CULTURAL 7. DISHONESTY 8. INFORMATION 9. INCAPABLE 10. ASSIGNMENTSI...

6. cultural 7. Dishonesty 8. information 9. incapable 10. assignments

III. READING COMPREHENSION. (1 pts)

Read the passage carefully and choose the correct answer: True (T), False (F).

‘Hello. How are you?’ ‘Good morning,’ ‘Have you eaten yet?’ ‘Where are you going?’ These are

greetings which people use in different languages when they meet each other. But what is a greeting?

A greeting is a way of being friendly to someone. It is a way of being polite. It is also a way of starting a

conversation. In many languages a question is used as a greeting “Where are you going?’ ‘How’s everything

with you?’ But questions like these are not real questions. They do not require a full answer or even a true one.

In English, the commonest greeting is a question about a person’s health: ‘How are you?’ But we do not expect

the person to tell us about their health when they reply. We do not expect them to talk about their headache or

their backache, if they have one. People reply to these questions with a fixed expression such as ‘I’m fine,

thanks’ or ‘I’m very well, thanks’. In the same way, in countries where people greet each other with ‘Where are

you going?’, a simple reply such as ‘Just walking around’ is sufficient. It is not necessary to describe where you

are actually going.

In most languages, a greeting is usually followed by ‘small talk’. Small talk means the little things we

talk about at the start of a conversation. In English- speaking countries people often make small talk about the

weather: ‘Nice day, isn’t it?’ ‘Terrible weather, isn’t it?’ But there is something special about small talk. It must

be about something which both people agree on something. This makes meeting people easier and more

comfortable. People usually agree about the weather, so it is a safe topic for small talk. But people often disagree

about religion or politics so there are not suitable topics for small talk in English. The topics for small talk also

depend on where the conversation is taking place. At football matches people make small talk about the game

they are watching: ‘Great game, isn’t it?’ At bus-stops, people may comment about the transport system: ‘The

buses are very slow these days, aren’t they?’

Greetings and small talk are an important part of conversation in any language. The way people greet each other

and the things they talk about, however, may be different from one language to another. This shows that there is

much more to learn when we learn a language than just the vocabulary and the grammar of the language. We

also have to learn the social behavior of the people who speak it.