Form 11 Test on listening (Контроль аудіювання , 11 кл, тексти)

Text 1 “Edinburgh Festival”

The post war years have seen a great growth in the number of art festivals in Britain and other European countries. Among them the Edinburgh International Festival is one of the best known events of its kind in the world. This is not surprising because everything in the arts, if it is the first class, becomes an Edinburgh Festival attraction. On most evenings during the festival there are as many as six events to choose from on the official programme: symphony concerts, ballets, plays, recitals all given by the finest artists of the world.

The idea of the festival originated in first post-war years. Many towns lay in ruins. The founders of the festival had a lot of difficulties to face, one of them being the fact that this was something that Scotland and its capital Edinburgh had never previously known. This festival started in 1947, it was a great success and has been held annually ever since. The festival is quite international in its character giving as a rule a varied representation of artistic production from a number of countries and over the past few years it has had a definite theme, that is the work of one or two composers was studied in depth. In 1962 the theme of the festival was the music of the famous composer Dmitri Shostakovitch. A great number of this works ranging from symphonies and operatic excerpts to string quartets, song and piano pieces were performed by leading artists.

In recent years about 90 thousand people visited Edinburgh every year during the 3 weeks at the end of August and early September. One of the reasons of the festival success is that it is easy for the visitors to make their arrangements since festival programs are published as early as March, and the booking opens soon afterwards, at the beginning of April. The festival has done a great deal in the development of arts in Scotland. In addition to establishing the Scottish Festival Chorus, it helped to develop the Scottish National Orchestra.

Text 2 Tea

Everybody knows that Britain is a tea-drinking nation. Tea is more than just a drink to the British –  it is a way of life. Many people drink it first with breakfast, then mid-morning, with lunch, at tea-time (around 5 o’clock), with dinner and finally just before bed. As a nation, they go through 185 million cups per day!

No less than 77% of British people are regular tea drinkers; they drink more than twice as much tea as coffee.

A legend says that tea was discovered in China in the third millennium BC. When a Chinese Emperor was having breakfast in his garden, a tea leaf fell into his cup with hot water. The water became coloured and the Emperor was delighted with the taste of the new drink. To Britain, tea came much later. It happened in the 17 th century, when the British ships landed on the shore of China and came back with a load of tea.

Tea drinking became fashionable in England after Charles II married the Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza. She adored tea, and introduced it to the royal court. Just as people today will copy celebrities, people in the 17th and 18th centuries copied the royal family. Tea drinking spread like wildfire, starting first among the nobles and then spreading to wealthy businessmen who liked to sit down for a nice “cuppa” in coffee houses. Tea was an expensive product. It was only for the rich and often kept under lock and key.

In the 17 th century the British really had two daily meals –  breakfast and dinner. Dinner was the heaviest meal of the day, and was usually served in the afternoon. The custom of eating a regular “afternoon tea” began during the 1700’s, as people began serving dinner later and later in the evening. For the aristocracy, or at least for the Duchess Anna Maria of Bedford, 6 hours between meals was simply too long.

She began to ask for a cup of tea and light snacks to be served around 5 pm, and then began to invite guests to join her. The custom of “afternoon tea” was born, and it spread among the upper classes and then among the workers, for whom this late afternoon meal became the main of the day.

The first tea shop for ladies was opened by Thomas Twining in 1717 and slowly tea shops began to appear throughout England making the drinking of tea available to everyone. The British appreciated the new drink for its taste. It was also believed that tea cured lots of diseases. However, the most important thing was that drinking tea prevented lots of diseases –  to make the drink people used boiled water and drank less raw water.

Tea has worked its way into language too. Nowadays people have tea breaks at work. Many people call the main evening meal tea, even if they drink beer with it. When there is a lot of trouble about something very unimportant, it is called a storm in a tea cup. When someone is upset or depressed, people say they need tea and sympathy. In fact, tea is the best treatment for all sorts of problems and troubles.

Text 3 Cambridge University

Cambridge University is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world (after the University of Oxford) and the seventh-oldest in the world.

The story of Cambridge University begins in 1209 when several hundred students arrived in the little town of Cambridge after having walked 60 miles from Oxford. These students were all churchmen and had been studying in Oxford at that city’s well-known schools. It was a hard life at Oxford for there was constant trouble, even fighting, between the citizens of the town and the students. Then one day a student accidentally killed a man of the town. The Mayor arrested three other students who were innocent and they were put to death. In protest, many students left Oxford, some of them went to Cambridge. And so the new University began. It was Cambridge University. Of course, there were no Colleges in those early days and student life was very different from what it is now. Students were of all ages and came from anywhere and everywhere.

Life in College was strict. Students were forbidden to play games, to sing (except sacred music), to hunt or fish or even to dance. Books were very rare and all the lessons were in the Latin language which students were supposed to speak even among themselves.

In 1440 King Henry VI founded King’s College, and other colleges followed.

Nowadays there are more than 30 different colleges, including five for women students and several mixed colleges, in the University. The number of students in colleges is different: from 30 to 400 or 500.

There are many ancient traditions that are still observed at Cambridge. Students are required to wear gowns at lectures, in the University library, in the street in the evening, for dinners in the colleges and for official visits. One more tradition is to use Latin during public ceremonies of awarding degrees.

All the students must pay for their education, examinations, books, laboratories, university hostel, the use of libraries. The cost is high. It depends on college and university speciality. Very few students get grants.

Many great men studied at Cambridge, for example, Bacon (the philosopher), Milton and Byron (the poets), Cromwell (the soldier), Newton (the outstanding physicist), Darwin (who is famous for his theory of evolution) and Kapitsa (the famous Russian physicist).