Daily Routine

Task 1. Read the text. Compare the working day of John Smith to your own and to your parents’. Fill in the table.

I wake up at 7 a.m. every morning. I’m not an early riser, so I set the alarm at 7 a.m. I press the snooze button five times every morning before I turn off the alarm and get up.

I have a cup of coffee and make breakfast. I usually read the newspaper while I have breakfast. My children like to have a shower after they have breakfast but I like to have a shower before I get dressed. My wife brushes her long hair, and I have short hair so I comb my hair. How do you do your hair in the morning? It is important to brush your teeth, and some women like to put make-up on.

I usually drive to work or carpool with my friends. When my kids go to school I give them a ride. It usually takes fifteen minutes to drive them to school.

At work I have a pretty busy schedule. I always check my emails when I get to work, but I don’t always reply to them immediately. I take a taxi or a train if I have a lunch meeting. I never take the bus because it is too slow. When I am at my desk I usually work on the computer, even during morning tea. At 1 p.m. most days I have lunch. At 3 p.m. we have afternoon tea, and that is when we usually talk and eat cake. Friendly chat is the best part of the working day as sometimes we work around the clock.

When you are in the office, you probably have a lot of papers. It is important for you to file your papers, and so that you can find them again you need to organise your files. As I try to cope with my work properly, I sometimes work overtime. When I work, I have to make telephone calls. If an important issue happens, I ask my secretary to organise a meeting and we clear up some problems. Once a month I report to my boss, but maybe you have to report to your boss more often. I usually write a document that my boss can read.

After I have finished work, take my kids from school. After school they are involved in the after-school activities — an orchestra, a choir, an arts club. My favourite work about the house is to cook dinner. In my house I usually do the cooking and wash up. The family eats dinner together at 7:30 p.m. Sometimes we eat out. After dinner I make sure that my children do their homework, they have a lot of homework and it takes them several hours to do it. They sometimes have to sit up to write a composition, to prepare a report, to translate a newspaper article from English into Ukrainian or to learn a poem by heart. Then I chill out on the sofa and watch television. On television I usually watch the news. Our children feed the dog and the cat before they go to bed and I tell them to go to the bathroom too. If I am sick I have to take my medication, but then I get into my pyjamas and set the alarm so I wake up in the morning.

The last things I do are locking the door, turning off the lights, and going to bed.

Time	John Smith	You	Your Father/Mother
Morning	_______________________ _______________________ _______________________	_______________________ _______________________ _______________________	_______________________ _______________________ _______________________
Working time	_______________________ _______________________ _______________________	_______________________ _______________________ _______________________	_______________________ _______________________ _______________________
In the evening	_______________________ _______________________ _______________________	_______________________ _______________________ _______________________	_______________________ _______________________ _______________________

Task 2. Who in your family can say this? Put their names in the gaps or ‘N’ if no one.

______________: I try to keep fit, I exercise at least three times a week. My husband usually works out in the gym every day.

______________: I meditate every morning so that I feel less stressed during the day.

______________: I go grocery shopping once a week at the local supermarket.

______________: Every week I change the bed linen.

______________: My family does the housework together, mum likes to dust and polish the furniture.

______________: I usually do the washing on Sunday morning and when the machine is finished I hang the clothes out to dry. My wife does the ironing.

______________: I usually vacuum the carpets, and my husband shakes out the rugs.

______________: On Sunday morning we go to church, and after it have a walk in the local park.

______________: On Saturday night my parents stay at home and I go out with friends.

______________: My father and mother call their parents each week or visit them.

______________: Every evening, I water the flowers and feed the fish in aquarium.

______________: I usually pay someone to wash the car, but my wife says I should do it, so sometimes I argue with my spouse about that.

______________: I work in an important office, so I have to shine my shoes each day.

______________: Sometimes we hire a movie, because we don’t like to illegally download music and films.

______________: I make sure that I synchronised my iPod so I always have new music on it.

______________: To get our shopping, we go to the mall in the car.

______________: Last week I forgot to buy the travel card, and I had to argue with a bus driver. I couldn’t call the office because I forgot to recharge my cell phone!

______________: I play the violin, so I have to attend music school three times a week.

______________: In the free time we like to play board games or complete puzzles.

Task 3. Compare your working day with the working day of your parents using the ‘Key Language’.

Key Language

Describe the General State of Events	It’s a matter of fact… It is a fact that…/It is…
Express Your Preferences	I really like/love/enjoy… I find … really fascinating… I prefer … to… If I were to choose I would…
Compare	Compared with… In the same way/manner… Similarly… Likewise…
Contrast	Besides…/However…/In contrast… Naturally…/Nevertheless… Different from…/On the contrary…

Task 4. Read the text. Match choices (A–H) to (1–7). There is one choice you do not need to use.

Effective time management

1 _________________ Time flies and if you want to reach your goals, you have to make your days productive, not to plan anything to kill time and remember that time is money. With some effort you can make your days more efficient. They say there’s a place for everything and everything should be in its place. How about your plan? Do you have a plan or strategy for organizing your clock and commitments? With discipline, you can be an effective time manager.

2 _________________ The first step is to make planning a habit. Remember that what can be done anytime is done at no time. Do not focus on one day, focus on the whole week.

3 _________________ Stephen Covey made a masterful illustration using a bucket, some sand, and several rocks of various sizes. He explained that the sand represents all the busy work that we have to do — must-dos. The bucket represents all the time we have for all the demands of our lives. What happens with most of us is that we fill up our buckets with the sand first, and then we can only put a few rocks on top, and there’s no more room for the rest. What he suggested is that we put all our rocks into the bucket first, and then fill in all the available spaces with the sand. And miraculously, everything fits in our container! This is the philosophy you need to employ when you schedule your week. Identify all your big rocks, and block out the time to handle these first. Then worry about the sand afterwards. We have to make sure that we handle the important stuff first, and not let the busy work consume our days.

4 _________________ Don’t plan the every hour of your day and week as it may turn out to be crammed with activities. Leave some time for you to catch up when the unexpected happens. Learn the art of juggling your activities and adapting to unplanned changes.

5 _________________ Learn how to say no. It’s more important than you may think. We have to learn how to say no when it’s needed or else we won’t get anything done. There is a lot of disturbing elements around us.

6 _________________ Once you have your days scheduled, you need to exercise discipline and stick to what you planned. Do everything you can to eliminate distractions and really focus on what you have to do. You will be amazed how much more productive you can be. Remember that procrastination is the thief of time!

7 _________________ Don’t forget to leave sometime for yourself to think, ponder, and for emergencies. If you are going to work for 10 hours, for example, make sure you leave 2 hours for pondering and emergencies. At the end of the day, reassess how your day went. Did you accomplish everything you wanted to do? Was your day beneficial?

A Why Planning Is Necessary

B Who Needs Planning?

C Discipline, Discipline, Discipline

D Be Flexible with Your Time

E The One Word that Can Save You Tons of Time…

F Learn to Prioritize

G Schedule at Least One Week at a Time

H Assess Your Day

Task 5. Your friend sent you a letter telling that he entered a university in the USA. On a separate sheet of paper write a letter, where you congratulate him with this success and give advice on the proper planning of the day:

· tell about ‘the stones and sand’ of the life;

· explain how to plan effectively;

· advise on how to deal with the plan.

Дата добавления: 2014-11-29