Контрольная

Технические параметры: шрифт Times New Roman, размер кегля – 14, межстрочный интервал – полуторный, границы полей: верхнее и нижнее – 20 мм, правое – 10 мм, левое – 30 мм. На титульном листе должны быть указаны фамилия, имя, отчество, курс, номер группы автора.

Контрольная работа 

Вариант 2

Task 1. Read the text and be ready to retell it.

The Civil Service

 In order to maintain continuity of policy, Government Departments and their agencies are staffed with politically neutral permanent officials, known as civil servants. These serve each Government regardless of which party is in power. Governments come and go, but the civil service remains. Some ministers stay in a post for only a short time before moving elsewhere. Civil servants, on the other hand, may spend many years in one department, and they therefore have the time to become experts in their work. In fact, they may know far more about it than the minister does, although they look to him or her for political direction. Moreover, civil servants know the secrets of the previous government which the present minister is unaware of. The most senior civil servant in a Government Department has the title of ‘Permanent Secretary’.

 The civil service in Britain today has at least distinct but interconnected functions to perform. These are: informing and advising Ministers; helping them to formulate policy and, if it involves legislation, to get it through Parliament; implementing the decisions once taken by Ministers; representing Ministers in meetings with and dealing with Ministers’ correspondence from other Departments, interest groups and members of the public; managing the bureaucratic machines of central Government.

 For those who belong to it, the British civil service is a career. Its most senior positions are usually filled by people who have been working in this system for twenty years or more. These people get a high salary (higher than that of their ministers), have absolute job security (unlike their ministers) and stand a good chance of being awarded an official honour. For all these reasons, top civil servants exercise quite a lot of control over their ministers, and it is sometimes said that it is they, and not their ministers, who really govern the country.

 The British civil service has a largely deserved reputation for absolute political impartiality. Top civil servant know that their power depends on their staying out of ‘politics’ and on their being absolutely loyal to their present minister.

Task 2. Find in the text above the equivalents for the following definitions:

the group of people in office at a particular time 

a law or laws passed by a government 

giving or showing firm and constant support or allegiance to a person or institution 

treating all rivals or disputants equally 

a fixed regular payment, typically paid on a monthly basis but often expressed as an annual sum 

Task 3. Make up three questions according to the contents of the text and answer them as well.