Practical class #1

1. Answer and discuss the following questions:

1. What is United Kingdom made up of?

2. What is the official name of the country? Provide some shorter names of it.

3. When was the term ‘Great Britain’ officially used for the first time?

4. How many countries are larger in size that the United Kingdom?

5. Who is the head of state?

6. Who governs the country?

7. What is the chief lawmaking body of UK?

8. What symbols does the shield of Royal Arms bear?

9. What is another name for United Kingdom’s flag?

10. When the UK’s flag was officially adopted? Dwell upon the history of the flag.

11. What is the floral emblem and patron saint of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland?

12. Provide 8 main land regions of Britain.

13. What seas do border the country?

14. Enumerate the rivers of Northern Ireland.

15. What is the division of London?

16. What is the Welsh name for Wales?

17. Enumerate signs of national identity.

18. Dwell upon certain stereotypes of national character which are well-known in Britain.

19. Provide the Roman names for Scotland, Wales and Ireland respectively.

20. What is ‘Burns’ supper’?

21. When was the term ‘Britishness’ used for the first time?

22. Dwell upon the ethnicity and social trends of UK.

23. What is ‘national identity’?

24. What can you say about the decline of the British National Identity?

25. When does the financial year start in UK?

26. What is the British opinions towards Immigration and Multiculturalism?

27. What is the second most widely spoken language?

28. Define the terms ‘dialect’ and ‘accent’.

29. Dwell upon Received Pronunciation.

30. What is Cockney?

31. How religious is the UK?

32. Identify three main strands of belief.

2. Translate these sentences paying special attention to the words and phrases given in bold type.

1. Most of the UK is made up of gently rolling hills with isolated areas of high ground such as Dartmoor in the south-west of England or the Mourne Mountains in Northern Ireland.

2. The heaviest rains fall in the highland areas of western Scotland.

3. A ridge of hills, the Pennine, runs down the centre of northern England.

4. The UK Landscape is very varied, ranging from the Grampian Mountains of Scotland to the lowland fens of England which are at or below sea level in places.

5. The climate of Great Britain is temperate and it is moderated by the Gulf Stream.

6. Mild fogs hang over parts of the country from time to time. But the famous “pea soup” fogs of London and other big cities seldom occur any more.

7. Many bays cut into the region’s Atlantic Ocean and North Sea coasts.

8. More important today is the region’s fine white china clay, used to make pottery.

9. The country was once known for its deciduous forests, which with passage of time have reduced largely in number due to deforestation.

10. Britain is an island under constant attack from the surrounding sea.

11. Many British rivers have drowned or sunken, mouths called estuaries, up which the ocean tides flow.

12. In the 19^th century it was once suggested that the House of Parliament should be wrapped in enormous wet sheets to protect those inside from the awful smell of the River Thames.

13. The great dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral still towers over other buildings in the area, just as it has for hundreds of years.

14. The South Bank is one of London’s fastest-growing sections.

15. Crowded residential neighborhoods surround most of central London.

16. Sothern England is the most densely populated area in the UK which does not include a large city and millions of its inhabitants travel into London to work every day.

17. The Norfolk Broads, for example, are criss-crossed by hundreds of waterways but there are no towns here, so this is a popular area for boating holidays.

18. The wild, windswept moors which are the setting for Emily Bronte’s famous novel Wuthering heights seem a world away from the smoke and grime of urban life – in fact, they are just up the road from Bradford.

19. National (‘ethnic’) loyalties can be strong among the people in Britain whose ancestors were not English.

20. For some people living in England who call themselves Scottish, Welsh or Irish, this loyalty is little more than a matter of emotional attachment.

21. The Irish is supposed to be great talkers, the Scots have a reputation for being careful with money and Welsh are renowned for their singing ability.

22. The people of Wales do not have as many reminders of their Welshness in everyday life.

23. Thanks to successive campaigns, the language receives a lot of public support.

24. Britishness "sprung into political and academic prominence" in the late-20th century, but its origins lie with the formation of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707.

25. Other research conducted for the CRE found that white participants felt that there was a threat to Britishness from large-scale immigration, the 'unfair' claims that they perceived ethnic minorities made on the welfare state, a rise in moral pluralism and political correctness.

26. There are very few ancient customs that are followed by the majority of families on special occasions.

27. The country has fewer local parades or processions with genuine folk roots than most other countries have.

28. The traditional 'British’ (or 'English') breakfast is a large 'fry-up' preceded by cereal with milk and followed by toast, butter and marmalade, all washed down with lots of tea.

29. The image of the British as a nation of tea-drinkers is another stereotype which is somewhat out of date.

30. The British govern­ment has been trying for years and years to promote the metric system and to get British people to use the same scales that are used nearly everywhere else in the world.

31. Everybody in Britain still shops in pounds and ounces.

32. Nearly everybody still thinks in Fahrenheit.

33. The use of the 24-hour clock is comparatively restricted.

34. Many of us make assumptions based on the way people speak — judging certain dialects or accents as too posh, or harsh, aggressive, unfriendly, ‘unintelligent’ or ‘common’.

35. Britain is an increasingly homogeneous and polycultural society, the vocabulary, structure and sounds that define the speech of a particular region, are, for many speakers, a source of great pride and an important expression of regional cultural identity.

36. Modern dialects preserve some of the features of traditional dialects. These are some of the "survivors" which have not yet been levelled out.

37. The written Scots looked very similar to contemporary Standard English, suggesting a somewhat modified version of that, rather than a distinct speech form with a phonological system which had been developing independently for many centuries.

38. Nobody object to the fact that the Queen is queen ‘by the grace of God’, or the fact that she, like all previous British monarchs, was crowned by a religious figure – the Archbishop of Canterbury in a church – Westminster Abbey.

39. The Catholic Church, in the interests of self-preservation, has maintained a greater cohesiveness and uniformity than the Anglican Church.

40. These figures hugely outnumber the 350’000 predicted to attend Church of England ceremonies.