Unit 17.Skeleton and muscles.

The headline of the article is Hussein Divides Iraq, Even in Death. The article is published on December 31, 2006 in the newspaper the International Herald Tribune by Sabrina Tavernise. The topic of the given article is Iraq after Hussein’s death. The main idea can be formulated in the following way: after Hussein’s death the country still remains divided due to different responses made by Sunnis and Shiites about his execution.

The summary. The article provides information on Saddam Hussein execution. At the very beginning of the article the author points out that Saddam Hussein is dead, but his legacy is more alive than ever. Though the former dictator has been hanged, the responses to the execution are different. For Shiites, long oppressed, it was a moment of intense release. Sunni Arabs were skeptical. Their different reactions show how far Iraqis have drifted apart in the three years since Mr. Hussein’s capture.

Then the author emphasizes that the new Iraq appears capable of inflicting only more of the abuse it suffered for so long, perpetuating it with overwhelming brutality. As vicious as he was, Mr. Hussein held the country firmly together. Beyond military control, there was a subtle social glue: Iraqis of all sects loved to hate Saddam together. Now that he is gone, Shiites are afraid to joke with Sunnis about him, and Sunnis feel they are being blamed for his crimes. Mr. Hussein spared almost no one in his murderous ways, but Shiites were particularly abused as a group. That systematic mistreatment seems to have left lasting scars that carry through to the current day. For some Iraqis, previous humiliations were enough to feel justice had been done.

Next the author presents different attitudes to the execution: if Shiites saw the hanging as a gift, most Sunnis revolted that, in what appeared to be a violation of Iraqi law, the execution was scheduled on a holiday of forgiveness. Others, namely Kurds, opposed the quick hanging. Now, Mr. Hussein will not testify in other important genocide cases, especially the trial over the Anfal military campaign against the Kurds, in which he is accused of unleashing mass killings and chemical attacks that killed tens of thousands of villagers.

In the final paragraphs the author stresses that still car bombs regularly intercede, shattering the calm. In response, Iraqis of both sects attempt to draw circles around the chaos in their own minds. As a result, they tend to generalize about the other, coming up with conspiracy theories, to make the violence easier to explain and accept.

The author concludes the article using the quotation: as Mr. Jasim said: "If we got rid of the terrorists, there would be no country better than Iraq, it’s the non-Iraqis that are against the Shiites." It is a common conclusion of the articles of this type.

The inferences. The genre of the article is news analysis. In my opinion the author managed to convey in the analyzed article the atmosphere created in the country after Hussein execution. The author gives different views made by ordinary people who live in Iraq and belong to different sects. The text contains some statistics as well. All these things contribute to the information presented in the article. The article is up-to-date since it was published a couple of days after Hussein execution.

The criteria for news selection that are of key importance for the given article are prominence as far as Iraq problem is widely discussed in the world not only by the politicians of great states but ordinary people as well, timeliness due to the fact that this article was published soon after the execution of Hussein, human interest that is caused by the nature of the execution itself (this event arose different attitudes of people in the world).

The target audience of the article is rather broad. The text will be interesting, first of all, for the Iraqis, secondly, for the international audience, for people who are not indifferent to the matters taking place in the world around them.

The language of the article is formal. It is full of different words and word combinations taken from the political sphere. It is not always easy for understanding.

Unit 17.Skeleton and muscles.

WARM-UP: Could you explain the following: Babies are born with 300 bones, but by adulthood we have only 206 in our bodies.

VOCABULARY: Learn the following words and word combinations.

Guess the meaning of the following words.

Leg; arm; skeleton; muscles; to protect; brain; lung; rib; blood vessel; blood cell; blood; nerves; calcium; phosphorus; cardiac muscles; skeletal muscles; digestive tract; involuntary; fiber; heart; internal organs.

Practice the following for pronunciation.

forearm [ˈfɔː.rɑːm]

wrist [rɪst]

thorax [ˈθɔː.ræks]

spinal cord [ˈspaɪ.nlkɔːd]

spinal column [ˈspaɪ.nlˈkɒl.əm]

breast [brest]

collarbone [ˈkɒl.ə.bəʊn]

shoulder [ˈʃəʊl.də]

elbow [ˈel.bəʊ]

periosteum [per′i·os′tē·əm]

pelvis [ˈpel.vɪs]

spongy bone [ˈspʌn.dʒibəʊn]

READING: Read the text and do the tasks that follow.

The human body is separable into the head, the trunk and the limbs. In the head the skull is distinguishable from the face. The trunk includes the chest (thorax) and the abdomen. Of the limbs there are two pairs - the upper (arms), consisting of the upper arm, the forearm, the wrist and the fingers, and the lower limbs (legs), including the thigh, the leg and the toes.

The human skeleton is made up of more than 200 bones. It gives our muscles a firm place to anchor themselves and also protects our body’s more fragile organs. For example, the brain is protected by the skull and the lungs are protected by the ribs.

The bones form the skeleton of the body. They vary in shape and size to fit their function. The spine has 33 separate bones. It is shaped to protect the spinal cord, which travels through it, while also giving the spinal muscles a place for attachment. The most important part of the skeleton is the backbone. The bones which form the skeleton or bony framework of the body include the bones of the head, the bones of the trunk, the bones of the lower and upper limbs. The bones of the head include the bones which make up the skull and freely movable bone which forms our lower jaw. The bones of the trunk include the spinal column, the ribs and the breastbone. The arms join the body at the shoulder, which consists of two bones - the collar-bone in front, and the shoulder-blade behind. Between the shoulder and the elbow there is only one bone in the arm (humerus), but between the elbow and the wrist there are two (ulna, radius). In the wrist there are eight small bones. Next come the bones of the hand itself. We have twenty-seven bones in the framework of the hand and wrist alone.

All bones have an outer layer called the periosteum. This contains nerves and blood vessels. Underneath lies the toughest part – compact bone. This part is hollow and is lined with spongy bone, which makes it strong but not too heavy. Cells in the bone take calcium and phosphorus from the blood to keep the bony substance hard. Bone marrow lies at the center of bone. The bone marrow at the end of long bones is responsible for making new blood cells.

The male skeleton is different to the female skeleton. For example, the female pelvis is specially designed to allow a baby’s safe journey down the birth canal.

We know that the muscles constitute approximately fifty per cent of the total body weight. There are three main types of muscular tissue that we identify and classify on the basis of structure and function: smooth muscle, skeletal muscle, cardiac muscle.

Smooth muscles can contract slowly. They make up the walls of the internal organs such as those of the blood vessels and the digestive tract. The walls of the blood vessels are contracting and expanding when they respond to certain chemicals in the blood or in response to the effect of temperature, but we can’t cause them to lift our arm or to open our mouth (involuntary muscles). Striated muscles are most necessary for manipulation of the bones of the skeleton. Those are the muscles necessary for walking, running, turning the head and so on. That’s why they are sometimes called the skeletal muscles. This type includes all those muscles which must react quickly to changes in the environment, i.e. those that become active through an effort of will (voluntary muscles). A characteristic feature of cardiac muscle is that fibers have neither a beginning nor an end. In other words, the heart is simply a huge net of muscles in which all elements are continuous with each other.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 1240