The festive year

The Rio Carnival in Brazil: This festival is by far the largest in the world. Hundreds of thousands of visitors come every year for the cele­brations before the start of Lent, (a fasting period of forty days before Easter). The carnival takes place in the Sambadrome, a huge new stadium. There, samba schools compete with each other for the best costumes and dancing. They spend a lot of time and money on carnival preparations, making fantastic costumes, masks, decorations, mobile floats and teaching the samba. In the past, the carnival procession was held in the streets of Rio, where beauti­fully clothed people threw streamers and confetti and danced for four days. Nowadays, the world's biggest street party has become a pleasure only for those who can afford the entrance fee.

Oktoberfest: Foreign beer-lovers might think that the Germans are unimaginative when it comes to beer because, good as it is, it all seems to taste very similar. There are, howev­er, many regional and seasonal differences, particular­ly in Bavaria and Munich. Oktoberfest, the world's largest beer festival, actually begins in September and, to mark the occasion, each of Munich's many breweries makes a special beer. Because of this, an astonishing variety of different types and strengths of beer ate available at this festival.

The Tibetan Butter Lamp Festival: Buddhists believe that nothing is permanent, and on the 9th of March they celebrate this belief. Long before the festival begins, monks make their preparations by mixing brightly-coloured dyes into huge quantities of iced butter. It takes them several months to carve the frozen butter into highly decorated statues, some of them as much as 8 metres high. On the day of the festival itself, the sculptures supported by wooden frames are carried through the streets and greeted with cheers from the excited crowds. Afterwards, the figures are thrown into a river by the monks who made them to demonstrate the idea that not even the most beautiful things last forever.

The Dragon Boat Festival: In China, towards the end of June, people celebrate a holiday known as the Dragon Boat Festival. The festival is held to honour the memory of Qu Xuan, a politician and poet who, in the year 278 B.C., is said to have commit­ted suicide by jumping into a river. It is said that local people threw rice dumplings into the water to save Xuan's soul from the evil spirits in the river. Nowadays, boat races are held every year to remind people of the search for the body of the dead poet. Spectators eat rice cakes and crews row large dragon-shaped boats. Some researchers, however, say that dragon boats existed long before the death of Qu Xuan, and the modern festival is a combination of several old traditions.

TEXT #15

1. Read and translate the text

2. Vocabulary exercises

3. Grammar exercises

4. Speaking tasks

Television

Television is rapidly becoming the literature of our time. Many of the arguments used for the study of literature as a school subject are valid for the study of television.

In the period before television, people read for pleasure and relaxation as well as for informa­tion. The novel, the short story and the serialized story were provided for the leisure time of the liter­ate. This was considered sufficient justification for including the study of novels, etc., in the schools syllabus. Although they were works of imagination and amusement, their study helped peo­ple to develop a well-rounded view of life: the insights they gained in a fictional setting could be transferred to the setting of real life.

In terms of numbers, there is a stronger case for the study of television than there was for the study of literature. Only a relatively small number of the population was literate. Today anyone can look at television and get pleasure, relaxation and information from it. It does not depend or acquiring a previous skill, the skill of being able to read. All one needs are eyes and ears.

There is a close connection between appreciation of literature and appreciation of television. Many of the same standards of judgment are present in both. Literature merges imperceptibly into television through drama. Viewed as a printed page, a play is literature. Viewed as a series ai guide-lines for speech and action, it is a live show.

It may be said that, in learning literary appreciation in school, we are indirectly learning television appreciation. In spite of the differences of presentation there are so many basic similarities that, in learning to appreciate one, we are learning to appreciate the other.

If time cannot be afforded for the appreciation of television, the best compromise may be for literature classes to be expanded to embrace television appreciation. After all, they already include the appreciation of drama.

TEXT #16

1. Read and translate the text

2. Vocabulary exercises

3. Grammar exercises

4. Speaking tasks