S.O.S. school (esame di terza media) ( ENGLISH LANGUAGE and THE SPACE RACE)

Gli esami di terza media sono alle porte ... qui di seguito troverete del materiale di supporto di inglese  che  i vostri ragazzi potranno utilizzare per preparare la tesina per il colloquio orale. Ecco qui i primi due testi...

A difficult relationship (USA - URSS: the space race)

After the Second World War the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR) became very powerful and they both wanted to achieve economic, political and scientific development. This started a period of tension between the two nations, called Cold War, which lasted over forty years. Advancement in space was one of the fields where the two superpowers wanted to excel and in October 1957 the USSR launched the first artificial satellite called Sputnik. It was the size of a basketball and took about 96 minutes to orbit around the Earth. This was the beginning of the space race between the two countries. In 1961 the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first person to travel into space. He flew around the Moon for 88 minutes. From space he communicated the Earth was blue. His flight was a strong blow for the Americans, who were determined to put a man on the Moon within ten years. In fact, the American cosmonaut Neil Armstrong, mission commander of the Apollo 11, was the first man to walk on the Moon on the 21^st July 1969. “That’s one small step for man, but one giant leap for Mankind” he said as he stepped on the lunar surface. His colleague Edwin Aldrin joined him a few minutes later.  They  spent about two and a half hours outside the spacecraft and  a total of 21 hours on the Moon, planted the American flag and collected a few rocks of lunar material to be examined on the Earth. A third member of the mission, Michael Collins, piloted the command spacecraft alone in lunar orbit while  Armstrong and Aldrin were on the Moon. The Apollo spacecraft had three parts: a Command Module (CM) with a cabin for the three astronauts, and the only part that landed back on Earth; a Service Module (SM), which supported the Command Module with propulsion, electrical power, oxygen, and water; and a Lunar Module (LM) for landing on the Moon.
The landing on the Moon was broadcast on live TV to a world-wide audience. Apollo 11 effectively ended the Space Race and fulfilled the national goal proposed in 1961 by US President John F. Kennedy , of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth before the end of the decade.

ENGLISH AS A LINK LANGUAGE

Even if Mandarin Chinese is the most spoken language in the world, English is the most widespread and it is the official language in most international institutions. There are about 375 million native speakers of English in the world but a quarter of the world’s population speaks some English. In fact, English has become the language of science, aviation, finance, commerce, information technology, diplomacy and tourism. People need to speak English for their studies, their job, or when they travel. The majority of the world’s letters and emails are written in English. It is the main language of books, newspapers, sport and pop music.

There are three main reasons why English has become so important. One is historical: in the 19^th century the British had the biggest and most powerful empire in the world. When the colonies became independent, many of them decided to maintain a special connection with Britain and they became part of the Commonwealth, a group of 54 countries where English is the native or official language.

The second reason is linked to the economic and cultural prestige of the USA in the world. In fact, the USA, where English is spoken in the American variety, is the leader in many fields, especially science, technology and film industry.

Another reason is probably because English has a simple grammar and contains words of different origins, which makes it a flexible language, capable of changing and adapting itself to different cultures.

English has become the language which helps overcome linguistic and cultural barriers. For example, in India, which was a colony of the British Empire and where there are 22 different regional languages, English is the link language of administration and government.

In recent years the Internet revolution has increased the importance of English. Of course it is not easy to learn a language perfectly. It takes years of study and practice. But very often non-native speakers manage to speak a simplified form of English. About twenty years ago a Frenchman, Jean-Paul Nerrière, at an international conference, discovered that he was able to communicate very well with Japanese and Brazilian colleagues whereas communication with British and American colleagues was more difficult, because their English was too complicated. Nerrière called this Globish, or Global English. Globish has only 1,500 words and 6 verb tenses, it is not a language but a sort of “decaffeinated English”.

In the near future almost everyone will speak English as a second language but this doesn‘t mean that local languages will disappear, even if it’s nearly impossible to safeguard a language from external contaminations.