Practical Tasks

Task 1. Listen to Audio Track 7.1 and Audio Track 7.2 ( Folder Unit 7) to get the general idea of the material.

What is the media focus in Audio Track 7.1 and in Audio Track 7.2? If there is any difference, why is it so?

Task 2. Listen to Audio Track 7.1 and transcribe the first sentence of each headline.

Write down the countries and organisations in the media spotlight.

Task 3. Listen to Audio Track 7.1 again.

1. Determine the three key words of Headline No 1.

2. What organisations are mentioned in Headlines No 2 and No 3. Recall the events they refer to.

3. What is the general idea of Headline No 4 and No 5?. Try to identify the key word in each headline.

Task 4. Study the word boxes below.

The final salary scheme – the amount of one’s pension on his retirement is equal to his last salary in work.

Labour peer – a member of the Labour party elevated to peerage for his service to the nation. He is entitled to sit in the House of Lords as life peer.

First Minister – a post set up in the process of devolution. Equals to the UK Prime Minister but relates to the UK four constituent parts.

(British) Commonwealth Games – sporting event held every four years by the British Commonwealth countries. In 2010 India and in 2014 Scotland hosted the Games.

Task 5. Listen to Audio Track 7.2 and transcribe it. What events are in the spotlight?

Task 6. Study the realia in the box below. Watch Video 7.1 (Unit 7) and transcribe it.

Shadow Cabinet the Tories Shadow Chancellor

News bulletin featured in Video 7.1 went on air on the same day as bulletins in Audio Track 7.1 and Audio Track 7.2. Is there any difference in television and radio news coverage? If so, what is it?

Task 7. What is the difference in news headlinesof Video 7.1 and Audio Track 7.2?

Task 8. Make sure you know the word combinations and names in the box.

to run amok (amuck) to make gains for good

Big Apple Nick Clegg

Task 9. Watch Videos 7.2 and 7.3 and transcribe them. What events does each video predominantly focus on?

Task 10. Watch Videos 7.1 – 7.3 again and fill in the grid below with appropriate headlines. Only two of the three news channels (BBC World News, EuroNews, Sky News)feature the headline in question at a time.

Headline in brief	Headline in full (broadcast by one TV channel)	Headline in full (broadcast by another TV channel)
1. Victory for nationalists in Sweden
2. Tragic events in Germany
3. The end of BP’s saga in the Gulf of Mexico

Task 11. Headlines of what channel are most difficult to understand, in your view? Why is it the case?

Task 12. Watch Video 7.4 and transcribe it.

Task 13. Answer the questions below.

1. In what way are Video 7.4 and Video 7.3 similar?

2. What is the top headline of each video clip?

Task 14. Having worked with Video 7.4 and Video 7.3, prove that any news bulletin is presented in a form of an inverted pyramid.

Compare the structure of the sentences and their grammar in both videos. What conclusions do you come to?

Task 15. Listen to Audio Track 7.3 and transcribe it. Be ready to compare its content with Video 7.2.

Task 16. Fill in the grid below with headlines of Video 7.2 and Audio Track 7.3 highlighting the same events.

Video 7.3 headlines (in full)	Audio Track 7.3 headlines (in full)
1.
2.
3.

Task 17. Analyse the difference in the wording of television and radio news scripts (Video 7.2, Audio Track 7.3). What conclusion do you come to?

Task 18. Read the article below, determine its genre. Render the article into Russian. Social class affects white pupils’ exam results more than those of ethnic minorities – study

Poverty affects grades less among non-white children with social divide noticeable from primary school

Jessica Shepherd

A child’s social class is more likely to determine how well they perform in school if they are white than if they come from an ethnic minority, researchers have discovered. The gap between the proportion of working-class pupils and middle-class pupils who achieve five A* to C grades at GCSE is largest among white pupils, academics found.

They analysed official data showing thousands of teenagers’ grades between 2003 and 2007. Some 31% of white pupils on free school meals – a key indicator of poverty – achieve five A* to Cs, compared with 63% of white pupils not eligible for free school meals, they found. This gap between social classes – of 32 percentage points – is far higher for white pupils than for other ethnic groups.

For Bangladeshi pupils, the gap is seven percentage points, while for Chinese pupils it is just five percentage points, the researchers discovered.

The study – Ethnicity and class: GCSE performance – argues that one of the reasons why class determines how white pupils perform at school is that white working-class parents may have lower expectations of their children than working-class parents from other ethnic groups.

Researchers from the University of Warwick analysed the scores of pupils living in the south London borough of Lambeth. White children from well-off homes were the top-performing ethnic group at the age of 11, while white pupils eligible for free school meals had among the worst test results.

“More recent immigrant groups, such as the Portuguese, Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities often see education as the way out of the poverty they have come from. By contrast, if you’ve been in a white working-class family for three generations, with high unemployment, you don’t necessarily believe that education is going to change that,” says the study.

The Guardian, September 3, 2010

Task 19. Watch Video 7. 5 and answer the questions.

1. What is the general idea of the clip? Transcribe a sentence of the report to highlight the social problem in the media focus.

2. What ethnicities are mentioned in the report? How successful are they academically?

3. How is the UK government trying to tackle the issue?

4. What conclusion does the journalist come to?

5. How does the article in Task 18 and Video 7. 5 correlate? Write out similar pieces of information (in sentences) out of the two media reports.

Task 19. Watch Video 7. 6 and say what is the general idea of the clip.

Task 20. Watch Video 7.6 again. Answer the questions.

1. What broadcaster is in the media focus? What news channel does it own?

2. What other broadcasters are also mentioned in the clip?

3. How many customers does the broadcaster have today compared with the late 1980s?

4. What does the day of 05.02.1989 mean for Britain’s news media?

5. What was the joke of the day back in the late 1980s regarding news television?

Task 21. Watch Video 7.6 and fill in the gaps in the pieces below.

1. Sky’s …1…, …2…and …3… are also attracting customers to …4… …5… as well as …6… and …7… …8…. What they have is a …9… …10… and …11…, what they don’t have is control of Sky’s crown jewels – the rights to live …12… …13… football matches. And the worry for is that in future the …14…, OffCOM wants Sky to share.

But this analyst believes that the biggest threat to Sky’s fututre success is the …15….

2. – A couple of years ago video and Internet was fuzzy …1… …2… clips, not very compelling. Now we have the …3… …4…, 4OD and several others which is beginning …5… reasonable experience. We’are going forward. We’re gonna have …5-7…, …8… …9…, we’ll be able …10… in HD. At that point any company can become …11-13….

Unit 8

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14