Read about means of text cohesion (see SUPPLEMENT: III. Aspects of Cohesion) and do the following assignments

1) Describe the way you usually tidy up your flat/ room. Put the jobs in the right order and make up a cohesive text using suitable link-words, like in the sample below:

Starting to build a house one first of all levels the site. When the site is ready, the materials are bought and delivered. At this stage the drains are dug and the foundations laid. Then the walls are erected. Afterwards the roof is put on. Next the doors and windows are put in. Meanwhile the electricity and water systems are installed. Later the house is painted. Eventually the house is decorated and furnished. Finally it is ready to live in.

2) Compose sentences to link the following ideas. Use the words expressingcauseandresult:owing to, on account of, as a result (of), to result from/ in, to cause, for this reason, therefore etc.

E.g.: hypermarkets/ local shops closing down

Hypermarkets will take away a lot of trade from the town centre and this will lead to local shops closing down.

1. unexpected visit/ schedule;

2. early morning rush/ chaos/ stress;

3. tidying up/ backache;

4. bunk beds/ more space;

5. eating fast food/ indigestion/ health risks;

6. a part-time job/ extra cash;

7. working a tight schedule/ neglected children;

8. outside interests/ self-confidence;

9. amateur theatre/ tremendous satisfaction;

10. council list/ a bigger home.

12. Read the text below and do the following assignments:

1) fill in the gaps with suitable linkers:anyway, for this reason, besides, but, as a matter of fact, so, on the other hand, in fact, as a result, however, apart from it, as, though, in particular, nevertheless etc;

2) introduce paragraphs where necessary;

Give the text a suitable title.

Work at home had never been something I would think of as a great option. ___ I had done odd jobs to earn extra cash, a full-time or even part-time real work at home was not a possible career for me. ___ at 34, and being pregnant with my second child, I started thinking that work at home was really a way out. ___, I had no idea whether there were any opportunities in the work-at-home field. My college qualifications in arts and design did not seem of much help. ___ I needed a work-at-home plan, like a business plan. ___ I was an avid user of the internet, I started my search there. But it took a while before I had found several part-time options that would allow me to bring in the income I needed. My first position was being a chat room moderator for a company in Boston. I got no more than ten hours of work a week and … plenty of room to add another job. ___,I was up to a beggarly $150 a month at that point. ___ I decided to look around and extend my current work-at-home schedule. I’d done a direct sales business before and enjoyed it – so why not. And I jumped straight in with a Wellness Company. ___, starting with them coincided with starting my own website, and I couldn’t invest the time. ___, when things straightened out, I decided to add another website and join an easier home business that would fit into my lifestyle with a toddler. After much search I went with a credible, ten-year-old company, and signed up for their Referral Rewards programme. This allowed me to interact via email with those interested. ___, I do several online money-making programmes which are not super time-consuming and which I can do right from my computer. ___ I currently make enough working on a part-time basis. The difference it makes for us – well, it’s a lot. ___, I take my kids to school and pick them up. I cook dinner and the housework is manageable. ___, I could easily make much more working full-time again. BUT … I would have missed so much with my kids. ___, I want to know I was the best mom I could be, and that the sacrifices I personally made, were the best ones at the time I made them.

13. Read the textTHE POLITICS OF HOUSEWORK (Reader) and write a précis of it (for tips, see SUPPLEMENT. Academic Writing). Be ready to discuss the message of the article.

Text 4

TAKING OVER

Things certainly changed for the better when we moved to our new house. Gloria, George’s mother, had her granny flat above the garage, George had his study which he called his “den”, the children had a large sunny playroom and I had the best view in Cambridgeshire. And a lock on my door.

I also gave up cooking. It was not a wild feminist decision (You’ve got nothing to do all day, George, why don’t you get the dinner for a change?) but an admission of feminine weakness. The new kitchen was banked with electronic controls like a space station, and all the equipment was hidden discreetly behind panelled doors, so that I kept opening the dishwasher to get out the milk and putting the dirty washing in the fridge.

A couple of weeks after we moved in, I decided to roast a joint of beef; and then decided to go out and buy a take-away chicken when the instruction manual instead of issuing instructions about roasting on number 4 for 20 minutes to a pound, started babbling about the unique benefits of combining Infra technology & Turbo technology.

“Let me look at it, Pauline,” George took the manual firmly out of my hand. “The trouble with you is that you don’t bother to read the instructions properly. I say, it is amazing. Do you realize you can bake and roast simultaneously on six different levels?”

I couldn’t see why I’d want to perform this culinary feat, any more than I understood why the ceramic hob needed two heat zones to boil an egg or what the microwave thought in its two stage memory.

Once he had mastered all the masculine stuff about thermostatically controlled oven heat and such like, George opened his first cookery book surreptitiously, as though it was called “One Hundred Amusing Ways of Making Love” rather than “The Good Housekeeping Infra Turbo Cookbook.” He didn’t go so far as to conceal it in a plain wrapper but shyly hid the cover with his arms if anyone came into the kitchen and caught him with it. I noticed that he read “The Art of French Cookery” with far more concentration than he ever gave to “The Beginner.”

When Gloria tactlessly told him that now that he had nothing much to do, he could help a bit more around the house (something I’d never dream of saying since I felt permanently guilty about having a wonderful job when George was out of work), she probably expected him to push the Hoover1 about once a week and produce an occasional steak and crinkle chips to rapturous applause from the womenfolk. But George, while doing very little Hoover-pushing, plunged right in at the Cordon bleu end of cooking, marinating meat in wine and herbs, grilling fish over fennel twigs, baking his own bread.

Proudly bearing his first batch of bread, covered with a damp tea towel, up the stairs to the airing cupboard to raise the dough, he had bumped into Gloria putting away freshly ironed laundry.

“Let me do that, George,” she said, attempting to take the tin from him, but George hung on grimly. “Leave me alone, mother. It’s wholemeal and I’m going to put cracked wheat on it.”

“I suppose it’s all right,” she said, bringing me a cup of coffee in the studio and reporting the incident, “but it’s not very manly, is it, cooking?” I realized she had come to be reassured. “The best chefs in the world are men,” I said.

“That’s true.” She sipped her coffee reflectively. “But they don’t go modelling clothes in their spare time, do they?”

“I’m sure George won’t make a habit of it,” I said. There seemed to be no point in worrying Gloria by telling her that George was rather taken with the idea. He told me in bed one night (the only time and place we seemed to have time to talk to each other), that since Sybilla’s fashion pictures had turned out so well he was thinking of getting an agent.

“And is it that easy?” – I for one always found it most unrelaxing being told to relax in front of cameras for our publicity pictures.

“Easier than trying to sell out-of-date packaging units to people who don’t want to buy them,” he said, taking me in his arms. “I hated it, you know, Pauly.”

So this is how our new life went on. I had two babies to look after, and three shops to worry about, to say nothing about designing. It was a relief that George had taken to the new kitchen technology with such enthusiasm.

As for modelling, he did a session from time to time but we never mentioned it in front of Gloria.

(by S. Lowe, A. Ince)

EXERCISES

1. Comment on the cultural connotations of the following items: granny flat, feminist, joint of beef, a take-away chicken, French cookery, Cordon bleu, airing cupboard, wholemeal, chef.