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Dear Telekolleg students,

I hope that you found the text about Malcolm X in the Arbeitsbogen interesting. The situation of Afro-Americans in the USA is, of course, much better nowadays than it was in the 1960s, when the Civil Rights movement was very active. Nowadays there are many, many Afro-Americans active in all parts of American society as mayors of cities, doctors, judges, politicians, artists, professors…. However we should not forget that although Afro-Americans have made great progress, the situation for large numbers of them has not changed just because of that – or just because there is a black man in the White House! Although they represent 12.7% of the population of the USA 24% of Afro-Americans of the age of 25 and over have not successfully completed high school (compared to roughly 16% of whites) and 26.5% of Afro-Americans live below the poverty line (compared to only 11% of whites). The picture is even more shocking if we look at the American prison population: Afro-American men have a greater than 1 in 4 chance of going to prison (with whites it is a 1 in 23 chance). And 48.2% of American adults in State or Federal prisons and local prisons are Afro-Americans. These are official statistics (Telekolleg students will find them, and other interesting facts in the Internet:

http://www.prisonactivist.org/archive/factsheets/racism.pdf

The work of Dr Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights movement has not finished yet.

In the Arbeitsbogen 1- 3 AMERICA – PEOPLE AND PLACES ‘Go west’, there are some interesting sentences :

Lines 1-2: In the decades after the United States’ independence from Britain, the American

West remained a huge area of land w a i t i n g (= which was waiting) to be explored.

Lines 5-6: The settlers travelled with wagons

p a c k e d ( = which were packed) with

everything they needed for their new homes.

Lines 22-23: The United States grew dramatically in the nineteenth century o f f e r i n g

( = and offered) a home for 25 million Europeans.1.In the decades after the United States’ independence from Britain, the American West remained a huge area of land waitING to be explored. 2. The United States grew dramatically … offerING a home for 25 million Europeans. The writer could have written : ‘a huge area of land WHICH WAS WAITING to be explored’ and ‘ The United States grew dramatically AND OFFERED a home for 25 million Europeans.

These are good examples of what the Germans call ‘verkürzte Nebensätze’ Don’t worry – you needn’t use these ‘verkürzte Nebensätze’ yourself, but it is important to recognise them in a text. See if you can recognise these forms in these two jokes:

Mrs Benson has bought her husband a birthday present.

“This is a watch made for people working under water,” she explains.

“Oh, thank you, darling, but why did you buy me that?” her husband asks.

“Well,” says Mrs Benson,” I thought you could wear the watch while you’re doing the washing up!”

“What’s your job?” Bill asks the man, sitting next to him in the pub.

“Oh, I’m a writer,” the man replies.

“And what do you write?” Bill asks.

“I write letters to my parents, asking for money.” *

As I said before it is enough if you can recognise these forms – you needn’t use them yourself. The same thing applies to (dasselbe gilt für) relative pronouns which are left out in English sentences. Nobody will be angry if you say: “The football match WHICH we are going to tomorrow has been cancelled.” instead of “The football match we are going to tomorrow has been cancelled.” (Arbeitsbogen 1- 3 THE BUSINESS WORLD).However, it is important to understand the sentence when the writer or speaker leaves out the relative pronoun. Can you see where the relative pronouns have been left out in the jokes above?

*This is a watch made for people working under water = This is a watch which was made for people who work under water.

…the man sitting next to him… = … the man who is sitting next to him…

I write letters to my parents, asking for money = I write letters to my parents and ask for money.

The man d r i n k i n g his soup in the restaurant is very angry.

“Waiter,” he shouts. “There’s a fly

s w i m m i n g in my soup!!”

“That’s great!” says the waiter. “That means that spring is coming!”

Instead of ‘the man drinking his soup…’, we could say the man w h o is drinking his soup…We have shortened the relative clause (Nebensatz). In the next line there is also a ‘verkürzter Nebensatz’. Instead of saying: ‘There’s a fly w h i c h is swimming in my soup !!’ we can say:‘There’s a fly s w i m m i n g in my soup.’

In the next sentence you can see another common participle construction:

A clock is a thing u s e d to wake up people who haven’t got young children.

Here there is another ‘verkürzter Nebensatz’: We could write the sentence like this:

A clock is a thing w h i c h i s

u s e d to wake up people who haven’t got young children.

When we say ‘a thing used’, we save two whole words (very important if we are rushing to get the train in the morning!)

In the next sentence there is a third important participle construction:

Brunhilde lay in the bath s i n g i n g ‘God Save the Queen’

Here we save the word ‘and’ ( Brunhilde lay in the bath a n d s a n g ‘God Save the Queen’). Dear Telekolleg students, please don’t worry: it is not important for you to u s e

these constructions. However, you can see them in many texts, so it is important to

r e c o g n i z e them and know what they mean

These three constructions are the most important participle constructions, but there is a fourth participle construction which you will perhaps see in texts: