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41
3. The Day Before You Came. (ABBA)
4. 'Never put off till tomorrow, what you can do the day after tomorrow.' (O. Wilde)
5. The Day of a Person Is a Picture of This Person.
Note:
Punctuation.
In writing it is very important to observe correct punctuation marks.
A full stop is put:
1) at the end of sentences;
2) in decimals (e.g. 3.5 — three point five).
A comma separates:
1) homogeneous parts of the sentence if there are more than three members (e.g. I saw a house, a garden,
and a car);
2) parentheses (e.g. The story, to put it mildly, is not nice);
3) Nominative Absolute Constructions (e.g. The play over, the audience left the hall);
4) appositions (e.g. Byron, one of the greatest English poets, was born in 1788);
5) interjections (e.g. Oh, you are right!);
6) coordinate clauses joined by and, but, or, nor, for, while, whereas, etc. (e.g. The speaker was
disappointed, but the audience was pleased);
7) attributive clauses in complex sentences if they are commenting (e.g. The Thames, which runs through
London, is quite slow. Compare with a defining clause where no comma is needed — The river that/which
runs through London is quite slow);
8) adverbial clauses introduced by if, when, because, though, etc. (e.g. If it is true, we are having good
luck);
9) inverted clauses (e.g. Hardly had she entered, they fired questions at her);
10) in whole numbers (e.g. 25,500 — twenty five thousand five hundred).
Object clauses are not separated by commas (e.g. He asked what he should do).
To be continued on page 140.
LESSON 4 DOMESTIC CHORES
INTRODUCTORY READING AND TALK
Have you ever met a woman who never touched a broom or a floor-cloth in her life? Nearly all women
but a queen have to put up with the daily routine doing all sorts
of domestic work. But different women
approach the problem differently.
The so-called lady-type women can afford to have a live-in help who can do the housework. She is
usually an old hand at doing the cleaning and washing, beating carpets and polishing the furniture. She
is like a magician who entertains you by sweeping the floor in a flash or in no time making an apple-pie
with one hand. Few are those so lucky as to have such a resident magician to make them free and happy.
Efficient housewives can do anything about the house. Tidying up is not a problem for such women.
An experienced housewife will not spend her afternoon ironing or starching collars; she gets everything
done quickly and effortlessly. She keeps all the rooms clean and neat, dusting the furniture, scrubbing
the floor, washing up and putting everything in its place. She is likely to do a thorough cleaning every
fortnight. She removes stains, does the mending, knits and sews. What man doesn't dream of having such
a handy and thrifty wife?
The third type of woman finds doing the everyday household chores rather a boring business. You can
often hear her say that she hates doing the dishes and vacuuming. So you may find a huge pile of washing
in the bathroom and the sink is probably piled high with plates. A room in a mess and a thick layer of
dust everywhere will always tell you what sort of woman runs the house. What could save a flat from this
kind of lazy-bones? Probably a good husband.
Finally, there are housewives who do not belong to any group. They like things in the house to look as
nice as one can make them. But they never do it themselves. They'd rather save time and effort and they do
not feel like peeling tons of potatoes or bleaching, and
rinsing the linen. It is simply not worth doing.
They persuade their husbands to buy labour-saving devices — a dish-washer, a vacuum-cleaner, a food
processor or... a robot-housewife. Another way for them to avoid labour-and-time-consuming house
chores is to send the washing to the laundry, to cook dinner every other day, or at least make their
husbands and children help them in the home.