a
0

może polegać na swoim przyjacielu]

Tie focus of the trening maturalny section is taiking about ³oland in English. Your students may have already disco. e”ed ^ror themselves that explaining their own culture through English to foreign friends is one of the most important ianguage skilis in an increasingly connected world. This section is devoted to Christmas and Easter. Your class may contain students from 'eligious and nomreligious families, and even some followers of lon-Christian religions, but this should not be seen as a reason to avoid taiking about those traditional festivals. If students are zble to discuss their different attitudes to Christmas or Easter n a respectful way in class, they will be better prepared to tell ■oreign visitors about the culture of their country, including the ifferent points of view on religion and tradition.

Exercises 3 and 4 deal with the question of explaining traditional foods to a foreigner. Notę how the speaker in Exercise 4 uses the Polish words 'barszcz' and 'uszka', and goes :n to explain what the foods are like by: naming the ingredients and describing the appearance and taste;

comparing the food to a similar dish from another country,

which his interlocutor may know;

encouraging the visitor to try the food for herself.

“his is probably the best strategy for explaining ethnic 'oods, preferable to looking for translations which may ■ot communicate anything. There is morę work on giving sxplanations concerning food in the next unit.

2    1 Christmas Eve 2 Christmas carols 3 midnight mass 4 blessed

3    The student's mistake is assuming that every Polish word - for example 'barszcz' - has a one-word English equivalent that can be found in a dictionary. The names of ethnic foods often do not have equivalents in other languages. Even if a translation can be found, it may be a rare, little-known word, if the food itself is not well known; your interlocutor may never have heard it. This is the case here: the Polish student’s friend has never heard of'borscht'. That is why names of food should be explained rather than translated.

-.DDSTIOIMAL ACTIVSTY

' :u may also ask students to explain the following Christmas and Easter concepts in English: a makowiec, b pisanki, c mazurki, i smigus dyngus

- zain, looking for translations would be futile. Suggested -rolanations:

. ts a kind of cake or pastry filled with a mixture of poppy ieeds, honey, nuts and raisins.

: Children paint Easter eggs, real hard-boiled eggs, not chocolate anes. You spend hours decorating them with all sorts of lovely aatterns and then you just break them and eat them.

: :’s a special kind of pastry thats madę only at Easter. It's ■’at and decorated with icing or chocolate, with images and catterns connected with spring.

: ts an old custom: on Easter Monday people chase their 'hends and throw water over them. If you're gentle, you just jse a toy water pistol; a morę extreme way is to use large •••ater bottles or buckets and get totally wet.

The aim of the treningmaturalny is to make surę students fulfil the requirements of the assessment criterion Content. This criterion is rather rigid; it insists on explicitly stating a number of elements that are not always stated in this way in literary fiction. Those elements are: the time, the place, the characters, and in the follow-up to the events, consequences, feelings and/or conclusions. Failure to include any of those may lead to losing marks; that is why students are asked first to identify those elements in the model text, and then to complete the table from Exercise 2 with information for their own story.

1 Napisz opowiadanie zatytułowane 'A Friend in Need', w którym główny bohater    przekonuje

2    1 Alice and her college mates, Vera and Julie

2    the airport in Barcelona

3    the end of the winter holiday

4    The characters are robbed. Alice's passport is stolen.

6 Feelings: relief.

Consequences and conclusions: Alice realises that Vera is

her true friend (and Julie isn't).

3    Id 2 c 3 e 4b 5a

ANSWER KEY: Szybka powtórka

1    1 adoptive 2 expectant 3 acquaintance 4 maintenance

2    1d 2e 3b 4a 5c

3    la 2a,b 3a,b 4c 5 after 6b 7 up 8 out 9 take Revision activitie§

1    Names of family members: Students sit in a sembcircle. Say a word referring to a family member, e.g. 'half-sister'. The first student has to give the małe equivalent, half-brother. He/she then says a different word, and the next student has to give the opposite-sex equivalent. The person who repeats a word that has already been used, or who can't give the matching word, is out. The gamę continues until there is only one person left or until nobody can think of any morę family words.

2    The activity described in the section Structures can be used to revise any of the idioms learned in the unit. Ask students to choose phrases from a specifk exercise, e.g. Exercises 7,10 or 11 page 91, or Exercise 1 page 93; and fol Iow the procedurę described earlier. The audience must know which exercise the phrase they are supposed to guess is taken from; otherwise the guessing becomes too difhcult.

ADDBTIONAL READING

= Graham Greene, The Inuisible Japanese Gentlemen: This short story is a perfect little picture of a relationship between two young people that is not working very well. You may wish to set groups of students the following task: What advice would you giue to the girl? What aduice would you giue to herfiance?

o Katherine Mansfield, At the Bay: This long short story portrays the life of an extended family in an idyllic New Zealand setting. You might wish to select just a passage to read and discuss.

• Oscar Wilde, The Importance ofBeing Earnest: any extract from this play could be the basis of a lesson on family and social life, but especially the scene in Act 1 when Lady Bracknell interviews Jack as a prospective son-in-law.