Экзаменационные темы 8 класс.

Describe a person you admire.
Speak about the most important holidays in your country.
Speak about some of the most important holidays in Britain/
Describe a memorable event in your life.
Choosing a career: your future job.
Say what you can do to keep fit.
What should be done to protect the Earth.
Your predictions about the future.
Famous people of Great Britain.
Famous people of Russia.
Strange phenomena.
Ways of spending free time.
Advantages and disadvantages of the Internet.
Different ways of travelling: advantages and disadvantages.
Famous places in Britain.
Famous places in Russia.
Talk about money and people’s attitudes to it.
Art and its role in modern life.
Say what qualities of character you would like to develop in yourself.
English in the world.

Famous people of Great Britain.

                Great Britain, and Scotland in particular, is the birthplace of many men of literature and science. Alexander Fleming invented penicillin. Walter Scott was a great master of historical novels like Rob Roy and  Ivanhoe. Robert Louis Stevenson is known for his stories and books of adventure. His books The Black Arrow, Treasure Island, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde are famous all over the world.

                I would like to speak about a famous Scottish poet Robert Burns.

Robert Burns was born in 1759 and was the eldest of 7 children, growing up in a life of poverty and hard farm work. His father made sure that his sons were well educated and hired a private tutor to teach them English, French, Latin, and even Philosophy.

              When Robert was not having lessons he would help his father on the farm. In his spare time he started to write poetry. In 1784 Robert’s father died and Robert had to support the family. The farm was a failure as the crops wouldn’t grow. To make matters worse, Robert fell in love with Jean Arma. They wanted to marry but Jean’s father disapproved. Burns was a poor farmer with little money and not good enough for his daughter.

             Burns was fed up and planned to emigrate to Jamaica. He decided to print some of his poems in order to make money for the voyage. When Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect were

Published, Burns became famous overnight .

             Burns didn’t just write poems, he was Scotland’s first collector of folk songs. In 1787 he set off on a journey around Scotland, writing down fragments of old songs like Auld Lang Syne, often rewriting them into the versions we know today.

             In 1788 Burns and Jean Arma married and went to live at Ellisland Farm. There he wrote his famous Tam O’Shanter – a tale of a farmer who, after a night of drinking, stumbles across some dancing witches on his way home.

            Burns and his family left Ellisland and moved to Dumfreys in 1793. My Love is Like a Red Red Rose was written soon after.

          By 1796 Burns had become dangerously ill and on the 21-st of July he died at the age of 37. Scotland lost one of its best loved poets and a national hero. Burns wanted to be the poet of Scotland and his dream came true. Today his poems are loved by millions all over the world.

Outstanding people of Russia.

Peter the First, or Peter the Great, was one of the most outstanding rulers and reformers in Russian history. Peter was a healthy, lively and clever child. He loved military games and enjoyed carpentry, blacksmithing and printing. He was married at the age of 17. At first Peter ruled together with his brother Ivan and his sister Sofya. In 1696 he became a sole ruler and in 1721 he became the Emperor of Russia. Peter I is famous for drawing Russia further to the East. He also transferred the capital from Moscow to St. Petersburg. Peter travelled much in Western Europe and tried to carry western customs and habits to Russia. He introduced western technologies. He completely changed the Russian government and military system, he increased the power of the monarch and reduced the power of the boyars and the church. In foreign policy, Peter waged a war with Turkey (1695-1696), the Great Northern War with Sweden (1700-1721) and a war with Persia (1722-1723). In these wars he wanted to get access to the Baltic, the Black and the Caspian Sea. He managed to get to the shores of the Baltic and the Caspian Sea. Peter I played a great role in Russian history. After his death Russia was much more secure and progressive than it had been before his reign.

Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov was a great Russian scientist and writer. He studied chemistry, physics, astronomy, geography, art, philology and others. Lomonosov was also a poet, who created the basis of the modern Russian literary language. Lomonosov was born on the 19-th of November, 1711 in the village of Denisovka, not far from Arkhangelsk, in the North of Russia. When Mikhail was ten years old his father began to take him to the sea. The dangerous life of a fisherman taught Lomonosov to observe natural phenomena. But he did not want to be a fisherman. Learning was his real passion. He spent every spare moment with books. In 1730 Lomonosov left the village and went to Moscow, where he entered the Slavic Greek Latin Academy. Lomonosov lived on three kopecs a day, but he made rapid progress. He was extremely hardworking and persistent. Five years later he graduated at the top of his class. After that he studied in St. Petersburg and then went to Germany. There he learnt German and studied philosophy, mathematics, chemistry and began writing poetry. In Germany Lomonosov fell in love with Elisabeth Christine Zilch. They got married in 1740. Lomonosov returned to Russia in 1741. He worked in the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1745 Lomonosov was made a professor. He was the first Russian member of the Academy. In 1755 Lomonosov joined his patron Count Ivan Shuvalov in founding Moscow State University, which is named after the scientist now. Lomonosov died in 1765 in St. Petersburg at the age of 53. He is remembered as a patriot, a talented scientist and an outstanding personality. Alexander Pushkin described Lomonosov as a person of formidable willpower and keen scientific mind.

What qualities of character you would like to develop in yourself.

   Everybody wants to live a happy life: to have friends and a family, to make a career, to be respected by others. To achieve these goals a person must have certain qualities of character and get rid of other ones.
   We admire courageous, intelligent, honest, hardworking and persistent people who set a good example to others. We study their biographies and want to be like them. I admire Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov because of his industry, decisiveness and persistence. He worked hard to develop his abilities. His character made him a successful scientist and an outstanding personality.
   Some people are not famous but they are admired by those who know them. I admire my aunt because she was a hardworking and optimistic person. Her life was not easy but I don’t remember her complaining. I also try to do my duties well and to overcome hardships. If you have done a difficult task, you feel satisfied or even proud of yourself.
   Kindness, wisdom and understanding are among positive qualities, too. They attract people. It is pleasant to communicate with a person who can understand your joys and sorrows and can give you good advice when you are in trouble. Wisdom comes with age and experience, but it is necessary to treat people kindly. I try to learn to understand others without judging all their actions and ideas. It is also important to learn to be honest and faithful to those you love. I do my best to keep my friends’ secrets and I don’t break my promises to them. I want my friends to trust me as I trust them.
   In conclusion I’d like to say that it is necessary to develop positive qualities in yourself because your success in life depends on your character.

Choosing an Occupation
One of the most difficult problems a young person faces is deciding what to do about a career. There are individuals, of course, who from the time they are six years old "know" that they want to be doctors or pilots or fire fighters, but the majority of us do not get around to making a decision about an occupation or career until somebody or something forces us to face the problem.
Choosing an occupation takes time, and there are a lot of things you have to think about as you try to decide what you would like to do. You may find that you will have to take special courses to qualify for a particular kind of work, or may find out that you will need to get some actual work experience to gain enough knowledge to qualify for a particular job.
Fortunately, there are a lot of people you can turn to for advice and help in making your decision. At most schools, there are teachers who are professionally qualified to counsel you and to give detailed information about job qualifications. And you can talk over your ideas with family members and friends who are always ready to listen and to offer suggestions.
But even if you get other people involved in helping you make a decision, self evaluation is an important part of the decision-making process.

Crimes and society.
There have been crimes and criminals for many centuries. Nowadays the crime rate speeds up and we hear the chilling statistics of violence, murders and assaults, robbery, burglary, sexual offences, thefts and smuggling despite the fact that a lot of money is spend to defend people and their property.
For ages scientists, philosophers and doctors have been desperately trying to find out what makes people commit crimes.  Perhaps the major cause of crime nowadays is the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor. Many of the poor live in crowded city areas. They don’t have time to look after their children and their kids mix in the street gangs, where are very often caught red handed in mugging, burglary or drug dealing. On the other hand, the rich commit crimes for the sake of easy money, drugs or to beat boredom and get an adrenaline buzz. Some people believe that TV violence causes crime.
The authorities light up dark streets, place CCTV cameras and sentence the criminals to life imprisonment or even death penalties. The question of crime prevention and especially kinds of punishment is a very shaky one. Some people think that criminals who have committed senior offences such as murder definitely deserve death penalty as an example for others not to do the same. Others disagree because of different reasons. Some people consider it too mild, because the accused won’t suffer of understanding his guilt. The others suppose that the trial may make a mistake and sentence the innocent to death. Moreover, there are a lot of arguments  about the way of execution. Even those kinds that are considered to be painless may cause long and torturous death.
So what should be done to prevent crimes? I believe that policemen should be given a professional training. Children should be busy with extracurricular activities in order not to spend too much time with bad companies.  In order not to become a victim of the crime you shouldn’t go through dark streets and you’d better always lock your door. And of course one should never try drugs.