and their mates agreed. This is an important finding, because it offers hope to those spouses who despair of anything important changing between them. A surprisingly large number of the very happy couples had experienced a crisis in the relationship. A good quarter of them had thought of leaving their spouses. Some had actually packed their bags and gone. The marriages survived – and flourished – because one or both partners changed whatever it was about himself or herself that was causing conflict in the relationship. It is not a good idea to go into marriage hoping that your partner will change. But the fact is that people do change. They cannot help but change. A good marriage helps people change for the better. 6. Happy couples understand the importance of sex. We are often told that sex is not what a good marriage is about. A good marriage rests upon friendship, respect, commitment – qualities that endure when passion wanes. Nonetheless, scratch the surface calm of these marriages and frequently a strong and vibrant sexuality, a clear sexual chemistry, soon reveals itself. Their love is fundamentally sexual – whatever the frequency and intensity of their encounters. For most of the couples I interviewed, being faithful was not what made happy, it was what made marriage possible. Marital fidelity was the “Of course,” the basic requirement. The notion of an open marriage held neither logic nor appeal for them. 7. Happy couples do not struggle for the upper hand. By the time they reached their late 40s, the spouses I interviewed were not vying with each other for dominance, if they ever had. There were conflicts, of course, but they were not about power and status. When it came to changing diapers or earning money, most older couples were divided along traditional sex lines – but they were untroubled by this division. Regardless of the contribution made, the efforts of each were viewed as equally important within the household. The equal standing of happily married couples revealed itself most clearly in their handling of finances. Without exception, every happy couple reported that the money was theirs – not his or hers. They experienced no power struggles over financial matters. 8. Happy couples usually describe their mate as their best friend. By “best friend” they meant much what the rest of us mean when we speak of a same-sex best friend. These husbands and wives simply liked each other above all others. They spent large amounts of time together, talking, working on their home, pursuing joint hobbies. Whatever they wanted to do with their lives, they wanted to do together. In this respect, happy spouses support each other; have faith in each other – even when one thinks the other is wrong. rapport – close relationship or sympathy vital – relating to the duration of life capacity for resolution – ability to resolve, to calm , to regulate smth. sulk – be in a bad temper and show this by refusing to talk exert – put forth, bring into use endure – bear, withstand the ravages of time marital fidelity – faithfulness in marriage |
Похожие:
 |
Н. С. Кузнецова, Н. А. Шайдорова практикум по стилистике английского... Иностранный язык с дополнительной специальностью с учетом рекомендаций, данных в разделе «Стилистика английского языка» Программы... |