Ex.5. Read the short passages and answer the questions about them giving your impressions to the point

1. Some people find it difficult to tell the difference between a custom and a habit. Customs are social and habits are personal. Smoking is a bad habit and certainly an expensive one. Customs are common to a large number of people who belong to a society or a nation. For men giving up their seats to old people, to women carrying babies, to people who are ill should be a national custom.

Can you describe any national customs giving your impressions of them?

2. I have always been attracted by the people of unusual habits, I mean quit, orderly people who enrich their humdrum existences by adopting odd quirks and passions, unlikely routine or harmless mania for useless objects.

Life, I am sure, would be very much poorer without such people in it. Sometimes, I feel, I am lacking in personality since I have none of these strange habits.

And what do you think of people who have such unusual habits as collecting dolls, railway carriages or something like that? Could you describe any such hobbies and share your impressions of the people indulging in them?

3. Tradition is a chain which links the present with the past, part of our task is to interpret the life and the activity of tradition as a formative and perfecting factor in the development of men in society.

What do you think of the role the tradition plays in our life and what does the successful performance of that role depend on?

4. Story-telling and story-collecting used to be an old tradition in the times well before the scientific and technological revolution. Scotland has stories of so many different sorts that the richness of their variety is almost beyond believing. The tales and legends have been handed down by word of mouth often for generations. Many were passed on by wandering storytellers, others were composed for special occasions such as weddings and christenings.

No matter what brings folk together, you may be sure that there will be a grand feast spread, and the singing of old songs and ballads, the dancing of reels and most probably speeches to follow. But in the old days, the high point of the entertainment was the story.

Can you give your impressions of a traditional wedding you recently attended (Russian, Kazakhstani, Moldavian etc.)? Could you describe the old and new customs and rituals you saw there?