Agatha

“Agatha Christie”




Цели урока:
1. Расширить активный словарный запас учащихся.
2. Тренировать учащихся в чтении текста публицистического характера с целью получения информации на уровне полного или частичного понимания с использованием разноплановых заданий.
3. Развивать лексическую догадку, внимание, быстроту реакции, гибкость мышления.
4. Способствовать воспитанию стремленияпознавать новое, расшить кругозор учащихся.


Agatha Christie
Pre-reading activity
T: I’m sure all of you have heard the name of a famous writer Agatha Christie. But what do you know about her life and career?
When did she live?
What country did she come from?
What was her family like?
Did she live a happy and long life?
What books by this writer have read?
What film versions have you seen?While-reading activity
Agatha Christie (New Headway Intermediate Oxford University Press)
Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie is possibly the world’s most famous detective story writer. She wrote 79 novels and several plays. Her sales outnumber those of William Shakespeare. However, behind her 4,680,000 words was a painfully shy woman whose life was often lonely and unhappy.
She was born in 1890 inDevon, the third child of Clarissa and Frederick Miller, and grew into a beautiful and sensitive girl with waist-length golden hair. She didn’t go to school but was educated at home by her mother. Her father died when she was 11 and both she and her mother were grief-stricken.
During World War I, while she was working in a hospital dispensary, she learned about chemicals and poisons, whichproved very useful in her later career. She wrote her first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in 1920. In it she introduced Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective who appeared in many subsequent novels. Her other detective was an elderly spinster called Miss Marple.
In 1914, at the beginning of the war, she married Archibald Christie but the marriage was unhappy. It didn’tlast and they divorced in 1926. That year there was a double tragedy in her life because her much-loved mother died.
Agatha suffered a nervous breakdown, and one night she abandoned her car and mysteriously disappeared. She went missing for 11 days and was eventually found in a hotel in Harrogate, in the North of England. It is interesting to note that it was while she was suffering so muchthat she wrote one of her masterpieces, The Murder of Roger Acroyd.
Agatha desperately wanted solitude and developed very bitter feelings towards the media because the newspapers had given her a hard time over her breakdown and disappearance. She was determined never let them enter her private life again and she buried herself in her work. On 25 November 1952 her play The Mousetrap openedin London. Today, over 40 years later, it is still running. It is the longest running show in the whole world.
She enjoyed a very happy second marriage to Max Mallowan, an archeologist. Her detective skills were a help to him in his excavations in Syria and Iraq. By successfully staying out of the limelight she ultimately found happiness with her beloved husband. She died peacefully in1976.

1.Which of the following numbers or dates relate to Agatha Christie? What do they refer to?

50 79 6,000 11 13 14 4,680,000 1882 1920 1926 1952

Keys:79 (She wrote 79 novels)
11 (Her father died when she was 11, and she went missing for 11 days)
4,680,000 (She has written 4,680,000 words)1920 (Her first book came out in 1920)
1926 (She divorced in 1926. Her mother died)
1952 (The Mousetrap opened in 1952)

2. Match the words in two columns to make up word combinations.
1.painfully a) tragedy
2.grief b) breakdown
3.waist c) loved
4.hospital d) stricken
5.later...