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Supplementary texts and exercises.
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Text 1. Physical Exercise.
Physical Exercise is one of the best ways of keeping depression away. It improves your body and your mind and enables you to perform better in the workplace and at home.
Proper breathing is essential if you want to get the most from exercise and you should also take into consideration your heart rate. It can be harmful to do too much, that is why all good fitness instructors emphasise the importance of ‘listening to your body’.
When you first start you should use good judgment, because it’s easy to make the mistake of using the equipment incorrectly or doing too much at one time. Start slowly and build up gradually.
Text 2. Wimbledon
The world’s most famous tennis tournament is Wimbledon. It started at a small club in south London in the nineteenth century. Now a lot of the nineteenth century traditions have changed. For example, the women players don’t have to wear long skirts. And the men players don’t have to wear long trousers.
But other traditions haven’t changed at Wimbledon. The courts are still grass, and visitors still eat strawberries and cream. The language of tennis hasn’t changed either. Did you know that “love” (zero) comes from “l’oeuf” (the egg) in French?
Text 3. Free-diving: Tanya Streeter
As a child, Tanya Streeter always loved swimming in the sea – she grew up in the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean. She could always dive the deepest for seashells. But she didn’t know then that she could dive deeper than anyone else in the world.
Tanya discovered her diving abilities in 1997, when she joined a class in free-diving. Free-diving is a new sport. It’s very dangerous, because you dive with no oxygen. There were only men in class and no one wanted to dive with her because she was a girl. But her class was surprised when they saw how long she could swim underwater. Her teachers immediately wanted to train her.
A few months later, Tanya started breaking records. She can swim underwater for nearly six minutes with just one breath! In 2003, she broke the world free-diving record. She dived 121 metres with one breath.
She says: ‘At the bottom of the sea I’m calm. I love the peace and quiet down there. Coming up again is very difficult. You can’t think about the pain! I’m not planning to break any more records for a while. I’m going to wait and see if anyone breaks my last record. In the future I’m going to teach free-diving and work for the sea-life conservation’
3.1. Translate the questions into English and answer them.
1. Что Тане нравилось делать в детстве?
2. Когда она вступила в класс по дайвингу?
3. Как долго она может плыть под водой?
4. Какой рекорд она установила?
5. Что она собирается делать в будущем?
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3.2. Check your memory. Say as much about Tanya Streeter as you can.
Text 4. Why do we risk it?
Ordinary people all over the world are willing to risk their lives for the ultimate experience – an ‘adrenaline buzz’. What basic human need is driving them to do it?
(1) Risk sports are one of the fastest-growing leisure activities. Daredevils try anything from organised bungee jumps to illegally jumping off buildings. These people never feel so alive as when they are risking their lives. In their quest for the ultimate sensation, thrill-seekers are thinking up more and more elaborate sports. ‘Zip wiring’, for example, involves sliding down a rope from the top of a cliff suspended by a pulley attached to your ankle.
(2) So why do some people’s lives seem to be dominated by the ‘thrill factor’, while others are perfectly happy to sit at home by the fire? Some say that people who do risk sports are reacting against a society which they feel has become dull and constricting. David Lewis, a psychologist, believes that people today crave adventure. In an attempt to guarantee safety, our culture has eliminated risk. ‘The world has become a bland and safe place,’ says Lewis. ‘People used to be able to seek adventure by hunting wild animals, or taking part in expeditions. Now they turn to risk sports as an escape.’
(3) Risk sports have a positive side as well. They help people to overcome fears that affect them in their real lives. This makes risk sports particularly valuable for executives in office jobs who need to stay alert so that they can cope when things go wrong. They learn that being frightened doesn’t mean they can’t be in control.
(4) Of all the risk and adrenaline sports, bungee jumping is proving the most popular. Worldwide, one-and-a-half million people have tried it. You hurtle towards the ground from 200 metres up and, at the last moment, when you are about to hit the water or land and death seems certain, a rubber band yanks you back to life. You can decide whether to jump from a crane, a bridge or a balloon. Attached to a length of elastic rope, jumpers experience a free fall of nearly 160 km/h, before they are slowed by a quickly increasing pull on their ankles.
(5) After five or six bounces jumpers are lowered on to a mattress and set free. Almost inarticulate, they walk around with idiotic grins on their faces. Their hands can’t stop shaking, they can only use superlatives and say repeatedly how amazing it was. ‘As you’re falling, all you see are things flying around as you turn,’ says one breathless bungee jumper. ‘You don’t think you’re ever going to stop and when you rebound, it’s like weightlessness. You feel as if you’re floating on air. My legs are like jelly, but I feel so alive!’
4.1. Look at these words from the text and choose the correct meaning a) or b)
1) crave (verb)
a) want very much
b) dislike strongly
2) bland (adjective)
a) frightening
b) without excitement
3) alert (adjective)
a) full of anxiety
b) quick to notice what is happening
4) hurtle (verb)
a) move very fast
b) be sick
5) yank (verb)
a) hit violently
b) pull suddenly
6) inarticulate (adjective)
a) unable to speak
b) unable to move
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4.2. Find the words with these meanings in the text.
1) search (noun, paragraph 1)
2) carefully planned and detailed (adjective, paragraph 1)
3) remove (verb, paragraph 2)
4) to deal successfully with a problem (verb, paragraph 3)
5) a broad smile (noun, paragraph 5)
6) to spring back or ricochet (verb, paragraph 5)
4.3. Answer the following questions.
a) Are you a risky person? How do you feel in dangerous situations?
b) Why do you think some people enjoy risk and extreme activities?
c) Unnecessary risk should be avoided. Do you agree? Why/why not?
Text 5. Film stunts
CRASHHHH! AAAAAGH! OOOOOOOFFFF! B-B-B-B-B-BANGGG! The star of the film is on fire. Someone shoots him, and blood hits the wall from a hole in his back. He falls back through a window – a closed window. Broken glass flies everywhere. He falls ten meters to the street. A car drives over his body. And his clothes continue to burn...
Of course the actor is perfectly all right – because he didn't fall through the window. It was a 'stuntman'. Stuntmen and stuntwomen do all the dangerous things which you see (or you think you see) on the screen. And the stuntman was probably all right, because they are always very careful.
In old cowboy films, horses fell down when a wire pulled their feet.
They always fell on special soft ground. But they often hurt their necks
or their backs, and they sometimes died. Now it is illegal to use wires.
Today they teach horses how to fall. It takes a long time, but it is much
safer.
OUCH! In fact, this is not really dangerous at all. The window is not
made of glass. In old films it was made of sugar, and now there is a
special kind of very expensive plastic. Tables and chairs are made of
light balsa wood. And they are already half cut in the right places. So
they break into little pieces, and the stuntperson's head stays in one
piece!
Fire is the most dangerous thing of all. The stuntperson wears a special
suit under normal clothes. The fire comes from a sort of gel made of
alcohol. This gel produces three or four centimeters of vapour, and then
flames above that. So the flames do not touch the clothes themselves.
This is not a model, or a camera trick. It is a real stuntman named Jerry Hewitt. He fell 23 meters and landed on a gigantic air bag made of nylon. 'It's not easy." says Jerry. 'If you land in the wrong way, you can break an arm or a leg - or even your back. And of course you have to be sure to land on the air bag! From 23 meters up, in a burning ski-lift, it looks very small.'
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