Reading and understanding newspapers. Пыж А.М. - 29 стр.

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a. Many Russian students are learning to read English newspapers.
students
b. Many Russian
, most of whom attend some of the country’s best-
known schools,
are learning to read English newspapers.
c. In an innovative programme sponsored by the Post Publishing Public
Company Limited, many Russian
students, most of whom attend some of
the country’s best-known schools,
are learning to read the English
newspapers.
To understand each of the above, you must be able to find the subject and
main verb. The above examples illustrate three of the most common positions
for these key elements. In the first, the subject and verb are together at the
beginning of the sentence. In the second, the subject and verb are separated. In
the third, the sentence opens with an introductory phrase, delaying the
appearance of the subject and verb. In the majority of the newspapers
introductory phrases are not common except when the story is an especially
important one.
A Common Misunderstanding
One of the reasons people sometimes misunderstand the lead is that they
find the wrong subject or, more commonly, the wrong main verb. This is
especially true when the subject and verb is separated by a phrase or clause.
Here is an amusing and true example: One day a student came to me. She was
having trouble understanding the following sentence:
A woman said to be despondent over her husband’s heavy drinking
jumped into a canal Friday night with her three children.
To me the sentence was totally clear, so I asked her to translate it into
Russian to find out how she understood it. Here is her translation:
A woman confessed that she and her three children pushed her
husband into a canal Friday night because he was a heavy drinker.
How was that possible? Look at the first three words: A woman said. That
was the source of her problem. She thought the main verb was “said” instead of
“jumped”. One reason she made this mistake was because the writer omitted
who was from the sentence. The long form would have begun: “A woman who
was said (by a witness) to be despondent...” This is a common technique in news
writing so watch for it.
Adding the source
One of the most common variations of the “something happened” story is
the “someone said something happened” story. In this case the lead sentence

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