Тема №2

TELEVISION IN OUR LIFE

We can hardly imagine our life without television. It offers the viewers several programmes on different channels to satisfy all tastes. It's a convenient source of information as it informs us about current affairs and the latest developments and achievements in science and technology both in our country and abroad. It also broadcasts meetings between famous people in various walks of life. You can also get a lot of useful information from a great number of educational programmes, which are very helpful and interesting for children and grown-ups. By watching the programmes dealing with animals and birds and all kinds of living things in their natural surroundings, about the unusual phenomena on our planet, we widen our knowledge of different subjects and the world around us.

Television today competes with cinemas and theatres. We love seeing dramatic entertainments of all kinds: the plays of many leading dramatists, dramatized versions of the works of famous novelists; lovely one-act plays, comic turns, amusing episodes of all sorts. A good serial (a detective story, for example) can keep the whole family in front of the telly during the day and in the evening. We enjoy all this without leaving home.

TV is a convenient source of entertainment too. You watch your favourite sport games, hear symphony concerts, operas, popular melodies; we have an opportunity to see soap-operas, especially popular among housewives; we hear talks on archeology, history, geography; we hear critics talking about new books, films, plays, works of art; we hear living poets reading their own poems. So, television informs, educates and entertains us.

Advertisements and commercials take a good amount of time on TV now, some people are not happy about it, but we can't do without them.

We may speak about different advantages and drawbacks of television but almost every home has at least one TV set. On average, a TV set is in use for about 7 hours each day. Thus, television is the most effective means of mass communication known to mankind. It has become the people's eyes and ears on the world.

Give English equivalents:

удовлетворять все вкусы; текущие события; достижения науки; различные сферы жизнедеятельности; образовательные программы; развлекательные программы; естественная среда обитания; расширять кругозор; экранизированная версия; комические этюды; преимущества и недостатки; в среднем.