Crash and Depression - раздел Образование, Учебное пособие по курсу «Анализ текста» Read The First Text And Make Its Summary.
In The Hea...
Read the first text and make its summary.
In the heart of New York City lies a narrow street enclosed by the walls of high office buildings. Its name is Wall Street.
One Thursday afternoon in October 1929, a workman outside an upper floor window of a Wall Street office found himself staring into the eyes of four policemen. They reached out to catch hold of him. “Don’t jump!” shouted one of the policemen. “It’s not that bad!” “Who’s going to jump?” asked the surprised worker. “I’m just washing windows!”
To understand this incident we need to look at what had been happening in Wall Street in the months and years before that October afternoon in 1929.
Wall Street is the home of the New York Stock Exchange. Here dealers called brokers buy and sell valuable pieces of paper. The pieces of paper are share certificates. Each certificate represents a certain amount of money invested in a company.
Every year in the 1920s the sales of cars, radios and other consumer goods rose. This meant bigger profits for the firms which made them. This in turn sent up the value of shares in such firms.
Owning shares in a business gives you the right to a share of its profits. But you can make money from shares in another way. You can buy them at one price, then, if the company does well, sell them later at a higher one.
More and more people were eager to get some of this easy money. Like most other things in the United States in the 1920s, you could buy shares on credit. Many people borrowed large amounts of money from the banks to buy shares in this way – “on the margin”, as it was called. Their idea was to spot shares that would quickly rise in value, buy them at one price and then sell at a higher one a few weeks later. They could then pay back the bank, having made a quick profit.
By the fall of 1929 the urge to buy shares had become a sort of fever. Prices went up and up.
Yet some people began to have doubts. By the fall of 1929 the profits being made by many American firms had been decreasing for some time. If profits were falling, thought more cautious investors, then share prices, too, would soon fall. Slowly, such people began to sell their shares. Soon so many people were selling shares that prices did start to fall. A panic began. By the end of the year the value of all shares had dropped by $40,000 million. Thousands of people, especially those who had borrowed to buy on the margin, found themselves facing debt and ruin. Some committed suicide. This was what the policemen thought that the window cleaner was planning.
This collapse of American share prices was known as the Wall Street Crash. It marked the end of the prosperity of the 1920s.
“You Walk”
A writer described what it was like to be jobless and homeless in an American city in the early 1930s. What is the general mood of this passage and how is it created?
“You get shoved out early; you get your coffee and start walking. A couple of hours before noon you get in line. You eat and start walking. At night you sleep where you can. You don’t talk. You eat what you can. You walk. No one talks to you. You walk. It’s cold, and you shiver and stand in doorways or sit in railroad stations. You don’t see much. You forget. You walk an hour and forget where you started from. It is day, and then it’s night, and then it’s day again. And you don’t remember which was first. You walk.”
The next text describes the situation in the USA at the time of the Great Depression. Read it and translate the word combinations in italics:
Государственное образовательное учреждение... высшего профессионального образования... Ивановский государственный энергетический...
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Contents
Part 1: Effective Reading
Part 2: George Washington Carver: The Plant Doctor
Part 3: Emily Dick
Effective Reading
‘Why am I reading?’ is the first question an effective reader asks himself or herself, because how you read depends on your purpose. You may read to locate specific information, to
Skimming
Skimming is used to quickly identify the main ideas of a text. When you read a newspaper, you’re probably not reading it word-by-word, instead you’re skimming the t
Scanning
Scanning is a technique you often use when looking up a word in the telephone book or dictionary. You search for key words or ideas. In most cases, you know what yo
Previewing
Previewing a text means gathering as much information about the text as you can before you actually read it. You can ask yourself the following questions:
Critical Reading
The purpose of critical reading is to accept or reject a writer's opinion. It involves gaining a deeper understanding of the material. Successful critical readers r
Guessing word meaning
There are various strategies that you can learn which will help you to deduce what a word likely means. Yes, you could just look them up in a dictionary; but, studies show that you
Making Inferences
Inferences are evidence-based guesses. They are the conclusions a reader draws about the unsaid based on what is actually said. Inferences drawn while reading are m
Vocabulary Practice
I. Explain the meaning of the following words and word combinations and translate them into Russian.
1) to snatch (up)
2) kidnap(p)er
Legacy of George Washington Carver
Scientist Extraordinaire, Man of Faith, Educator and Humanitarian
As a botany and agriculture teacher to the children of ex-s
Vocabulary Practice
I. Find synonyms to the following words and word combinations:
− to outvie
− to abandon
− to be content
− (to write)
Mine-by the Right of the White Election!
Mine-by the Right of the White Election! Mine-by the Royal Seal! Mine-by the Sign in the Scarlet prison- Bars-cannot conceal! Mine-here-in Vision-and in Veto! Mine-by the Grave'
An American Renaissance.
I. Read the text and answer the questions:
1. What ideological border existed between the western and eastern parts of the country?
2. What were some young people disappointed by?
Quiz for Automobile Experts
1. When was the first automobile with internal combustion engine made?
a) in 1862
b) in 1872
c) in 1882
2. What was its engine po
Vocabulary Practice.
I. Choose a synonym from the text to the underlined words and word combinations.
1. The only further step required is to get rid of the idea of produ
Mass Production
For all that, Britain emerged from the Second World War as the second biggest car producer and the biggest exporter in the world. Let’s see how management squandered that position.
What we
James Smithson’s Gift
Read the text and answer the questions:
1 Do you think Mr. Smithson found a good way to dispose of his money?
2 What do you call people who donate
Ernest Hemingway: Tragic Genius.
Quiz for Literature Experts
1. What is ‘epigram’?
a) an ending, or an extra part after the end of a book or play
b) a short, funny, sharp
Vocabulary Practice
I. Find a synonym from the text to the underlined words and word combinations:
1) from time to time
2) to stress, to underline
3) freedom
4) sympathy
The Roaring Twenties.
The following are paragraphs of one text. Read them carefully and place them in the correct order. Explain your choice.
A In 1928 the American people electe
The Left Bank
References to the Left Bank have never lost their power to evoke the most piquant images of Paris. The Left Bank's geographic and cerebral hub is the Latin Quarter, which takes its name from the un
The Lost Generation
Though several stories conjecture on how the Lost Generation came to be called thus, the most plausible seems to be this: One summer in Belley, while Gertrude Stein's Ford auto was in need of some
Gertrude Stein - brief biography
Gertrude Stein (b. Feb. 3, 1874, Allegheny, Pa., U.S.--d. July 27, 1946, Paris) was an avant-garde American writer, eccentric, and self-styled genius, whose Paris home was a salon for the leading a
Vocabulary Practice
I. Fill in the right prepositions where necessary:
1. The strange behavior of the newcomer set him ... from the rest of the company.
2. Though his parents opposed
The Bonus Army
In the spring of 1932 thousands of unemployed ex-servicemen poured into Washington, the nation’s capital. They wanted the government to give them some bonus payments that it
Architecture Periods Quiz
There are many architects, but few true architect geniuses. Genius is, afterall, quite exceptional. What is an architectural genius? A genius is someone who has an extraordinary knack for architect
Vocabulary Practice
I. Translate into English:
− строительный подрядчик
− чувство пространства
− оказывать огромное влияние на что-либо
−
Music Theory Quiz
Are you good at music theory? Not sure? Let’s see.
1. What does the letter “C” stand for in musical notation?
a) doh
b) me
Vocabulary Practice.
I. Find synonyms to the following words and word combinations:
− unassuming
− unchallenged leader
− unaffected style
The Roots of Jazz
A number of regional styles contributed to the early development of jazz. Arguably the single most important was that of the New Orleans, Louisiana area, which was the first to be c
Vocabulary Practice
I. Translate the word combinations and sentences into Russian:
− wise sages from different world cultures
− to have a mean streak
− to s
Vocabulary Practice.
I. Find synonyms to the following words and word combinations:
− to capture
− to collaborate with
− to curtail
Sean Callahan
Margaret Bourke-White's persistence, combined with the prescience of Life picture editor Wilson Hicks, led her to a global scoop and another professional reincarnation: war photographer. W
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