About 250 British industrial companies in the latest reporting period each had an annual turnover of more than Ј500 million. The annual turnover of the biggest company, British Petroleum', makes it the llth largest industrial grouping in the world and the second largest in Europe. Five British firms are among the top 25 European Community companies.

7. The Modern British Army

The strength of the regular armed forces, all volunteers, was nearly 271,000 in mid-1993 -- 133,000 in the Army, 79,300 in the Royal Air Force (RAF) and 58,500 in the Royal Navy and Royal Marines. There were 18,800 women personnel -- 7,500 in the Army, 6,800 in the RAF, and 4,400 in the Royal Navy.

British forces' main military roles are to:

ensure the protection and security of Britain and its de-pendent territories;

ensure against any major external threat to Britain and its allies; and

contribute towards promoting Britain's wider security in-terests through the maintenance of international peace and security.

Most of Britain's nuclear and conventional forces are commit-ted to NATO and about 95% of defence expenditure to meeting its NATO responsibilities. In recognition of the changed European security situation, Britain's armed forces are being restructured in consultation with other NATO allies.

Under these plans, the strength of the armed forces is being cut by 22%, leaving by the mid-1990s some 119,000 in the Army, 70,000 in the RAF and 52,500 in the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines. This involves reductions in main equipment of:

three Tornado GR1 squadrons, four Phantom squadrons, two Buccaneer squadrons and part of a squadron of Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft;

12 submarines, nine destroyers and frigates and 13 mine

countermeasures ships; and

327 main battle tanks.

Civilian staff employed by the Ministry of Defence will be re-duced from 169,100 in 1991 to 135,000.

As a member of NATO, Britain fully supports the Alliance's current strategic concept, under which its tasks are to:

help to provide a stable security environment, in which no country is able to intimidate or dominate any European country through the threat or use of force;

serve as a transatlantic forum for Allied consultations af-fecting member states' vital interests; deter from aggression and defend member states against military attack; and

preserve the strategic balance within Europe.

8. The Two Lessons

This section of the paper is dedicated to the development of two lessons for the “Regional Geography of Great Britain” course to be taught in schools. The chosen topics are “Customs and Traditions of Great Britain” and “American English”.

Both lessons are intended for 45-50 minutes duration and are of so-called “combined” type, according to the generally accepted terminology in Russia. The principal scheme of such a lesson can be represented in the following way:

1) Lesson organization (2-3 minutes)

2) Review of the previous studies (5-7 minutes)

3) New studies (approx. 15-20 minutes)

4) Systematization of the new knowledge and training for it's application in practice (15-

20 minutes)

5) Homework (1-2 minutes)

Lesson organization and review of previous studies are not thoroughly considered here since they depend upon the composition and structure of the whole course, and their development would require knowledge of the previous and the following lessons. We concentrate our attention on the “New studies” and “Systematization of the new knowledge and training for it's application in practice”. The main goal of both lessons is to introduce new information and expand student's vocabulary by learning some specific words and expressions related to the considered topics.

8.1. “Customs and Traditions of Great Britain”

The studies of the customs and traditions of Great Britain here are supposed to be carried out in calendar order, which means that introduction of customs and traditions should begin with winter events and go on throughout the whole year, from December until November.

Lesson topic: “Customs and Traditions of Great Britain”

Lesson goal: general study of the British customs and traditions

Lesson structure:

1) Lesson organization (2-3 minutes)

2) Particular review of the previous studies (4-5 minutes)

(We accept) that the previous lesson was dealt with the civic customs of GB.

A student reports a result of his work done on the material of the previous topic that was studied in class. He/she is supposed to talk fluently by memory and speak about one-two civic customs that he'she founds to be remarkable. The report is followed by a brief discussion (3-4 minutes) Approximate variant of the report is as follows:

“Some historical and colorful customs belong essentially to a particular town or community because they sprang, originally, from some part of the local history, or from some deep-seated local tradition. No doubt, such customs, along with various religious customs and traditions, attached to certain calendar dated, constitute the soul of British social culture and are of great interest for a researcher.

At Lichfield, a festival commonly called the Greenhill Bower and Court of Array takes place annually in late May or June. This is really two customs, of which the first - the Bower - is said to run back to the time of King Oswy of Northumbria, who founded Lichfield in A.D. 656. In the Middle Ages, the city guilds used to meet at Greenhill, carrying flower garlands and emblems of their trades. Now the Bower ceremonies have become a sort of carnival, wherein lorries carrying tableaux, trade floats, decorated carts, and bands pass cheerfully through streets profusely adorned with flowers and greenery.

The second part of the custom is the meeting of the Court of Array and the inspection of the ancient suits of armour which the city was once obliged by law to provide. By Act passed in 1176, every freeman between the ages of 15 and 60 had to keep a sufficiency of arms and armour, and maintain them in good condition and ready for use. He had also to be able to handle them efficiently himself. Every county had to have its Court of Array whose duty was to see that these regulations were duly carried out by the freemen, and to hold periodical inspections of the weapons and suits of armour provided by them”.

3) New studies (approximately 20 minutes)

This part of the lesson is dedicated to the present topic: the Winter holidays. It basic part represents a text which must be read and immediately translated by paragraphs, one paragraph by every student, one by one. The text is approximately following:

“The Christmas Day in the United Kingdom is celebrated on 25 December, as well as in the most of European countries. Pope Julius I (A.D. 337-352), after much inquiry, came to the conclusion that a very old tradition giving 25 December as the right date of the Birth of the Lord was very probably true. This date already had a sacred significance for thousands of people throughout the Roman Empire because it was the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun, and also the chief festival of the Phrygian god, Attis, and of Mithras, the soldier's god, whose cult was carried to Britain and many other countries by the Roman army. In the barbarian North, also, the long celebration of Yule was held at this period. The Christian Church, therefore, following its ancient practice of giving Christian meaning to pagan rituals, eventually adopted 2 December for the Christmas Day.

Many of the British modern Christmas customs and traditions are directly derived from pagan ceremonies belonging to ancient midwinter feasts. One of the oldest is probably the decoration of houses with greenery. Evergreens, which are symbols of undying life, were commonly used to adorn the dwellings of forefathers, and their sacred buildings, at the time of the winter solstice, and they have been so used ever since.

The curious custom of kissing under the mistletoe seems to be altogether English in origin, and to appear in other European countries only when Englishmen have taken it there. It has almost vanished nowdays, but can still be met in the northern regions of England. The kissing bough, the lovely garland that used to hang from the ceiling of the living room in so many houses before the coming of the Christmas tree, had a bunch of mistletoe attached to its base. It was a crown, or a globe, of greenery, adorned with lighted candles, red apples, rosettes and ribbons, with the mistletoe hanging below. Sometimes small presents were suspended from it. The Christmas tree surepceeded it in many homes in the middle of the nineteenth century, but it never faded away altogether.

The Christmas tree came originally from Germany and went to America with German settlers before it reached the British Isles in the first half of nineteenth century. The first Christmas tree in Britain is believed to be set up at a children party in 1821. By 1840 the custom became quite well-known in Manchester, but what really established the Christmas tree and made it one of the British cherished Christmas customs was the setting-up by Prince Albert of a Christmas tree at Windsor castle in 1841. With little more than twenty years, the Christmas trees were to be seen in countless British homes, and thousands were annually on sale at Covent Garden Market. A century later the tradition has overflowed from the houses into the streets and squares. Churches of every denomination have their lighted and decorated trees, and since 1947 Oslo had made an annual gift to the people of London, in the form of an immense tree which stands in Trafalgar Square, close to Nelson's Monument.

The giving of presents and the exchange of Christmas cards are almost equally essential parts of the Christmas festival in Britain today. The first one has its roots in the pre-Christian times, and the latter is little more than a century old. Presents were given to kinsfolk and to the poor at the feast of the Saturnalia in pagan Rome, and so they were at the three-day Kalends of January, when the New Year was celebrated. The Christmas cards began life in the late eighteenth century as the “Christmas piece”, a decorated sheet of paper on which schoolchildren wrote polite greetings for the season in their best handwriting, to be presented to their parents at the end of the winter term. Sometimes, also, adults wrote complimentary verses for their friends. It is now usually supposed that the artist J.C.Horsley designed the first genuine pictorial Christmas card at the instigation of Sir Henry Cole in 1843.

Father Christmas is the traditional gift-bringer in the United Kingdom. Originally he was Odin, one of the pagan gods that were brought to the British Isles from the ancient Scandinavia. When Christianity swept away the old gods, Odin's role was overtaken by St. Nicholas, who was the Bishop of Myra during the fourth century, and who now appears in some European countries (such as Germany, Austria, Switzerland and others) wearing episcopal robes and a mitre, being accompanied by a servant carrying a sack of gifts.

Still one should note that the pure British Father Christmas seems to have been more a personification of the joys of Christmas than just a gift-bringer. He was first mentioned in a fifteen-century carol, then abolished by Parliament in 1644 (along with everything else connected with the Feast of Christmas), came back after Restoration, and is nowdays one of the British living traditions. In the nineteenth century he acquired some of the attributes of the Teutonic Santa Claus, and now is being thought of as the essential gift-bringer, coming by night from the Far North in a reindeer-drawn sleigh, and entering the houses he visits by way of the chimney.

Christmas food has always been largely a matter of tradition, but its nature has changed a great deal with passage of time. The turkey which is now the most usual dish on Christmas Day didn't appear in Britain until about 1542. Its predecessors were goose, or pork, or beef, or a huge pie made up of a variety of birds. In the grater houses venison, swans, bustards, or peacocks in their feathers were eaten. The ancestor of another traditional British food, the Christmas pudding, was plum porridge (until 1670).

Another feature of the Christmas time in Britain is represented by carols, which are the popular and happy songs of the Christian religion which came into being after the religious revival of the thirteenth century, and flourished more strongly in the three centuries that followed. Carols were swept away by Puritanism during the Commonwealth, and they didn't come back into general favor for about 200 years afterwards, but never vanished altogether. Now, nearly all British churches have their carol service. In many towns, the people gather round the communal Christmas tree, or in the town hall, to sing carols under the leadership of the local clergy, or of the mayor.

The 26 December is the St. Stephen's Day, the first Christmas martyr, far better known in England as Boxing Day. A name is derived either from the alms boxes in churches, which were opened, and their contents distributed to the poor on that day, or from the earthenware boxes that apprentices used to carry round with them when they were collecting money gifts from their master's customers. Until very recently it was usual for the postman, the dustman and a few other servants of the public to call at all the houses they have served during the year, and to receive small gifts from the householders on Boxing Day.”

Then follows a set (3-4) of brief reports by students on the holidays that follow the Christmas season (that time which is called the Opening Year in GB). Reports are supposed to be prepared at home. The approximate variants of 3 reports are:

- “The New Year comes in very merrily in most parts of Britain, with the pealing of bells and the blowing of ships' sirens and train whistles, and singing of the traditional “Auld Lang Syne”, although the majority know only some of the words. Great crowds assemble outside St. Paul's Cathedral in London to see the Old Year out and welcome in the New. Private parties are held everywhere, and good wishes are exchanged. Some celebrate the occasion more quietly and see a Watch Night service in some Anglican or Nonconformist church.

In the north of United Kingdom, especially in Scotland, the custom of First-footing has been flourishing for centuries. The First Foot is the first visitor to any house in the morning hours of 1 January. He is considered to be a luck-bringer. He is welcomed with food and drink (especially the last one), and brings with him symbolic gifts, which are most usually a piece of bread, a lump of coal, salt, and a little money, all of which together ensure that his hosts will have food and warmth and prosperity all throughout the year.

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