Учащиеся самостоятельно выбирают англо-говорящие национальности и проводят исследовательскую работу в группах из 3-4 человек в течение 8 учебных часов. Группы формируются по желанию, что нацеливает на более дружную и плодотворную работу. Однако руководителем каждой группы является наиболее компетентный в языковом плане студент. Также в каждой группе имеется учащийся, хорошо владеющий навыками работы с основными офисными программами. Учитель курирует работу, просматривает материал, помогает отобрать главное и корректирует возможные языковые ошибки.

Учащиеся самостоятельно распределяют роли при выступлении, используя презентацию в качестве иллюстрации своего материала.

Teacher.

Today you are going to introduce your project work. We’ll start with the group of students who have studied a mysterious country – Ireland.

Ireland

The topic of our project is the national characteristics of the Irish, and we’re going to tell you a little bit about it. There are many aspects that influence a people’s national character, and one of them is traditions that have been passed from generation to another for centuries. Many of the Irish holidays take their origin in the old pagan traditions of the Celtic tribes that used to inhabit the island.

Holidays and festivals

Much of the Irish calendar still reflects the old pagan customs to this day, with later Christian traditions also having significant influence. As in other countries, the date for observing Christmas was deliberately chosen to coincide with the winter solstice. Christmas in Ireland has several local traditions, some in no way connected with Christianity.

Brigid's Day (1 February, known as Imbolc or Candlemas) also does not have its origins in Christianity. It refers to the lactation of the ewes, the flow of milk that marks the returning of the life-giving forces of spring. The Brigid's cross made from rushes on this day represents a pre-Christian solar wheel. Brigid literally means the “The Exalted One”.

Other pre-Christian festivals, whose names survive as Irish month names, are Bealtaine (May), Lúnasa, Lughnasadh (August) and Samhain (November). According to the ancient Celtic calendar, the yearly cycle consists of a light half beginning on Bealtaine (May 1st) mirrored by a dark half beginning on Samhain (November 1st) – literally means summer’s end. Samhain is still widely observed as Halloween, but in fact it used to be the Ancient Celtic New Year. Lughnasadh is the Celtic harvest festival celebrated on August 1st which takes its name from the Irish god Lugh, one of the chief gods. Legend tells that Lugh dedicated this festival to his foster-mother, Tailtiu, the last queen of the Fir Bolg, who died from exhaustion after clearing a great forest so that the land could be cultivated. Fir Bolg are believed to be one of the ancient races that inhabited the island of Ireland.

The national holiday in the Republic is Saint Patrick's Day (also called St. Paddy’s Day) which is an annual feast day which celebrates Saint Patrick, the most commonly recognised of the patron saints of Ireland, and is generally celebrated on 17th of March. People celebrate the holiday by wearing green, eating Irish food, imbibing Irish drink (such as Irish stout, especially Guinness, Irish Whiskey or Irish Cream) and attending parades.

Green ribbons and shamrocks were worn in celebration of St Patrick's Day as early as the 17th century. He is said to have used the shamrock, a three-leaved plant, to explain the Holy Trinity to the pre-Christian Irish, and the wearing and display of shamrocks and shamrock-inspired designs have become a distinct feature of the day.

St. Patrick’s Day is also widely celebrated outside of Ireland, in countries like Canada, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Britain. In the USA, some cities like Chicago dye their rivers green every year for the celebration of the day.

Languages

And now we’ll take a look at the language of the Irish as another aspect that helped form the national character.

The two dominant languages in Ireland have long influenced each other, with the local English dialect adopting aspects of the Irish grammatical structure, and in turn, Irish drawing much vocabulary from the foreign tongue. Today however, Irish is spoken less in daily routine.

As for the ancient language of the Celts, it is not spoken in Ireland anymore, but many writers use it in their works. For example, J.R.R. Tolkien invented the language of the elves in his famous trilogy ‘The Lord of the Rings’ using Gaelic. Many Irish writers also inherited some of the words and the style from that language.

There we can see some words in Irish Gaelic. Let’s have a look at them and try to analyze and speak.

Níl aon tintéan mar do thintéan féin.

There's no place like home.

The Celtic Page Counter

With a LOUD voice read
the following lines:

a haon

a d/o

a tri

a ceathair

a c/uig

a s/e

a seacht

a hocht

a naoi

a deich

One can, perhaps,not be sure if one can count on the Irish but, what is sure is that you just counted IN Irish!

Dancing

National dancing could be regarded as another important aspect influencing the national character. If we look at the Irish national dancing, we’ll see that they need to be rather cooperative to be able to perform all the moves correctly, and also very energetic since they do a lot of legwork.

So, we’ve looked at some of the national features of the Irish, and we can conclude that the Irish are friendly and out-going and have a good sense of humour, and in our work we’ve used the following websites:

• http://www.luminarium.org/mythology/ireland/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_people
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Patrick's_Day
• http://www.google.ru/search?hl=ru&q=Irish+traditions&btnG=РџРѕРёСЃРє+РІ+Google&lr=&rlz=1I7SKPB_ru

см. Приложение

Teacher.

Thank you very much. The next we’ll learn about another nation – the Scotts.

The Scots
We present our project about the Scots.

The British & the Scots have each derived from mixed sources racially and historically. Each has developed strong national characteristics which separate them in custom, habit, religion, law and even in language.
The Scots are kind, but at first glance are not friendly. They hate compromise, lean much upon logic and run much to extremes. They are penny-wise but can be pound-foolish. They can be cheerless and grey, or highly coloured and extravagant in gesture and manner.
The history of the country influenced the Scots characters. Scotland has seen migration and settlement of peoples at different periods in its history. Germanic people arrived in the 7th century while the Norse settled many regions of Scotland from the 8th century. In the High middle Ages there was some emigration from France, England and the Low Countries to Scotland.
In general the nation of modern Scotland derives from three main racial sources. The Celts, the Scandinavians or Teutons and the mysterious and shadowy Picts. These Picts, historically speaking, were the first inhabitants of what we now call Scotland. They were a small tough people. They have left their strain in the blood and occasional marks in the land and language. They were conquered by the invading Celts from Ireland who, incidentally, were called Scots and from whom the name of the modern nation comes.
Two and three centuries later, however, the Celts retreated into the north-western hills and islands, their place in the east and south lowlands being taken by the Scandinavians, Teutons and Angles. Hence the celebrated division of the Scottish people into Highlanders and Lowlanders.
It was a division which marked the distinction between people of different culture, temperament and language.
It is from the Celts that there comes the more colourful exciting and extravagant strain in the Scots. The Gaelic language and song, the tartan, the bagpipes, the Highland panache, and so on.
The Scottish Highlander considers himself the "true" Scot and he wears his national dress, the kilt, with pride. Kilts, the pleated skirts made of the material with a squared, coloured design called a tartan, probably derive from the costume of the Roman conquerors. Each Scottish clan has its own tartan with specific coloures and design and only members of that clan are entitled to wear it. There are tartans for all the famous Scottish names like Stuart and Macdonald.
The Scots have a reputation being inventive, hardworking, serious-minded and cautious with money. In the past they were pioneer settlers in places like America, Canada and Australia. They also provided the British army with some of its most famous regiments. Enemies called the Scottish soldiers devils in skirts'.
So, we can draw a conclusion that Scottish national character was found during historical development of this country.

См. Приложение.

Teacher.

Thank you very much. And now we’ll fly to another continent and learn about a considerably young nation – the Americans.

AMERICANS

We present our project about features of American character.

Individualism
Higher than all Americans value personality. In spite of traditionally strong family bonds and wide network of public organizations, individual rights and interests are put in the first place. Due to egoism in the USA principles of equality and respect to other people have developed.

Independence and self-confidence
Americans teach their children to be independent. They tend to value their individuality and to believe they are masters of their own destiny. They feel free to speak their minds on most subjects and are often astonishingly frank in expressing political opinions, cherishing above all other rights the freedom of speech guaranteed by the Constitution.

Ease in everything
Americans like to get dressed informally. They often introduce themselves by their first names and call others by their fist names on very slight acquaintance. In professional situations, however, it is preferable to address people using their title and last name (e.g. Dr. Smith, Ms. Jones) until they ask you to use their first name.

Sincerity and straightforwardness
They are direct in their communications; they say no when they mean no. They do not follow traditional European etiquette and feel free to talk about things that are not acceptable for us. Such approach allows to achieve a compromise quickly, passing many psychological barriers.

Spirit of cooperation
In spite of their love to the personal freedom and desire to appear better than others, Americans are used to work "as part of a team".

Friendliness
To Americans the concept of "friendship" doesn't get as deep as it does to us. The American independence and the fact that they tend to change their home and workplace frequently have had their impact on the understanding of friendship. Americans like to classify their acquaintances as "work colleagues", "ex-classmates", "family friends". But nevertheless, Americans can be true friends.

Vanity
Americans believe it is normal to be proud of one's achievements in sports, studies or business. They make judgments about a person based not on the person's inner qualities, but on characteristics of their past activity.

Materialism
 "Success" in American society often depends on the size of a man's income and the amount of transactions he made and the number of houses, cars and other financial values he owns. But it is wrong to consider that all Americans are such. There are many financially successful Americans who value spiritual and cultural aspects of life.
All the previous reports (about the Irish and Scots) tell us about ancient nations. As Americans are rather young their holidays and traditions are young too. Probably the most traditional is Thanksgiving Day. It’s celebrated on the last Thursday of November. This is a day when families get together for a dinner and everybody gives their thanks to everybody else. The tradition of celebrating Thanksgiving takes its origin back in the 17th century when the first European immigrants landed on the east coast of North America and Indians helped them to survive. As for Christmas and Halloween it is European holydays. And Independence Day is a political holyday.
A nation's character takes centuries to form. Since Americans are a very young nation, their traditions and customs don't go back so far. The culture of the native American Indians does, but nobody considers them "Americans" at all anymore. What we think to be "American culture" is, in fact, a mixture of different European, Asian, and South American cultures as numerous immigrants brought their culture with them to the USA. The modern American culture has a little bit of everything in it, but still some generalizations can be made about it.

См. Приложение.