Page 13 - 4710

it’s no secret that English is the language of great literature and great writers and poets, like
William Shakespeare, William Falkner, John Updike, George Byron, and Ernest
Hemingway, many others. I want to know English to be able to read English and American
writers in the original.
Knowledge of foreign languages helps people know more about each other and
understand each other and develop friendship.
English is spoken and understood practically all over the world, so the knowledge of it
may help you not to get lost in any city of any country.
2. Answer the following questions.
1. Why should an educated person know at least one foreign language? 2. Do you agree that
the English language is the world’s most important language in politics, science and
culture? 3. How is the Ukrainian language classified? 4. Why was it difficult for the
Ukrainian language to develop? 5. What does it mean: “to acquire the ability to use a
language automatically”? 6. Do you agree that learning a foreign language is an endless
process?
UNIT 2
Family Life In Historical Context
1. Research general information characterizing the fifteenth century; describe the most
important events in Ukraine and in Britain in that period.
2. Who were the rulers of these countries?
3. Read, translate and learn the following words and phrases:
without doubt, to be hard, to obey smb., to trust, disobedient, exhausting, the wife of a
noble, responsibilities, to be in charge of, a harvest, to run the household, manor, to improve
smth., wealth, to look after children.
FAMILY LIFE IN THE LATE MIDDLE AGES
4. Read the following text, translate it into Ukrainian.
Little is known about the life of English women in the Middle Ages, but without doubt
it was hard. Life used to be hardier in the past than it is now. The Church taught that women
should obey their husbands. It also spread two very different ideas about women: that they
should be pure and holy like the Virgin Mary; and that, like Eve, they could not be trusted
and were a moral danger to men. Such religious teaching led men both to worship and also
to look down on women, and led women to give in to men’s authority.
Marriage was usually the single most important event in the lives of men and women.
But the decision itself was made by the family, not the couple themselves. This was because
by marriage a family could improve its wealth and social position. Everyone, both rich and
poor, married for mainly financial reasons. Once married, a woman had to accept her
husband as her master. A disobedient wife was usually beaten. In those days married women
were considered to be their husband’s possession. It is unlikely that love played much of a
part in most marriages.
The first duty of every wife was to give her husband children, preferably sons.
Because so many children died as babies, and because there was little that could be done if a
birth went wrong, producing children was dangerous and exhausting. Yet it is was the future
for every wife from twenty or younger until she was forty.
The wife of a noble had other responsibilities. When her lord was away, she was in
charge of the villagers, the harvest and the animals. She also had to defend the manor if it
was if was attacked. She had to run the household, welcome visitors, and store enough food,
including salted meat, for winter. She was expected to have enough knowledge of herbs and
plants to make suitable medicines for those in the village who were sick. She probably
visited the poor ant sick in the village, showing that the rulers “cared” for them. She had

15