Seminar 1 The Geographical Position and Physical Features of the usa

1. Describe the geographical position of the USA.

2. Speak on the major land regions of the USA.

3. Speak on the climate and vegetation of the USA.

4. Give an account of the main rivers and lakes of the USA.

5. Give an account of the chief mineral resources of the USA.

Quiz

1. The USA is self-sufficient in ___, ___, ___, phosphate, molybdenum and some other raw materials.

2. The majestic ___ Mountains stretch all the way from Mexico to the Arctic.

3. The ___ River flows northward from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. Halfway there, at ___ Falls, the river suddenly plunges almost 200 feet. (60 m)

4. In certain places, the gorge of the ___ Canyon is more than a mile deep, and it is from 4 to 18 miles wide.

5. Almost the whole ___ half of the United States lies in the ‘___ ___’ of he mountains, which means that very little rain falls.

6. Today the USA flag has ___ horizontal stripes symbolising the ___ ___ states and ___ white stars on the ___ background representing the ___ states. The red stripes proclaim ___, the ___ stripes proclaim liberty, the field of blue stands for ___.

7. The ‘Star-spangled Banner’ is the title of the national ___ of the USA, beginning with ‘Oh, say can you see by the down’s early light … the star-spangled banner…’

8. Benjamin Franklin objected to the choice of the ___ ___ as the American national bird the wrote, the eagle is ‘a bird of bad moral character; he does not get his living honestly… Too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labour of the fishing hawk and … takes fish from him.’ Franklin suggested choosing the wild turkey instead, but he was outvoted. His colleagues saw the ___ ___ as a symbol of freedom and power.

9. The main land mass of the United States is in the ___ zone.

10. The Midwest, the Middle Atlantic States, and New England experience ___ summers and ___, ___ winters.

11. The ___ Mountains extend from Maine to Alabama in the eastern United States. This is a region of old mountains with worn, rounded peaks, the highest of which is less than 2,200 metres.

12. The ___ ___ occupy a huge expanse of land that stretches from the Appalachian Highlands in the east to the Rocky Mountains in the west.

13. Some territories and dependencies of the United States (in the ___ Sea and the ___ Ocean, such as ___ and ___ Islands, have a large degree of self-government. ___ ___, one of the areas, is a commonwealth associated with the United States that has been given wide powers of self-rule by the U.S. Congress. American ___, ___, ___ ___ and the ___ Islands each send to Congress a representative who votes only in committees.

Chapter II the population of the usa lecture 2

The formation of the nation

According to statistics in 2004 there were 293,027,571 inhabitants in the USA. In number of population the country holds the third place in the world after the People’s Republic of China and India. The first 90% settlers were of Anglo-Saxon stock, most of the rest being of Negro origin. Vast numbers of immigrants poured into it in the first decade of the 20^th century. Within its population the United States has today about 31 million citizens who are foreign-born of various nationalities: German, Italian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Croatian, Jewish, Russian, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Swedish, English, Scotch, Irish, Mexican, Canadian, Cuban, etc. Poor economic and political conditions at home forced them to emigrate to the United States in search of a better life.

The first people to live in what is now the United States were Indians, Eskimos, and Hawaiians. The Indians and Eskimos are descended from people who migrated to North America from Asia more than 20,000 years ago. At that time groups of wandering hunters following herds of elk and caribou crossed a northern land bridge where the Bering Straits are today. These people settled throughout North and South America. The ancestors of the Hawaiians were Polynesians who sailed to what is now Hawaii from other Pacific islands about 2,000 years ago.

Today about two million Americans consider themselves Indians and so identified themselves on the 2000 census. Indians, Eskimos and Aleuts are considered to be the only ‘native’ Americans and make up about 2% of the population.

American life … p. 17

During the 1500’s, groups of Spanish settlers established outposts in what is now Florida, in the south eastern United States. In 1604 a small French colony was founded on the New World’s north-eastern seacoast. In 1607 Great Britain founded its first permanent North American settlement: Jamestown, in the colony of Virginia. Soon America attracted many immigrants from other nations of northern and western Europe including Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Scotland; and the Scandinavian lands of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.

European colonists were brought to the New World by the desires that still bring people today. The first European settlers were seeking land, wealth and freedom – a better life. Some colonists came to America to find religious freedom.

Between 1840 and 1860, the United States received its largest wave of immigrants to date. In Europe famine, poor crops, rising population and political unrest caused an estimated 5 million people to leave their homelands each year. In one year alone – 1847 – 118,120 Irish people emigrated to the United States. During the Civil War (1861-1865), the federal government encouraged immigration from Europe especially from the German States, by offering grants of land to those immigrants who would serve as troops in the armies of the North. Today, fully one-third of Americans have German ancestors.

Until about 1880 most immigrants came from northern and western Europe. Then, large waves of people began arriving from southern and eastern European nations, including Austria-Hungary, Greece, Italy, Poland, and Russia. By 1896, more than half of all immigrants were from eastern or southern Europe.

One group of people who came to the USA during this period were Jews. The first Jewish people actually settled in North America as early as 1654. Between 1880 and 1925 about 2 million Jews immigrated here. Today, there are about 6 million Jewish Americans living in the United States, comprising about 2.2% of the total population.

Most Hispanic Americans are people who immigrated – or whose ancestors immigrated – to the United States from Latin America. These are people of Mexican, Cuban, or Puerto Rican descent. A small percentage of them trace their ancestry directly back to Spain. Some have mainly Spanish ancestry. Others have mixed Spanish and Latin-American Indian or black ancestry. Today Hispanics make up 9% of the US population.

Most black Americans are descendants of Africans who were brought to the United States as slaves during the 1600’s, 1700’s, and 1800’s and forced to work on plantations. Today blacks form the largest minority group. They account for about 13% of the population.

The immigration was extremely intensive at the end of the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th centuries during the rapid growth of industry, agriculture, the construction of railways. During and after World War I the immigration into the USA decreased considerably. Tough measures against immigration were taken. These measures had both economic and political nature. After World War II the immigration increased again, but its influence on the growth of population was not important.

The year 1965 marked a most important change in American immigration law. Under the new law, there is no consideration of people’s country of origin. Soon after the 1965 law was passed, immigration pattern began to change. As recently as the 1950’s, two thirds of all legal immigrants came from Europe and Canada. By the 1980’s, only one immigrant in 7 came from these traditional sources. In the 1950’s, immigrants from Asia accounted for only 6% of total immigration – or 150,000 in the entire decade. During the 1980’s 2.6 million Asian immigrants arrived, making up 44% of legal immigrants. Today 42% of the population is of Asian descent.

(American life …, p. 19)

The United States used to be called a melting pot. This term refers to the idea that the country is a place where people from many lands have come together and formed a unified culture, i.e. their ethnic origins, their native languages and habits ‘have malted away’. Americans have many things in common. For example, the vast majority of them speak English, and people throughout the country dress similarly and eat many of the same kinds of foods. Public education, mass communication, and other influences have helped shape a common identity. But in other ways, US society is an example of cultural pluralism. Some ethnic groups have managed to retain their language – about 8 million ‘Chicanos’ who speak Spanish, half a million Frenchmen in New Orleans and a million and a half Swedes in Minnesota. Many Americans take special pride in their origins. They preserve traditions of their ancestors. In many cities, people of different national or ethnic origins live in separate neighbours (Franco-Canadians in the north of New England, Germans in Pennsylvania, the French in Louisiana, the Slavs in the north-east and the Lake District), and shops and restaurants reflect their cultural heritages. Ethnic festivals, parades, and other events emphasize the nation’s cultural pluralism. In attempt to acknowledge significant cultural differences of the various ethnic groups in the USA American now use a new symbol, the ‘salad bowl’.

The United States in one of the few countries that has no ‘official’ national language or languages. English is the common language by use, but it is not the national language by law. The great majority of the US people are English-speaking Americans (over 80%), though their language under new conditions of life and immigrant environment acquired a number of new phonetic and lexical peculiarities. Spanish is the second most common language in the United States. The region that is now the South-western United States was colonized by Spain in the 1500’s. As a result, many people from that region speak Spanish.

(World Book, pp. 108,109)

Population density. Migration

The average population density in the United States is 79.6 persons per square mile (30.7 per sq. km), i.e. considerably less than in most of the countries in Europe. More than half of all the population is concentrated in the industrial North-east, and the density of population here is very high – 375 people per s1. km. The density of the population of the South is over 30 people per sq. km. On the Pacific coast the density is high again – 64 people per sq. km (California). Meanwhile, California is the most populous state (27 million people), New York is second (18 million). In the industrial and agrarian states of the Lake District the density of population is lower and decreases sharply in the purely agricultural states – North and South Dakota and Nebraska – 4-7 people per sq. km. In the mountainous Cordillera States the density ranges from 2 people to 12 people per sq. km. The lowest density of population is in Alaska – 0.3 people per sq. km. But the tendency of movement of the population from one region to another never stopped.

Interregional migrations of the population are closely connected with considerable territorial differences in the level and rate of economic development and reflect changes in the structure and distribution of economy. As a result of the reduction of employment in agriculture (due to improved agricultural methods and equipment) and the increase of those employed in industry, trade, finance, government, service (due to an industrial boom which has created large numbers of new jobs in the nation’s urban areas), the urban population of the country is continuously growing, now it is 75%. The proportion of rural population is only 25%. The principal reason today for population movement is the growth of new industries, especially in the West and South. Census experts look for the migration to continue for at least the next several years. If this should occur, it would be the first time in recorded history that more people lived in the South and West than in the Northeast and Midwest.

Urban life. Rural life

The United States is divided into urban areas and rural areas. An urban area is a community with 2,500 or more people. Although the urban areas cover about 2.5% of the land, they are the home of about three-fourths of the people. New York City, with about 7 million people, is the largest US city by far. Los Angeles has about 3.5 million people. Chicago has a population of about 2.7 million. Five others US cities – Houston, Philadelphia, San Diego, Detroit, and Dallas – each have more than 1 million people.

Network of suburbs surround many US cities. The central cities and their suburbs form units called metropolitan areas. There are about 277 metropolitan areas in the United States. The largest of them, in order of size, are New York (the population is 17.9 million, Los Angeles (13 million), Chicago (8.1 million), San Francisco (5.8 million), Philadelphia (5.8 million), Detroit (4.6 million), etc.

For many years, the vast majority of the country’s urban population lived in the central cities. But during the mid-1900’s people started leaving central cities for suburbs – the process known as ‘suburbanization’ It is caused by high prices of land in town, bad sanitation, transport and other reasons. Suburbs are defined as residential areas within commuting distance to larger cities. Most people who live in suburbs own their own homes and commute to work in the city or they work in nearby offices and factories that have relocated to the suburbs.

(World Book, p. 110, 111)

More than 97% of all the land of the United States is classified as rural. But much of the rural land is uninhabited or only lightly inhabited. About a fourth of all Americans live in rural areas. But only 9% of the country’s rural people work on farms. Many other rural people own or work in business related to agriculture, such as grain and feed stores and warehouses. Mining and related activities and light industries also employ many rural people. Still other rural Americans work as teachers, police officers, salesclerks, or in other occupations.

People engaged in agriculture live, as a rule, on isolated farms situated at some distance from each other. The number of farms is rapidly decreasing. In 1986 there were 2,214 thousand farms in the USA. In the middle of the 1980’s 3,5 million people, including farmers, members of their families and employed workers were engaged in agricultural production.

Religion. Age and sex structure

About 60% of all the American people are members of an organized religious group. Among them, about 56% are Protestants, 28% Roman Catholics, 2% Jews, 4% other, including small Americans belonging to Islam, Buddhism. Roman Catholics make up the largest single religious denomination in the United States. The country’s largest Protestant group are, in order of size, Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals, Lutherans, and Presbyterians.

The ratio of females and males is 51.4 to 48.6. The United States has one of the highest life expectancies of any country – 77.4: 77.64 for men and 80.36 for women. The estimated age distribution of the US population in 2004 was roughly as follows: 0-14 years – 20.8% (male 31,122,974; female 29,713,748); 15-64 years – 66.9% (male 97,756,380; female 98,183,309); 65 years and over – 12.4% (male 15,078,204; female 21,172,956).