Английский ЕГЭ - банк заданий - страница 371
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Прочитайте текст и выполните задания №12-18. В каждом задании запишите в поле ответа цифру 1, 2, 3 или 4, соответствующую выбранному Вами варианту ответа.
Table manners
The other day, my friend Nicky was reflecting on what kind of a job she had done as a mother. Her three boys had completed their education without major mishaps, all were now holding down a job. Result! "Then I had dinner with them," said Nicky, "and, oh my God, their table manners. It was like feeding time at the zoo. How did I forget to do table manners?"
Nicky made me think about the state of dining etiquette at my home. The Daughter has never quite mastered putting her knife and fork together at the end of a meal. The Boy eats like Henry VIII, and I don't mean in an impressive, regal manner. A sausage will be speared on a fork, then lifted up and gnawed from either end. Tom who, after 15 years of nagging, chiding and pleading, is almost a complete stranger to the knife, despite many attempts to explain that it's the thing you use to cut stuff up. My son will attempt to eat any foodstuff by fork — or hand — alone. Judging by his peer group, the knife is increasingly regarded as an optional implement. A finger buffet used to be something you found at weddings; now all of life is one long finger buffet.
Frankly, I blame myself. I managed to drum please and thank you into both children but, instead of insisting that they ate meat, I fed them the new childhood staples: carrots, rice, pasta and sauce. Knives not required.
Over Sunday lunch last week, I encouraged the Boy to swap the fork into his left hand, hold the knife in his right and push his peas onto the back of the fork. Not too much to ask, is it? He gave an existential snort as befits a teenager. "Why would I want to do that?" he inquired. "Because. Because table manners are... very important," I said helplessly.
Are they? Of course, they are. Manners make the man. At least, that's what I was taught during a childhood when every meal was an ordeal. Elbows Off The Table! Don't Speak With Your Mouth Full! Don't Hold Your Knife Like a Pen! Ask Before You Get Down From The Table! Don't Chew Noisily! Where's Your Napkin?
And God help you if you didn't clear your plate. We were the children of frugal, wartime children and food was a serious business, not to be played with or wasted. Back then, there was no such thing as a fussy eater: you were shut in a room with five brussels sprouts till you surrendered.
Parents today lack both the stomach, and the time, for such a battle of wills. Carolyn, a primary teacher who works at one of London's leading prep schools, tells me that it's not uncommon for pupils to arrive unable to use cutlery. Partly, she thinks it's to do with being given constant finger food.
I can, however, identify another possible culprit: the kitchen island. It's not unusual to find all members of a family, adults and kids, standing round the island, grazing on different types of food. They can't be bothered to sit down at the table; if they still have one, that is. According to recent research, six out of ten meals consumed in British homes are eaten in front of the TV. Fortunately, there are no statistics for barbarians like mine who are quite happy to eat in bed.
Is all this the end of civilization as we know it or just a changing family dynamic with more casual ways of eating? Will my darling son ever learn to put his peas on the back of a fork and be acceptable in polite society, or is polite society now rudely picking up fries with its fingers?
I will always nag my kids about such things because they are an expression of civility, restraint and, yes, my mother was quite right: speaking with your mouth full is not nice.
How did Nicky feel about her children?
The expression "lack the stomach" in "Parents today lack both the stomach, and the time..." (paragraph 7) means to "lack the...
Прочитайте текст и выполните задания №12-18. В каждом задании запишите в поле ответа цифру 1, 2, 3 или 4, соответствующую выбранному Вами варианту ответа.
Non-drivers in the UK
My name is Andrew and I’m a non-driver. I don’t drive motorised vehicles known as cars. I can, but I won’t. I probably should, but I don’t. I’m a non-driver.
For a skill that in terms of human history is still relatively new — it’s approximately 127 years since automobiles were available to the public — driving is considered innate. “You don’t drive?” people say, quizzically. As a form of defence I have developed a few retorts. But for all the bravado, I feel like a good-for-norhing.
So accustomed are we to the idea of being able to control a complex piece of machinery at high speeds, that we never mention it. You never hear: “Meet my husband... he’s a driver, don’t you know!” It is only the non-drivers that are afforded special demarcation. I'm also a non-racist, a non-astronaut and a non-morris dancer, but nobody cares about all of that.
80 % of UK men eligible for a driving licence have one. However, there are some five million males - including myself - who will never drive our partners home from dinner parties. Quite a lot of us will not do so because we find it too scary. There is no medical term for the phobia of driving, which let’s face it is a pretty rational fear, unlike say, balloons (globophobia) or felt (textophobia). We are simply “the nameless”.
Even in today’s liberated age, the idea of a non-driving woman is still fine, but Driving Mr Daisy is not. Aside from people so powerful, they don’t have time to drive, because they're busy writing film scripts in the back of limos, the rest of us have to drive. If we don’t, society raises a collective eyebrow. Why the big deal? It’s only driving! In car ads, however, the notion of driving is presented as being cool, exciting and manly. Hardly any other form of potentially fatal human activity is so casually and misleadingly glossed up.
I know that statistically my fear is irrational, so why have I made my life so difficult? Well, I hated driving lessons, even though I passed first time. On hearing the news I sniggered: “Are you sure?” I then moved from Norwich to London, where a large proportion of friends and colleagues either couldn’t or didn’t drive. It wasn’t an issue, but as the years went by the idea of getting back behind the wheel became more and more terrifying. Scientists believe that younger men, particularly teenagers, have virtually no sense of mortality and as such the emerging ego regularly tries to “cheat death” in order to gain social standing. I don’t think I ever had that mindset, and I certainly don’t have it now. I have a “life wish”.
So what is life like as a non-driver? Well, it’s socially awkward. Often, I feel absolutely stupid. My four-year-old daughter recently pointed at a car being driven down the road and roared: “That car was driven by a man. Men don’t drive cars!” I went red. Thank God, I don’t have a son, I thought.
Another time I was asked to move the family car a few yards back, while my wife had popped into a shop, and I found myself shaking like a leaf. “I can’t move it!” I mumbled with an apologetic shrug. “You'll have to shoot me.”
There are benefits, of course. Being a non-driver means I simply don’t understand Top Gear, something I see as a gift. It also means I don’t get upset by fuel prices, car parks or speed cameras, But, hands-up, I wish I did drive. I want to drive to experience the oft-cited freedom of the road. I often think of all things I have missed. The routes and journeys my life could have taken if I had been less dependent on Tubes, buses and cabs.
Being a non-driver, the author feels...