Топик: Билеты и ответы на них по Английскому языку на 2002 год

As for British history, it is not one of harmonious continuity, broadening from epoch to epoch. It is a dramatic, colourful, often violent story of an ancient, society and culture torn apart by the political, economic, and intellectual turmoil of human experience. Britain in many ways has been the cockpit of mankind.

Vocabulary

Ambassador – посол assume – допускать

Proclaim – провозглашать psychology – психология

Self – confidence – самоуверенность intolerance – нетерпимость

Ostentatious – показной Uniqueness – уникальность social fluidity – соц. Подвижность Avoidance – уклонение extreme – крайность Isolation – изоляция invader – захватчик Continuity – непрерывность proceed – продолжать Turmoil – беспорядок

private property – частная собственность

Environmental protection

The 20^th century began slowly, to the ticking of grandfather clocks and the stately rhythms of progress. Thanks to science, industry and moral philosophy, mankind's steps had at last been guided up the right path. The century of steam was about to give way to the century of oil and electricity. Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, only 41 years old in 1900, proposed a scientific basis for the notion that progress was gradual but inevitable, determined by natural law.

And everybody thought that the development would continue in the small steps that had marked the progress of the 19th century. In­ventions like the railroad or the telegraph or the typewriter had en­abled people to get on with their ordinary lives a little more conven­iently. No one could have guessed then that, in the century just beginning, new ideas would burst upon the world with a force and frequency that would turn this stately march of progress into a long­ distance, free-for-all sprint. Thrust into this race, the children of the 20th century would witness more change in their daily existence and environment than anyone else who had ever walked the planet.

This high-velocity attack of new ideas and technologies seemed to ratify older dreams of a perfectible life on earth, of an existence in which the shocks of nature had been tamed. But the unleashing of unparalleled progress was also accompanied by something quite different: a massive regression toward savagery. If technology en­dowed humans with Promethean aspirations and powers, it also gave them the means to exterminate one another. Assassinations in Sarajevo in 1914 lit a spark that set off an unprecedented explosion of destruction and death. The Great War did more than devastate a generation of Europeans. It set the tone - the political, moral and intellectual temper - for much that followed.

Before long the Great War received a new name - World War I. The roaring 1920s and the Depression years of the 1930s proved to be merely a prelude to World War II. Largely hidden during that war was an awful truth that called into question prog­ress and the notion of human nature itself.

But civilization was not crushed by the two great wars, and the ruins provided the stimulus to build a way of life again. To a de­gree previously unheard of and perhaps unimaginable, the citizens of the 20th century felt free to reinvent themselves. In that task They were assisted by two profound developments–psychoanalysis and the Bomb.

Vocabulary

stately - величественный, величавый

thrust - толчок

high-velocity - большая скорость

savagery - варварство

aspiration - стремление

exterminate - уничтожать

assassination - убийство политического или общественного деятеля spark - искра

explosion - взрыв

destruction - разрушение, уничтожение

devastate - опустошить

roaring - бурный

Depression - кризис 1929-32 гг.

Outstanding people

Edward VI took the English throne in 1461. When he unex­pectedly died in 1483, his brother Richard was one of the most powerful men in the kingdom. Edward IV left two little sons, Ed­ward, Prince of Wales, age twelve, and Richard, Duke of York, age nine. Their uncle Richard made a conspiracy to seize the Princes. He brought them to London and locked away in the Tower, and started to move toward usurpation. He alleged that the marriage of his dead brother, Edward IV, was invalid because Ed­ward had previously promised to marry another woman. As a re­sult, the little princes were declared bastards, and young Edward V had no right to the throne of England. To assure his own security, Richard is believed to have ordered to murder the little princes in the Tower. He became King Richard III.

Richard had the most obvious reasons for wanting the young princes dead. He lived through a civil war that taught him that pow­erful men were always ready to rally around a standard revolt. If such a flag could be raised for a prince of the royal blood to restore him to a rightful throne, noblemen with great lands, great debts, and empty wallets might readily take arms, looking for the main chance in the change of kings. Richard never felt secure on his throne; his swift, lawless, and lethal moves against those who threatened him showed that he was capable of murder if by murder he could rid himself of the mortal danger. And as long as the little princes remained alive the danger was always present. In the summer of 1483, the little princes disappeared forever; that much is certain.