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( Фамилии студентов с А-К) Text 1. A TEACHER’S MAIN RESPONSIBILITY IS TO TEACH

Teaching brings many rewards and satisfactions, but it is a demanding, exhausting, and sometimes frustrating job. It is hard to do well unless you enjoy doing it. Teachers who do enjoy their wok will show this in their classroom behavior. They will come to class prepared for the day’s lessons and will present lessons in a way that suggests interest and excitement in promotion learning. When students achieve success, the teacher shares in their joy.

The teachers’ job involves many roles besides that of instructing students. At times, a teacher serves as a parent surrogate, entertainer, psychotherapist, and record keeper, among other things. All of these are necessary aspects of the teachers’ role. However, they are subordinate to, and in support of, the major role of teaching.

Some teacher’s become more concerned with mothering or entertaining students than with teaching them. In these classes, much of the day is spent in reading stories, playing games, singing and listening to records. Such teacher’s do not like to spend much time teaching the curriculum and feel they must apologize to children or bribe them when lessons are conducted. These teachers are meeting their own needs, not those of the students. By the end of the year, the pupils will have acquired negative attitude toward the school curriculum, and they will have failed to achieve near their potential.

The teacher’s is in the classroom to instinct. This involves more than just giving demonstrations or presenting learning experiences. Instruction also means giving additional help to those who are having difficulty, diagnosing the sources of their problems, and providing remedial assistance. For the teacher we see that it means finding satisfaction in the progress of slower students as well as brighter ones. If teacher’s method of handling students who finish quickly is to assign them more of the same kind of exercises, students will learn to work more slowly or hid the fact that they have finished. Teachers would do much better to assign alternate activities of the students’ choice or to allow them to move on to more challenging problems of a similar type.

Another important indicator is the way teacher’s respond to right and wrong answer. When teachers have the appropriate attitude, they accept either type of response for the information it gives about the student. They become neither overly elated about correct answers nor overly disappointed about incorrect answers. They use questions as a way to stimulate thought and to acquire information about a student’s progress.

Although praise and encouragement are important, they should not interfere with basic teaching goals. If a teacher responds with overly dramatic praise every time a student answers a simple question, the class will likely be distracted from the content of the lesson. A better strategy is to follow a simple correct answer with simple feedback to acknowledge that it is correct. Criticism, of course, should be omitted. In general, the teacher’s behaviour during question-and-answer sessions should say, “We’re going to discuss and deepen our understanding of the material,” “We’re going to find out who knows the material and who doesn’t.”

(Фамилии студентов с Л-Я)

Text 2. STEPFAMILIES – DEALING WITH ANGER AND

DISAPPOINTMENT

It’s a myth that love and harmony will come instantly when a new stepfamily is formed. It can take years to overcome the major challenges to creating a stable and successful household.

The number of people living in stepfamilies is growing in the USA. There are more than 30 million adults and about 1 in 5 children in stepfamilies on a national level. In California and a few other states where the divorce rate is really high, about 1 in 3 children is living in a stepfamily situation.

Divorce is the biggest reason. It’s used to be that stepfamilies formed mostly after the death of a parent. Now most stepfamilies are formed from divorce. It’s tougher to create an atmosphere of love and harmony in such families. Often there are unresolved feelings between one of the mates and former spouse that can have an incredible effect on the stepfamily. Also, children typically are very angry at their parents for having divorced and often have not had an opportunity to work that out emotionally. They project this anger onto the new stepmother or stepfather.

Disappointment is common because people expect instant love particularly stepmothers. Many women assume that “I love my new husband, so I will love his children, and they will love me, and it’s all going to happen overnight”. But it can’t, because relationships take time to build. Instant love is one of several myths that surround stepfamilies.

New stepfamilies must work out all sorts of differences in values and habits. They form this new stepfamily from two different ones that have done things their own way for many years. One family may rise at 6o’clock and have a big breakfast while the other likes to sleep later and get by one coffee and orange juice. In one family, it may be O’K to come to dinner in sneakers and a T – shirt, another may require that you dress up more.

A major problem for children is loyalty conflicts created by their parents. They wonder: “If I love Mum, how about Dad?” or, “ If I like my new stepmother, will my mother get upset?

Children also sometimes feel guilty or disloyal talking about their former family and things that they did.

For adults, the most serious challenge surrounds the children. Research shows that in first families money and sex are the biggest troublemakers. Problems with children rank third. In stepfamilies, the № 1 trouble area is children-because of discipline, because of the kids moving between two houses, because both kids and adults have to deal with a biological parent living outside the home, because of feeling and fears.

When stepfamilies form, people on a sense are asked to change their identity and to question who they are and why they do things the way they do. That causes a lot of problems.

But the most difficult situation is with adolescents. They are going through their own life crisis-establishing their own identity and breaking away from their biological families-and at the same time somebody’s saying: “Come in. We have to get this little family going.” They have a very hard time.

Sometimes people get a legal divorce on paper, but the emotional divorce doesn’t come until much later. Sometimes this leads to a lot of unnecessary contact – like calling late at night ostensibly about the children but in reality to have a chat with the former spouse. For remarried people, this often causes problems of competition with the new spouse.

A lot depends on where children are and who is providing support. If a stepfather has financial responsibility for the child, he should have more authority. What is important is that stepparents don’t attempt to take over as the parent or assume the role of disciplinarian at first.

In traditional families, it is usually pretty clear who does what. In most stepfamilies, though, rules and roles are ambiguous. Stepfathers often tend to jump in as the disciplinarians, or they are encouraged to assume that role by the biological mother who, as a former single parent, may have grown tired of being the enforcer. But children often resent the stepparent who hands down discipline.

Instead, stepparents should initially approach their stepchildren as a friend and gradually get into discipline, letting the biological parent with custody take care of most of the disciplining. What is very important is for adults as they form the new family, to present a united front on matters of discipline – as in all families. But it’s a major challenge in the stepfamily.