Exercise 2. Answer the questions
1. What kind of state is the United States of America?
2. What is the territory of the country?
3. What is the population of the USA?
4. Where is the state situated?
5. When was it founded?
6. When did the country get its independence?
Exercise 3. True or false.
1. The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district.
2. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-nine contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south.
3. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries.
4. The United States was founded by fifteen British colonies located along the Atlantic seaboard.
5. The current United States Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787; its ratification the following year made the states part of a single republic with a strong federal government.
Exercise 4. Complete the sentences from the text.
1. The country also possesses several territories in … .
2. … , the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest both by land area and population.
3. The Native American population was greatly reduced by … .
4. On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was issued, … .
5. The Bill of Rights, … , was ratified in 1791.
Exercise 5. Retell the text.
Text B
CANADA
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean. It is the world's second largest country by total area. Canada's common border with the United States to the south and northwest is the longest in the world.
The land that is now Canada was inhabited for millennia by various groups of Aboriginal peoples. Beginning in the late 15th century, British and French expeditions explored, and later settled, along the Atlantic coast. France ceded nearly all of its colonies in North America in 1763 after the Seven Years' War. In 1867, with the union of three British North American colonies through Confederation, Canada was formed as a federal dominion of four provinces. This began an accretion of provinces and territories and a process of increasing autonomy from the United Kingdom. This widening autonomy was highlighted by the Statute of Westminster of 1931 and culminated in the Canada Act of 1982, which severed the vestiges of legal dependence on the British parliament.
Canada is a federation that is governed as a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy with Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state. It is a bilingual nation with both English and French as official languages at the federal level. One of the world's highly developed countries, Canada has a diversified economy that is reliant upon its abundant natural resources and upon trade—particularly with the United States, with which Canada has had a long and complex relationship. It is a member of the G7, G8, G20, NATO, OECD, WTO, Commonwealth, Francophonie, OAS, APEC, and UN. With the eighth-highest Human Development Index globally, it has one of the highest standards of living in the world.
Vocabulary
To cede – сдавать, уступать
To extend - простираться
A рrovince - провинция
Territorу – территория (административная единица, не имеющая прав штата или провинции)
A border - граница
Millennia - тысячелетия
A dominion - владение
An autonomy – автономия, самоуправление
Аboriginal – коренной, местный
Exercise 1. Make up sentences with the words above.