Study the meaning of the following synonyms or near synonyms. Make up your own sentences or short situations to show how you understand the difference in their meaning.

1. proper, appropriate, suitable

proper – подходящий, нужный, правильный

appropriate – подходящий, соответствующий, уместный

suitable – подходящий, соответствующий, годный

E.g. Everything will come in its proper time.

Write him a thank-you letter. It will be highly appropriate.

Such clothes are suitable for cold weather.

2. benefit, advantage, profit

benefit – преимущество, польза, выгода

advantage – преимущество, превосходство, выгода

profit – польза, выгода, прибыль

E.g. to do smth for the benefit of smb – сделать что-либо на благо (в пользу) кого-либо

to get (derive) benefit from smth – извлечь пользу (выгоду) из чего-либо

to turn smth to one’s advantage – обратить что-либо себе на пользу

to make profit of smth – извлечь выгоду (доход) из чего-либо

3. common, mutual

common – общий, совместный, широко распространенный

mutual – общий, взаимный

E.g. a common language – общий язык

common efforts – общие (совместные) усилия

a mutual friend – общий друг

mutual benefit – взаимная выгода

4. a goal, a purpose

a goal – цель, задача

a purpose – цель, намерение, замысел

E.g. one’s goal in life – цель в жизни

a sense of purpose – целеустремленность

What’s your purpose in doing that? – С какой целью вы это делаете?

5. to admit, to acknowledge, to recognize

to admit – признавать, допускать, сознаваться (в преступлении)

to acknowledge – признавать (открыто), сознавать

to recognize – признавать, официально признавать (государство)

E.g. I admit it to be true. – Я признаю (допускаю), что это правда.

He admitted (to) stealing. – Он признался в краже.

He was acknowledged as their leader. – Он был признан лидером.

He recognized that he was not qualified enough. – Он сам видел, что недостаточно квалифицирован.

to recognize a new state (a government) – признать государство (правительство)

6. to claim, to state, to maintain

to claim – утверждать, заявлять

to state – утверждать, констатировать

to maintain – утверждать, настаивать, уверять

E.g. He claimed to have reached the top of the mountain. – Он утверждал, что достиг вершины горы.

He stated that he had never seen the accused man. – Он заявил, что никогда не видел обвиняемого.

The plaintiff stated his case. – Истец изложил свое дело.

He maintained that it was the only way out. – Он утверждал (настаивал), что это единственный выход.

7. to resist, to oppose

to oppose – противиться, сопротивляться, выступать против

to resist – противиться, сопротивляться, не поддаваться

E.g. The people oppose this policy. – Люди выступают против этой политики.

to resist the police in the discharge of their duty – оказать сопротивление полиции при исполнении служебных обязанностей

to resist the enemy – оказать сопротивление врагу

 

Reading for Information

 

Read the following article quickly and find answers to the questions given below. Try to concentrate only on those passages that provide the information you need and skip those that are of no importance to you at the moment.

1. What does the term ‘freeter’ mean?

2. What kind of people become freeters?

3. What major sub-groups does the younger generation in Japan fall into?

4. Why do so many young Japanese adopt the freeter lifestyle?

5. What job opportunities did the older generation have?

6. What is the attitude of the older people to the freeter lifestyle of the young?

 

Japan’s Young Slackers

Meet the easygoing ‘part-time’ generation.

Gone are the days when most young men expected to climb the corporate ladder at Sony, Mitsubishi or another industrial giant, while their sisters took “office lady” positions until marriage. Nowadays Japan Inc. simply isn’t creating middle-class opportunities like it used to, and while young Japanese might fantasize about jobs-for-life, most end up with something much different: paid-by-the-hour temporary work.

Japan has a name for its swelling legion of part-timers. They are called freeters (derived from the English word free and the German word for worker, Arbeiter) – a term that describes not just an employment category but a lifestyle. By reputation, freeters are a bit like America’s Gen-X slackers: they work only when they need cash, hang out, travel whenever possible and celebrate their rejection of their parents’ old workaholic lifestyle. Japan’s new workers froth cappuccinos, pump gas, pack boxes and run cash registers. “I couldn’t be a salary-man,” says Yoshinari Nozaki, a 30-year-old design-school dropout. “Getting up early even in winter, crushing yourself into a commuter train, working late and drinking with your superiors to ingratiate yourself. Where’s the freedom in that?”

Ten years ago, such behaviour was virtually unheard of. From the early 1960s until 1992, career jobs awaited not just college grads but kids out of high school as well. Major corporations recruited aggressively at top universities, where male students willing to trim their hair and don three-piece “interview suits” had their pick of careers inside Japan Inc. All the while, major manufacturers sought fresh high-school grads to staff factories and sales offices. The good times ended when companies reined in hiring, and universities began to feel the “job-seekers’ ice age.” It’s been a long freeze. In 2000 only eight in 10 college grads landed jobs of any sort after matriculation.

Now magazine publications are chock-full of help-wanted listings of unskilled, short-term positions. Typically, the ads emphasize a job’s ease, flexibility and fun – not old-fashioned draws like status or career promise. Reads one: “For this job you are free to choose your own clothing and hairstyle. You can get up late in the morning. You don’t have to ride crowded trains. Even if you have no experience, you get a good rate pay. Yes, all these selfish wishes can come true!” The position advertised: $11-an-hour-telemarketing.

Many of Japan’s freeters harbor artistic aspirations. Daiki, for example, earns meager wages passing out fliers in a gritty underpass in Tokyo and spends his free time composing rap lyrics. Daiki, 20, still lives at home and hangs out in clubs at night. “If my folks are still up when I get home, I get an earful,” he says. “When I wake up in the afternoon, I hear the same refrain: ‘Get a job!’ My dad’s a mechanic and he works very hard. That’s why they never let up on me.”

As originally coined, the term freeter described “artists and musicians with a purpose in life who needed part-time work to make a living,” says Reiko Kosugi, an expert on part-time Japanese workers at the Japan Institute of Labor, a government-funded think tank. Even today, she adds, young people with entrepreneurial or artistic ambitions make up one of three main subgroups. The other two are kids who tried unsuccessfully to land career jobs and drifters with no firm plans. Kosugi believes the last group, the drifters, to be the fastest growing. “As children they saw only the backs of their fathers. They have no idea what they want to do. All they say is: ‘I don’t want to be a salaryman.’ In this sense, Japan’s economic situation is reflected inside the family.”

In 1999 Kosugi and her research team interviewed 97 part-timers about their employment perspectives and motivations. Their study, entitled “ Freeters: Their Reality and Thinking,” profiles a generation adrift. Most part-timers want freedom and flexibility, it concludes, but either lack firm career goals or “tend not to have any means of connecting their present situations to a future career.” At times, the dysfunction is staggering. One interview subject, a 31-year-old male, completed a doctorate in biology and abandoned the field abruptly – to attend beauty college. Another, a 19-year-old high-school graduate, quit a vocational business school to work in a club. “I had an eye on one bar I kind of liked,” she told scholars. “I was hired as a part-timer. I enjoy the job now, but I am also interested in fashion. I don’t know if I will try to become a full-fledged bartender, or quit. I’m not sure.”

Traditionally minded Japanese find these antics heretical. To them, the young generation’s self-indulgence breaks a time-tested social contract. Conventionally, Japanese salarymen work for decades within rigidly hierarchical corporations until they are eventually rewarded in the form of fat retirement bonuses. Freeters take the dramatically opposite approach: work as little as necessary, then have fun as long as possible until the money runs out.

Masahiro Yamada, a sociologist at Gakugei University in Tokyo, thinks Japan’s self-indulgent youngsters constitute a bloodsucking “affluent class that can live like Japan’s ancient aristocrats.” Yamada charges that Japan’s kids “hinder the nation’s economy and sap the nation’s vitality.” His prescription: young Japanese should move out from their parental homes, marry earlier and have more kids. It’s a view many older Japanese share. “I want him to get out and become independent,” the mother of a live-at-home 29-year-old son told NEWSWEEK. “I want him to discover what he wants to do with his life and be happy.”

Throughout the postwar boom, Japan’s children typically stayed in the nest long enough to save a down payment for a flat of their own, and then married. Yet today’s high housing costs and relatively low wages have made it tough for most young people to follow the job-marriage-mortgage path. They lack options and for that reason adopt the freeter lifestyle.

(From “Newsweek”, abridged)

 

V Now read the article very carefully, find the following words and word combinations in the text and learn their meaning. Make it a particular point to use them in the further overall discussion of theproblem.

To create opportunities (jobs), to pay by the hour, temporary work, to be unheard of, a major corporation (manufacturer), (a) top (university), to have one’s pick of smth, a rate of (pay), meager wages, to let up on smb, a think tank, to land a career job, to profile smth, staggering, to complete a doctorate, a scholar, full-fledged, self-indulgence (self-indulgent), to share a view, a down payment for smth, housing, an option.

 

17. See Grammar Reference (Nouns in groups) p. … Read the article again and write out compound nouns and noun phrases with compound words used as attributes. Think of a way to translate them into Russian.

E.g. paid-by-the-hour temporary work – временная работа с почасовой оплатой

 

18. Rewrite the following sentences using noun phrases instead of the words given in italics.

1. The firm employed a boy of 16 who dropped out of secondary school.

2. Small firms placed a lot of advertisements which showed that help was wanted for short terms.

3. Alison got a job of a cleaner at a café for which she got $8 an hour.

4. The boys who were 12 years old set off on a hike in the mountains which lasted for 6 hours.

5. The local authorities made it a point to create job opportunities for graduates of high schools who belonged to the middle class.

6. It was the time of recession which was as long as a decade.

7. They launched a project for employment which was funded by the government.

8. The research profiles the perspectives for employment of the younger generation.

9. The article keeps a low profile on the rate of unemployment among graduates of top universities.

10. The parents are concerned about the style of life of their children.

11. In New York Jack stayed in a room in a hotel which cost $400 a night.

12. We missed our connection at Kennedy Airport. Due to bad weather conditions there was a delay which lasted for three hours.

 

 

Reading and Speaking 2