Text and tasks I

Übungen Englisch, Technikerschule MBT 1 und 2
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Different texts and tasks
useful for preparation
Text and task A.
Level of difficulty: easy to medium
(A) Marlon Brando, who is widely seen as one of the greatest and most important actors of the
20th century, was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1924. His father was a chemical manufacturer.
When he was eleven years old, his parents separated and his mother took her three children
and Marlon to live with her own mother in California. In 1937, Brando's parents met again and
moved back together to Libertyville, Illinois, a northern suburb of Chicago.
(C) Brando had been held back a year in school and was later thrown out from high school for
riding his motorcycle through corridors. He was sent to a military academy, where his father
had studied before him. There, Brando was excellent at theatre and did generally well in
school. In his final years and shortly before his taking his exams, he decided to drop the
academy.
(D) In 1944, Brando found himself in a difficult situation and had to work as a ditch-digger. He
then tried to join the army, but it was discovered that a football injury had left him with a
twisted knee. He was therefore classified as "not fit" and couldn't enter the army. When he
finally got some money from his father, he decided to study at the American Theatre Wing
Professional School, which was led by Lee Strasberg. This school was part of a movement that
wanted new ways of acting and founded the so-called "Method acting": With this, actors create
in themselves the thoughts and emotions of their characters, developing lifelike performances.
(E) Despite being widely thought of as a Method actor, Brando saw himself as anything but. He
claimed to have disliked Lee Strasberg: "After I had some success, Strasberg tried to take credit
for teaching me how to act. He never taught me anything. Some people worshipped him, but I
never knew why".
(F) Nevertheless, Brando was an enthusiastic student - there is a story in which one of his
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former teachers spoke about teaching Brando, saying that she had instructed the class to act
like chickens, then added that a nuclear bomb was about to fall on them. Most of the class
clucked and ran around wildly, but Brando sat quietly and pretended to lay an egg. Asked by
the teacher why he had chosen to react this way, he said, "I'm a chicken - What do I know of a
bomb?"
A. Reading Comprehension
1. Multiple Choice
Mark the most suitable answer with a cross (“X”).
1. Marlon Brando's father …
◦ … worked in a chemistry and his mother lived in California.
◦ …was the producer of chemical substances and was interested in
photography.
◦ … earned his money with photography and lived in Libertyville.
◦ … left his wife because she was an alcoholic.
2. Marlon Brando’s mother …
◦ … inspired her son to become an actor.
◦ … was head of the local Alcoholics Anonymous.
◦ … was an actress who played unconventional male roles.
◦ … was an unsuccessful and unconventional actress.
3. Brando left high-school, because …
◦ … he wasn't prepared to learn hard.
◦ … he wanted to become a soldier.
◦ … he did not obey its rules.
◦ … he wanted to attend a theatre academy.
2. Short answer questions.
Answer the following questions by referring to the information given in the text.
1. What made it possible for Brando to become an actor?
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2. Why was Marlon Brando not able to join the army?
3. What was innovative about the acting school Brando finally joined?
4. Why didn’t Brando like Lee Strasberg?
C. Mediation
Erläutern Sie, inwiefern das Verhalten Brandos in der der Absatz F geschilderten SchauspielÜbung ungewöhnlich bzw. bemerkenswert war.
Übungen Englisch, Technikerschule MBT 1 und 2
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Text and tasks B.
Level of difficulty: medium to high
(1) When 7-year-old Shiva Ayyadurai left Mumbai with his family nearly 40 years ago, he
promised himself he would return to India someday to help his country.
(2) In June, Mr. Ayyadurai, now 45, moved from Boston to New Delhi hoping to make good on
that promise. An entrepreneur and lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with
a fistful of American degrees, he was the first recruit of an ambitious government program to
lure talented scientists of the Indian diaspora back to their homeland.
(3) “It seemed perfect,” he said recently of the job opportunity. It wasn’t. As Mr. Ayyadurai sees
it now, his Western business education met India’s notoriously inefficient, opaque
government, and things went downhill from there. Within weeks, he and his boss were at
loggerheads. Last month, his job offer was withdrawn. Mr. Ayyadurai has moved back to
Boston.
(4) In recent years, Mother India has welcomed back tens of thousands of former emigrants
and their offspring. When he visited the United States this week, Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh personally extended an invitation “to all Indian-Americans and nonresident Indians who
wish to return home.” But, like Mr. Ayyadurai, many Indians who spent most of their lives in
North America and Europe are finding they can’t go home again.
(5) About 100,000 “returnees” will move from the United States to India in the next five years,
estimates Vivek Wadhwa, a research associate at Harvard University who has studied the
topic. These repats, as they are known, are drawn by India’s booming economic growth, the
chance to wrestle with complex problems and the opportunity to learn more about their
heritage. They are joining multinational companies, starting new businesses and even
becoming part of India’s sleepy government bureaucracy.
(6) But a study by Mr. Wadhwa and other academics found that 34 percent of repats found it
difficult to return to India — compared to just 13 percent of Indian immigrants who found it
difficult to settle in the United States. The repats complained about traffic, lack of
infrastructure, bureaucracy and pollution.
(7) For many returnees the cultural ties and chance to do good that drew them back are
overshadowed by workplace cultures that feel unexpectedly foreign, and can be frustrating.
Sometimes returnees discover that they share more in their attitudes and perspectives with
other Americans or with the British than with other Indians. Some stay just a few months,
some return to the West after a few years.
(8) Returnees run into trouble when they “look Indian but think American,” said Anjali Bansal,
managing partner in India for Spencer Stuart, the global executive search firm. People expect
them to know the country because of how they look, but they may not be familiar with the way
things run, she said. Similarly, when things don’t operate the way they do in the United States
or Britain, the repats sometimes complain.
(9) “India can seem to have a fairly ambiguous and chaotic way of working, but it works,” Ms.
Bansal said. “I’ve heard people say things like ‘It is so inefficient or it is so unprofessional.’ ”
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She said it was more constructive to just accept customs as being different.
(10) Sometimes, the better fit for a job in India is an expatriate who has experience working in
emerging markets, rather than someone born in India who has only worked in the United
States, she said.
(11) While several Indian-origin authors have penned soul-searching tomes about their return
to India, and dozens of business books exist for Western expatriates trying to do business
here, the guidelines for the returning Indian manager or entrepreneur are still being drawn.
“Some very simple practices that you often take for granted, such as being ethical in day to day
situations, or believing in the rule of law in everyday behavior, are surprisingly absent in many
situations,” said Raju Narisetti, who was born in Hyderabad and returned to India in 2006 to
found a business newspaper called Mint. He said he left earlier than he expected because of a
“troubling nexus” of business, politics and publishing that he called “draining on body and
soul.” He returned to the United States this year to join The Washington Post.
(12) There are no shortcuts to spending lots of time working in the country, returnees say.
“There are so many things that are tricky about doing business in India that it takes years to
figure it out,” said Sanjay Kamlani, the co-chief executive of Pangea3, a legal outsourcing firm
with offices in New York and Mumbai. Mr. Kamlani was born in Miami, where his parents
emigrated from Mumbai, but he has started two businesses with Indian operations.
(13) When Mr. Kamlani started hiring in India, he met with a completely unexpected
phenomenon: some new recruits would not show up for work on their first day. Then, their
mothers would call and say they were sick for days in a row. They never intended to come at
all, he realized, but “there’s a cultural desire to avoid confrontation,” he said.
A. SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONS
Answer the questions or complete the sentences with words or phrases from paragraphs
1-7.
1. When Shiva Ayyadurai returned to India, he thought he could ___________________________.
By doing so he would __________________________ a promise he had made 40 years ago.
2. Which other phrase does the author use when referring to ”nonresident Indians”?
______________________________________
2. Which other expression does the author use when referring to so-called ”returnees”?
______________________________________
3. Some returnees regard it is a challenge rather than a burden that they have to
____________________________________________________, when they are back home.
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B. GAPPED SUMMARY
Fill in the gaps with words from paragraphs 2-5 of the text. Do not make any
grammatical adaptations. One word per line!
In order to attract qualified people, India has started to ___________________ some skilled ethnic
Indians back home. But for many of those who return it is not easy to come to terms with the
way things are done in India. In many cases, it doesn't take long until the returnees are
_______________ ____________________ with their colleagues. The consequence is that very often the
offers of employment are ___________________ after just a few weeks. That's when some of them
regret returning to India and decide to leave the country with their ____________________ for good.
These stories of unsuccessful returns deter many ______________________ Indians from going
home. That there is still a significant number of returnees in spite of such warning examples is
mainly due to the fact that many people are ______________ by the challenge of coming to terms
with such difficult circumstances. Besides, for many ethnic Indians it is very important to find
out more about their cultural ____________________.
C) MULTIPLE MATCHING
Match each person with the correct statement. (Who said what, according to the text?)
Two statements do not fit any of the persons.
Shiva
Ayyadurai
Manmohan
Singh
Vivek
Wadhwa
Anjali Bansal
Raju
Narisetti
Sanjay
Kamlani
Statements:
(A)
When I worked in India, I was surprised to see that some people do not have the
code of conduct that is so important for co-operation.
(B)
What I dislike most about living in India is the traffic, the bad infrastructure and that
everything is so dirty there.
(C)
It seems to be harder for newcomers to get used to living in India than to do so in the USA.
(D)
I would not recommend Indian-Americans to return to their country of origin.
(E)
Indians prefer being dishonest to provoking a conflict.
(F)
Learn to live with some Indian flaws rather than try to change them!
(G)
Returning to India was the best decision I have ever made.
(H)
I would be glad to see more ethnic Indians return to their country of origin.
Übungen Englisch, Technikerschule MBT 1 und 2
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D. MULTIPLE CHOICE: (paragraphs 7-13)
Mark the most suitable answer by putting a cross against the letters A-D!
1. Which statement is true according to paragraph 7?
A No returnee stays in India longer than a few years.
B One reason for ethnic Indians to return to their country of origin is to help there.
C Many returnees have a hard time at work, because they are regarded as foreigners by
their colleagues.
D The attitude of most Indians is more similar to the American one than to the British one.
2. According to paragraph 8, returnees ...
A sometimes are a bit impatient.
B are expected to look Indian.
C cannot deny being American because they don't look like Indians.
D are expected to know a lot about America because of the way they look like.
3. According to Anjali Bansal,
A Indians are not professional enough.
B Indians should follow the advice of returnees in order to get rid of their chaotic way of
working.
C even if the Indians´ way of working is different from those of other people, it does work.
D people who complain about the Indians´ inefficiency are liars.
4. According to paragraph 10,
A people who were born in India are better suited to do some jobs in India than people
with work experience in the USA.
B for some jobs in India, work experience under similar conditions is more important than
being of Indian origin.
C people with work experience in the USA are better suited to do some jobs in India than
people who are acquainted with the Indian society.
D for some jobs in India, people from India with work experience in other countries are the
better choice than people from other countries who have worked in India before.
5. According to paragraph 11, which statement is not correct?
A Some Indian authors who have returned to their home country have written books about
it.
B In India, politics, economy and the media interfere in each other.
C After leaving India, Raju Narisetti founded a newspaper in Washington.
D When Raju Narisetti came to India, he thought he would stay there longer than three
years.
Übungen Englisch, Technikerschule MBT 1 und 2
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E. MEDIATION
Beantworten Sie die folgenden Fragen auf deutsch! Die Fragen beziehen sich auf die
Absätze 12-13.
1. Erläutern Sie folgenden Satz im Textzusammenhang.
“There are no shortcuts to spending lots of time working in the country.” (Z.56)
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________ _
2. Was widerfuhr Sanjay Kamlani, als er in Indien Mitarbeiter einstellen wollte?
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ __
Übungen Englisch, Technikerschule MBT 1 und 2
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Working with cartoons
A. Analyse the following cartoon in about 100 words.
B. Analyse the following cartoon in about 100 words.
Note: This cartoon was taken from the US presidential election in 2012. You may have to inform
yourself online before you are able to interprete it correctly.
Übungen Englisch, Technikerschule MBT 1 und 2
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Text and tasks I - solutions
A. MC
1b
2a
3c
B. SAQ
1 He received money from his father.
2 A football injury had left him with a twisted knee.
3 It was part of a movement that wanted new ways of acting and founded the so-called
"Method acting"
4 Strasberg tried to take credit for teaching him how to act but he never taught him anything.
C. MED
Es war ungewöhnlich, da Brando sich als einziger der Schüler tatsächlich in die Lage eines
Huhn versetzte, dass in der Tat nichts von einer Atombombe wissen kann und sich daher auch
nicht anders als sonst auch -verhalten wird.
Text and task II - solutions
A) SAQ
1. help his country; make good on
2. Indian diaspora
3. repats
4. wrestle with complex problems
B) GAP
lure – at loggerheads – withdrawn – offspring – nonresident – drawn – heritage
C) MM
D) MC
D
H
C
F
A
1B
2A
3C
4B
5C
E
E) MED
1.
Man braucht viele Jahre, um sich in Indiens Arbeitswelt zurecht zu finden, da hier vieles
anders läuft als in anderen Ländern. Man kann diesen Eingewöhnungsprozess nicht abkürzen.
Übungen Englisch, Technikerschule MBT 1 und 2
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2.
Die Mitarbeiter erschienen nicht zur Arbeit und ließen sich von ihren Müttern entschuldigen,
da sie sich scheuten zuzugeben, dass sie die Stelle gar nicht antreten wollten.
Solution cartoon 1)
Description:
The cartoon depicts a scene taking place at a table around lunch-time. A middle-aged
mother has prepared an alphabet soup for her son, who has just sat down. He stares in
confusion at his plate, as his mother, who is beaming, explains that she has replaced the
letters with Chinese ones to better prepare him for the future.
Interpretation:
The cartoonist wants to ridicule the behaviour of the mother, who rightly is of the conviction
that China and thereby also Chinese as a language is on the rise. However, the act of
eating Chinese pasta-letters as a means of preparation for this is more than foolish, which
can also be seen by the puzzled look of the son.
Solution cartoon 2)
Description:
The cartoon depicts a scene with the two US-politicians Obama and Mitt Romney shown
as boxers in an entirely uneven fight. While an aggressive-looking Romney is crazily
trying to hit his opponent with his fists, Obama, who is in a totally relaxed, even bored
pose, keeps him easily at distance with one arm being stretched out, so that Romney has
no chance of hitting him. Obama even finds the time to look at his watch.
Interpretation:
The cartoonist wants to highlight in a funny way that Romney has no real chances to win
the elections. Although he is trying hard to attack the President with various topics, his
attempts do not pose a danger to Obama, who can symbolically lay back and just wait for
the end of the campaign.