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4.1. Religious Movements in the U.S.
One of the reasons for which many of the first immigrants left England and Germany was to escape religious persecution (such as the Puritans and the Mennonites – a protestant sect named after Simons Menno (1492 – 1559)). The variety of religions increased at the end of the 19th c. and the beginning of the 20th c. with the massive influx of immigrants from central and southern Europe.
The majority of the population belongs to one of the 1,000 or so Protestant Churches. Protestants include Baptists, Methodists and Lutherans and each of these groups is divided into smaller ones. Nearly a quarter of the present population is Catholic. Catholics are the single largest religious group. To sum up, more than 90 % of the Americans are Christians.
Judaists are the largest non-Christian group, then Moslems, and smaller numbers are Buddhists, and Hindus. Native Americans often preserve their tribal religions.
Answer the questions:
1. What was one of the reasons for the first immigrants to leave England and Germany?
2. What are the largest single Christian and non-Christian groups in the U.S.?
4.2. Religious Phenomenon in the U.S.
The lack of a national religion resulted in the Bill of Rights attached to the original Constitution. Most Churches in America are characterized by a strong evangelical spirit. A common phenomenon in the U.S. has been the rise of new Churches or sects, such as the Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christian Scientists. Many preaches make use of television to preach their message.
Religious differences of immigrants and the territories where the immigrant groups settled account for the existing nowadays religious differences among certain regions of the United States:
● the Mormons religion in Utah;
● the Baptist religion mostly in the South;
● most Lutheran Churches in the Midwest;
● some sections of the South and the Midwest form “the Bible Belt” because of many Protestant fundamentalists living there;
● the locations with the population of Latin American and Mexican origin – in the South-west, and in the regions close to the Mexican border – belong to the Catholic Church.
Answer the questions:
1. What sects do you know in the U.S.?
2. What religion forms “the Bible Belt”?
3. Where are the Catholic Churches located?
Translations of the Bible
The Bible (Gr. biblia – “books”) is a set of books comprising the Christian Scripture. The Bible consists of two parts, the Old Testament (50 books) and the New Testament (27 books). The Old Testament is written in Hebrew (some parts in Aramaic), while the New Testament is written in Greek (Matthew – in Aramaic). The first Biblical texts appeared in the 12th century BC, and the latest texts date back to the beginning of the 2nd c. AD. Aramaic was the native language of Jesus Christ.
The first translation of the Old Testament into Greek (“Septuagint”) was made by 70 Jewish translators who spent 72 days, and became the first part of the Christian Bible. It was made on request of Ptolemy II, king of Egypt (285 – 247). The Latin version of the Bile was prepared by Jerome (342 – 420) in the late 4th who translated it directly from the Hebrew text of the Old Testament making use of the Septuagint Greek translation as well. This version is known as “Vulgate” (Lat. vulgata – “public”).It is used by the Roman Catholic Church.
The spread of Christianity necessitated translations of the Bible into Coptic, Ethiopian, and Gothic. In the era of the Reformation new versions in European languages were made.
The name of the Russian translation of the Bible (from Greek) approved by the Moscow Patriarchate and published in 1876 is called Synodal. The Russian Pravoslavnaya Church uses in its liturgy the translations made by the enlighteners of Slavs Kirill and Mefodii (Cyril and Methodius).
The first English translation was made by John Wycliff who translated the Bible from Latin in XIV c. The popular name of the 1611 English translation of the Bible is the Authorized Version, known as the “King James Version”. It is the first Bible translated from Greek into the Literary Standard English (by 54 translators).
Answer the questions:
1. What parts does the Bible consist of?
2. What languages are they written in?
3. What other versions of the Bible in European languages do you know?
UNIT 5. ECONOMY OF THE USA
5.1. The Basis of the U.S. Economy
The economy of the U.S. is the largest national economy in the world. Its nominal gross domestic product (GDP) was estimated at $ 14.2 trillion in 2009, which is 3 times more than GDP of Japan, the world’s second largest national economy.
The American economy is described as a free enterprise system which allows private business the freedom to operate for profit with minimum government regulation. The theoretical foundation of the American economic system was provided by Adam Smith whose economic ideas of free competition influenced the development of capitalism. Competition benefits society by allowing the consumer to search for the best available product at the lowest price.
Throughout the XIX c. market operated with a minimum government regulations. Since 1930’s American capitalism has undergone a radical change. Although a private enterprises flourishes, government regulation now exists in many areas of business ranging from product safety to labor conditions.
The number of workers and their productivity help determine the health of the U.S. economy. After World War I, most workers were immigrants from Europe, their descendants, or African Americans who were mostly slaves taken from Africa, or slave descendents. Beginning in the early XX c., many Latin Americans immigrated, followed by large numbers of Asians. The promise of high wages brings many highly skilled workers from around the world to the U.S.
The USA today is a leading economic power with a high standard of living and enormous productivity in industry and agriculture. It is the most affluent nation in the world: 60 % of all families and individuals are in the middle income or high-income rank.
Answer the questions:
1. What place does the USA economy occupy in the world?
2. What is the essence of the American economy?
3. What workers determine the U.S. economy?
4. How many per cents of families and individuals are in the middle or high-income rank?
5.2. Major Industries
The USA remains the world’s leading producer of goods and services. In the second half of the XX the c., services have grown faster than any other sector of the U.S. economy. Services are the 2nd contribution after manufacture into GDP. The most important components are health and business services.
Industrial and technological position of the states is very high. The USA is the leading producer of electrical energy, aluminum, copper, sulphur, paper and one of the top producers of natural gas and automobiles. No other nation exports as much high technology as the USA. The U.S. produces nearly 1/5 of the world’s output of coal, copper and crude petroleum.
The USA owes its economical position more to its high developed industry than to its natural resources or agricultural output. Manufacturing accounts for about a fifth of the GDP.
One of the most important sectors in the economy is the manufacture of transportation equipment, including motor vehicles, aircraft, and space equipment. Other important sectors include non-electrical machinery, electrical machinery, food products, and chemicals. Steel mill products go largely to the automotive industry and to the construction industry.
Main industries include petroleum, steel, motor vehicles, aerospace, telecommunications, chemicals, electronics, food processing, consumer goods, lumber and mining.
The Midwest (stretches from the Appalachians to the Rockies and from the northern forests to Arkansas) is large, economically important region. It contains major industrial cities, like the cities of the Great Lakes region:
– Chicago, Ill.
– Milwaukee, Wisc.
– Detroit, Mich.
– Cleveland, Oh. and also
– Cincinnati, Oh.
– Indianapolis, Ind.
– Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnes.
In Texas there are Houston and Dallas. They prospered thanks to the growth of the ship channel and the cotton industry. In the XX th. c. oil discoveries in East Texas transformed Houston into a modern boom town.
The Rocky Mountains states are rich in natural resources: there are deposits of oil, as well as gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc and other minerals.
Answer the questions:
1. What sector in the U.S. economy is the 1st contribution into GDP?
2. What sector in the U.S. economy is the 2nd contribution into GDP?
3. What sectors does the manufacture include?
4. What does the USA produce?
5. What main industries in the USA do you know?
6. What major industrial cities do you know?
5.3. Agriculture
Agriculture is a major industry in the U.S. and the country is a net exporter of food. The U.S. controls almost half of world grain export. Products include wheat, corn, other grains (are all grown in great quantities in 12 mid-western states), fruits, vegetables, cotton; beef, pork, poultry, dairy products; forest products; fish (Sitka in Alaska is a fishing town). More than 80 % of timber production is made up of softwoods (the principal trees are Douglas fir and southern yellow pine) and the remainder of hardwoods (oak).
Farming is highly mechanized and commercialized but at the same time it requires much investment. U.S. farmers produce enough food for domestic consumption and still supply 15 % of the world’s food need.
Large fruits and vegetables are grown in Palmer (Alaska) in short summers because of 20 hours of day light. Hawaii’s agricultural products include sugar, pineapple, pineapple wine, coffee, and macadamia nuts.
However, high efficiency and productivity of American agriculture has its negative side. On one hand farming has become too productive to be profitable to many American farmers. Low crop prices, which have resulted from overproduction, often do not bring farmers enough income to live on. Another difficulty is the decline of agricultural exports. The share of the U.S. crops on the world’s market is shrinking while the shares of the European community expand.
Answer the questions:
1. What products are exported by the U.S.?
2. What are grown in Alaska and Hawaii?
3. What advantages and disadvantages are there in American agriculture?
5.4. Foreign Trade and Global Economic Influence
The U.S. is the world’s largest trading nation; it is the largest importer and exporter. Besides agricultural products the most part of the U.S. export occupy machinery, automotive products, aircraft and chemicals. The leading U.S. imports are petroleum products, food and beverages, machinery, iron and steel products.
The economy of America depends heavily on foreign imports. Until recently the U.S. exported more goods than it imported. The present situation is the declining competitiveness of American goods in the world market due to poor quality.
It should be specially noted that the U.S. economy depends on the world-wide oil prices. If they are at a low-rate American economy prospers, otherwise it is in decline. This phenomenon can seem the reason for the economic crisis of the USA nowadays. That’s why America has to control the oil field in Iraq which will give it an opportunity to control also over the world one.
Since the U.S. is the world’s leading importer, there are many U.S. dollars in circulation all round the planet. The dollar is used as the standard unit of currency in international markets such as gold and petroleum (which is called petrocurrency, or petrodollar). Large foreign economies such as China, Arab states of the Persian Gulf, and the EU own huge dollar reserves, China’s reserves are more than $2 trillion, the world’s largest.
The U.S. is the world’s largest and most influential financial market, home to major stock and commodities exchanges like NASDAQ, NYSE, AMEX, and CME. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is the largest stock exchange in the world by value of its listed companies’ securities. NASDAQ is another American stock exchange; it has more trading volume per hour than any other stock exchange in the world.
During a decade the USA was taking part in so called trade wars. A trade war is the usage of export and import towards the pressure on the trade partner. One country considers the other one to buy not enough its production and demands for more. Otherwise it promises to limit the import from this country. At the end of 90-s the USA took part in several trade wars at one time: the meat war, the banana war, the grain war, the tax war.
Answer the questions:
1. What does the U.S. export and import?
2. What does the U.S. economy depend on?
3. What major U.S. stock and commodities exchanges do you know?
4. What is the essence of a trade work?
UNIT 6. CULTURE OF THE USA
6.1. American Culture Characteristics
American culture is rich, complex, and unique. Although European cultural patterns predominated, especially in language, the arts, and political institutions, people from Africa, Asia, and North America also contributed to American culture. All of these groups influenced popular tastes in music, dress, entertainment, and cuisine.
Americans attend museums, operas, and ballets, as well as they listen to country and classical music, jazz and folk music, classic rock-and-roll and new wave. They attend and participate in basketball, football, baseball and soccer games. They enjoy food from different foreign cousins (Chinese, Thai, Greek, French, Indian, Italian, Mexican, Ethiopian, and Cuban). They also developed their own regional foods, such as California cuisine and Southwestern, Creole, and Southern cooking.
American culture has come to symbolize what is most up-to-date and modern. American culture has also become international and is imported by countries around the world.
In the late 19th c. Americans who enjoyed the arts usually lived in big cities or had the money to attend live performances. People who were poor or distant from cultural centers settled for second-rate productions mounted by local troupes or touring groups.
For most of the 20th c. the common quarrel that has absorbed many American artists and thinkers has been one between the values of a mass, democratic culture and those of a refined elite culture accessible only to the few – the quarrel between “low” and “high”.
At the beginning of the 20th c. new technologies and new machines began to appear (the motion-picture camera and the phonograph) that made it possible for music, drama and pictures to reach more people. During the 20th c. mass entertainment extended and the world became consumers of American popular culture. America became the dominant cultural source for entertainment and popular fashion, from the jeans and T-shirts to the music groups and rock stars and the movies. American entertainment is one of the strongest means by which American culture influences the world, although some countries, such as France, resist this influence because they see it as a threat to their unique national culture.
Answer the questions:
1. Why is American culture rich, complex and unique?
2. What does American culture symbolize?
3. What developed American culture during the 20th c. in comparison with the previous century?
6.2. Education in the USA
The general pattern of education in the USA is an 8-year elementary school, followed by a 4-year high school. There is no single governmental agency to prescribe for the American school system; different types of organization and of curriculum are tried out.
Admission to the American high school is automatic on completion of the elementary school. Usually there is no admission examination required by a state university for those who have finished high school within the state.
Private colleges and universities, esp. the larger, well-known ones such as Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, have rigid requirements for entrance, including an examination.
It usually takes 4 years to meet a degree – a Bachelor of Art or Bachelor of Science. A Master of Arts or Master of Science degree may be obtained in one or two additional years. The Highest academic degree is the Doctor of Philosophy. It may take any number of years to complete the original research work necessary to obtain this degree.
The first American colleges were small and attended by an aristocratic student. The earliest institutions were established in the U.S. between mid-17th – mid-18th cc.:
● Harvard University (1636) – its purpose was to provide a literate ministry for colonial churches, and then it became theological training school;
● the College of William and Mary (1693) at Williamsburg, Virg.;
● Yale University (1701);
● the University of Pennsylvania (1740);
● Princeton University (1746);
● Columbia University (1754);
● Brown University (1764);
● Rutgers University (1771);
● Dartmouth College (1769).
The last three private institutions initially prepared students for careers in theology, law, medicine, and teaching.
An important development occurred in 1862, when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morril Act, which donated public lands to provide colleges with the resources necessary to teach such branches of learning as agriculture and the mechanical art:
● the University of Arizona (1885);
● the University of California and Berkeley (1868);
● the University of Florida (1853);
● the University of Illinois (1867);
● the University of Maryland (1807);
● Michigan State University (1855);
● Ohio State University (1870);
● Pennsylvania State University (1855);
● the University of Wisconsin (1849).
Answer the questions:
1. What is the name of a single governmental agency to prescribe for the
American school system?
2. What well-known private colleges and universities can you name?
3. What were their students prepared for?
4. What is the essence of the Morril Act signed by President Abraham
Lincoln?
6.3. Holidays
There are no national holidays in the U.S. Each of the 50 states has jurisdiction over its holidays. In practice, most states observe the federal public holidays. Ten holidays a year are proclaimed by the federal governments:
New Years Day (January, 1);
Martin Luther King Day (3rd Monday in January);
George Washington’s Birthday (3rd Monday in February);
Memorial Day (last Monday in May) – for past wars;
Independence Day (July, 4);
Labor Day (1st Monday in September);
Columbus Day (2nd Monday in October);
Veteran’s Day (November, 11);
Thanksgiving Day (Last Thursday in November);
Christmas (December, 25).
There are holidays which are neither legal nor official:
Valentine’s Day (February, 14);
St. Patrick’s Day (March, 17);
Mother’s Day (2nd Sunday in May);
Father’s Day (3rd Sunday in June);
Halloween (October, 31).
Answer the questions:
1. What is the difference between the national holidays and the federal public holidays?
2. What American holidays were exported to Ukraine?
3. Tell about one of the American holidays.
6.4. Places of Sightseeing
The Pentagon is a building in Arlington, Virginia, near Washington D.C. It has the offices of the U.S. Department of Defense, which includes the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guards.
The Pentagon has five rings (which are inside each other) with five sides, with five stories tall. It is the largest office building in the world: 17 miles of halls, not to get lost in it, the walls on each floor are a different color (brown, green, red, grey, and blue); there are also many maps in the hall.
The Pentagon is like a city: 30,000 people work there. It has its own nurses, dentists, doctors, banks, stores, post office, a fire department, a police department, a centre of communications (hundreds of feet under the ground), own radio and TV stations.
New York is one of the largest cities in the world and the largest sea port; the financial capital of the country; the business center of the U.S. It is in the New York state, at the mouth of the Hudson River. Population – 8 mln. Here, in Wall Street there are many business offices, banks, and NYSE (stock exchange).
There are two world-famous streets in New York – Broadway (the center of the theaters and night life) and Fifth Avenue (great shopping, hotel and Club Avenue; the Metropolitan Museum).
The Statue of Liberty is the Symbol of American democracy. It stands on Liberty Island in New York port.
Beverly Hills – the place where you can find the homes of the movie stars. Beverly Hills is not Los Angeles; it is a small city next to Los Angeles. In Beverly Hills all kinds of celebrities live: movie stars, television stars or other people in the news. Tourists may buy special maps for the houses of the stars. These homes are very beautiful with swimming pools, tennis courts, a lot of trees and high walls.
Only about 35,000 people live there and more than 200,000 people come to Beverly Hills every day to work or to shop. Rodeo Drive is a very special and elegant street with the most expensive shops where people can buy unusual clothing, jewelry or furniture of the new styles and fashions.
Answer the questions:
1. What offices of the U.S. Department of Defense does the Pentagon include?
2. Describe the Pentagon building.
3. How many people work in the Pentagon?
4. Give the main characteristics of the largest city in America.
5. Where is Beverly Hills situated, and what is it famous for?
6. Tell about other famous places in America which you know or visit.
6.5. Famous People of America
Mark Twain – Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in a small town on the Mississippi River and became a river pilot. Later he went to west and worked as a newspaper reporter. His pen-name was Mark Twain. He wrote “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” published in 1876. Tom is really Mark Twain. Huckleberry Finn is his close boyhood friend, Tom Blankenship. The book tells of the boy’s adventures. Other books: “The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn”, “Tom Sawyer”, and “Huckleberry Finn”, “Life on the Mississippi”.
Abraham Lincoln – the 16th president of the U.S. was born in 1809 in Kentucky. His family was poor, he did not go to school and taught himself to read and write. Later he studied law, and became a lawyer and them a politician. His nickname was “Honest Abe”.
He became a president in 1860 and in 1861 a war between the North and he South began. The Civil War was 4 years; it ended in April 9, 1865. Six day later, President Lincoln was shot in the head by John Wilkes Booth and died the next morning.
Tomas Alva Edison was born in 1847. He was sick and his mother taught him lessons. He read the first scientific books, built a laboratory in his house and began to invent things. At the age of 23 he made a special telegraphic machine and sold it for a lot of money.
He started his own laboratory at Manio Park, New Jersey. He hired mechanics and chemists to help him and invented; over 1,300 inventions belong to him: wax paper, fire alarm, the battery, motion pictures, the phonograph (a record player), and the light bulb. He died in 1931 when he was 84 years.
Ernest Hemingway – the greatest American writer of the XX th c. He was born in 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. He was a legend man, an adventurer, a brave war correspondent, an amateur boxer, a hunter, a deep-sea fisherman, the victim of three car accidents and two plane crashes, a man of four wives and many loves, but above all a brilliant writer of stories and novels.
His life provided the background for his stories and novels: “A Farewell to Arms”, story of love between an American lieutenant and an English nurse in WW I. “For whom the Bell Tolls” – novel of war, love and death in the Spanish Civil War. The last years he lived in Cuba and wrote “The Old Man and the Sea”. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954.
He committed suicide (because of cancer), as his father had done it before him under similar circumstances.
Theodore Roosevelt – the 26th President of the U.S. (from 1901 to 1909). He was a boxer, a soldier, a rancher, and an explorer. He had asthma. Because of boxing he became blind in one eye. His nickname was – “Teddy”. While hunting he did not shoot a little bear; he said the bear was too small. The next day this story was in the newspapers and little was named “Teddy”, and toy bears for children – “teddy bears”. When he left the White House he went to hunt in Africa then to South America to explore the unknown places.
Answer the questions:
1. What famous people of America do you know?
2. In what spheres of the social life are they well-known?
3. What books by Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway did you read and liked most of all?
Task 1. Tell about one of the U.S. Presidents and what deeds he is famous for.
6.6. Cultural Shock and Consumerism
Specialists in intercultural studies say that it is not easy to get used to life in a new culture. They call the feelings which people experience when they come to a new life – “culture shock”.
There are 3 stages of culture shock:
6) the newcomers like their new life;
7) the newness wears off and they begin to hate the city, the people and everything else in the new culture;
8) the newcomers began to get used to their new life.
The people with the worst culture shock are those who never had any difficulties in their own country, they were active and successful. People begin suffering homesickness; they do not have the same hobbies and positions.
Some of the factors in cultural shock are obvious: the weather is unpleasant; the customs are different; the public service systems (telephone, post office, transport) are difficult to understand; the food is strange for you; you feel everybody looks at you etc. Only familiarity and experience are solutions of cultural shock.
Popular culture is linked to the growth of consumerism, the repeated acquisition of an increasing variety of goods and services. The American life style is often associated with clothing, houses, electronic gadgets and leisure time. Advertising stimulates the desire for update and improved products; people equate their well-being with owning certain things of the latest model.
The standard of success in American society is products consumed and owned rather than professionalism or personal ideals. The media exemplify this success with the most glamorous models of consumption: Hollywood actors, sportsmen, music celebrities.
This dependence on products and on constant consumption defines modern consumer society everywhere. Consumption has been extensively criticized because it seems to erode older values of personal tastes and economy.
Answer the questions:
1. What stages of culture shock do specialists in intercultural studies single out?
2. Enumerate the factors in cultural shock which are obvious. What can you advis to people to overcome these difficulties?
3. What is the American life style often associated with?
Task 1. Give your point of view on the growth of consumerism and modern consume society.
Дата: 2019-03-05, просмотров: 248.