1.Go to Grammar Focus

Revise the material about modal verbs.

3. Work out recommendations how to be active and healthy

Module 2. International Communication Unit 1. Communication in the Globalized World

Lead-in

• Do you agree that the number of international contacts is obviously increasing or mass media exaggerate the importance of global communication? Give your reason.

• Is globalization the tool to open the doors into the universal cultural, educational, scientific, and business common space or that’s the way to lose the national integrity and disappear as a nation? Prove your idea.

• Do you share the opinion that knowing a foreign language is a tool that helps to survive in a “global village”? Dwell upon it.

• Is bilingualism or further multilingualism a necessary requirement for a modern person who wants to achieve success? Does the ability to speak several foreign languages increase a personal competitiveness while searching for a job?

• Can language ignorance cause problems while visiting a foreign country? Give some examples.

• How many and what languages do you want to learn to speak? Explain your choice.

Reading

1. Read the following quotations about learning foreign languages. Develop the ideas suggested by the authors.

“Knowledge of languages is the doorway to wisdom.” Roger Bacon (English Franciscan philosopher and educational reformer)

“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.” Nelson Mandel (South African politician and a anti-apartheid activist)

“Language is the means of getting an idea from my brain into yours without surgery. Mark Amidon  (Popular American blogger)

“If you can speak three languages you're trilingual.  If you can speak two languages you're bilingual.  If you can speak only one language you're an American.”  Author Unknown

“Learn a new language and get a new soul.”  Czech Proverb

Reading and vocabulary

1. Read the definition of the communication phenomenon from Wikipedia. Translate into Russian.

Communication is the exchange of thoughts, messages, or information, as by speech, visuals, signals, writing, or behavior.

This word is derived from the Latin word "communis" which means to share. Communication requires a sender, a message, and a recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast distances in time and space.

2. Try to give your own explanation to the notion of communication. Emphasize the ultimate purpose of communication. You may find useful the following basic ideas:

It’s a process of ….	to reach mutual understanding
This is the way to ….	to share ideas
It’s a system of ….	to inform about one’s plans and intentions
That’s the tool to ….	to gain some profit.

2. Scan the text for general understanding. What it is about? Think of the title to the text.

The world is a global village. Over the last fewdecades, scientific progress and technological innovations have made it possible for people all around the world to be in touch 24/7. Companies and organizations are increasingly expanding beyond the borders of their own countries.

Modern people have so many exciting opportunities that were beyond the wildest dreams of their parents. With an instant click a Russian student can attend a webinar delivered by an outstanding professor from Oxford, anti-crisis managers from different departments of an international corporation can create a think-tank via Skype to brainstorm genuine ideas to help the company survive, young band musicians can post their songs on Internet to attract some sponsors from foreign countries, senior students can find international grants and internships for their projects or search for a job offer to participate in the Work&Travel Program. Chances are really infinite!

Global communication at the turn of the 21st century has brought about many effects. It is destroying technological, economic, political, and cultural boundaries. Print, photography, film, telephone and telegraphy, broadcasting, satellites, and computer technologies are quickly merging into a digital stream of a binary system of zeros and ones in the global telecommunications networks which violate national borders by broadcasting foreign news, entertainment, educational, and advertising programs.

Worldwide communication gives a modern man an eyewitness view of events in remotest locations; we participate in political events of global, regional or even local importance, besides we tend to share different knowledge, values and ethics, aesthetics, lifestyles which are based on global contacts.

Economically, separate industries are joining to service the new global environment; the expansion of WTO comes to mind here as a graphic example. Politically, global communication is undermining the traditional boundaries and sovereignties of nations. So, in orderto meet the requirements of new technologically advanced reality people should interact much closer and intensify international contacts.

International communication has its own history. News have already been 'inter-nationalized' in the fifteenth century: the wheat traders of Venice, the silver traders of Antwerp, the merchants of Nuremberg and their trading partners shared economic newsletters and created common values and beliefs in the rights of capital. The commercialization of mass print media (due to steam engine technology) has led to internationally operating news agencies (Reuters, Associated Press, AFP) in the nineteenth century. World wire and cable systems allowed international communication between France, Germany and Great Britain to their colonies in Africa and Asia. Transnational media organizations such as Intelsat, BBC, founded in the middle of the 20th century were the starting point for a new idea of international communication. It was the establishment of internationally operating media systems, such as CNN and MTV by individual companies which have finally opened a new age of global communication by distributing the same program "around the world in thirty minutes" (as a CNN slogan states) - across nations and cultures.

The moon landing, broadcast 'live' worldwide, was indeed a large step for mankind: simply because for the first time Planet Earth was seen as a common habitat, without borders, a blue planet of landmasses and oceans. The idea of the 'world' seemed to have switched from a metaphysical concept into a material reality, and finally has become the basis for such phenomenon as "Globalization."