Sports in great britain

Sport is a very important part of life in Great Britain. Thousands of people devote their leisure time to different sport games, athletics, cycling, boxing and other sports. Horse-racing. dog-racing and motor-racing are among the most popular sports in Britain.

The favorite team game in Great Britain is certainly football, or the soccer, as they call it Soccer matches get big crowds of fans. The Cup Final is one of the most important football matches of the year in England. It is always played at the Wembly stadium, near London.

One type of football, in which the players carried the oval ball in their hands, appeared in 1859 at Rugby School. That is why the game took the name of Rugby, or "rugger". The rules of the game are different from football and there are 15 players in the team.

Cricket is often called an English national game. It is played with balls, bats and wickets. English people love cricket. Summer isn’t summer without it. And really it is very attractive to watch the players, dressed in white playing on the beautiful green cricket fields. There are many thousands of cricket grounds all over England.

The other' popular kind of sport in Great Britain is tennis. The championship is held in Wimbledon at the end of June and beginning of July every year. This championship, in which sportsmen and sportswomen from many countries take part, gathers large crowds of fans.

The British are also fond of swimming. Attempts to swim the English Channel which separates Great Britain from the Continent have been made every summer. Some of the attempts are successful.

Скачки; собачьи бега; автомобильные гонки; футбол (соккер); Уэмбли; регби; крикет; бита, воротца (в крикете), крикетное поле, турнир (чемпионат).

Uk holidays

Bank Holidays, the peculiar English holidays, were appointed by Act of Parliament in 1871. They come four times a year. Easter Monday, Whit-Monday, the first Monday in August and December 26th. December 26th is Boxing Day. The "boxing" refers to the boxes of Christmas presents which are usually given to the people who have given service during a year. Other public holidays are: Christmas Day, New Year’s Day. Good Friday and May Day. On these days all banks and all places of business are closed and practically every one takes a holiday.

But besides public holidays the British people observe certain traditions on such days as Pancake Day, Bonfire Night, and St. Valentine's Day. April Fool's Day, Mother's Day, which unless they fall on a Sunday are ordinary working days.

Пасха; Духов день; рождество; Новый год; страстная пятница; блин (оладья); костер; День Святого Валентина; первое, апреля с его шутками.

Family life

The English are a nation of stay-at-home. "There is no place like home", they say. And when the man is not working he is at home in the company of his wife and children and busies himself with the affairs of the home. "The Englishman's home is his castle", is a saying known all over the world. And it is true.

A "typical" British family used to consist of mother, father and two children, but in recent years there have been many changes in family life. Some of these have been caused by new laws and others are the result of changes in society. For example, since the law made it easier to get a divorce, the number of divorces has increased In fact one marriage in every three now ends in divorce. This means that there are a lot of one-parent families. Society is now more tolerant than it used to be of unmarried people, unmarried couples and single parents.

Another change has been caused by the fact that people are living longer nowadays, and many did people live alone following the death of their partners. As a result of these changes in the pattern of people's lives, there are many households which consist of only one person or one person and children.

You might think that marriage and the family are not so popular as they once were. However, (he majority of divorced people marry again, and they sometimes take responsibility for a second family.

Members of a family - grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins - keep in touch, but they see less of each other than they used to. This is because people often move away from their home town to work, and so the family becomes scattered. Christmas is the traditional season for reunions. Although the family group is smaller nowadays than it used to be, relatives often travel many miles in order to spend the holiday together.

In general, each generation is keen to become independent of parents in establishing its own family unit, and this fact can lead to social as well as geographical differences within the larger family group.

Relationships within the family are different now. Parents treat men-children more as equals than they used to, and children have more freedom to make their own decisions. The father is more involved with bringing up children, often because the mother goes out to work. Increased leisure facilities and more money mean that there are greater opportunities 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.

Who looks after the older generation? There are about 10 million old-age pensioners in Britain, of whom about 750,000 cannot live entirely independently. The government gives financial help in the form of a pension but in the future it will be more and more difficult for the nation economy to support the increasing number of elderly. At the present time, more than half of all old people are looked after at home. Many others live in Old Peoples' Homes, which may be private or state owned.

Развод; терпимый; семья; брать ответственность; разбросанный; сбор; вовлекать; воспитание; возможности для отдыха.