B. Put the words given into the groups of synonyms below

chiefly growing mean significantly proportion remedy enormous decline

1. huge, massive, …
2. number, percentage, …
3. largely, mainly, …
4. drop, fall, …
5. increasing, rising, …
6. answer, solution, …
7. substantially, greatly, …
8. ensure, guarantee, …

c. Using the synonyms above, rewrite the paragraph in a

Task 6. Match the problems and solutions

1. Elderly people are often viewed as being useless or in some way inferior. …
2. Vandalism and damage to public property is on the increase. …
3. The problem of poverty is one that affects a significant proportion of the world’s population. …
4. One of the biggest problems faced by the industrialised world is the rising levels of unemployment. …

a. Governments should be forced to step in and provide subsidised retraining schemes.

b. One solution would be for world banks to cancel all unpaid debts in developing countries.

c. Every effort should be made to catch and severely punish the perpetrators.

d. The problem could be greatly eased if we were to teach our children to have greater respect for them.

Task 7. For each of the following social problems, fill in as much information as possible under the headings provided

Problem	Suggested practical solutions	Possible results (if suggestion is put into practice)
Vandalism, hooliganism	……………………………….	………………………………..
Prejudice, racism	……………………………….	………………………………..
Unemployment	………………………………..	………………………………..
Violence involving firearms	………………………………..	………………………………..

 

Task 8. Read the following newspaper article, translate it and answer the questions

Scream stolen in Oslo

 

Aimed robbers stole The Scream and another masterpiece, Madonna, by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch on Sunday during the daytime in an Oslo museum packed with terrified tourists.

A pair of masked robbers ran into the Munch Museum, threatened staff members with a handgun and forced people to lie down before grabbing both The Scream and Madonna.

Shocked tourists said they thought they were victims of a terror attack. The men pulled the masterpieces from the wall, walked out the front door and escaped in a black Audi driven by a man who had been waiting outside, police said.

'We're busy looking for clues,' Chief Inspector Kjell Pedersen said at a news conference. 'We don't know who did this.' The paintings were later cut from their flames, which were found smashed into pieces in an Oslo street. The car was separately found abandoned a few kilometres away.

Munch, a founder of modern expressionism who lived from 1863 to 1944, painted both works as part of a series about love, anxiety and death.

The paintings are among Munch's best-known and are worth millions of dollars. He actually produced several similar versions of both.

Art experts speculated that the thieves might demand a ransom from the government because the works were too well known to be sold on the open market. But Pedersen said, 'We have heard nothing'.

The police blocked off the museum, informed Interpol and alerted airports and border crossings. One of the thieves spoke during the robbery in the local tongue. No shots were fired; one guard was treated for shock. 'I saw one of the men put a gun right behind a guard's head,' said one of the witnesses, a sixty-three-year-old Texas businessman visiting Oslo. 'It took quite a while for the police to come.' Anna Lieherr, a twenty-two-year-old German student, was also a witness. 'Some people were lying on the floor,' she said. 'I don't know if they were forced to or were just scared.'

Another and perhaps better known version of The Scream was stolen from Norway's National Gallery in a break-in in February 1994 on the opening day of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. The government refused to pay a ransom, and the police caught the thieves a few months later, recovering the painting. Those thieves, including one who stole another Munch painting in 1988, were later released from jail.

One Norwegian art expert estimated that the version of TheScream stolen on Sunday would cost S60 million to $75 million if legally sold, and Madonna about $15 million.

 

1. Which word in the text means 'exceptional works of art'?

2. Why might the criminals want to demand a sum of money from the government for the paintings?

3. What did the police do after the crime?

4. Where do you think the thieves were from and why?

5. Who needed medical attention and why?

6. Why were people lying on the floor during the robbery?