Текст 1(f). American English

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Elementary Education

Secondary Education

Higher Education College or University (from 18 years or later)

The System of Education in the USA.

Расскажите о системе образования в США, используя данную ниже схему.

Текст 1(e). Education in the USA

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1 When do American children begin to go to school?

2 What is the first school called?

3 What kinds of secondary schools are there in the USA?

4 At what age do boys and girls finish secondary school?

American Children go to school for twelve years. There are different schools in the USA: public and private, co-educational¹ and for boys and girls alone. When the children are five years old they go to kindergarten. After kindergarten from the age of six years old they go to elementary school². They study there eight years.

Then the American children can go to high schcool³. They study there four years more. There are two kinds of secondary or high schools: Junior High schools are for children from 12 to 15 years of age; Senior High schools are for students of 15 to 18 years of age. In all secondary schools the schoolchildren are called “students” not pupils.

In American High schools there are two compulsory subjects for all students, that is all students must learn them. These subjects are English, physical education, and social science. But there are also elective subjects. There are the subjects which some students learn and other do not learn, if they do not like them, or think that they do not need them. Among elective subjects are mathematics, physics, chemistry, foreign languages, history and many others. American children finish school without any examination.

Higher education is given in colleges, technical institutes and universities. A college is like a university. The difference is that a university has several colleges. The students study at college four years. The must pay for their education.

¹ – совместный

² – начальная школа

³ – средняя школа

Senior High (from 15 – 18 years of age) High school (from 12 – 18 years

Junior High (from 12 –18 years of age) of age).

Elementary or Grade School (from 6 – 12, 14 years of age)

1 Когда первые англичане появились на американском континенте?

2 Претерпел ли английский язык в США? Если да, то найдите в тексте подтверждения этому.

3 Языки, каких народов обогатили английский язык в США?

English may be said to have traveled to North America with the ship “Mayflower”¹ in 1620. The earliest English colonists in the New World were speaking Elizabethan English, the language of Shakespeare, Lyly, Marlowe, when they came to America. This is important and necessary for our understanding of some of the distinctive features which American English was to develop later on.

In the formation of American English there were added to the seventeenth century form of English many words derived from the languages of different peoples with whom the English – speaking colonists were brought into contact. First in importance come the words derived from the speech of various Indian tribes. From the Indians were borrowed not only the many geographical names of rivers, mountains, and names of implements and food preparations of a new kind (such words as canoe, moccasin, wigwam, tomahawk).

Besides the various Indian influences American English reflects the other non-English cultures. In the westward expansion of their territory, the English speaking colonists soon came into contact with the French, From the French in America were derived a considerable number of words, such as prairie, rapids.

Spanish words were adopted at two different periods. In the old colonial days, American received Creole, mulatto. Then, after the Mexican War (1846 – 1848) contact with Spanish-speaking inhabitants of Texas and the Spanish West resulted in the acquisition of such words as canyon, ranch, sombrero.

The Dutch settlers of New York contributed to American the following words: boss, Santa Claus, cookie.

We ought just to notice that in American English there is an increasing tendency to employ a simplified spelling. This tendency is the use of – or in all words that in English contain – our: thus Americans write honor and honorable for honour and honourable. Many Americans write thru for through.

Is there a difference between the English language as it is spoken by the English and by the Americans not only with reference to the pronunciation?

Well, just listen to me for a few minutes and you will see.

When you arrive in America and want to continue your journey by railroad (not railway as you are used to call it), you won’t take your tickets at

the booking – office but at the ticket – window, and the man who hands it to you is no longer the booking – clerk, but the ticket – agent.

You walk out on the platform, oh, I beg your pardon, it is here called track.

The train is already waiting and you quickly get into a car which in England you would call a carriage. If you want to fix an appointment with a friend, it will be best to call-him up. You are quite right in guessing that this is the same as to ring him up. He will tell you how to get to his hotel, whether you have to go by subway by which the underground railway is understood, or whether you had better take the trolley car, he may also call it street car, or even surface car.

Your friend will probably be expecting you in the lobby, in England you call it lounge. Then you will both get into the elevator (must I tell you that this is the lift). Which will take you up to your friend’s room. Your friend will probably take you out for a walk to have a look at the shops or stores as they call them in America. And then, I suppose, you will drop into one of numerous movies. I hope you will not mind the “cinema” being called movies here.

¹ – корабль “Мэйфлауэр”, привёзший в Америку первых английских колонистов.

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