Most teenagers consider it important to be part of one or more groups outside their families. These groups may include school groups, religious groups, sport teams, social clubs, political groups, or hobby clubs. The support of groups of people you trust helps to build your confidence and self-esteem, feeling good about yourself and being proud of yourself.
When you are part of a group, many of the things you do become fun. All kinds of activities, like studying for a test, going to a show, or roller-skating, can be more enjoyable when you do them with others. Something that might seem silly doing alone, like dressing up in a costume, can be fun to do with friends.
Right now, some of your most important relationships may be with a small group of close friends. Close friends can give each other confidence and bring out the best in one another. When you are feeling sad or discouraged, it is reassuring to have a friend who will listen to you and help you through the hard time.
There is some dualing of the inner position of senior students: they are turned to the future, they are thinking about it, planning for the future and they are living actively in the present time.
Psychological peculiarity of the teenager and the youthful age was discovered. Youth is the special eldest school age. It was selected and pointed out unformed because of development of the system and compulsory education.
So, one of the essential changes of the teenager's inner position is origin of the special complex of requirements, which finds expression in desiring to go out of the school limits and to be involved into the adult's life and activities.
On the base of these requirements an ability to learn the aims, which go out of the today limits. But of all the excitements, interests, wishes and desires of the teenager stay intented on the school life problems, which are the lessons, marks and others, we can say that it is a definite violation of the personality's development. It says about the fact that the child is not really transferred to the new age level.
The next moment of the new teenager's inner position is the appearing of the forming requirement. It is the desire for corresponding not only to the level of the people's demands, but the desire for self demands and self-esteem.
Kosarevskaya Maria,
9 th Form Specialized in Linguistics
Forgotten Heroes
Only the dead have seen
the end of the war.
Plato
Sixty years ago the guns of the Great Patriotic War were silenced. Sixty years ago the Great Victory was won. However, people who carried this victory on their shoulders and gave peace to every home, now have to take part in another war.
Long ago, in 1945, most of them were from 18 to 25 years old. All of them were winners and were greeted as heroes. The whole world gave them respect for their great deeds.
They became honourable veterans. For forty six years they were famous and didn't need to complain about their life conditions.
But in the recent 90-s everything collapsed. Both the country which they shed their blood for and the regime they trusted, fell. Severe times came.
Fifteen years more have now passed. After many governmental crises they were remembered. By this time many of them have died. Unfortunately, our society remembers them only during holiday celebrations, meetings and memorial days. It is a happy time for them because during the rest of a year most of them suffer from neglect of surrenders' attention. They know that solitude is one of the most horrible ordeals. On the front-line there were brothers-in-arms near them. Now they live lonely lives. Not so many of them are surrounded with the appreciation of their children and grandchildren.
Veterans, as they themselves say, take part in their "war" with bureaucratic laws, medical and pension problems. Conditions under which they are placed now seem to be an absence of gratitude toward people who, on the one hand, brought us the victory and, on the other hand, have earned great life experience. These people can teach us a lot.
That is why our government must improve their living conditions. We must be thankful for these People (beginning with the capital letter) for the sacrifices which they gave for the whole world.
Michael Sinjushin, 9 th Form
Specialized in Biology and Chemistry
Job for Life and Job for Love
From early age children like to dream about their future profession. Boys often want to be soldiers or car race drivers, girls – to be ballet dancers or singers... But growing older they learn more about other professions, begin to understand the role of money in life. A difficult question appears: how to find a job that is interesting and at the same time profitable.
Some people don't think of this problem much. They choose security – a job that brings money. They work for the rest of their lives in the sphere that is boring and irritating for them. They don't get any satisfaction out of their work, they only spend time there. Sometimes these people have problems with their health and family relationships. On the other hand, a person can't be satisfied if he has got an interesting job which brings him money only for buying cheap food and second-hand clothes, paying rent for a flat (if he has got one) and nothing more.
Sometimes people's interests and profit coincide. We know many examples from life and literature when professionals get what they deserve (remember Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes or Maugham's Julia Lambert from "Theatre" and etc.). However we know other examples when people live just on bread and water, live in a small and uncomfortable attic and work "for love". They don't even notice their lives are hard (a great number of scientists and, men of art; from literature we can remember Maugham's Charles Strickland from The Moon and Sixpence). Many of them sacrifice their family life and the joys of ordinary people for their work.
It all depends on one's personality. I think one can find something attractive in every job. At least, if a person hasn't got any satisfaction from his work, he can get a hobby (collecting something or going in for sports). At the same time, if you are unable to earn enough money for life, you can always find another additional job or another way out.
Looking for a job for life and love you should only have a desire for it. Believe in yourself and everything will be OK!
Alyona Slinkina, 11th form
Specialized in Biology and Chemistry
Bill Bryson
Bill Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1951. A back-packing expedition in 1973 brought him to England where he met his wife and decided to settle. He wrote for the English newspapers The Times and The Independent for many years, writing travel articles to supply his income. He lived with his family in North Yorkshire before moving back to the States in 1995, to Hanover, New Hampshire, with his wife and four children. In 2003 he and his family moved back to England, where they currently reside.
Bill Bryson, the acclaimed author of such bestsellers as The Mother Tongue and Made in America, has lived in Britain for nearly two decades. But before leaving his much-loved home in North Yorkshire, Bryson insisted on taking one last: trip around Britain, a sort of valedictory tour of the green and kind island that had so long been his home. His aim was to take stock of modern-day Britain, and to analyze what he loved so much about a country that had produced Marmite, zebra crossings, and place names like Chew Manga, Titsey, and Little Rollright. And it is about his book reflecting the impression he got that I'd like to speak.
Bryson makes his way through the British countryside, towns and cities by way of bus, train, or on foot. He quickly became fascinated with British nomenclature. One thing that bothered Bryson was that too many British buildings offended the local landscape.
He often found historical edifices being replaced by parking lots. He lamented, "You can't tear down fine old structures and then pretend they are still there." And Liverpool, which he was exceedingly fond of, seemed to him a "...place with more past than future." Then, near the end of his trip, he audaciously names off the buildings he would love to blow up in Britain.
Most of Bryson's humor comes alive when he is disturbed by what he finds, or doesn't find, or when he is mislead by travel maps and time schedules. But he does have some favorite places, such as Ludlow, Manchester, Inverness, and Glasgow.
Bryson speaks a lot about British character. He actually finds the British the happiest people on earth! The most extraordinary thing is that they are extremely easy to please! They actually like their pleasures small. Bryson assumes that that's why so many of their treats - teacakes, scones, rich tea biscuits – are so cautiously flavourful. They are the only people in the world who think of jam and currants as thrilling constituents of a pudding or cake. Offer them something genuingly tempting – a slice of gateau or a choice of chocolates from a box – and they will nearly always hesitate and begin to worry that it's unwarranted and excessive. The author finds all this completely alien to the American mind. To an American the whole purpose of living is to cram as much sensual pleasure as possible into one's mouth more or less continuously.
Bryson used to be puzzled by the curious British attitude to pleasure, and the tireless, dogged optimism of theirs that allowed them to attach an upbeat turn of phrase to the direst inadequacies. Though, having once understood and come round to their way of thinking, he made his life richer.
He understood that he loved Britain, every last bit of it, good and bad-old churches, country lanes, people saying 'Mustn't grumble' and 'I'm terribly sorry but,' people apologizing to him when he conk them with a careless elbow, milk in bottles, beans on toast, haymaking in June, seaside piers. Ordinance Survey maps, tea and crumpets, summer showers and foggy winter evenings.
With characteristic wit and irreverence, Bill Bryson presents the ludicrous and the endearing in equal measure. The result is a hilarious social commentary that conveys the true glory of Britain.
Shipilova Yekaterina, 10th form
Specialized in Linguistics
Заметки о переводах на русский язык
стихотворения Apтюpa Рембо
«Пьяный корабль»
Название самого знаменитого стихотворения французского поэта Артюра Рембо (1854-1891) Le Bateau ivre традиционно переводится на русский язык как «Пьяный корабль». Это самое известное в русской поэзии произведение Рембо –
существует около двадцати его переводов на русский язык. В XX веке в разное время поэты и переводчики обращались к «Пьяному кораблю», по-своему его интерпретируя.
«Пьяный корабль» был написан летом 1871 года, приблизительно в конце июля. В стихотворении отчетливо видны намеки на события весны 1871 года, когда в Париже произошел военный переворот, в результате которого Вторая Империя сменилась на Третью Республику. По одной из версий, сам Рембо участвовал в этих событиях на стороне революционеров.
Автограф «Пьяного корабля» не сохранился. Текст, с которого стихотворение было впервые издано, написан рукою Поля Верлена, близкого друга поэта. Характер поправок, сделанных Верленом, указывает на то, что стихотворение было записано по памяти.
В своей работе я рассматриваю шесть переводов «Пьяного корабля», сделанных известными русскими поэтами и переводчиками. Предметом изучения являются изменения, связанные со смыслом, значением строф, некоторых отдельных предложений. Для более полного представления о переводах рассмотрены также и стихотворные размеры, которыми написаны переводы, так как они могут влиять на смысл стихотворения. Для оценки эмоциональной составляющей текстов, помимо семантических приемов, выявлены и некоторые графические особенности переводов, в частности, процентное отношение восклицательных и вопросительных знаков к общему количеству знаков препинания в переводах. Дополнительным приложением к работе является небольшое исследование, посвященное причинам, по которым некоторые из поэтов обращались к «Пьяному кораблю». Здесь же показаны несколько принципов, которых придерживаются поэты при переводе этого стихотворения.
Первый по времени создания из рассматриваемых мною переводов – это «Пьяный корабль» Владимира Набокова. Он был написан в 1928 году и впервые издан в том же году 16 декабря в берлинской газете «Руль». В это время Набоков находился в эмиграции в Германии. По традиции, стихотворение Набокова называют первым полным переводом «Пьяного корабля» на русский язык. На самом деле, он неполный, так как в нем нет последних двух строф. Тем не менее перевод является законченным произведением, поэтому его можно смело назвать «полным», особенно на фоне явно незаконченного перевода Владимира Эльснера, сделанного в 1909 году. Однако работа Набокова долгое время не была известна в России; ее стали издавать на родине поэта лишь в начале 90х годов.
Следующий перевод принадлежит Давиду Григорьевичу Бродскому, у которого было два варианта «Пьяного корабля». Первый был создан в 1928 году, второй – через год, в 1929 году, именно он и включен в работу. Предположительно, появление у Бродского второго варианта перевода было обусловлено тем, что поэт переосмыслил свое понимание «Пьяного корабля» в связи с изданием в России книги Ж. М. Каре «Жизнь и приключения Жана Артюра Рембо», переведенной Бенедиктом Лифшицем.