TEXT 1. Read and translate the texts. Remember words describing

Appearance.

Appearance: Beauty

How important is your appearance? Although everyone wants to be good-looking, are beautiful people always happier people? For example, it must be a problem to be a really beautiful woman, because some men may be more interested in looking at you than talking to you.

They think of you as a picture rather than a person. There are also some people who think that women who are exceptionally pretty and men who are particularly handsome must be stupid. They believe that only unattractive people can be intelligent.

On the other hand, no one wants to be really ugly, and have a face that nobody wants to look at; and no one wants to be plain either — that is to be neither attractive nor unattractive, and have a face that is easily forgotten.

Being attractive is like being rich — it can help you find happiness, but it doesn't always make you happy. So maybe the best thing is to try to be interesting person. For interesting people have interesting faces, and interesting faces are almost always attractive.

 

Appearance: Parts of the Face

People who can't hear often learn to understand a spoken language with their eyes. They watch the mouth of the person talking and follow the movement of his lips. This is called lip-reading.

Some people think the distance between your hair and your eyebrow is a sign of how intelligent you are. The bigger your forehead is, the more intelligent you are supposed to be.

Nowadays, a person who doesn't like his or her nose can have it changed with plastic surgery. Plastic surgeons can change your face in many other ways too. They can make your cheeks a little rounder. If you don't like your chin, a plastic surgeon can break your jaw and re-make the whole lower half of your face. If you think your skin looks too old and wrinkled, he can take the wrinkles away and make you look twenty years younger.

Women often disagree about men having beards and moustache. But some women think that hair on a man's chin makes him look more attractive.

Usually, only women wear make-up. They are lucky. They can put a little black mascara on their eyelashes and some eyeshadow on their eyelids, and look fresh and attractive, even when they are really tired.

 

 

TEXT 2. Read and translate the article. Answer the questions below.

How Good Looks Can Guarantee Lifetime of Opportunity

Beauty is far more than skin deep, according to a leading scientist.

Good looks can smooth the way to a better education and well-paid job as well as getting the best out of others.

Attractive men and women reap benefits from their appearances all through their lives, says psychologist Dr Nancy Etcoff.

Bonny babies get preferential treatment over plain ones while teachers assume their most attractive pupils are the smartest. In later life, police officers, judges and juries are more lenient towards pretty women and handsome men.

Dr Etcoff, who works at Harvard Medical School in the U.S., in her book «Survival of the Fittest: The Science of Beauty» argues that beautiful people are «sprinkled with Stardust right from the beginning».

Her studies showed both women and men tended to be more helpful towards a pretty woman asking for help than a plainer one. In one experiment, researchers left a coin in full view in a telephone kiosk and waited for passers by to make a call.

The callers were then approached by one of two actresses and asked if they had found a coin left behind. The better looking woman got her coin back 87 per cent of the time. But the plainer actress was less successful, scoring a 64 per cent return rate.

The two women later stood at the roadside by a car with a flat tyre. The prettier one was far more likely to be helped first, the study found.

Dr Etcoff shows mothers are more likely to talk and play with beautiful babies, while teachers expect good looking pupils to be «smarter and more sociable».

Dr Etcoff said that while good looks can make life easier, they do not guarantee happiness. «Beautiful people are perhaps a little bit happier», she said. «But not as much as we might imagine».

Although ideals vary between generations and nationalities, Dr Etcoff believes the appreciation of human beauty is "gene deep", rather than the result of cultural and social pressures. Even three-month-old babies stare the longest at attractive people when shown pictures, she said.

It suggests that we all come into the world with these beauty detectors.

"The fascination with beauty seems to run very deep. Forty thousand years ago, people had red ochre crayons and they were painting their faces. Today we have breast implants, hair plugs and 24-hour mascara, but it's the same thing."

Her book also claims that beauty ideals are not imposed on women by men. They are part of an evolutionary process in which humans do whatever they can to advertise their fertility and health to potential mates.

We use appearance to judge how suitable a potential partner is, she said. Big eyes in women are linked to high levels of the female hormone oestrogen, while a red flush on the face indicates fertility.

Research has shown that people with symmetrical appearances are regarded as more attractive than those with irregular features.

Symmetry has also been linked to health and may be a sign of a long-living partner. There are even parallels in the animal kingdom, according to Dr Etcoff. "In the animal world, they do experiments where they lengthen the tail or make spots brighter and then other animals are more attracted. For the rest, perhaps a nip and tuck."

One in three women under 40 have considered cosmetic surgery. Women from the South of England are more likely to submit to the surgeons knife than those from elsewhere in the country. Women in their twenties and early thirties are most likely to opt for breast enlargement.

The survey of more than 1,200 women between 15 and 40 was carried out for the Lanark Centre, a London cosmetic surgery clinic. As its chief surgeon says "Now everyone wants to realize their full potential in terms of their features and physique, so demand is rising."

 

Questions

1. How can beauty influence on our life?

2. What benefits do attractive women and men get?

3. What experiments were made to prove the idea?

4. Do good looks guarantee happiness?

5. Do you agree with the opinion that human beauty is gene deep?

6. What can you say about beauty detectors?

7. What can symmetrical appearance tell us about?

8. What is special about appearance in the animal world?

9. Why is plastic surgery so popular nowadays?

10. What is your personal opinion on the problem of the article?

 

TEXT 3. Look through the text. Render its contents into Russian.

Age

«How old are you?» It's a simple question, and there's usually a simple answer: «sixteen years old», «twenty years old», «fifty-five», etc. But if someone is described as «young» or «middle-aged» or «old», then how old are they? It's difficult to know because these words have different meanings for different people.

Except for the word teenager, which describes young men whose age is between thirteen and nineteen other words which describe age are not exact. When, for example, does a baby stop being called a baby and become a young child?

When does a boy become a young man and a little girl become a young woman? At what age does middle age begin? When do you call someone elderly and not simply old? At what age does someone become an adult? In some countries, like Britain, France, and the US, it is when the government says a person is old enough to vote. Is that really the difference between a child and an adult?

The answers to these questions partly depend on how old you are. There is a saying that old age is always ten years older than yourself. If you are a youth of fifteen then you think someone of twenty-five is old. At thirty, forty seems old. If you are seventy, then you probably think someone of eighty is old.

A recent survey showed that there was some truth in the old saying. People were asked, «When is middle age?» Those in their early twenties usually answered, «Between thirty-five and fifty», and people in their thirties answered, «Between forty-five and sixty».