Unit 4: Music And Arts - Skills 1

Read the text and answer the questions Vietnamese water puppetry is a unique folk art. It's said that ‘Not watching a performance of water puppetry means not visiting Vietnam yet.' That's why water puppetry is a must-see show for tourists in Vietnam. Watching this show can help you escape from your busy life and refresh your minds with unforgettable moments. During the shows, you can only see the puppets and a small folk orchestra of about 7 people; the puppeteers stand behind a curtained backdrop in a pool. All puppets are made of fig wood which goes along well with water. Then they are carved and painted. The themes of the shows are very familiar to Vietnamese people. They focus on the daily life of farmers and common aspects of Vietnamese spiritual life. Vietnamese water puppetry has been introduced to many countries all over the world and received much love from audiences. Foreigners don't understand Vietnamese, but they enjoy the shows because the puppets clearly demonstrate Vietnamese life and culture through their actions. Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre on Dinh Tien Hoang Street near Hoan Kiem Lake is the most popular theatre for water puppetry.

Read the passage, and then answer the questions. The Old Man and the Sea is a short novel written by the American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Bimini, Bahamas, and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction by Hemingway that was published during his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it tells the story of Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Florida.     In 1953, The Old Man and the Sea was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and it was cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to their awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Hemingway in 1954.