2015-04-01
757
Pudgy toddlers face a good chance of becoming overweight 12-year-olds, according to government research that shoots down the notion that children naturally outgrow early chubbiness.
Children who were overweight at age 2 or later during their preschool years faced a five times higher risk of being overweight at age 12 than youngsters who were not overweight early on, the study found.
Sixty percent of the children who were overweight at any time during the preschool period were overweight at age 12.
Children were considered overweight if their body-mass index was in the 85th percentile or higher for their gender and age. That means they were heavier than at least 85 percent of children their same age and sex.
The researches also found that 40 percent of children whose BMIs were between the 50th and 84th percentiles by age 3 – or in the normal to high-normal range – were overweight at age 12.
By contrast, no children with a body-mass index below the 50th percentile throughout elementary school had become overweight by age 12.
“It is clear that the longer a child remained in the lower range of normal BMI, the less likelihood there was that the child would become overweight by early adolescence,” the researches said.
The study was prepared for release today in the June issue of Pediatrics.
(The Sun. 2008)
Tasks and questions:
1. What newspaper clichés do you come across in this text? (e.g. vital issue, escalation of war, etc.)
2. What features of ‘sensationalism’ could you point out? What is the function of such elements in a newspaper?
3. Are foreign words used in the article?
4. There exists a specific style of newspaper headlines – ‘headlinese’. Can you say what main function do headlines perform? How are they structured?
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5. What abbreviations are used? (NATO, etc.)
6. Can you trace the presence of emotional words, colloquial words, etc.?
2.
You can’t see through a Guinness
Tasks and questions:
1. This text is an advertisement. Advertisements are often accompanied pictorially. In this case, this is a picture of a bar with two glasses of drinks placed on the bar counter. State what is advertised here.
2. What are the two meanings of the phrasal verb ‘to see through’? Do you think both meanings are realized in the context of the advertisement?
3. In favour of which beer – light or dark – is the advertisement? Is the light beer, according to the ad, easily looked through and thus not genuine?
4. Which is the real beer therefore?
5. How does the ad demonstrate play on words and the use of metonymy?
3.
This splendid volume of short fiction testifies to Margaret Atwood’s startlingly original voice, full of a rare intensity and exceptional intelligence. Each of the fourteen stories shimmers with feelings, each illuminates the unexplored interior landscape of a woman’s mind. Here men and women still miscommunicate, still remain separate in different rooms, different houses or even different worlds. With brilliant flashes of fantasy, humor and unexpected violence, the stories reveal the complexities of human relationships and bring to life characters who touch us deeply, evoking terror and laughter, compassion and recognition – and dramatically demonstrate why Margaret Atwood is one of the most important writers in English today.
Tasks and questions:
1. The text is a blurb on the back of Margaret Atwood’s collection of short stories “Dancing Girls and Other Stories.” Do you think it would be fitting for a review or an academic essay? What is a blurb?
2. What is the primary purpose of a blurb?
3. May this blurb be called an unconcealed eulogy of Margaret Atwood’s writing?
4. What complimentary words and phrases are used in it? Is their proportion high for a relatively brief text?
5. What stylistic device is used in ‘stories shimmer with feelings’, ‘landscape of a woman’s mind’, ‘characters who touch us deeply’? State what the writer’s motive here is.
6. Prove that the sentences provide no argument being assertive statements without reasoning.
7. Prove that separately listed elements reinforce the assertions the writer makes, especially when they are linked by ‘and’ or based on contrast.
8. What words would be more suitable for ‘dramatically’ in the last lines?
9. Find out instances of obtrusive repetition in the blurb.
10. Which of the two pragmatic effects prevails in the blurb: persuasion or rational argument?
4.
Courts should be wary of requiring an abnormal degree of self-control from those who attend proceedings. There was an astonishing episode in 1981 when a Durham Crown Court judge ordered a man to spend the weekend in gaol for contempt of court by throwing up his arms to celebrate his acquittal by a jury on two theft charges. The man was committed for contempt despite apologizing and explaining that ‘it was just the excitement of getting off. I’ve been in custody for five months.’ The judge took a stern view: such behaviour was an ‘insolent contempt’.
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Tasks and questions:
1. To what functional substyle (register) would you refer the text above?
2. Find out the terms appertaining to a special sphere of information in the text.
3. How can you characterize the structure of the sentences?
4. How do the sentences of the narration contrast with the direct speech in the text?
5.
Herbert Hoover, the last of the Republican presidents elected in the 1930s, was by no means a ‘stand-patter’, but a cautious progressive who lost the confidence of the majority of the American people during his term. In 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Democratic governor of New York, was elected President in a landslide.
(W.H. Rehnquist. The Supreme Court)
Tasks and questions:
1. How does the contextually motivated choice of words account for the reference of the text?
2. What is the origin of the neologism ‘stand-patter’?
3. Translate the expression ‘be elected in a landslide’.
6.
The Power of Attorney is issued for a term of two months without power of substitution.
Tasks and questions:
1. In what sphere of day-to-day life are you likely to encounter this kind of structure?
2. Translate the following expressions referring to the same functional category:
- competitive bid
- to pay interests
- submit tender
- expiration of validity
- as laid down in Article 20 of this Treaty
- commencement of works
- to notice promptly
- to enclose the copy of the order
- to grant a high discount
3. Is the reader (speaker) tuned in to the social setting verbalized in this way? Does he know what to expect?
4. What stylistic conventions do you come across in business style?
7.
And he took him by the
right hand and raised him,
and instantly his feet and
ankles were strengthened.
He jumped and stood and
started walking, and entered the
temple with them, walking and
leaping and praising God.
And all the people saw him
walking and praising God.
(Acts, Ch. 3)
Tasks and questions:
1. Can you easily recognize the book from which the text is taken? Why?
2. What is the dominant stylistic feature of this type of texts?
3. What syntactic peculiarity of the quoted text is noticeable to the reader?
4. What conjunction is widely repeated? Why?
5. What category of verbs dominate in the quoted extract?
6. Entitle the episode described.
8.
Link together the suitable words and their translation:
| 1. private | a. гранатомет |
| 2. ambush | b. симулянт |
| 3. advancement | c. засада |
| 4. AWOL (absent without official leave) | d. второй пилот |
| 5. sergeant | e. учебный плац |
| 6. belly robber | f. рядовой |
| 7. bazooka | g. траншея |
| 8. bulletproof | h. продвижение по службе |
| 9. bust | i. дневальный |
| 10. drill field | j. часовой |
| 11. OD (officer of the day) | k. повар |
| 12. orderly | l. пуленепробиваемый |
| 13. co-pilot | m. медаль |
| 14. sentry | n. разжаловать в рядовые |
| 15. umbrella man | o. сержант |
| 16. gold brick | p. дежурный офицер |
| 17. gong | q. самовольная отлучка |
| 18. trench | r. медаль |
Tasks and questions:
1. In what substyle are you likely to come across these words?
2. Which of the words may belong to the bulk of the English vocabulary?
3. Which of the words may be labeled as ‘army slang’?
4. Can you say which words and expressions demonstrate a flash of humour? Why?
5. Can you trace the origin of words 5, 8, 15 and 17?
6. How can you define ‘slang’? Can you give examples of teenager slang?
9.
250 CHARING CROSS ROAD LONDON WCI
4RD
Tel ++44-181765329 Fax ++44 181 765 274
Maria Saans
Accounts Manager
South Australia Bank of Commerce
PO Box 400
Bondi Junction
New South Wales 2022
AUSTRALIA
Our ref. GF 6 Your ref. 15 March 20__
Dear Maria.
Munich International Communications Fair
Following our telephone call I confirm that we will meet at the Interlink stand at the Munich Fair on Thursday 24 May 20__ sometime during the morning.
I look forward to the opportunity to discuss some of our products and services with you and am confident that there will be plenty to interest you. I enclose some information which you may like to look at before you come to Munich.
It would be very nice if we could meet socially while in Munich. I wonder if you would be free to join me and some colleagues for a meal in the city on the Thursday evening? We are planning to meet at around 8.30 for dinner at the Hilton Hotel. Do let me know if you can join us, and of course we would be pleased if you were able to bring a colleague or partner.
We look forward to meeting you and do call if we can be of any assistance between now and the Fair.
Very best wishes,
John Callam
Product Development
encs.
Tasks and questions:
1. What standards of business letter organization do you know? Enumerate them.
2. Find out in the text of the letter clichés, special terminology and abbreviations which are typically used in business letters.
3. Find out lexical, grammatical and syntactic means which make the text of the letter rather emotional.
