Text a. Work – Life’s Central Activity

Today the work you do to earn a living influences your way of life. It is the major factor in your identity. It affects your choice of friends and the way you spend your leisure time. Work gives you an opportunity to have impact on the culture in which you live. Work is the central activety around which people plan their lives. Successful work activity is necessary to achieve personal happiness.

In the past the variety of work activity available to a young person was limited. Few women worked outside the home. Most young people followed in the same line of work as their parents. Many became farmers, having learned how to work at an early age by helping on their parenrts’ farm. Others learned a trade by helping their parents or a friend of the family. There was not much choice about the king of work a person could do.

During the past 50 yours, our society has become much more complex. There are naw more than 20,000 different jobs. Most women now work for at least 25 years of their lives outside the home. Women have become an important part of the work force. Most people no longer perform their work activities in the home – they travel to work. Thus, many young people never see their parents engaged in the work activity which earns the family livelihood. While there are several thousand kinds of work which are avalible to young people, there is less opportunity to closely observe work activity today then there was 50 years ago.

Psychologists tell us that one of the thengs which most disturb young people is the lack of an occupational identity. That is, too many young people have no picture of themselves some five or ten years in the future. They have no career goals. They don’t know where they are going. Young people who know where they are going occupationally have a goal to pursue. They have a purpose. As you daydream (as everyone does) about your future, have you thought carefully about how your work affects you and your overall lifestyle? Did you know, for example, that half of the average person’s lifetime is spent at or involved in work? Your work, or career, is not something that affects you only during working hours.

If you are going to spend most of your waking hours involved in some kind of work activity for moet of your adult life, you can see hew important it is to spend some time planning this facet of your future.

Word Study

Exercise 1. Translate the following sentences paying attention to the active vocabulary.

1. Colleges and universities are free to determine their own in­dividual standards, admissions and graduation requirements.

2. The faculties must prepare their students to earn a living immediately after graduation.

3. The main principle of our educational system is an equal opportunity of getting education.

4. You may take courses in adult evening school.

5. Some people believe that traditional family values are now in danger.

6. The average human life is now longer.

7. Various schools and systems are similar in structure.

8. Does education influence culture or doss culture influence education?

9. Old age is highly respected in China.

10. One of the goals of education is to bring people together.

Exercise 2. Fill in the blanks with the necessary words of the active vocabulary:

average, goal, work force, jobs, leisure, make up, involved, major, alone, complex.

1. The proportion of women in the total ... is about 52 percent.

2. The ... of education may be money, status, power, or simply knowledge.

3. The speaker showed the ... tendencies in the devolopment of science.

4. Many different cultural traditione, ethnic sympathies, ratial and religious groups ... the people Of Amerioa.

5. Few of us like to be told that wo are ... or typical.

6. There are many families in which women have to raise their children ... .

7. A very small proportion of the country's population is ... in agriculture.

8. A large number of students hold ... in addition to studying.

9. Many people are too busy in their jobs and cannot enjoy ...

10. The world around us is becoming more and more ... .

Exercise 3. Make the pairs of synonyms:

affect, trade, goal, culture, equal, similar, major, central,

important, chief, like, the same, influence, purpose, career, occupation, society.

Exerciac 4. See the difference between "some" and "the same" and translate the sentences:

1. Children must have some of the duties at home.

2. All mothers are the same in their love for their children.

3. Some computers are designed so that they never give wrong unswers.

4. He is the same age as his wife.

5. We have lived in the same house for twenty years.

6. Some years ago he married a girl whose mother is an expert cook.

7. I can't eat the same food every day.

8. Some mothers see their daughters as teachers because they themselves always wanted to be teachers.

9. The day will come when we can reach some stars.

10. People can use the same words in different meanings.

11. Knowledge and experience are not the same thing.

12. Values of life will not be the same when your children grow up as they are today.

Exercise 5. Fill in the blanks with "some" or "the same":

1. These facts are not new to us, we received ... information two days ago.

2. I hear you have ... important information.

3. They are not close friends, they simply took economics at ... college.

4. ... (itudents get to college by bus.

5. people smoke, ... don't.

6. They smoke ... sort of cigarettes.

7. I have ... good friends among actors.

8. My brother and I are in ... group at college.

9. They are twins, they were born on ... day.

10. We used ... materials in all the experiments.

Exercise 6. Read the following sentences and note "that" and "those" which are used in place of nouns, singular or plural:

1. The climate of California is different from that of Alaska.

2. The relationship between parents and children in China is much different from that in the West.

3. Compare the newspapers of today with those of a hundred years go.

4. Planetary distances are about a million times greater than those of ordinary, everyday life.

5. The article included, among other things, that of the total number of Indians in the United States.

6. Like schools in Britain and other English speaking countries those in the U.S. provide a lot of sports activities.

7. You can see the greatest contrast of the present educational standards with that of the past.

8. The human memory is a filing system that has a far greater capacity than that of the largest computer.

9. It is a mark of a cultured man that he is interested not only in his own thoughts and feelings but in those of others.

Exercise 7. Choose the right word:

1. It is a very interesting (work, job).

2. What time do you get home from (work, job)?

3. Over three million people are now out of (work, job) in Britain.

4. She got a (work, job) as a secretary when she left college.

5. If you are looking for a (work, job) as a typist why don't you read the advertisements in the evening paper?

6. The principal of equal pay for equal (work, Job) has now been accepted.

7. A lot of married women havo (work, job) nowduyn.

8. She's constantly changing (worku, Jobn).

9. Peter's (work, job) has improved this term.

10. I have much (work, job) to do.

11. This is one of Bethoven's early (works, jobs).

Exercise 8. Say the following in English:

1. Моя работа мне нравится.

2. Он ищет более интересную работу.

3. Она устроилась работать машинисткой в издательстве (publishing house).

4. У меня завтра будет очень много работы.

5. Он хочет сменить работу.

6. Этот пейзаж - одна из последних работ Левитана.

7. Ирина еще не пришла с работы?

8. В саду всегда много работы.

9. Она но хочет потерять работу.

10. Ходить по магазинам и стряпать считается женской работой.