Учебное пособие для студентов 1 курса направлений

Match the adjective on the left with the nouns on the right according to the story. Say which character of the story each word combination refers to.

stolid, sturdy and unpretentious life

patriarchal old man
tall, upright and dignified eyes
bright and shrewd people
despotic but kindly woman
toothless, crippled, penniless rule

3. 
   Tell the story of George Meadows according to the outline below:
   

1. 
   The old man and his home.
   
2. 
   The old man and Emily Meadows.
   
3. 
   The old man and his exile’s life.
   
4. 
   The old man back home.
   

4. 
   Discuss the following:
   

1. 
   Why does the author call the life of the Meadows patriarchal? What kind of life is patriarchal to you?
   
2. 
   Why do you think they were a happy family? What makes a family happy?
   
3. 
   Why do you think George Meadows had gone to sea?
   
4. 
   Do you think he was a one-woman man? What do you think there was about Emily Meadows that he would never marry anyone but her?
   
5. 
   Why had he never visited them during his exile’s life?
   
6. 
   Make guesses about the things he had seen in his day.
   
7. 
   What is your main impression of the story?
   
8. 
   Read out the proverbs you wrote down in the pre-reading task. Do you remember the proverbs:
   

East or West – home is best.
There’s no place like home?
Comment on the proverbs with reference to the sto


Text-based activities
Read the text below.

FAMILY LIFE

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. 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 for a common purpose. That purpose is usually to provide shelter and 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. 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.
The first thing most Western people notice in the Far, Middle and Near East is the respect everyone has for old people. Elderly men and women live with their married children and are important members of the family. They look after the children, help with cooking, give advice and often rule family life. Living in an extended family has advantages for everyone. A small child, for example, knows many people from the very beginning, not just his mother and father. When his mother goes out, it doesn’t matter. He’ll stay with someone who loves him - an aunt, sister or grandmother.
For a young mother and father there are also advantages. They can go out to work, and grandmother will look after the house and children. This is especially important in farming communities, where both men and women work in the fields.
And the older woman, for example, has something important to do. She sees how her children and grandchildren grow up. She is needed and loved.
The nuclear family is a product of the West. If the mother goes out to work, she must leave her children with a stranger – someone who looks after them as a job, for money. If there is a divorce, the child’s life will change completely.
And as for the elder people, too many of them live alone – in special flats or homes. They hardly ever see their children and grandchildren. They have nothing important to do. They are often poor and lonely. In the winter many older people die of cold or from falls in the house, because there is no one to look after them.
Years ago in Great Britain it was also important to have large families. The best Victorian mother was the mother who had the most children. The proudest Victorian father was the father who had the most sons. It was important, to have many children so that the family remained strong. If you were rich, you needed sons to inherit your property. If you were poor, you needed sons to help with your work and take it over when you were old. Rich or poor, you needed daughters to help with the running of a large household and to make good marriages with other families.
Not only children were important. Everybody in the family was important: grandmother, aunts, uncle, cousins, and cousins of cousins. Even when branches of (he family quarreled (and they often did) at least they were still there, and that gave people a sense of stability and order.
Nowadays, things are quite different. Young people move away from where they were born, and young couples often leave their hometown to work, and take their immediate family (wife and children) with them, so the family becomes scattered. Slowly, people lose touch with their distant cousins and their great-aunts. Their family unit becomes more and more important, as they see less of their other relatives than they used to.
In general each generation is keen on becoming independent of parents in establishing its own family unit. However, Christmas is a traditional, though probably the only season for family reunion, and trying to keep in touch with distant relatives, people often travel many miles in order to spend the holiday together.
There is one more reason why families in Britain have been getting smaller and smaller. People have fewer children because children are expensive and they take up room. Who can afford a large house? Who can afford food for more than three children when the cost of living is so high? And now, there is the problem of overpopulation, too. We are always being told in Britain that a family should have no more than two children. Britain is a small island (93,026 sq. miles) and it has a population of more than 58 million. Nearly 8 million of those live in London. People can’t have big families when they are living in a small space. Their homes are not big enough to take in such extra members as grandparents. So they live in tiny houses or flats and they get more and more isolated. Sometimes they live very close to other people but they don’t get to know each other. They have hundreds of neighbors but they are lonely. They only have each other to talk to, so they get bored and cross with each other. What is to be done?
In recent years there have been many other changes in family life. Some of these have been caused by new laws, and others are the result of changes in society. The nuclear family, a manned couple with perhaps two children, is still considered the ideal social unit, and most young people still aspire to this idea of their own future. Yet, as a picture of the way most British people live, it is increasingly unrealistic.
The traditional idea of the man going out to work while the wife stays at home is true of less than 10 per cent of households. More and more frequently men are not the only breadwinners. Women’s role in the family has changed as they go out to work to support financially the family budget.
Since 1971, when the law made it easier to get a divorce, the divorce rate has increased greatly and now Britain has the largest rate of divorce in Europe except Denmark. In fact one marriage in every three now ends in divorce, and only 40 per cent of the population live in nuclear family households, and even within this group a large proportion of parents are in their second marriage with children from a previous marriage. On the whole society is now more tolerant than it used to be of unmarried people, unmarried couples and single parents. There are a lot of one-headed families (with mostly the mother as the single parent) as well as men and women living together before marriage or without any marriage. More and more children are born outside marriage, either to cohabiting couples or to single mothers. In addition Britain has the highest rate of teenage pregnancies in Europe, and teenage families are not unusual.
Relationships within the family are different now. Parents treat their children more as equals than they used to and children have more freedom to make their own decisions. Parents are less strict with children, they talk to, listen to them and explain house rules instead of imposing them on the child, and children are more involved in family decisions. The father is also more involved in bringing up children because the mother goes out to work. Increased leisure facilities and more money mean that there are greater opportunities for the individual to take part in activities outside the home. Although the family holiday is still an important part of family life (usually taken in August and often abroad) many children have holidays away from their parents, often with a school party or other organized group.
There are people who think that the family unit in Britain is in crisis and that traditional family life is a thing of the past. They see many indications that the family is in decline. Some politicians blame social problems, such as drug taking and juvenile crime, on a disintegrating family life. There are also economical reasons for the changes in family patterns, and all this is a great concern to those who think a healthy society is dependent upon a stable family life.
However, although people are marrying later (the average woman gets married at 26 to a man who is just over two years older), marriage and the family haven’t gone out of fashion.
Family life in Britain is changing - for better or worse?