• 2) Write a summary of the text.

3.16 The President of the usa

• 1) Do you know who the current President of the usa is? Is he a Democrat or a Republican? Do you know anything about his educational, ethnic or social background?

• 2) Read and translate the first text into Russian.

Do you want to be president of the United States of America? Maybe you can apply for a job. Answer these three questions. Are you a U.S. citizen? Are you thirty five years old or older? Have you been a resident of the United States for fourteen years or longer? Did you say “yes” to all three questions? Then you can take the first steps to the White House.

You become President for a term. A term is four years. You can only serve two terms. This means that you can only be President twice. This became law in 1951. Before that, the law was different. In fact, Franklin D. Roosevelt became president in 1933. He was still President when he died in 1945. He was President for twelve years. No one was President longer than he was.

As President of the United States, you earn $200,000 a year. You also get extra $50,000 for expenses, tax free. You have your own limousine, jet, and housekeepers, all free. You also live rent free, in the White house, D.C. And you are Head of the richest country in the world.

Presidents of the United States are very different people. Twenty two were lawyers, four soldiers, four farmers, four teachers, two writers, two businessmen, one tailor, and one actor. Eight of them didn’t have a college education!

• 3) Read and translate the second text and indicate the differences between the two texts. Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson, the second President of the United States, even at his best did not make an impressive appearance. Yet, though a very ineffective public speaker, he charmed everybody in conversation, and he wrote with greater literary skill than any president before or since, with the exceptions of Abraham Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson. More than that, he was a genius. Besides being a politician and a diplomat, he was an architect, educator, inventor, scientific farmer, and philosopher-scientist. As a shrewd and practical politician, he was excelled by no other president, though he was equaled by Lincoln and by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

3.17 George Washington

• 1) What do you know of George Washington? What was he (politician, farmer, military officer, inventor, president, commander-in chief)? How does the country commemorate him?

George Washington was the first President of the United States of America. He was born on February 22, 1732 in Virginia. At the age of 20 he became an adjutant in the Virginia militia. In 1759, he married Martha Dandridge Castes, a widow, and settled down as a gentleman farmer at Mount Vernon, Virginia.

From 1759 to the outbreak of the American Revolution, Washington managed his lands around Mount Vernon and served in the Virginia House of Burgesses.

When the Second Continental Congress took place in Philadelphia in May 1775, Washington, one of the Virginia delegates, was elected Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army.

On October 19, 1781 the war against British influence was over, but the Nation was not functioning well. So Washington became the prime mover in the steps leading to the Constitutional Congress at Philadelphia in 1787. Two years later he was elected President. He was the head of the country for eight years (1789-1797).

George Washington died of a throat infection in Virginia on December 14, 1799. For months the Nation mourned him.