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Galina Gumovskaya and Elena Markova

Page history last edited by PBworks 15 years, 10 months ago
Integrating Skills, Critical Thinking, Cooperative Learning
 
 I. ListeningComprehension
 
Task 1.
·        Before listening task.
Answer the question, please. What do you think about the role of a man and a woman in our life?
·        While listening task
 
You are going to listen to the text –it’s an extract from “Xenophobe’s guide to the Russians”, by Vladimir Zhelvis,. 
The task for Group 1 - Listen to the text and write down everything you think is important in the text.
 
The task for Group 2 - Listen to the text and write down the key words.
 
The task for Group 3 - Listen to the text and write down some interesting and unusual word combinations and phrases.
 

The Ruler of the Roost:

 

 

Power in Russia has been in the hands of women for a long time. Russian feminists never needed to declare war on men, since men freely surrendered to the more educated, more cultured, more intelligent, more hard-working, less hard-drinking sex. In relatively unimportant fields, such as politics, men still prevail, but amongst teachers, doctors, engineers, not to mention service staff, as well as families, woman reigns supreme. If the husband is the head of the family, the wife is the neck, dictating which way the head will look. Defeated and subdued, Russian men submissively, and it seems almost willingly, bow to ‘the weaker sex’. It is not for nothing that, grammatically, ‘Russia’ has the feminine gender. She is Mother Russia – nobody would dream of calling her ‘Father’.

 

 

 

 

 
·        After listening task
Reconstruct the text as closely to the original as you can (orally).
(Each group should present its outcome).
 
 
II. Reading
 
Task 1.
·        Before reading task.  
Here you have an extract from Jerome K. Jerome “Three Men in a Boat” about a Man. What do you think it is about?
·        While reading task.  
The tasks for Group 1- Read the text and write down the ideas that are similar to
the ideas of the text “The Ruler of the Roost”.
 
The task for Group 1I - Read the text and write down the ideas that are different to
                                                                                   the text “The Ruler of the Roost”.
 
 

The next day, which was Friday, we met in the evening to pack. We got a big Gladstone for the clothes, and a couple of hampers for the victuals and the cooking utensils. We moved the table up against the window, piled everything in a heap in the middle of the floor, and sat round and looked at it.

 

I said I'd pack.

 

I rather pride myself on my packing. Packing is one of those many things that I feel I know more about than any other person living. (It surprises me myself sometimes, how many of these subjects there are.) I impressed the fact upon George and Harris, and told them that they had better leave the whole matter entirely to me. They fell into the suggestion with a readiness that had something uncanny about it. George put on a pipe and spread himself over the easy-chair, and Harris cocked his legs on the table and lit a cigar.

 

This was hardly what I intended. What I had meant, of course, was, that I should boss the job, and that Harris and George should potter about under my directions, I pushing them aside every now and then with, "Oh, you—!" "Here, let me do it." "There you are, simple enough!"—really teaching them, as you might say. Their taking it in the way they did irritated me. There is nothing does irritate me more than seeing other people sitting about doing nothing when I'm working.

 

 I lived with a man once who used to make me mad that way. He would loll on the sofa and watch me doing things by the hour together, following me round the room with his eyes, wherever I went. He said it did him real good to look on at me, messing about. He said it made him feel that life was not an idle dream to be gaped and yawned through, but a noble task, full of duty and stern work. He said he often wondered now how he could have gone on before he met me, never having anybody to look at while they worked.

 

Now, I'm not like that. I can't sit still and see another man slaving and working. I want to get up and superintend, and walk round with my hands in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my energetic nature. I can't help it.

 

However, I did not say anything, but started the packing. It seemed a longer job than I had thought it was going to be; but I got the bag finished at last, and I sat on it and strapped it.

 

"Aren’t you going to put the boots in?" said Harris.

 

And I looked round, and found I had forgotten them. That's just like Harris. He couldn't have said a word until I'd got the bag shut and strapped, of course. And George laughed—one of those irritating, senseless, chuckle-headed, crack-jawed laughs of his. They do make me so wild.

 

I opened the bag and packed the boots in; and then, just as I was going to close it, a horrible idea occurred to me. Had I packed my tooth-brush? I don't know how it is, but I never do know whether I've packed my tooth-brush.

 

My tooth-brush is a thing that haunts me when I'm travelling, and makes my life a misery. I dream that I haven't packed it, and wake up in a cold perspiration, and get out of bed and hunt for it. And, in the morning, I pack it before I have used it, and have to unpack again to get it, and it is always the last thing I turn out of the bag; and then I repack and forget it, and have to rush upstairs for it at the last moment and carry it to the railway station, wrapped up in my pocket-handkerchief.

 

Of course I had to turn every mortal thing out now, and, of course, I could not find it. I rummaged the things up into much the same state that they must have been before the world was created, and when chaos reigned. Of course, I found George's and Harris’s eighteen times over, but I couldn't find my own. I put the things back one by one, and held everything up and shook it. Then I found it inside a boot. I repacked once more.

 

When I had finished, George asked if the soap was in. I said I didn't care a hang whether the soap was in or whether it wasn’t; and I slammed the bag to and strapped it, and found that I had packed my tobacco-pouch in it, and had to re-open it. It got shut up finally at 10:50 p.m., and then there remained the hampers to do. Harris said that we should be wanting to start in less than twelve hours' time, and thought that he and George had better do the rest; and I agreed and sat down, and they had a go.

 

They began in a light-hearted spirit, evidently intending to show me how to do it. I made no comment; I only waited. When George is hanged Harris will be the worst packer in this world; and I looked at the piles of plates and cups, and kettles, and bottles and jars, and pies, and stoves, and cakes, and tomatoes, etc., and felt that the thing would soon become exciting.

 

It did. They started with breaking a cup. That was the first thing they did. They did that just to show you what they could do and to get you interested.

 

Then Harris packed the strawberry jam on top of a tomato and squashed it, and they had to pick out the tomato with a teaspoon.

 

And then it was George's turn, and he trod on the butter. I didn't say anything, but I came over and sat on the edge of the table and watched them. It irritated them more than anything I could have said. I felt that. It made them nervous and excited, and they stepped on things, and put things behind them; and then couldn't find them when they wanted them; and they packed the pies at the bottom, and put heavy things on top, and smashed the pies in.

 

They upset salt over everything, and as for the butter! I never saw two men do more with one-and-two pence worth of butter in my whole life than they did. After George had got it off his slipper, they tried to put it in the kettle. It wouldn't go in, and what was in wouldn't come out. They did scrape it out at last, and put it down on a chair, and Harris sat on it, and it stuck to him, and they went  looking for it all over the room.

 

"I'll take my oath I put it down on that chair," said George, staring at the empty seat.

 

"I saw you do it myself, not a minute ago." said Harris.

 

Then they started round the room again looking for it; and then they met again in the centre, and stared at one another.

 

“Most extraordinary thing I ever heard of,” said George.

 

“So mysterious!” said Harris.

 

Then George got round at the back of Harris and saw it.

 

“Why, here it is all the time,” he exclaimed, indignantly.

 

“Where?” cried Harris, spinning round.

 

“Stand still, can’t you!” roared George, flying after him.

 

And they got it off, and packed it in the teapot.

 

 

 

(Jerome K. Jerome. Three Men in a Boat.)

 

 

 

·        After reading task.  
(for both groups)
1.     Express your own attitude to the opinions and judgments given in both texts. 
2.     Comment on the most debatable points.
 
 
 
 
 
 

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