Chernobyl. It ' was a tragedy. Another problem is earthquake. We know some
terrible earthquakes in the world. Our scientists try to forecast
earthquakes, then we can protect ourselves from them.
The people all over the world do everything to protect their nature, to
make their country richer, to make their life happier.
CHRISTMAS DAY
Every country has its own customs and traditions. English people are proud
of their traditions and they keep them up.
It is difficult to speak about England without speaking about its
holidays. Christmas Day is among them.
All English people celebrate Christmas (or X-mas) on the 25th of December.
Christmas! What kind of holiday is it? It is the yearly celebration of the
birth of Jesus Christ. It falls on December 25 by the Catholic Church and
on the 7th of January by the Orthodox Church. This holiday means the
beginning of the new year and the new life. English people celebrate this
holiday with the evergreen tree — Christmas tree. Children rut
along sock, called a Christmas stocking at the end of their beds and Santa
Claus conies down the chimney to bring them presents.
Christmas Day is the greatest holiday in England. It is interesting to
visit the shops before this holiday. There are a lot of nice Christmas
cards and presents there. English people like this holiday very much and
prepare for it beforehand. They buy presents for each other, try to send
Christmas cards for their relatives and friends.
It is interesting to visit London during this holiday. There is a
Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square. We can see many lights, toys and sweets
all over this tree. Everywhere you can see slogans "A Merry Christmas and a
Happy New Year".
The traditional English dinner on Christmas is turkey and pudding.
NEW YEAR'S DAY
There are many holidays in our country. They are: New Year's Day,
Christmas, Women's Day, Victory Day, May Day and others.
I like New Year's Day, it is my favourite holiday. The 1st of January is a
winter holiday and now it is the first day of the New Year.
Peter the First changed the Russian calendar in 1699. He made the 31st of
December, 1699 the last day of the year. The first of January 1700 became
New Year's Day.
The 1st of January is in the middle of winter. The weather is usually fine
and there is a lot of snow everywhere. As the 1st of January is a holiday I
don't go to school and my parents don't go to work.
We usually have got a very interesting New Year's party at school. We
have got it on the 28th or 29th of December.
Our family prepares for this holiday beforehand. My father buys and
brings home a beautiful New Year's tree at the end of December. Our family
has a tradition to buy it. I like to decorate the New Year's tree with
toys, little coloured lights, sweets and a beautiful star on the top.
My mother and grandmother prepare our holiday supper and lay the table. I
make a cake.
All the members of our family clean the flat before this nice holiday and
then each of us try to dress well. We like to see the New Year in at home
with our relatives. They come to see us at 11 o'clock in the evening.
At 12 o'clock we are sitting at the table and we are glad to see the New
Year in. We say, "Best wishes for the New Year!"
I hope that next year will be better than the last one.
The New Year's Day is always connected with our new hopes and dreams.
It is a pleasant moment to get presents on the New Year's Eve.
I usually get many nice useful things from my parents and relatives.
My parents put their presents under the New Year's tree.
We don't go to bed till morning, we watch TV, dance, eat tasty things and
make jokes.
I enjoy this holiday very much.
YURI GAGARIN (1934-68)
Yuri Gagarin was the first cosmonaut in the world. Yuri Alexeyevich
Gagarin was born on the 9th of March, 1934. He was born in the village of
Klushino in the Smolensk region.
Yura was an active, brave and curious boy. His father was jack of all
trades and he helped his son when Yura made toy planes by hand. But the war
began. Yuri Gagarin and his mother, father, brother and sister left their
house and had to live in a dug-out.
After the war Gagarin's family moved to Gzhatsk. Now it is Gagarin. It
was named after the first cosmonaut.
In 1951 Gagarin graduated from a vocational school in Lyubertsy near
Moscow.
Yuri Gagarin attended an aeroclub and began to fly when he was a student
of a technical secondary school in Saratov.
In 1955 he entered a school for pilots. Then he became a pilot and joined
the first group of cosmonauts.
In 1960 Gagarin began to prepare for the flight into space.
On April 12, 1961 Yuri Gagarin flew into space and spent 108 minutes
there. Jt was the first time in history that the Russian spaceship "Vostok"
with the man on board was in space. After his flight he visited many
countries and saw millions of people. Gagarin became a Hero of our country.
He died in 1968, but people always remember the first Russian cosmonaut.
THE MASS MEDIA
Newspapers
There are many kinds of newspapers in our country. It is possible to buy
them almost everywhere. But we can't read all the newspapers. We know that
it is necessary to read newspapers. Reading them we can learn a lot of
interesting and useful things. I think that everyone must read newspapers
every day. I read many newspapers and magazines.
Everyone has its favourite newspapers. I like "Vechernaya Moskva" best of
all. This newspaper was published on the 6th of December, 1923 for the
first time. It usually has 8 pages. You can read some news on the 1st page.
You can't know a lot about these events, you read only some facts, which
are usually short, but
interesting. If you turn the second page, you can read about our life. You
can read out events abroad and about your favourite artists and singers,
too. You л see some advertisements on each page the newspaper and use them.
You can learn about the weather from the pages of is newspaper.
If you are fond of football, basket-ball tennis, you read articles about
sport events in our country and about our famous sportsmen. If you want to
buy something you have to read the last page. There are some humorous
stories in this newspaper.
Magazines
It is interesting to look through some magazines or read them. It is
possible to subscribe to some of them or buy them. We usually subscribe to
the magazine "At the wheel". As we have a car it is useful for us to read
it. My mother prefer to read the magazine "Liza". She says that it even
helps her in some cases.
Television and radio
I think that they are very popular means of information. They are popular
among young people in our country. We can know a lot of news watching TV or
listening to the radio set. All members of our family watch TV very
regularly. We like such programme as "My family". I prefer to discuss some
problems with my parents after it. I have many favourite TV programmes but
I haven't enough time to watch all of them.
MY HOBBY
What is a hobby? It is what you can and like to do, when you have free
time. We choose a hobby according to our character and taste. When we have
a hobby our life becomes more interesting.
Very often our hobby helps us to choose our future profession because we
learn a lot of new things.
Many people are interested in music. They collect records. Others like to
read and collect books. People living in cities and towns like to be closer
to nature and they spend their free time in the country.
Some of us go on hikes, some like to work in their gardens, take
photographs or knit.
For example, gardening and growing roses is the most common hobby among
Englishmen.
Both grown-ups and children are fond of playing different computer games.
It has become one of the numerous hobbies.
I have got a hobby too.
My name is Nastya. Sometimes I have got some free time. As my hobby is
cooking I like to make cakes and pies. My cakes are very tasty, but I like
pies best of all. I'll tell you how I make pies with cabbage.
First of all I take a head of cabbage, cut and put it into a frying-pan.
Then I take carrot and peel it. By the way I have a very comfortable grater
at home. I like to use it when I make my pies. I usually grate carrot,
onion using my favourite grater. I put grated carrot into the frying-pan,
then I salt cabbage and carrot to my taste, mix them and add some water.
Then I stew these vegetables in the frying-pan. I usually buy some paste
for my pies.
I cut up paste, roll it and make small pies. Then I put pies with stewed
cabbage into the oven. It takes twenty minutes
to bake them. My parents and friends like to eat my pies. I advise you to
make such pies and I hope that you'll like them too.
MY SCHOOL
At the age of 6 or 7 all boys and girls go to school. I go to school too.
The number of my school is 338. Our school is large and light. It is
neither old nor new. There is a schoolyard around it. It is a pity, but
there are no flowers near the school. You can see a sportsground behind the
school. Sometimes we have physical training lessons there.
Our school has got three floors. There is a workshop on the ground floor.
It is big. There are all kinds of tools and machines there. The boys of our
school have a wood-work room too. They learn to make things of wood in this
room. There is a room for manual work for girls. It is not on the ground
floor, it is on the second floor.
There are some computer classes, and pupils like such school subjects as
Computing.
If you enter the school and go to the left you see a dining-room. Here
pupils and teachers have their breakfast and dinner.
The dining-room is a clean one. There are many nice pictures on the walls.
There is a gymnasium near the dining-room. All pupils like to go there,
because they like physical training lessons.
Our school has got a library. It is on the ground floor too. There are a
lot of interesting new and old books in it. But our library has no reading-
room.
Our school has got many classrooms. We have got two English classrooms.
History, Geography and Physics classrooms and others. They are big and
light and each of them has got two large windows with green curtains,
flowers on the window-sills, a bookcase near the door, the blackboard on
the wall.
The teacher's table with many books on it is situated not far from the
blackboard.
There are twenty desks and some comfortable chairs in the classrooms.
There is a TV set in each classroom. Sometimes it is used during the
lessons.
There is a school hall on the second floor where meetings and conferences
take place.
We organize concerts, parties when we celebrate our holidays. Pupils of
our school sing songs and dance modern and folk dances and perform some
plays there. The last bell is organized at our school in a proper way. It
is a very remarkable day in the life of all the pupils. The pupils of the
first form and the pupils of the eleventh one are preparing for this day
with great pleasure.
The teachers' room is on the second floor. There are tables and chairs
for teachers, a TV set and a telephone there. It is a comfortable and cosy
room and the teachers like to spend their free time in it. I like my
school. I go there and get knowledge.
THE CINEMA
The Lumiere brothers made their first film in 1895. This film was
demonstrated in one famous cafe in Paris.
The first films were silent and short, but they were popular among people.
The USA was the leader in the production of films. The first sound film
appeared in 1927. Soon coloured films appeared.
Cinematography has a long history in our country too.
Pioneers of the Russian cinema were Protozanov, Gardin, later Pudovkin and
Dovzhenko. At that time films were silent and black-and-white.
Later films became sound and colourful.
Some years ago it was popular to go to the cinemas in Moscow. It was
difficult to buy a ticket for a good film and we had to stand in a queue
for hours.
But now we prefer to stay at home and watch TV and video films.
In England the cinema is usually called "the pictures". The prices of
cinema seats in London are high. In the past cinemas were more popular than
they are now. It is interesting that in some towns in Britain the cinemas
are closed on Sundays.
I like to see documentary films best of all. Some of them are rather
interesting, because they tell us the truth about the history of our
country.
I like to see films about school life. As I study at school, such films
are connected with me. It is interesting to see films bout school life in
England, France, Spain and in the USA. It is interesting to know about
foreign education and to see their schools.
My favourite Russian film is "Moscow doesn't believe in tears". It is the
true story about the girl. She leaves her village for Moscow. This film
tells us about her difficulties, about her wish to live in the capital,
about her friends. I am sure that it is a kind and a clever film.
THE TRETYAKOV GALLERY
There are many interesting galleries in our country. The Tretyakov
Gallery is one
of the famous and well-known picture galleries in our country and all over
the world.
The State Tretyakov Gallery is situated in a Russian-looking building in
the centre of Moscow. This gallery is named after its founder Peter
Tretyakov. He began to collect Russian paintings in 1856. He wanted these
paintings to be seen by people.
This gallery and collections of paintings were nationalized in 1918.
The first works in Tretyakov's collection were the paintings of the "Pere-
dvizhniki". The collector bought paintings "Morning in a Pine Wood" by
Shish-kin and "Ivan Tsarevich on the Grey Wolf "by Vasnetsov.
The gallery has got many halls. There are halls devoted to the great
Russian painters of the 18th and 19th centuries. We can see pictures by
such painters as Serov, Repin, Ivanov, Levitan and others. You can see the
landscapes "After Rain" and "Golden Autumn". These paintings by Levitan are
beautiful. I like to see his paintings because he is one of my favourite
artists. I compare his painting "Golden Autumn" with the poem "Autumn" by
Pushkin.
There are some paintings by Repin in the Tretyakov Gallery. His paintings
are connected with the history of our country. For example, his painting
"Ivan Grozny Murders His Son Ivan". There are some portraits of Lev Tolstoy
and a self-portrait of Repin in this hall.
I like the painting "Trinity" by Andrei Rublyov. This work reflects the
life and soul of the Russian people.
This gallery has many new exhibits now. You can see works of the painters
of the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century there. I like
works by Gerasimov. I think that he is a very talented painter.
BOOKS IN OUR LIFE
Books... I think that we can't live without them.
I consider that books are with us during all our life. When I was a child
my parents read them to me. I was pleased to listen to the stories and
tales. I learned a lot of interesting things from books. I remember, I
liked thick books.
Later I could read myself. I like to read books about animals, nature and
children.
I like to get presents on my birthday. I am happy if it is a book. It
doesn't matter what kind of book it is. I like to read almost all books. If
I have got time I like to spend it with my favourite book. When I was
fifteen I was fond of reading too.
But I preferred to read books about travels. I travelled with the heroes
of the stories. I saw many interesting places and learned a lot of
important facts about other countries and people.
Now I like to read books on science. You can learn many things from
books. I am sure that books play a very important role in my life.
Our family has got many books. All the members of our family buy books
and read them. My mother says that books help us in self-education.
In ancient times books were written by hand. It was difficult to write a
book with a pen. Then printing came into our life. Printing played an
important role in the development of literature and culture.
Now there are a lot of books in the shops, there are many books in our
flats. But it is difficult to buy all books which we want to read. That's
why we get books in public libraries.
There are some problems in our life and sometimes it is difficult to
solve them. I think that books can help us. Last year I read a very
interesting book "An American Tragedy" by Theodore Dreiser. This novel was
published at the beginning of the 20th century. The novel describes the
tragic fate of a boy and a girl, Clyde and Roberta by name. It is a sad
story. This novel was written many years ago, but it is popular nowadays.
Books must be our friends during all our life.
