Read text 4B and answer the questions.

1. Why is Moscow often chosen as the place for international conferences and meetings?

2. What achievements did Russian scientists make in different spheres?

3. Where did many new trends in modern science originate?

4. What do the foreign scientists show great interest in?

5. What is Moscow like?

6. What makes you think that the colossal construction is going on in Moscow?

7. What is the Moscow underground like?

Reproduce the parts of the Text in which these words and phrases are used. Use these phrases in short stories of your own.

Throughout the world, frequently, to have an impact on something, to effect a break-through, to be well to the fore in something, to be held, at least, numerous, to miss, a scale of construction, neat, to match something, advanced, a genuine bulwark of something.

Discuss the Text in pairs. Use the pattern below as a model and guidelines.

A.: It has been stated that Moscow is more and more frequently chosen as the place for the major international conferences and meetings.

B.: I think it’s debatable. As a matter of fact not only Moscow is chosen as the place for major conferences. St.Peterburg, Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg and others are also very big scientific and educational centers of the Russian Federation.

A.: As far as I know from the text …, etc.

10. Find and reproduce the key sentence in each paragraph expressing the main idea.

11. Retell the Text according to the plan made up.

TEXT 4C

Moscow Places of Interest

1. Moscow is the capital of the Russian Federation. It attracts tourists from all over the world.

2. Moscow is known for its beautiful old cathedrals, churches and monasteries. Some of them date from the 15th to the17th centuries. Before the revolution of 1917 Moscow had 350 churches, but many of them were destroyed after the revolution.

3. Moscow is also noted for its art museums. The most popular of them are the Tretyakov Gallery and the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. The Tretyakov Gallery houses a unique collection of Russian painters. Almost all famous Russian paintings are represented there.

4. The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts contains a vast collection of antiquities and a well-known collection of modern foreign painters including Impressionists.

5. The oldest part of Moscow is the Kremlin. This is the main tourist attraction in Moscow. The Kremlin stands at the heart of the city. The word “Kremlin” means fortress, and the Moscow Kremlin used to be a fortress. In 1156 a small settlement in Moscow was surrounded with a wooden wall, and became a Kremlin. The town and the Kremlin were burnt in 1237 and 1293 during the Tatar invasion, but they were rebuilt. In 1367 Prince Dmitry Donskoy built a white-stone wall around the Kremlin. In the 15th century, by order of Tsar Ivan III the Kremlin was surrounded with a new red-brick wall.

6. Twenty towers of the Kremlin wall were constructed in the end of the 17th century. By that time Moscow had already ceased to be a fortress. The towers were built for decoration and had no military significance. Five of the towers were gates. The Tainitskaya Tower had a secret passage to the Moskva River. The Spasskaya Tower is a symbol of Russia and Moscow. It has a famous clock; one can hear its chimes on the radio. The clock which we can see today was installed in the middle of the 19th-century.

7. The buildings inside the Kremlin wall were built between the 15th and 17th centuries. There is the Bell Tower of Ivan the Great (16 c.), and a famous group of churches. The Uspensky Cathedral is the largest one. It was built in 1479; there Russian tsars and imperators were crowned. In the Archangel Cathedral one can see tombs of Moscow princes and tsars. Among them are the tombs of Ivan the Terrible, his sons Ivan and Tsar Fyodor. Blagoveshensky Cathedral was built in 1484. It is noted for its frescoes by Andrei Rublyov and his pupils.

8. Granovitaya Palata is another masterpiece inside the Kremlin wall. Moscow tsars held magnificent receptions in honour of foreign ambassadors there. The Tsar Cannon (16 c.) and the Tsar Bell attract crowds of tourists, too.

9. Outside the Kremlin wall there is the famous Red Square. Tourists can look at the magnificent Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed, the Lenin Mausoleum and the monument to K.Minin and D.Pozharsky.