Натюрморт или интерьер

Это описывать проще всего. Напоминаем лишь некоторые слова, которые могут пригодиться в подобной ситуации.

Что же касаетсясцены действия, которая может оказаться на картинке, то она вполне поддается описанию с помощью элементарных глаголов («ходить», «делать», «работать» и т.п.). К этому остается лишь добавить некоторые элементы портрета или интерьера, например: «Высокий джентльмен в черных ботинках переходит улицу, а в это время из окна смотрит, задумчиво опершись на подоконник, девушка с волнистыми волосами, и на скамейке под лучами послеполуденного солнца отдыхает пушистая кошка».

Лучше, конечно, вести рассказ короткими простыми предложениями, чтобы не запутаться в придаточных и чтобы вас не могли неправильно понять. Избегайте монотонности, обращайте внимание на ритм и интонацию.

Остается добавить лишь один момент, относящийся к грамматике. Иногда рассказ по картинке выглядит более живым и интересным, если изображенное на картинке связать с тем, что могло произойти ранее. Тогда напрашиваются фразы типа: «Вероятно (быть может, должно быть), перед этим...»

Помните, что в таких оборотах модальные глаголы must, may, might и could имеют не тот, ставший наиболее привычным для многих абитуриентов, смысл.

Сравните:

Не must go. – Он должен идти.

Не must have gone. – Он, должно быть, ушел.

(То есть выражено не долженствование, а вероятность.)

То же самое с глаголами may, might и could. В сочетании с перфектным инфинитивом (have + 3 форма глагола) они могут означать не разрешение и физическую возможность, а степень вероятности по отношению к прошлому.

П р и м е ч а н и е. Обратите внимание на отрицание вероятности или догадки. Для выражения Не must have left his umbrella в отрицательном смысле нельзя употреблять must not. Для отрицания служит оборот с глаголом can (при согласовании времен может переходить в could) в отрицательной форме.

Вероятность с помощью модальных глаголов может быть выражена и для настоящего времени, если это требуется по смыслу картинки. Иногда к ситуации на картинке, если вы не уверены точно, подойдут те же обороты – «должно быть», «возможно» и т.д.

Для выражения вероятности, относящейся к будущему, с помощью модальных глаголов для этой цели используются may, might и could.

(У might меньшая степень определенности, чем у may.)

С учетом приведенных выше комментариев, такая незамысловатая форма ответа, как описание картинки, может быть более разнообразной, с более глубоким содержанием, что принесет несколько дополнительных очков в вашу пользу.

Приведем теперь конкретные тексты из художественной литературы, которые помогут вам более тонко описывать различные картины. Эти тексты подобраны так, что первый представляет портрет человека, второй – групповой портрет в интерьере, а третий и четвертый – пейзаж (описание фотографии и вид с холма).

Переведите эти тексты со словарем, а затем попробуйте их пересказать, обращаясь при необходимости к тем средствам, которые указаны в разделе «Пересказ».

Col. Grangerford was very tall and very slim, and had a darkishpaly complexion, not a sign of red in it anywhere; he was cleanshaved every morning all over his face, and he had the thinnest kind of lips and the thinnest kind of nostrils, and a high nose and heavy .eyebrows, and the blackest kind of eyes, sunk so deep back that they seemed like they was¹ looking out of caverns at you, as you may say. His forehead was high and his hair was gray and straight and hung to his shoulders. His hands was long and thin, and every day of his life he put on a clean shirt and a full suit from head to foot made out of linen so white it hurt your eyes to look at it, and on Sundays he wore a blue tail-coat with brass buttons on it. He carried a mahogany cane with a silver head to it. There warn't² no frivolishness about him, not a bit, and he warn't ever loud. He was as kind as he could be – you could feel that, you know, and so you had confidence. Sometimes he smiled and it was good to see, but when he straightened himself up like a liberty pole and the lightning begun to flicker out from under his eyebrows, you wanted to climb a tree first and find out what the matter was afterwards. He didn't ever have to tell anybody to mind their manners – everybody was always good-mannered where he was. Everybody loved to have him around, too; he was sunshine most always – I mean he made it seem like good weather. When he turned into a cloud-bank it was awful dark for half a minute, and that was enough; there wouldn't nothing go wrong again for a week.

(From Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by M. Twain)

¹ they was (простореч.) = they were

² warn't (простореч.) = wasn't

Over against the piano a man of bulk and stature was wearing two waistcoats on his wide chest, two waistcoats and a ruby pin, instead of the single satin waistcoat and diamond pin of more usual occasions, and his shaven, square, old face, the colour of pale leather, with pale eyes, had its most dignified look, above his satin stock. This was Swithin Forsyte. Close to the window, where he could get more than his fair share of fresh air, the other twin, James – the fat and the lean of it, old Jolyon called these brothers – like the bulky Swithin, over six feet in height, but very lean, as though destined from his birth to strike a balance and maintain an average, brooded over the scene with his permanent stoop, his grey eyes had an air of fixed absorption in some secret worry, broken at intervals by a rapid, shifting scrutiny of surrounding facts; his cheeks, thinned by two parallel folds, and a long, clearf-shaven upper lip, were framed within Dundreary¹ whiskers. In his hands he turned and turned a piece of china. Not far off, listening to a lady in brown, his only son Soames, pale and well-shaved, dark-haired, rather bald, had poked his chin up sideways, carrying his nose with that aforesaid appearance of «sniff», as though despising an egg which he knew he could not digest. Behind him his cousin, the tall George, son of the fifth Forsyte, Roger, had a Quilpish² look on his fleshy face, pondering one of his sardonic jests.

Something inherent to the occasion had affected them all.

Seated in a row close to one another were three ladies – Aunts Ann, Hester (the two Forsyte maids), and Juley (short for Julia), who not in first youth had so far forgotten herself as to marry Septimus Small, a man of poor constitution. She had survived him for many years. With her elder and younger sister she lived now in the house of Timothy, her sixth and youngest brother, on the Bayswater Road. Each of these ladies held fans in their hands, and each with some touch of colour, some emphatic feather or brooch, testified to the solemnity of the opportunity.

In the centre of the room, under the chandelier, as became a host, stood the head of the family, old Jolyon himself. Eighty years of age, with his fine, white hair his dome-like forehead, his little, dark gray eyes, and an immense white moustache, which drooped and spread below the level of his strong jaw, he had a patriarchal look, and in spite of lean cheeks and hollows at his temples, seemed master of perennial youth. He held himself extremely upright, and his shrewd, steady eyes had lost none of their clear shining. Thus he gave an impression of superiority to the doubts and dislikes of smaller men. Having had his own way for innumerable years, he had earned a prescriptive right to it. It would never had occurred to old Jolyon that it was necessary to wear a look of doubt or of defiance.

Between him and the four other brothers who were present, James, Swithin, Nicholas, and Roger, there was much difference, much similarity. In turns, each of these four brothers was very different from the other, yet they, too, were alike.

Through the varying features and expressions of those five faces could be marked a certain steadfastness of chin, underlying surface distinctions, marking a racial stamp, too prehistoric to trace, too remote and permanent to discuss – the very hall-mark and guarantee of the family fortunes.

(From The Forsyte Saga, book 1, by John Galsworthy)

¹ Dundreary whiskers – Lord Dundreary is the chief character in Tom Taylor's «Our American Cousin» (1858).

² a Quilpish look – a mocking, wicked look. Daniel Quilp is a hideous dwarf, ferocious and cunning character in Dickens's «The Old Curiosity Shop» who enjoys tormenting others.

At the top of the hill, they came face to face with the sun. It was a quarter of the way up, cut like a knife by the treeless horizon. Down below them was a valley lying under a cover of mist that was rising slowly from the earth. They could see several houses and farms, but most of them were so far away they were almost indistinguishable in the mist. There was smoke rising from the chimney of the first house...

The sun came up above the horizon, fast and red. Streaks of gray clouds, like layers of woodsmoke, swam across the face of it. Almost as quickly as it had risen, the sun shrank into a small fiery button that seared the eyes until it was impossible to look at it any longer.

(From Man and woman, by Erskine Caldwell)

The folder was like most travel folders inside – there were pictures and text. And it was beautifully printed; the pictures looked real. What I mean is, you've seen colour stereopticon pictures? Well, that's what these were like only better, far better. In one picture you could see dew glistening on the grass, and it looked wet. In another, a tree trunk seemed to curve out of the page, in perfect detail, and it was a shock to touch it and feel smooth paper instead of rough actuality of Bark. Miniature human faces, in a third picture, seemed about to speak, the lips moist and alive, the eyeballs shining, the actual texture of skin right there on paper: and it seemed impossible, as you stared, that the people wouldn't move and speak.

I studied a large picture spreading across the tops of two open pages. It seemed to have been taken from the top of a hill; you saw the land dropping away at your feet far down into a valley, then rising up again, way over on the other side. The slopes of both hills were covered with forest, and the colour was beautiful, perfect: there were miles of green, majestic trees, and you knew as you looked that this forest was virgin, almost untouched. Curving through the floor of the valley, far below, ran a stream, blue from the sky in most places: here and there, where the current broke around massive boulders, the water was foaming white: and again it seemed that if you'd only look closely enough you'd be certain to see that stream move and shine in the sun. In clearings beside the stream there were cabins, some of logs, some of brick or adobe. The caption under the picture simply said: «The Colony».

...I don't know how you knew this, but you realized, staring at that forest-covered valley, that this was very much the way America once looked when it was new. And you knew this was only a part of a whole land of unspoiled, unharmed forests, where every stream ran pure; you were seelngwhat peopl, the last of them dead over a century ago, had once looked at in Kentucky and Wisconsin and the old Northwest: And you knew that if you could breathe in that air you'd feel it flow into your lungs sweeter than it's been anywhere on earth for a hundred and fifty years.

(From Jack Finney, Of missing persons, abridged)

Раздел 8. ВОПРОСЫ ПО ЛЕКСИКЕ И ГРАММАТИКЕ