Examination Card №40

I. Reading
The United States is the country of natural wonders known all over the world. The Rocky Mountains of Colorado draw skiers and snowmobilers. The Grand Canyon in Arizona attracts about 5 million visitors a year. The nation's largest national park, Yellowstone, as well as Glacier National Park in Montana and Yosemite in California are popular among tourists.

Tourists eagerly visit Los Angeles (L.A.) and Hollywood which is the home of the American film industry. San Francisco is one of the hilliest and most cosmopolitan of American cities, which is famous for its bridges, cable cars, breathtaking scenery, exotic Asian cuisine and the giant sequoia trees.

Alaska's sights include smoking volcanoes, grassy plains, rain forests, lakes, glaciers, and many high mountains including Mount McKinley, the highest mountain in North America. If you want to see mountain peaks, forests, waterfalls, and the world's most active volcano (Kilauea) you should visit Hawaii.

II. Writing
From: Serhiy
To: Oleksiy
Subject: school leaving party

Hi, Oleksiy!
This is just a quick email to ask if I can be of any help while preparing our school leaving party. You know that I'm interested in music greatly so I can organize the music or invite a DJ from our local club.
Let's meet at 4 pm in the school hall to discuss the details.
Bye for now,
Serhiy

III. Speaking
Each country is famous for and proud of its museums, monuments of architecture and sculpture, which testify to the intellectual wealth, artistic talents and immortal soul of its people. There are museums well-known for their marvellous collections of genuine masterpieces throughout the world: the National Gallery, the Tate Gallery and the British Museum in London, the Louvre in Paris, the Prado in Madrid, the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the National Gallery of Arts in Washington, D.C., the National Gallery of Ukraine, the Russian Fine Arts Museum and the Khanenko Western and Oriental Art Museum in Kyiv and hundreds of others. There are also the Natural History and Zoological Museums and others. Some people visit museums and galleries quite voluntarily, because they feel the call of arts; others are made by either their parents or teachers. For the first group it's usually entertainment, some minutes of joy, plunging into a different world, which gives them new experience. The other group turns their blind eye to whatever they see, and neither landscapes nor portraits or still-lives awaken any response in their hearts.

I am a culture-minded person, I feel the call of arts so there is nothing like visiting a museum of Fine Arts for me. I take an interest in going to the museums because I admire coming in touch with the pictorial history of the world with all its victories, tragedies and disasters, triumphs and celebrations. Visiting a museum in Ukraine is rather cheap, while the knowledge visitors receive is invaluable. There is nothing more wonderful than seeing breathtaking and unique portraits, landscapes, seascapes, city-scapes, still-lives, pictures of animals, marble and bronze statues etc with your own eyes. It's unforgettable when you stand in front of the masterpiece and feel everything the artist wanted to tell.

This spring we went to the Museum of Western and Oriental Art in Kyiv. It enjoys the great popularity between the Kyivites and the guests of the city. There are nearly 17,000 artworks there, with 2,000 pieces exposed in the museum halls. Visitors can view many remarkable samples of Ancient Greek, Roman, Italian, French, Spanish, Flemish, Dutch, Japanese, Chinese, Persian, Turkish, Egyptian, etc art. With time the collection was enriched through the efforts of many famous people. The museum collection today consists of 25 thousands exhibits and is considered to be the biggest foreign art collection in Ukraine. Among the museum's collection there are masterpieces which include Diego Velasquez's "The Portrait of Infanta Margaret", located in the Spanish Hall. Although the collection covers a wide range of countries, it does not claim to completely represent periods and styles of foreign art and the creative manners of foreign artists. It is not the number of art pieces, but the unique nature of many that makes Kyiv Museum of Western and Oriental Art famous not only in Ukraine but far abroad as well.

I spent only two hours in the museum, but it was enough for me to feel the mysterious energy which the real masterpieces radiate. I liked the Spanish Hall most of all. If only we could join a guided group to hear more about.

I wish my friends and I frequently went to the museums because they give us a chance to become better educated and admire the real beauty.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-21