Unit V. Love. Marriage. Family in Britain.
1. Read
and translate the text using a dictionary if necessary
Text I
THE
FAMILY
There
are many different views on family life. Some people could not do without the
support and love of their families. Others say it is the source of most of our
problems and anxieties. Whatever the truth is, the family is definitely a
powerful symbol. Turn on the television or open a magazine and you will see
advertisements featuring happy, balanced families. Politicians often try to
win votes by standing for "family values": respect for parental authority,
stability in marriage, chastity and care for the elderly.
Sociologists divide families into two general types: the nuclear family and
the extended family, which may include three or more generations living
together. In industrialized countries, and increasingly in the large cities of
developing countries, the nuclear family is regarded as normal. Most people
think of it as consisting of two parents and two children. In fact, the number
of households containing a nuclear family is shrinking year by year.
There
are people who say that the family unit in Britain is in crisis and that
traditional family life is a thing of the past. This is of great concern to
those who think a healthy society is dependent upon a stable family life. They
see many indications that the family is in decline, in such things as the
acceptance of sex before marriage, the increased number of one-parent
families, the current high divorce rate and what they see as a lack of
discipline within the family. Some politicians blame social problems, such as
drug taking and juvenile crime, on a disintegrating family life. Concern that
the family is in a state of crisis is not new in Britain. In the nineteenth
century, many legislators and reformers were saying the same. It was also a
concern between the two World Wars, and in the 1980s it became a continuous
political issue.
There is
no definition of a "normal" family. Broadly speaking, the family is a group of
people related by blood or law, living together or associating with one
another fop a common purpose. That purpose is usually to provide shelter arid
food, and to bring up children. The nature of the family keeps changing: there
are a number of types of family that exist in a society at any one time.
Vocabulary Practice
1. Match
the following word combinations according to their meaning:
|
to assume power |
to take upon oneself |
|
to assume the role of a leader |
to gain power |
|
to assume a part |
to put on a look |
|
to assume a look |
to pretend (to feign) |
|
to assume responsibility |
to take leadership |
2.
Translate the following sentences into Russian:
a) a man
of good family, a man of no family, a family man, nuclear family, cat family,
family of language, in a family way, in the family way, a family tree.
b) A
much more common name is Jack. 2. The plot behind the house was common
property. 3. Her brother is a common Worker. 4. In such matters you must use
common sense 5 It's a mistake common to all students. 6. It's common knowledge
that his work of art is very valuable. 7. There was hardly any hope of finding
common ground with the opposition. 8. They have plenty in common.
3. Which
is the odd word out?
a) live,
dwell, lodge, stay, stop, put up;
b) begin,
commence, start, finish, end, cease, go on, go out, continue;
c) expect,
wait, hope, believe, think, suppose.
4.
Answer the following questions:
1. What
are some of the views on family life? 2. What are the predictions of the end
of the family system based upon in Great Britain and Russia? 3. What
relations are customary between Russian young men and girls? 4. What
are the basic characteristics of a family? 5. What are the definitions of a
family? 6. What is your idea of an "ideal" family?
5. Make
up sentences of your own with these words:
a)
assume v 1. take over: assume responsibilities, power 2. suppose: We
must assume him to be innocent. 3. pretend: assume ignorance,
indifference, an air of concern, etc. assumption n supposition:
on the assumption
b)
care for
n
anxiety, concern: a mother's care for her children; take care of oneself/smb/smth
= make sure that one/smb/smth is safe and well: My sister is taking care of
the children while we are away. care v feel special interest in smb/smth:
He cares much for her. not to care = be indifferent: don't care.
careful adj cautious (ant careless, carefree)
Speech Exercises
1.
Answer the questions:
a) What
are many different views on family life?
b) How
do sociologists divide families?
c) In
what country is the nuclear family regarded as normal?
d) What
is a great concern to those who think a family life is the basis of a healthy
society?
e) What
are the family declining indicators?
f) Do
you agree that some politicians blame social problems on a disintegrating
family life?
g) Is
there a definition of a “normal family”?
h) Does
the nature of the family keep changing?
2. Read
and learn the dialogue by heart.
-- Are
you married?
-- Yes,
I am.
-- How
long have you been married?
-- For
two years.
-- When
did you marry?
-- I
married in 1999
-- Had
you known each other long before you got married?
-- We
had known each other for five years.
3.
Comment on the following statements about marriage:
a) Society
would not exist without marriage.
b) Marriage
is necessary.
c) Marriage
is important for the children.
d) Marriage
keeps couples together.
e) A
marriage license is a worthless piece of paper.
f) Marriage
restricts freedom.
g) A
lot of married people get divorced.
4. What
are the characteristics of a wife/husband and a mother-in-law preferably for
you and your own family life?
a)
Wife or husband: tolerant, considerate, faithful, affectionate to
husband/wife, affectionate to children, hard-working, tidy, home-loving,
good-looking at home, rich, thrifty, well-educated
b)
Mother-in-law: willing to baby sit, attractive, generous, young (relatively),
well dressed, rich, good at organizing home, has telephone, has many
interests, does not interfere, has other married children, lives nearby
c)
Put the characteristics in order of priority.
d)
Expend them to describe the most perfect wife/husband and mother-in-law.
II.
Family Problems
1. Read
the following survey about a British family. In groups create a survey of the
kind for an average Russian family.
Text II
A
STEREOTYPE
The
average British family lives in a semi-detached house with a garden in the
south of England. They own their house, which is situated in the suburbs of a
large town. The house has three bedrooms. On average they have two children
and a pet. The family drives a two-year-old Ford.
He works
in the office of an engineering company for 40 hours a week and earns £ 200
per week. He starts at 9.00 in the morning and finishes at 5.30 in the
evening. He goes to work by car, which takes him 20 minutes. He doesn't
particularly like his job, but there are chances of promotion.
She
works in a service industry for three days a week and earns £ 95. She works
locally and goes there by bus. She quite likes her job as it gets her out of
the house, she meets people, and it is close to the children's school. The
children go to a state school which is a few miles from home. A special bus
comes to pick them up every day. They are at school from 9.00 to 3.30. The
most popular evening entertainment is watching television or video, which the
average person does for two and a half hours a day. After that, the next most
popular activity is visiting friends, going to the cinema or a restaurant or
going to the pub. The most popular hobby is gardening and the most popular
sports are fishing, football and tennis.
2. Put
questions to the text and retell the text, using questions as a plan.
3.
Answer the following questions:
a) What
are the usual steps that precede marriage?
b) Do
you believe house chores should be distributed between you and your partner?
c) Why
do some men agree to help with the house-work at least in theory?
d) Is
it possible to let house-work wait until you want to do it?
e) What
would you take into consideration while distributing house chores in your
family?
f) What
do you like to do about the house and what do you dislike?
g) What
would you do if your husband/wife comes home from work tired and irritated?
h) If
you feel ill-treated or hurt by your husband/wife do you think you should have
the matter out at once or would you wait till you cool down?
4. Speak
on the following topics:
a) Husbands
and wives who both work should share domestic chores.
b) The
problems of having a granny in the family.
c) Courses
on marriage and family matters in secondary school might be helpful in
preserving the family.
d) Home
life feels the stress of social life.
e) Divorce
is morally wrong and marriage should be preserved at all costs.
f) Marriages
at later ages are more stable.
g) Life
begins at home.
5.
Translate the text from English into Russian, using dictionaries if necessary.
Text III
FAMILY
LIFE.
Most
young people eventually get married, buy or rent a house or flat of their own
and start a family. However, a great many changes are taking place in this
pattern of behaviour. As in many other Western European countries, more and
more men and women are living together without being married. In the mid 1980s
more than a quarter of new brides had lived with their husbands before
marriage, compared with 8 per cent in 1970. People are also getting married
later than they used to.
However
marriage is still popular even among those whose first marriage has failed. In
fact, in 36 per cent of all marriages one or both partners have already been
married and divorced. Britain now has the highest divorce rate in Europe and
about 10 per cent of children live with only one parent.
Another
trend is towards smaller households. Very few children now grow up in large
families and more and more adults are living alone (25 per cent in 1987). Many
of the people who live alone are elderly; it is unusual to find three
generations living in one house as they used to do in the past. It is quite
common for close relatives to live in different parts of the country and. many
people hardly ever meet their uncles, aunts and cousins. One reason for this
is that British people move house every five years on average. They do this in
order to change jobs or to buy a bigger or better house.
III.
Love and Marriage in Britain
1. Read the text and
try to retell it
Text I
Love
and Marriage in Britain
Young
people in Britain may have several girlfriends or boyfriends from their teens
onwards. They go to the cinema, go dancing, play sports or eat out together
and do not necessarily intend to get married. However, each year about 350,000
British couples become husband and wife. Marriage is legal from the age of
sixteen but most people wait until their mid to late twenties. Of those who
get married, about seventy per cent prefer a traditional church wedding to a
registry office wedding. However, by the age of forty, one woman in twenty and
one man in eleven will still be single.
One in
four children are born outside of marriage but these are not all in
single-parent families; sixty per cent of unmarried parents have stable
relationships. Thirty-seven per cent of marriages end in divorce and cost the
country more than £1.4 billion a year. Although over thirty per cent of women
depend financially on their husbands, women ask for seventy per cent of all
divorces. Three out often divorced women married as teenagers.
Marriage
does seem to be more popular now than could be imagined thirty years ago. Is
it since research has shown that married people generally live longer than the
single?
2.
A.
Ask and answer questions on the text.
B. Speak about marriage in Britain.
C. 1. What do you think is the best age to get married? 2. Children
should have married parents. Discuss.
D. Did you use to fight with your brothers and sisters when you were
young? How do you get on with them now?
Discuss
which THREE of the following are the most harmful to children.
—
having a favourite child
—
wanting children to do well at school
—
wanting them to be attractive/or popular
—
not giving enough discipline
—
not spending enough time with them - being too protective
Now
write three paragraphs giving your opinion. The phrases below may be useful.
I
think/don't think having a favourite child is ...
I think
it's quite natural for parents to ...
To give
you an example, when I was a little child...
Assignment
Text II
The
Family
A
"typical" British family used to consist of mother, father and two children,
but in recent years there have been many changes in family life. Some of these
have been caused by new laws and others are the result of changes in society.
For example, since the law made it easier to get a divorce, the number of
divorced has increased. In fact one marriage in every three now ends in
divorce. This means that there are a lot of one-parent families. Society is
now more tolerant than it used to be of unmarried people, unmarried couples
and single parents.
Another
change has been caused by the fact that people are living longer nowadays, and
many old people live alone following the death of their partners. As a result
of these changes in the pattern of people's lives, there are many households
which consist of only one person or one adult and children.
You
might think that marriage and the family are not so popular as they once were.
However, the majority of divorced people marry again, and they sometimes take
responsibility for a second family.
Members
of a family—grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins—keep in touch, but they see
less of each other than they used to. This is because people often move away
from their home town to work, and so the family becomes scattered. Christmas
is the traditional season for reunions. Although the family group is smaller
nowadays than it used to be, relatives often travel many miles in order to
spend the holiday together.
In
general, each generation is keen to become independent of parents in
establishing its own family unit, and this fact can lead to social as well as
geographical differences within the larger family group.
1.
Comment on the author’s view of a “typical” British family.
2. Compare and say
what factors affect family relations in Russia.
1. Read
and translate the text, using dictionaries if necessary.
Text III
Social
Trends
When
Adrian Hutton and Carla Leene get married they will move into a new house that
they have bought. But what sort of life will they have? What can they expect
in modern Britain? Every year the British government publishes statistics
about social trends. Their findings show definite patterns in the British way
of life. In most marriages there are some marked differences between husbands
and wives. Working wives, for example, sleep (on average) one hour more a day
than working husbands. Housewives, on the other hand, sleep only about three
hours more every week than their working husbands. And what about housework?
The government survey showed that only 1% of men do the household chores —
like cleaning and ironing. But they do usually keep household accounts and it
is always men who do repairs or improvements in the house. 30% of all
marriages end in divorce. The government survey also looked at leisure
activities. They found that the two most popular leisure activities in Britain
are watching television (the average family spends 20 hours a week in front of
the TV set) and going for walks. Swimming is an especially popular activity
among British women.
Carla
and Adrian's life, though, will probably be different from the average
marriage. In the first place Carla has always kept her own accounts and Adrian
has always done his own housework. Neither of them like watching television
very much and they both like swimming.
A. Ask and answer questions on the text.,
B. Speak on social trends in the British way of life.
2. Make the following
statements disjunctive questions:
a)
Married couples
are happiest shortly after marriage.
b)
They have been
engaged for a year.
c)
Things normally
went according to plan for him.
d)
He had just
about everything he wanted.
e)
She was
reluctant to marry anyone outside her class.
f) When
he proposed to her, his proposal was accepted eagerly.
g)
Marriage is
usually presided by dating.
h)
There can be no
perfect marriage without security and understanding.
i) She
made up her mind to marry her beloved by all means.
j) Marriage
has always been a universal social expectation.
3. Ask your friend if
he/she…
a)
is married
b)
is going to
marry
c)
is in love
d)
has a family
e)
wants to remain
single
f) has
a lot of relatives
g)
has never
thought of the problem
h)
knows a happy
married couple
i) knows
what romantic love is
j) has
never been in love with anyone
Text IV
Those
lazy husbands
Men are
lazy in the home, according to an official survey published today.
They
have about six hours' a week more free time than wives, but play very little
part in cooking, cleaning, washing, and ironing, according to the Social
Trends Survey by the Central Statistical Office.
Nearly
three quarters of married women claimed to do all or most of the housework,
and among married men the proportion who admitted that their wives did all or
most of the housework was only slightly lower.
The
survey showed that washing and ironing was the least popular task among men,
with only one per cent performing this duty, compared with 89 per cent of
women, and 10 per cent sharing equally.
Only 5
per cent of men prepare the evening meal, 3 per cent carry out household
cleaning duties, 5 per cent household shopping, and 17 per cent wash the
evening dishes.
But when
household gadgets break down, repairs are carried out by 82 per cent of
husbands.
The
survey says that, despite our economic problems, the majority of Britons are
substantially better off than a decade ago. We're healthier, too - eating
healthier foods and smoking less.
The
average Briton, not surprisingly, is more widely travelled than a decade ago.
More people are going abroad for holidays, with Spain the favourite
destination.
So here
is the way the statisticians see us...
Splitting up - the painful facts
There
were 162,000 divorces in Britain in 1983, and about a fifth of those involved
at least one partner who had been divorced before.
But
splitting up is more common among the lower income groups. The survey shows
that the rate of divorces per thousand husbands in unskilled manual jobs was
more than four times that for professional husbands.
Nearly
two-fifths of all currently divorced women aged 18 to 49 were receiving
maintenance from their former husbands for their children or themselves.
Marriages in the UK - a total of 387.000 - were three per cent down on the
previous year. Just over a third of these were remarriages for one or both
partners.
Money
Most
people considered that the gap between high wage earners and those on small
incomes was too large.
Predictably, people with high incomes were less likely to agree, but even
among those with an annual income of at least £15,000, more than half thought
the gap was too wide. The majority also disagreed that the rich in this
country are over-taxed.
Questioned on Government spending, the three most favoured candidates for
extra cash were health, education, and help for industry. The least favoured
were overseas aid, public transport, roads, police, and prisons.
Smoking
The
number of smokers dropped by around 12 per cent compared with 1972, with more
men than women kicking the habit. But drug abuse rocketed. Registered male
addicts under 20 doubled between 1982 and 1983.
* There
were 56 million people living in the UK in 1983 - only half a million more
than in 1971. But the number of people aged 65 or over had gone up by more
than two million since 1961, and represented more than 15 per cent of the
population, compared with less than 5 per cent at the turn of the century.
1.
Complete the following sentences, using information from the article above.
Women do
more work in the house than men do.
a. Women
__________ free time __________ men.
b. Men
__________ housework.
c.
__________ do any washing or ironing.
d. Only
one man in twenty __________.
e.
__________ wash the dishes in the evening.
f.
__________ repairs in the household __________ by men.
g.
Britons __________ more money __________ ten years ago.
h.
Britons __________ cigarettes, and are eating __________.
i.
Spain __________ place to go on holiday.
j. There
were __________ as many divorces among __________ as among professional
classes.
k. Fewer
than two in five divorced women __________.
l.
__________ marriages in 1983 __________ 1982.
2. Ask
and answer questions on the text.
3. Speak
on the Social Trends Survey by the Central Statistical Office.
4. Do you agree with
these statements?
a)
Father should
feed children and change their nappies.
b)
Men should do
more work about the house.
c)
Mothers with
young children should not work.
5. What are the
results of the Social Trend Survey in Russia?
a)
Have you get
any information on this problem?
b)
Tell your
friends what you’ve read or heard about it.