III. Practical assignments A.

1. Find out the information about the well known places of interest in the USA.

2. Give the explanation for the following: Stars and Stripes, Medallion Taxi, White House, the Big Apple, and Disneyland.

Additional topics for reports

1. Tell the story of the flag of the US.

2. Write a short biography of an American president who you believe have left a serious impact on the American history.

3. Put down a table of "The US Federal Institutions".

4. Prepare a presentation on a) your favourite Hollywood film and its place in the historyof cinematography; b) your favourite American musician or trend in music.

Theme 2: Traditions, Customs and Public Holidays of the USA.

I. Questions.

1. Language situation in the USA.

2. Public Holidays and Traditions.

3. Food in the USA.

4. American National Icons (Blue Jeans, American comic books, fast food, Coca-Cola, etc.).

5. American National Personalities (Elvis Aron Presley, Marilyn Monroe, John F Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr.).

II. Problems for class discussion.

1. What was the first American dictionary of the English language and was particular about it?

2. What are the famous American sports?

III. Practical assignments B.

1. Make written comparison in the essay “The Englishman and the Americans”.

IV. Literature to use:

1. Гапонів А.Б., Возна М.О. Лінгвокраїнознавство. Англомовні країни. Підручник для студентів та викладачів вищих навчальних закладів. – Вінниця: НОВА КНИГА, 2005. – 464 с

2. The English-speaking world / Упоряд.: M.Poccoxa. – Тернопіль, 1996. – 161 с.

3. Синько Л.В., Пахомова В.Г. Американский английский язык. – К., 1992. – 336 с.

Material to use for the seminar

The United States of America (commonly referred to as the United States, the U.S., the USA, or America) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to its east and Russia to the west across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories, or insular areas, in the Caribbean and Pacific.

At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km²) and with about 306 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and third largest by land area and by population. The United States is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The U.S. economy is the largest national\ economy in the world, with an estimated 2008 gross domestic product (GDP) of US $14.3 trillion (23% of the world total based on nominal GDP and almost 21% at purchasing power parity).

The nation was founded by thirteen colonies of Great Britain located along the Atlantic seaboard. On July 4, 1776, they issued the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed their independence from Great Britain and their formation of a cooperative union. The rebellious states defeated Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War, the first successful colonial war of independence. The Philadelphia Convention adopted the current United States Constitution on September 17, 1787; its ratification the following year made the states part of a single republic with a strong central government. The Bill of Rights, comprising ten constitutional amendments guaranteeing many fundamental civil rights and freedoms, was ratified in 1791.

In the 19th century, the United States acquired land from France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and Russia, and annexed the Republic of Texas and the Republic of Hawaii. Disputes between the agrarian South and industrial North over states' rights and the expansion of the institution of slavery provoked the American Civil War of the 1860s. The North's victory prevented a permanent split of the country and led to the end of legal slavery in the United States. By the 1870s, the national economy was the world's largest. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a military power. In 1945, the United States emerged from World War II as the first country with nuclear weapons, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and a founding member of NATO. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union left the United States as the sole superpower. The country accounts for approximately 50% of global military spending and is a leading economic, political, and cultural force in the world.

Etymology

In 1507, German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere "America" after Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci. The former British colonies first used the country's modern name in the Declaration of Independence, which was the "unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America" adopted by the "Representatives of the united States of America" on July 4, 1776. The current name was finalized on November 15, 1777, when the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, the first of which states, "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be 'The United States of America.'" The short form United States is also standard. Other common forms include the U.S., the USA, and America. Colloquial names include the U.S. of A. and the States. Columbia, a once popular name for the United States, was derived from Christopher Columbus. It appears in the name "District of Columbia".

The standard way to refer to a citizen of the United States is as an American. Though United States is the formal adjective, American and U.S. are the most common adjectives used to refer to the country ("American values," "U.S. forces"). American is rarely used in English to refer to people not connected to the United States

The phrase "the United States" was originally treated as plural – e.g., "the United States are" – including in the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1865. It became common to treat it as singular – e.g., "the United States is" – after the end of the Civil War. The singular form is now standard; the plural form is retained in the idiom "these United States."

Language

English is the de facto national language. Although there is no official language at the federal level, some laws—such as U.S. naturalization requirements—standardize English. In 2005, about 216 million, or 81% of the population aged five years and older, spoke only English at home. Spanish, spoken by 12% of the population at home, is the second most common language and the most widely taught foreign language. Some Americans advocate making English the country's official language, as it is in at least twenty-eight states. Both Hawaiian and English are official languages in Hawaii by state law. While neither has an official language, New Mexico has laws providing for the use of both English and Spanish, as Louisiana does for English and French. Other states, such as California, mandate the publication of Spanish versions of certain government documents including court forms. Several insular territories grant official recognition to their native languages, along with English: Samoan and Chamorro are recognized by American Samoa and Guam, respectively; Carolinian and Chamorro are recognized by the Northern Mariana Islands; Spanish is an official language of Puerto Rico.

Culture

The United States is a multicultural nation, home to a wide variety of ethnic groups, traditions, and values. There is no “American” ethnicity; aside from the now small Native American and Native Hawaiian populations, nearly all Americans or their ancestors immigrated within the past five centuries. The culture held in common by most Americans – mainstream American culture – is a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of European immigrants with influences from many other sources, such as traditions brought by slaves from Africa. More recent immigration from Asia and especially Latin America has added to a cultural mix that has been described as both a homogenizing melting pot and a heterogeneous salad bowl in which immigrants and their descendants retain distinctive cultural characteristics.

According to Geert Hofstede's cultural dimensions analysis, the United States has the highest individualism score of any country studied. While the mainstream culture holds that the United States is a classless society, scholars identify significant differences between the country's social classes, affecting socialization, language, and values. The American middle and professional class has initiated many contemporary social trends such as modern feminism, environmentalism, and multiculturalism. Americans' self-images, social viewpoints, and cultural expectations are associated with their occupations to an unusually close degree. While Americans tend greatly to value socioeconomic achievement, being ordinary or average is generally seen as a positive attribute. Though the American Dream, or the perception that Americans enjoy high social mobility, plays a key role in attracting immigrants, some analysts find that the United States has less social mobility than Western Europe and Canada.^[

Women now mostly work outside the home and receive a majority of bachelor's degrees. In 2005, 28% of households were married childless couples, the most common arrangement. Same-sex marriage is contentious. Several states permit civil unions in lieu of marriage. Since 2003, four state supreme courts have ruled bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, while voters in more than a dozen states approved constitutional bans on the practice. In 2009, Vermont and Maine became the first states to permit same-sex marriage through legislative action.