Júlia Bácskai-Atkári

Headway Intermediate (Third Edition), p. 32.

In Britain…

you can get married when you‟re 16.

you can‟t drink alcohol until you‟re 18.
you have to wear a seat-belt in a car.
you can vote when you‟re 18.
young people don‟t have to do military service.
there are lots of public places where you aren‟t allowed to smoke.

Attachments to the handout:

Exercise 2.

„Queue jumping‟ is frowned upon.

It is impolite for men to wear hats in churches.

When yawning or coughing, it is all right not to cover your mouth with your hand.

When you are first introduced to someone, you shake hands.

A smiling face is not welcome.

People drive on the right side of the road.

People open doors for others.

You are not expected to greet people with a kiss.

It is normal to talk loud in public.

It is all right to stare at anyone in public.

It is impolite to ask a lady her age.

You are required to avoid gestures such as backslapping and hugging.

Feel free to spit.

It is normal to burp in public.

It is impolite to speak with your mouth full.

 Júlia Bácskai-Atkári

Exercise 4.

TABLE MANNERS

Next time you ______ next to an Englishman in a restaurant, ______ him carefully to see how
he eats. Table manners are perhaps ______ less seriously than they were twenty years ago, but
there is still a tendency, especially among older people, to judge one‟s fellow-country-men by
the way they ______ a fork or pass the salt.

“Don‟t ______ with your mouth full” – a very sensible stipulation. “Don‟t put your elbows on
the table – this resulted in whole generations of British children who sat upright with their
hands folded uncomfortably in their laps between courses.

“Don‟t ______ too much on your plate at a time” – it ______ better in the eyes of the British
to gorge yourself on six small helpings than to ______ one large one to start with.

“You should never ______ the last piece of meat or the last potato from the serving dish” – it
is fascinating to ______ a group of still hungry diners ______ a dish around with one slice of
meat on it, each of them too polite to take it.

Particularly interesting is the way the British handle their cutlery. A fork, for example, in the
best British society, is only ______ to ______: it is ______ either vulgar or “foreign” to turn
the fork over and scoop up vegetables. The sight of an Englishman ______ a last pea around
his plate, ______ to catch it on the prong of his fork, ______ British sporting instincts at their
best.

Soup spoons are also handled in a very unusual way . The best mannered people always scoop
up their soup by moving the spoon away from them, not towards them. The last tasty
mouthful of soup must not be ______ out by tipping the plate towards one.

Less sensible ______ what the British ______ with their cutlery to ______ that they have
finished. In most countries, people ______ wise enough to put their knife and fork on the
plate in the “three o‟clock” position: parallel to the edge of the table, so that they cannot
knock them into their laps. The British ______ to the “six o‟clock” position.

Finally, every Englishman ______ with him a store of polite and complimentary phrases for
his hostess; “How nice”, “This really is good”, “I don‟t ______ how you do it”, etc.

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(taken from: This Is Britain Today)