12. English as a means of international communication

    Every day we can see that it is very important to know foreign languages. The Internet and satellite TV enable us to get information from all over the world. We are able to get education or a job in any country of the world. But we all know that we have to know the language of the country we want to study or work in.

English is the world's first truly universal language. Today there are more than 1.5 billion English speakers in the world. At any station or airport in the world we can find instructions in English. Pilots and air traffic controllers, sailors speak English at all international airports and ports.

English is also the language of the information age. Computers talk to each other in English. More than 80 percent of information of any kind (scientific, commercial, personal) is stored and exchanged in English. Business and trade can't exist now without English. It is the official language of international aid organizations such as OXFAM and Save the Children Fund as well as of UNESCO, NATO and the United Nations.

If we listen to the talk of young people we'll hear words like 'rap music', 'bodybuilding', 'windsurfing', 'computer hacker' and others. English has become a part of youth culture all over the world and in Russia too.

If we want to feel ourselves comfortable in our modern world we must know English. But it's not the limit. The knowledge of one foreign language extends our mind more than twice. So let's not put limits on our minds and souls and study more foreign languages.

13. My favourite singer

(1)

Bob dylan - Master poet, caustic social critic, guiding spirit of the counterculture generation.

He was born with a snake above his fist while a hurricane was blowing.

You must know that.

Bob Dylan couldn't wait for the music to change. He couldn't be only part of the change. He was the change itself. The snake and the hurricane.

Hundreds of songs; more than 500. Forty-three albums; more than 57 million copies sold. It was folk music. Rhythm and blues, too, and juke-joint, rock'n'roll; and hymns from backwoods churches. He put all that together, and found words to match it.

So Bob Dylan took up folk. Got a ride to New York.

Settled, in Greenwich Village. Took any gig he could get. Within two years — tops — turned inside out.

And then abandoned it. What had been music of comment and protest became songs of unprecedented personal testament. Dylan got booed when he showed up with rock musicians behind him, and the booing didn't let up until his great songs like DesolationRow and Like a Rolling Stone pierced the consciousness of a whole new generation, making everyone realise that rock music could be as direct, as personal and as vital as a novel or a poem.

Dylan was suddenly a singer no longer. He was a shaman. A lot of people called him a prophet. In a way, it must have beenscarier than being booed. Everything he gang, said, did or even wore took on a specific gravity that made it harder and harder for him to move. The music became so important to so many people, took on such awesome proportions, that Dylan could respond only with the ultimate sanity: silence.

After a motorcycle accident in 1966, he used the recovery time to retreat and cook up some new music that was mystical and playful, and so deliberately rough edged that it seemed almost spontaneous.

A dizzying number of changes but Dylan has been consistent only in one thing he has never stopped making great music. In 1991 he got a Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement. He gave us a great record. The album Time Out of Mind was greeted as masterpiece, his greatest work since Blood on the Tracks more than 20 years before. It was as if everyone suddenly woke up and figured it was Dylan who had been asleep all these years. In fact, as always, he was the only one with his eyes open. To know that, all you had to do — still and ever — is listen.

(2)

Elvis Presley. Elvis Presley came from a very poor family. He was born on the 8th of January, 1935 in Mississippi.

Elvis loved music. He went to church every Sunday and sang in the choir. When he was 13, mother bought him a guitar. (Elvis wanted a bicycle, but it was too expensive.) In the same year Elvis and his family left Mississippi. They moved to Memphis, Tennessee.

One day in 1954 he went to a recording studio called Sun Records. He wanted to make a record for his mother's birthday. The secretary at the studio, Marion Keisker, heard Elvis and she told her boss, Sam Phillips.

Elvis was just what Sam Phillips dreamed about: "a white boy with a black voice".

Phillips became Elvis's manager and Elvis made his first single — "That's All Right, Mama". When disc jockeys played it on their radio stations, American teenagers went wild. Many American parents didn't like Elvis. He was too sexy.

In 1955 Elvis appeared on TV in New York. The following year he went to Hollywood and made his first film "Love Me Tender".

In 1958 Elvis joined the American army and went to Germany. When he returned to the United States in the early 60s, pop musicwas not the same. British groups like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were the new stars.

Elvis was a millionaire, but he was a very lonely man. In his last years he became fat and depressed. He died of a heart attack on the 16th of August, 1977 in his mansion at Graceland, Memphis.

But for his millions of fans Elvis is still the King, the King of Rock'n'Roll.

(3)

John Lennon John Winston Ono Lennon was best known as a singer, songwriter, poet and guitarist for the British rock band The Beatles. His creative career also included the roles of solo musician, political activist, artist, actor and author.

As half of the legendary Lennon-McCartney songwriting team, he heavily influenced the development of rock music.

Many of his songs such as "Imagine" and «Strawberry Fields Forever «are often ranked among the best songs in popular music history. In 2002, the BBC conducted a vote to discover the 100 Greatest Britons of all time, and the British public voted Lennon into 8th place.

Lennon was born in Liverpool on 9 October, 1940. Both of his parents had musical backgrounds. After his parents' divorce Lennon lived with his aunt and her husband throughout the rest of his childhood and adolescence.

John Lennon was accepted into the Liverpool College of Art. He didn't enjoy studying there and ultimately dropped out. He instead devoted himself to music, inspired by American Rock 'n' Roll and singers like Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly. Lennon started playing rock 'n' roll in a band, which was later called The Beatles.

Lennon had a profound influence on rock and roll and in expanding the genre's boundaries during the 1960s. He is widely considered, along with songwriting partner Paul McCartney, as one of the most influential singer-songwriter-musicians of the 20th century.

John Lennon decided to quit the Beatles in 1970. Of the four former Beatles, Lennon had perhaps the most varied recording career.

Lennon was tragically killed in 1980 by the obsessed fan named Chapman. He fired five bullets. One bullet missed, but four bullets entered Lennon's back and shoulder.

When asked once in the 1960s how he expected to die, Lennon's offhand answer was «I'll probably be popped off by some loony.» Although Lennon might have meant it as a joke and did not expect it to happen, the comment turned out to be chillingly accurate.