Card # 14

LISTENING (7 minutes)

Listen to the recording [T.14] ‘Gender Issue‘ and and complete the test.

(listening - 2 minutes; time for fulfilment - 1 min., for answering -1 min.).

#		true	false
1	Em is sure being a woman hasn`t stopped her doing anything she wanted to.
2	Everything Bob wanted to do has always been from a male perspective.
3	Bob doesn’t know any other way of behavioring than being a man.
4	Bob is not happy staying a man.

Task 2. Retell the main idea of the text. (Time for preparation – 2 min. Time for answer -1 min.)

SPEAKING (10 minutes)

Task 1. Discuss the given topic: ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained’

(Time for preparation -2 min. Time for answer -2 min.)

Task 2. Speak on the given topic: Should animals be used in experiments?

(Time for preparation - 5 min. Time for answer -1 min.)

READING (9 minutes)

Task 1. Read the text (silent reading – 1 min., reading aloud – 2 min.)

Make a plan to the text (time for preparation- 1 min., time for answering- 1 min.).

Gender issues in America

So ready to find in every little thing some general, obsessive topic, to dissect it collectively, to take it to its extreme conclusion, extreme instances, to articulate and define it, to institutionalize it –whether it is a question of D-Day, catastrophes, jaws, earthquakes, parasites, cancerous rays or AIDS – Americans are for the moment obsessively preoccupied with sexual harassment and the sexual abuse of children. It seems to me, a foreigner forgetting for a moment where I’m from, that America is living through all the myth of all the cultures that came into being before her; that she is experiencing them passionately, collectively, in a fairy-tale, ignorant mish-mash, where the origin quoted is not important, what matters is the story. It seems to me that in America a theme that has the structure of myth, a primordial form, a fairy-tail, an archetype, really flourishes.

Myth is a fable, American culture is fabulous, American culture is profoundly mythic. So it is not at all clear (and not at all important) whether the theme of sexual harassment has been brought to the surface by genuine and, they say, alarming statistics, or whether it is just the infantile longing of collective America for a new myth, a new collective psychoanalytical theme. Or both. Such a theme is readily taken up by the media, the newspapers, publishing houses, television, the firm industry, it becomes a public, collective and personal nightmare, it determines behavior, attitudes, it stimulates new laws, like adrenaline it quickens the collective American metabolism, sharpens the sensibilities, clarifies attitudes.

Task 2. Translate the 2-nd paragraph of the text (time for preparation- 3 min., time for answering – 1).

WRITING (14 minutes)

Task 1. Write a comparative essay to the given topic: ‘It is not necessary for everyone to learn a foreign language’

(100 words).

(Time for preparation -13 min., time for answer -1 min.).