TEZA LA ENGLEZA CLASA aXIa SEM II

I. READING
1. Read the following text and find words that mean: (5 points)
a) alteration of shape
b) effort
c) shocked and angry
d) reproduce
e) claim, sometimes untruthfully

Many people who profess to love art are offended when pictures do not look ‘real’. They consider that this shows a lack of skill in modern artists who do not have enough knowledge to draw ‘correctly’ and who cannot compare with the great masters of the past. Such masters were able to render faithfully the visible world around them by much labour and the recording of every tiny detail. Yet there is not much mystery about these distortions of nature about which people still complain today when talking about modern art. Everyone who has seen a Disney film or a comic strip knows that it is sometimes right to draw things otherwise than they look. Mickey Mouse does not look very much like a real mouse, yet people do not get indignant about the length of his tail!

2. Explain in your own words:( 4 points)
a) why some people criticise modern art
b) why the great artists of the past were so admired
c) what cartoons show us about art
d) why nobody criticises the length of Mickey Mouse’s tail.
3. Summarise what the passage says in about 20 words.(8 points)
4. Put the following sentences into the correct order to make a piece of structured writing about appreciating artistic works.(8 points)
a) They seem to be as inexhaustible and unpredictable as human beings.
b) You should never think you know all about it, for nobody does.
c) You will never finish learning about art.
d) Nothing is more important to enjoyment than having a fresh mind.
e) There are always new things to discover.
f) It is an exciting world of its own with its own strange laws and adventures.
g) It is far better to know nothing about art at all than to have a kind of half-knowledge that makes for snobbishness.
h) Great works of art seem to look different every time you stand before them.

II. VOCABULARY
1. Here is a short text about democracy from an encyclopedia. Fill in the spaces with a suitable word from the box. Be careful: there are more words than spaces! (15 points)

for ballot majority cases instance citizens councilor local constitution rights vote real party minority centuries elect minister within democratic decisions general secret ways national rule polling
_1_________a democracy, all persons have the right to play a part in the government of their country. In the United Kingdom, for __2________, everybody over the age of 18 can__3_______ a member of the parliament to represent them in the __4_____ government; and a __5______-their representative in __6_______ government.
Democracy means government by people, but different groups of people might want to do completely different things and in such __7______ the view of the __8_____ rules. This could lead to the views of the __9_______ being ignored, so many democratic countries and organisations have a __10_______that safeguards the __11_________of individuals and minorities.
India is the biggest representative democracy in the world; more than 500 million people are able to __12_________. In the __13_________election of 1989, about 370 million went at the __14__________stations.
In 1989 people in Communist Eastern Europe demanded __15________ government and in 1990 Czechoslovakia declared the first democratic government in a Communist country.

III. LITERATURE

Read this excerpt from” Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and write no more than 200 words to show that the text plays on nonsense and on language.(30 points)
As she said these words her foot slipped, and, in another moment , splash! she was up to her chin in salt water . Her first idea was that she had somewhat fallen into the sea, "and in that case I can go back by railway”, she said to herself….However she soon made out that she was in the pool of tears which she had wept when she was nine feet high.
“I wish I hadn’t cried so much!” said Alice, as she swam about , trying to find her way out. “I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears!…”
Just then she heard something splashing about in the pool a little way off, and she swam nearer to make out what it was:… it was only a mouse that had slipped in like herself.
“Would it be of any use now”, thought Alice, “to speak to this mouse? Everything is so out-of- the-way down here, that I should think very likely it can talk: at any rate , there’s no harm in trying.” So she began: ”O Mouse, do you know the way out of this pool? I am very tired of swimming about here, O Mouse!”
Alice thought this must be the right way of speaking to a mouse: she had never done such a thing before , but she remembered having seen in her brother’s Latin Grammar, “A mouse –of a mouse-to a mouse- a mouse- O mouse!” The mouse looked at her rather inquisitively, and seemed to her to wink with one of its little eyes, but it said nothing.
“Perhaps it doesn’t understand English”, thought Alice; “I daresay it’s a French mouse, come over with William the Conqueror”. … So she began again: “Ou est ma chatte?” which was the first lesson in her French lesson-book. The mouse gave a sudden leap out of the water, and seemed to quiver all over with fright . “Oh, I beg your pardon!” cried Alice hastily, afraid that she had hurt the poor animal’s feelings. “I quite forgot you don’t like cats.”

III. WRITING

1. In about 150 words comment on the following quotation by Oscar Wilde: (20 points)
“I treat art as the supreme reality and life as a mere mode of fiction”