Упр.27 Unit 4 ГДЗ Enjoy English 11 класс

Work in groups. Read one of the extracts from the book Watching the English. The hidden rules of English behaviour by Kate Fox and say what the most popular pastimes of the English are. Choose a title for the extract you’ve read.

1. Reading rules
2. Rules of the game
3. Pet rules and “petiquette”
4. Television rules
5. Cyberspace rules

A We do watch quite a lot of television — the national average is about three to three and a half hours a day — but television cannot be said to be killing the art of conversation. In the same survey, 97 per cent of respondents had entertained or visited friends or relations in the past month. I am also always somewhat skeptical about television viewing figures, ever since I was involved in a research project in which a team of psychologists installed video cameras in ordinary people’s sitting rooms to monitor how much television they watched and how they behaved while watching. The subjects all filled in forms every day, saying what programmes they had watched and estimating how much of each programme they had actually watched. The differences between their estimates and reality showed that when people tell a survey researcher that they spent an evening, or an hour, “watching television”, it is more than likely they were doing no such thing. What they really mean is that they had the television on while they chatted with family or friends, played with the dog, read the newspaper, squabbled over the remote, gossiped on the telephone, cut their toenails, nagged their spouse, cooked and ate supper, did the ironing and hoovering, shouted at their children, fell asleep and so on, perhaps only occasionally glancing at the television screen during that period.

B I would add that reading books ranks as even more popular than DIY and gardening in national surveys of leisure activity, and over 80 per cent of us regularly read a daily newspaper. Our passion for word games and verbal puzzles is well known, but it is also worth noting that every one of the non-verbal hobbies and pastimes that occupy our leisure time — such as fishing, stamp collecting, trainspotting, bird-watching, walking, doing sports, keeping pets, flower arranging, knitting and pigeon fancying — has at least one, if not many more, specialist magazines devoted to it. The more popular hobbies each have at least half a dozen dedicated weekly or monthly publications, as well as umpteen Internet sites, and we often spend much more time reading about our favourite pastime than we do practising it.

D Keeping pets, for the English, is not so much a leisure activity as an entire way of life. In fact, “keeping pets” is an inaccurate and inadequate expression — it does not begin to convey the exalted status of our animals. An Englishman’s home may be his castle, but his dog is the real king. People in other countries may buy luxurious five-star kennels and silk-lined baskets for their pets, but we, the English, let them take over the whole house. The unwritten rules allow our dogs and cats to sprawl all over our sofas and chairs, always hogging the best places in front of the fire or television. They get far more attention, affection, appreciation, encouragement and “quality time” than our children, and often better food. Imagine the most overindulged, well-dressed, adored bambino in Italy, and you will get a rough idea of the status of the average English pet.