Task 1. BEFORE WATCHING.In pairs (small groups) find oat who knows the answers to the questions from (1) to (27) and write down the person's name in the section 'Name'.
Task 2, WHILE WATCHING (1).Watch the videofilm and fill in the correct information comparing with your (your partners') guesses.
FIND SOMEONE WHO KNOWS
NAME
INFORMATION FROM THE VIDEO
1. Where W.Shakespeare was born ___
2. What the extreme temperatures are in summer _______________
3. What the extreme temperatures are in winter ________________
4. What part of the population live in cities or towns ______________
5. The population of Greater London ___
6. What part of population are Black or Indian or Chinese (mln/%)___________
7. What the most famous traditional English food is____________
8. How many people in Britain go to church regularly _____________
9. What percentage of the British population own their house (%) _________
10. When Elizabeth II was crowned ____________
11. Who has the power to rule in Britain ___________________
12. When (approximate time) British Constitution was written ___
13. Whom the Power in the British Parliament belongs to ________
14. When Oxford and Cambridge boat race takes place____________
15. When the Normans invaded Britain__________
16. What the reminders of Scottish independence are _________
17. When Ireland entered the United Kingdom ______________
18. How big the British Empire around the Globe used to be ______________
19. What the last British colony was _______________________
20. The name of the ship which first carried the English to the New World _________________
21. How many people in the world speak English these days ___
22. Who discovered penicillin ______
23. What "NHS" in Britain means ____________________
24. What percentage of pupils go to state schools (.%) ___________
25. Till what age children in Britain go to a primary school ____
26. How many universities there are in Britain_______________
27. How many member states there are in European Union ______
a) Decide if the following statements are true (T) or false (F )
b) Suggest some possible corrections of the given facts
TASK 2. WHILE WATCHING.
a) Watch the videofilm and check your answer.
b) Write the correct answer where necessary.
Statement
True
False
Correct statement
1.The mainland Europe and France are more than 40 km away from the port of Dover.
2.The area of the UK is more than a quarter of a million square kilometers.
3.The British weather is temperate with few extremes in temperature.
4.Indeed large parts of the UK are easily inhabitable.
5.With 58 mln people Britain is one of the most sparsely populated countries in Europe
6.The British are mainly the descendants of the original dark-skinned peoples living in these islands or of waves of immigrants from Europe: Danes, Vikings, Normans, French Protestants, Jewish immigrants.
7.Britain is a multicultural society built on the tradition of tolerance.
8.Britain’s food has a poor reputation.
9.British families are now smaller than they used to be 50 years ago.
10.The UK has one of the lowest marriage and divorce rates in Europe.
11.In Britain there is complete freedom of religious belief and observance.
12.In Britain living in a house gives the freedom of having your own front door and always a garden.
13.The idea of Britishness is rooted in the value system.
14.To many non-British people it is ridiculous that Britain still has a monarchy.
15.The present-day Queen's father was King George IV.
16.In Britain the Queen doesn't have any formal constitutional roles.
17.Britain's development was evolutional, not revolutional.
18.In Britain the Monarchy is not controlled by Parliament.
19.Britain never felt the need for a written constitution.
20.Britain's Parliament is one of the youngest representative assemblies in the world.
21.The House of Lords still remains an important arena for debates of current issues.
22.The British Law is based on case law and precedent.
23.The Queen's birthday is celebrated in April each year.
24.In February Scots everywhere celebrate the birthday of Robert Burns.
25.The boat race between Britain's oldest universities (Oxford and Cambridge) takes place on the river Thames near London.
26.The ancient people were subdued nearly 4000 years ago by the Romans.
27.1066 was the last time Britain was conquered by a foreign invader.
28.It was 700 years before English monarchs could persuade the Welsh into a Political Union.
29.It was in the early 18th century that the Scots signed the Act of Union binding them to England.
30.In the beginning of the 19th century Irish nationalists rebelled. The result was two countries of Ireland.
31.Since 1969 Northern Ireland has suffered campaigns of violence.
32.There is a soccer team for each of the UK's countries.
33.The British Empire was not the largest empire in the history of the world.
34.Hong Kong (the last British colony) was reverted to China in 1987.
35.The Commonwealth with the Queen as its Head provides a forum for international cooperation for a few of Britain's former dominions.
36.Lord Byron is a 19th century English poet.
37.Britain was the world's first agricultural country.
38.Britain was the first to invent a printer.
39.In Britain the National Health Care provides universal free medical care.
40.Today 1 in 4 school-leavers goes into higher education.
41.As everywhere in the world people in Britain spend most of their free time watching TV and listening to the radio.
42.Beer in British pubs is usually served cold.
43.Since the days of the 'Beatles' Britain has led the world in rock music.
44.Nearly 1/10th of the British population goes fishing.
45.The National Trust is the oldest charity in Britain.
46.Cricket was invented in England.
47.Britain's economic prosperity is firmly based on private enterprise.
48.Service industry supplies 85 % of Britain's income.
49.Britain was a founding member of the United Nations
50. Britain's destiny as a trading nation lies firmly in Europe.
F
e.g. …LESS…
Task 3. AFTER WATCHING. SAILING TO BRITAIN...
Task 3.1. Think of a name of a famous person (athlete, pop star, writer, etc.) and write it down on a small piece of paper.
3.2. Now imagine that this person is you!
ROLE-PLAY:a group of famous people is travelling to Britain on a nice big yacht.
There are 10 people on the yacht including (write down their names):
_______________________ ( )
________________________( )
_______________________( )
________________________( )
________________________( )
_______________________( )
________________________( )
_______________________( )
________________________( )
________________________( )
(!) But suddenly you realize that the yacht is leaking and is about to sink. There is only one person who could stay on this yacht and survive! The rest of you should jump out of the boat!
Task 3.3. Mingling activity. You should talk to each of your famous companions and convince them to jump out of the boat. Certainly you are the one who is staying on the boat! Give your reasons why your opponent should leave the boat and why you are the only one who is supposed to survive!
Task 3.4. Round-table. As a group discuss the results of your conversations which each other and decide on the order of the people's leaving the yacht. Write down the numbers from (1) to (10) in the spaces provided.
AS OTHERS SEE US
We are rarely able to såå those who are very close to us as they really are because of our readiness to accept their faults and accentuate their virtues. The same is equally true when we come to look at ourselves. It is very difficult for anybody to be objective about his own character. Yet it is very good for us to try to be so from time to time. As the Scottish poet Robert Burns put it:
0 wad1 come Pow'r the giftie2 gie3 us
To see oursels4as others see us!
It wad frae5 mony6 a blander free us
And foolish notion.
______________
1 would 2gift 3. give 4. ourselves 5. from 6. many
What Burns says about individuals is equally true of nations. Every country tends to accept its own way of life as being the normal one and to praise or criticize others às they are similar to or different from it. And unfortunately, our picture of the people and the way of life of other countries is often a distorted one.
Here is a great argument in favour of foreign travel and learning foreign languages. It is only by travelling in, or living in a country and getting to know its inhabitants and their language, that one can find out what a country and its people are really like. And how different the knowledge one gains this way frequently turns out to be from the second hand information gathered from other sources! How often we find that the foreigners whoa we thought to be such different people from ourselves are not so very different after all!
Differences between peoples do, of course, exist and, one hopes, will always continue to do so. The world will be a dull place indeed when all the different nationalities behave exactly alike, and some people might say that we are rapidly approaching this state of affairs. With almost the whole of Western Europe belonging, to the European Economic Community and the increasing standardisation that this entails, plus the much greater rapidity and ease of travel, there might seem some truth in this — at least as far as Europe is concerned. However this may be, at least the greater ease of travel today has revealed to more people than ever before that the Englishman or Frenchman or German is not some different kind of animal from themselves.
Yes, travel does broaden the mind. And learning the language and culture of another nation does liberalise one's outlook. It is to be hoped that more and more of the ordinary people in all countries will have the opportunity to do both things in the future. But when people travel they should be open to new experiences. Too often English people abroad create their own community keeping to English ways of life no matter where they might be.
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