I Read the article and answer your teacher’s questions.

FOOTBALL  IN  ENGLAND Encyclopaedia Britannica

Football is the most popular game in England – you understand it if you come to one of the important matches. Rich and poor, young and old, one can see them all there, shouting and cheering for one side or the other. Football matches are also watched by millions of people on TV.

One of the most surprising things about football in England to a stranger is the greatest knowledge of the game. Even the smallest boy can tell you the names of players in most of the important teams; he has photographs of them and knows the results of large number of matches. He will tell you, who he expects will win such and such a match, and his opinion is usually as good as of men three or four times older.

Most schools in England take football seriously –much more seriously than nearly all European schools. In England, it is believed that education is not only a matter of filling a boy’s mind with facts in the classroom: education also means character training; and one of the best ways of training character is by means of games, especially team games, where the boy has to learn to work with others for his team, instead of working selfishly for himself alone.

The school therefore arranges games and matches for its pupils. Football is a good team game, it is good exercise for the body, it needs skill and a quick brain, it is popular and it is cheap: as a result, it is a schools` favourite game. (1137)

 

 

 

 

II Read the text and say which facts are for reading book and which are against it. Say if the  technological progress is important to people.

 

The Book or the Computer?

 

The death of the book has been predicted for centuries. Cinema, radio and television have all been presented as the murderers of books and reading. With the development of computing and the Internet books were replaced by electronic media. Who wants to use a twenty-volume encyclopaedia if you can take the necessary information from a small CD-ROM? It is, of course, the greatest revolution! But no one will lie in bed reading a novel from CD-ROM. Reading and the books, magazines and newspapers are still important in our lives. They continue to teach us lessons, amuse and broaden our minds.

 

 

 

 

III Speak to your teacher. You begin the conversation.

 

Discuss with your foreign friend what is necessary to become successful: a good education, a lucky marriage, a special talent for something.  Give your opinion and ask about your friend’s opinion of this problem.