(taken from theExile.ru solely for educational purposes)
Pre-Reading Activity
Try to recall the English equivalents for the following English words that you are doomed to come across in the article below:
Just when you start to worry that Moscow's turning into another boutique town, along comes a crime so old-school horrible that it restores your faith in inhumanity. Last January, Moscow showed it still generates stories that hark back to the bad old days, when winters really did kill.
It's New Year's Eve in a twelve-story building on Dubininskaya Street where three-year-old Denis lives with his mother. His Mama, Natasha, is 31 going on delirium tremens. She devotes her every waking hour to staying as drunk as possible and doesn't have much left over for the boy, who's skeletally thin and so neglected that he hasn't even begun to learn to talk. He criesincessantly instead. Mama has a guest, Sasha, a 50-year-old drunk who's just been thrown out of his apartment by his wife. Mama and Sasha drink until the vodka runs out. Natasha decides to go out for a refill. She tells Sasha to stay and watch out for Denis--and to make sure he does she locks the old man inside.
But you can't keep a good drunk down, or rather upstairs. When Natasha doesn't come backpronto, Sasha improvises a rope out of sheets, ties it to the radiator and climbs down to the street. Intent on the search for more booze, he forgets to close the window behind him.
Denis has one item of clothing, a fluffy jacket. It was a very cold January in Moscow. They don't manage to force the apartment door open until January 3, after the neighbors have called everyone they can think of and tried getting in on their own. Denis is lying on the sofa, frozen solid.
Find the following words and word combinations in the article you've read.
- a small shop that sells fashionable clothes, shoes, or jewellery
- characteristic or evocative of an earlier or original style, manner, or form
- to make faith return to its former level or condition
- to return (to an earlier subject in speech or thought)
- a severe condition characterized by delirium and trembling, caused by chronic alcoholism
- continuing without stopping (often in an annoying way)
- another drink to refill your glass
- quickly
- alcoholic drink. (INFORMAL)
- made of or covered with something soft and light, such as wool, hair or feathers in a physical state in which it resists changes in size and shape
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