Teachers and Actors

Read the text and answer the questions after it.

Explain the words, word combinations and phrases in bold in the text.

6) Fill in the correct preposition or particle, then make sentences:

1) to refer … smb/smth; 2) to proceed … generalisations; 3) way … doing smth;4) … one’s working milieu; 5) to isolate smb/smth … smb/smth; 6) to begin … Sunday night; 7) to shake … a sense of guilt … the quantity and quality of smth; 8) arrival … school; 9) there is no place … smth; 10) college lectures … smth; 11) to be (not) warned … smth; 12) to have an (emotional) impact … smb/smth; 13) to encroach … smb’s life; 14) with the class being split … and loaded … … colleagues; 15) propelled … anxiety; 16) to have a great influence … smth; 17) attitude … smb/smth.

7) Answer the questions:

What image of teachers do people have in their minds?

What does the word “lot” in the title mean? What does the title suggest?

How does the text support the idea suggested in the title? What examples are given to show the difference between teachers and people of other professions?

What do you think are the rewards of the teacher’s job?

Do you agree with the author of the text? What do you agree/disagree with?

To be a good teacher, you need some of the gifts of the good actor: you must be able to hold the attention and interest of your audience; you must be a clear speaker, with good, strong, pleasing voice which is fully under your control; and you must be able to act what you are teaching in order to make its meaning clear.

Watch a good teacher, and you will see that he does not sit motionless before his class: he stands the whole time he is teaching, he walks about, using his arms, hands and fingers to help him in his explanations and his face to express feelings. Listen to him and you will hear the loudness, the quality and the musical note of his voice always changing according to what he is talking about.

The fact that a good teacher has some of the gifts of a good actor does not mean that he will indeed be able to set well on the stage: for there are very important differences between the teacher's work and the actor's. The actor has to speak words which he has learned by heart: he has to repeat exactly the same words each time he plays a certain part; even his movements and the ways in which he uses his voice are usually fixed before. What he has to do is to make all these carefully learnt words and actions seem natural on the stage.

A good teacher works in quite a different way. His audience takes an active part in his play: they ask and answer questions, they obey orders, and if they do not understand something, they say so. The teacher therefore has to suit his act to the needs of his audience, which is his class. He cannot learn his part by heart, but must invent it as he goes along.

I have known many teachers who were fine actors in class but were unable to take part in a stage-play because their brains would not keep strictly to what another had written.

2) Scan the text and find English equivalents for the following:

удерживать внимание, сидеть неподвижно, изобретать/придумывать, на сцене, выучить роль наизусть.

· What is similar between teachers and actors?

· What is the difference between the teacher’s work and the actor’s?

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