What is your opinion on popularity of such kind of music?

Write 200-250 words.

Use the following plan

§ make an introduction. (state the problem)

§ express your personal opinion and give 2-3 reasons for your opinion

§ express an opposing opinion and give 1-2 reasons for this opposing opinion

§ express why you don’t agree with the opposing opinion

§ make a conclusion restating your opinion

Positive and negative aspects of pop music:

Positive:

§ Young people search for new rhythms and new styles.

§ The words of the songs deal with the younger people’s world: their hopes, dreams, disappointments and joys.

§ The new rhythms are full of vigor and force: just what appeals to young children. The tunes are easily caught.

§ It is an experimental kind of music. Different groups are looking for new rhythms and sometimes achieve really.

§ The popularity of the genre of pop music speaks in its favor. It attracts great masses of young people. Why should we deprive them of the joy they obviously get from this music?

Negative:

§ The rhythms are new but they lack variety, it’s the same monotonous rhythm again and again.

§ The tunes are mostly primitive as easily forgotten as caught.

§ The words of some songs are absolutely senseless. The songs often contain…

§ Medical research has proved beyond doubt that the volume of sound produced by powerful music at some pop concerts does great damage both to senses of hearing and to the nervous system. Cases of mass hysteria are not unusual at pop concerts.

Read the text, learn the vocabulary and discuss.

BOOKS

There is no doubt that reading is very important. By learning to read you learn how to concentrate, how to use your imagination, and to visualize the stories in your own way. Undoubtedly, reading is becoming less and less popular nowadays, with the increasing popularity of TV, videos and computers. I’m not sure people read as much as they watch TV or video now. However, I think that with books you always get a picture in your mind, and have certain ideas about certain characters, so it is often a disappointment when they make a film out of your favourite book.

The Russians are a reading nation. Books of different types and genres are published every year in numerous publishing houses so you can choose a book which best suits your requests. A lot of bookshops are being opened today in our city and provide customers with a great variety of books. What’s more, in some bookshops you can drink a cup of coffee while reading a bestseller and meet authors presenting their latest works.

There are different kinds of books. You know that children like reading and listening to fairy tales, fables, short stories. There are also historical novels, adventure books, science fiction, love stories, true stories, autobiographies and detectives for people of all ages. Some people prefer reference books and encyclopaedias or use them in their work.

A new type of book called audio book has become popular recently with people who spend a lot of time in cars getting to work and stuck in traffic jams. For some of them it is the only opportunity to appreciate books in our hectic lifestyle. You have “to taste” books to understand what suits your personal interest.

However, there are many books that you should “chew and digest”. People admire the books written by British writers Jonathan Swift and Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens and William Thackeray, Oscar Wild, Herbert Wells, Aldus Huxley, Somerset Maugham. In Russia we are proud of the works of Denis Fonvizin, Nikolai Karamzin, Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Our modern writers are appreciated in many countries too. For example, Vladimir Nabokov wrote the world-famous novel “Lolita”.

Verses by Russian poets, such as A.Pushkin, S.Yesenin, and V.Mayakovsky are translated into many languages. Russian poet Joseph Brodsky was awarded the Alfred Nobel Prize in 1987. We can be proud of other Alfred Nobel Prize winners. They are B.Pasternak, M.Sholokhov and A.Solzhenitsin

I. Bunin.

S.Maugham ones said that “a real masterpiece makes you share feelings and emotions with the characters, follow the plot and think.” I believe that we should try to read as many books as possible, no matter whether we swallow, chew or digest them.

As for me I’m into….

I’d like to tell you about a book I’ve recently read/ I’d like to tell you about my favourite book.

It is “…..” by ….

The main characters are …Mostly I liked ….because

The plot is (quite, very) funny, serious, dramatic, gripping, moving, clever, thrilling, typical, boring, predictable, ordinary, silly because….

The situation is set in….

This book has got a lot of original ideas about…..

This book is really worth reading / this book isn’t worth reading.

Study the vocabulary:

Books: entertaining, boring, shocking, frightening, sad, exciting

Scary characters, tragic end, too much violence, funny incidents, predictable characters

Original ideas, unhappy situations, lots of action, repetition