X. Make up short situations or dialogues using Essential Vocabulary.

Exercises to the Text.

I.Summarize the text in a short paragraph of 60 – 80 words.

II.Write a précis of the text in 20 – 30 words.

III.Pick up from the text sentences describing the characters, their behavior and manner of speech. Give the character sketches and speech portraits.

IV.Retell the text a) on behalf of Sheila, b) Robert, c) bystander.

V.Practice dialogues between Sheila and Robert.

VI.Write out from the text sentences containing the word combinations and phrases given after the text and translate them into Ukrainian.

VII. Answer the following questions on the text as fully as possible:

1. What can you say about the setting of the story?

2. What do you know about Harvard University and American system of higher education?

3. What have you found out about characters’ family status and professional interests after reading the text?

4. What are Sheila and Robert going to celebrate?

5. What inferences can you make about characters’ relations?

6. Can you guess what happened in Sheila and Bob’s lives before the situation described in the text?

7. Do characters have a good sense of humor? What testifies to that?

8. What did Sheila and Bob discuss during their picnic lunch?

9. What strategies does Bob use to persuade Sheila of the sincerity of his feelings?

10. How does Sheila reacts to Bobs remarks?

VIII. Reread the text to answer the questions below on its style and composition:

· What types of narrative do you come across in this text?

· What stylistic device does the author use in the sentence ‘Sheila, you’re a tiger’? Are there any other examples of it in the text?

· What features of colloquial style have you noticed in characters’ speech?

· What is the function of the question ‘Haven’t I always told you were the best editor they had?’? What type of question is it?

· What intensifiers have you found in the characters’ speech? Can you suggest their Ukrainian equivalents?

· What can you say about the syntactic stylistic device used in the following sentences ‘That’s good luck,’ he said, kissing her eyes. Her cheeks. Her lips.’? Find similar examples in the text.

· Can you explain the pun used by the author in ‘I don’t want you to get cold feet. Anyway, even if you do, I’ll be there to warm them up at the last minute’? What other types of pun do you know?

· What intertexual elements are used in the text? What is the author’s point in using them?

· What stylistic device is used in the sentence ‘His heart ached for her’? What is it based on?

IX. As a newspaper Agony Aunt columnist write an answer to one of your readers offering strategies of coping with a certain family problem or conflict. Use your experience and imagination.

X. Write an essay of 350 words on one of the following topics:

- Family values: past and present.

- Do women and men speak different languages?

- The art of arguing with your partner.

- What do you mean by healthy relationship?

- Women and men in interruption.

XI. Comment on the following sayings and quotations:

A woman’s tongue wags like a lamb’s tale.

Foxes are all tail and women are all tongue.

The North Sea will sooner be found wanting in water than a woman be at a loss for word.

Ask him the time and he’ll tell you how the watch was made (Jan Wyman of ex-husband Ronald Reagan).

The hardest task in a girl’s life is to prove to a man that his intentions are serious (Helen Rowland).

One of the most difficult things in this world is to convince a woman that even bargain costs money (Edgar Howe).

Don’t imagine you can change a man, unless he’s in nappies. (Jasmine Birtles).

SECTION B

Language and gender research began approximately 35 years ago with the publication of Lakoff’s (1975) Language and Women’s Place. During the late 1970s and early 1980s research which has come to be known as the power/dominance approach developed. The culture/difference approach then emerged in the mid 1980s and early 1990s. Both approaches assume that difference between male and female speech patterns is pre-existing. Though they differ in their explanations as to why this is the case.

Researchers who follow the power/dominance approach argue that the considerable economic power men have over women in society permeates into language, resulting in male domination in spoken interaction. Male domination in society’s power structures ensures that men’s speech is always more highly valued.

Researchers who follow the culture/difference approach assert that men and women speak differently due to differences that are implemented during the socialization process. Instead of viewing female language as something that is imposed on women from society’s patriarchal institutions, culture/difference researchers began to celebrate female speech styles.

Critics of power/dominance and culture/difference approaches have now turned to the view of gender as a perfomative social construct. Instead of viewing gender as something that is rigid and fixed, serving to perpetuate stereotypes associated with male and female speech, the notion of perfomativity allows gender to be viewed as something which is flexible. Males and females learn a much more complex set of gendered meanings, and both sexes are fully capable of using strategies associated with either masculinity or femininity.

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