Arakin 4 kurs new 001 176. indd

a) After reading the text, answer the following questions:
1) Does the headline of the article clarify or obscure its main idea 
concerning the trends in marriage? Explain your point of view. 
2) What are the basic reasons for the marriage statistics and divorce 
data being inaccurate? 3) What are the chief predictors of whether 
a marriage will be stable or not? 4) Elicit all the vocabulary items 
related to the topic “Family Life” and organize them in groups of col-
locations under key words: e.g. “marriage” — “marriage-friendly 
policies; grim marriage stats; a guide to marriage; marriage-therapy 
programme”, etc. 5) Find all the compound words in the article, state 

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whether they are abundant or scanty and explain what functions they 
perform. 6) Explain the stylistic device used in the following lines: “a 
myth that persists because it’s something of a political Swiss Army 
knife, handy for any number of agendas.” Point out any other cases 
of striking imagery in the article and expand on them. 7) Provide 
2–3 examples from contemporary newspapers (especially the head-
lines) illustrating the metaphorical use of the verbs “to wed” (e.g. His 
film made me conscious of the power of wedding image to music.) and 
“to divorce” (e.g. Their constitution divorces church and state).
10. In many women’s magazines there is a column on personal problems where 
a journalist running the column tries to answer the readers’ letters. Below you’ll 
find a woman’s letter to the agony aunt and a stereotyped reply to the letter, 
imitating the kind of “sensible”, inoffensive advice offered in such columns in 
women’s magazines
a) Read the letter and the reply. The expressions in bold type show the ways 
English people give advice. Note them down
Dear Agony Aunt,
My father-in-law died about two years ago. Of course my mother-
in-law was very upset and lonely, so my husband invited her to live 
with us. I don’t know what to do — I’m going crazy. My mother-in-
law and I don’t get along very well. She’s a wonderful person and is 
very helpful to me in many ways, but she thinks she’s the boss in our 
home. If I try to discipline the children and tell them that they can’t 
do something, they go running to their grandmother and she tells 
them they can do it! My husband and I have no privacy. What’s worse 
is that she constantly criticizes me to my husband behind my back. 
I’m afraid this is going to break up our marriage. What should I do?
Jean
Dear Jean,
Do you think