1.PLAN . 2. pages .
2.TEACHING . 3-7.pages .
3.LITERATURE LIST . 8. pages.
1.
1.THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA. 3pages.
2. GENERAL FACTS ON THE USA.4-5 pages.
3.WASHINGTON . 6-7 pages.
2.
The Vikings visited the continent of North America about a thousand years ago ,but they did not try to settle the land .
According to the writtensagas , Bjarni Herjolfsson was the first European to see the coast of North America and teel the story of his life there .
He was going from Iceland to Greenland but lost his way and went to America instead.
The century of the great geographical discoveries came five hundred years later .In 1492, Spain sent Christopher Columbus to discover a sea route to India.He knew that the world was round and he could rech India by sailing west . With three small ships he sailed for three months and in October 12,1492 he saw land . he thought it was India and gave the name “Indians” to the red-skin people who lived there. But it was an island not far away from the coast of North America. Columbus died believing that he had found the Far East and never understood that he had discovered a new continent.
Many other brave seamen went out to the new continent. In 1499-1500, Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian seaman, reached the coast of South America and explored the Bay of Rio de Janeiro, or River of January. He named the place after the month in which he and his men had found the bay. In one of his letters to his friends Amerigo wrote that he had discovered a new world. The new world was named after him—America, the land of Amerigo .
The great powers of that time –Spain, France and England—sent their people to colonize the new world .The Spanish came there to look for gold, silver and other metals. The French began a trade in animal skins with the Indians. The English came to live and to work there.
3.
The UnitedStates of America is a federal republic consisting of 50 states. Each state has its own government and constitution and is joined to the other by a federal government. Each state has its own capital . In some states it is the biggest city, for instance , Boston in Massachusetts,but in most states the capital is a smaller place, for instance, Sacramento in California or Albany in NewYork. Washington is the federal capital of the United States of America.
The territory of the United States is nearly the same as the area of Europe. It extends from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. In the north it has a long border with Canada, and in the southwest it is separated from Mexico by the Rio Grande River. Alaska, which became the 49th state in 1959, is separated from the continentalus US by Canada . Hawaii, which became the 50th state in the same year , is half-way between America and Asia.
Half of the area of the United States lies in the large basin between the Appalachian Highlands in the east and the Rocky Mountains in the west. About a third of the country in the west is dominated by high mountains(part of the Cordilleras).Here is the highest peak in the continental US, Mountain Whitney(4,418m).
The rivers flowing into the Atlantic are short .The main river entering the Gulf of Mexico is the Mississippi, the biggest river in the USA. Its most important tributaries are :
the Missouri, the ohio and the Arkansas.
The five Great Lakes –Ontario, Erie, Huron,Michigan and Superior– are on the Canadian border .All of them are navigable. The River Niagara, flowing from Lake Erie into
Lake Ontario, is famous for the Niagara Falls.
4.
The United States is rich in mineral recources .Petroleum is found in the states of Texas , Louisiana, Oklahoma and California. Natural gas is foun in the same areas as petroleum. The northern part of the the country is rich in coal and iron ore .