CUS

ADVANCED

A resource book of speaking activities

Adrian Wa ork

CAMBRIDGE

UNIVERSITY PRESS

D CUS

A resource book of speaking activities

Which is more difficult to do? Give or take? Listen or talk? Praise or criticise? Why do we remember some people and forget others? What's the difference between a good or bad rule? Who has most influence on your opinions? Would your ideal friend be beautiful or sincere?

These are just some of the questions asked in Discussions AZ Advanced, a photocopiable resource book of speaking activities designed to encourage lively and meaningful discussion among advanced level students.

•       offers a fresh perspective on a variety of discussion topics

•       encourages fluency through personalised activities

•       gives suggestions for follow-up speaking and writing activities

•       flexible and free-standing: activities can either be used in sequence or independently

•       easy-to-use format: teacher's notes and photocopiable student's material are on facing pages

•       subiect index: enables teachers to search for topics which fit in with the student's main coursebook

The accompanying cassette features a good variety of native speaker accents.

CAMBRIDGE

UNIVERSITY PRESS

Acknowledgements          4            No                       60

Home                     36

Intelligence             40

Justice                                             44

Language               52

Memory                   56

AC kn OWI ed m n ts

I would like to thank above all Angie Graham for getting this project started and for all her subsequent advice. Thanks also to my father, Basil Wallwork, for doing a lot of the legwork and dogwork and for passing on to me his interest in words; to Andreina Marchesi and Tommaso for being a constant source of inspiration; to the many students who were guinea pigs for my ideas; to Francesco Oriolo for his immense knowledge and wit; to LIST SpA for letting me use their equipment; to International House in Pisa, in particular Chris Powell, Lynne Graziani and

Antonia Clare; to Tau Pei Lin, Honor Routledge and Marcheline Frontini for their voices an ideas; to Robin Routledge for reading the early proofs; to my American, Dutch, South African and Ugandan neighbours for access to their brains and book shelves; and to Lindsay White help and patience in the early stages.

I would also like to thank the following people at Cambridge University Press who suffered a lot ofburning e-mails and faxes: Jeanne McCarten, Geraldine Mark, Nóirín Burke and Isabella Wigan. Thanks also to James Richardson, who produced the recordings, for being amazingly patient. I would also like to thank Felicity Currie for providing the listening extract of old English on p. 24.

Particular thanks are due to the following institutions and teachers for their help in testing the material and for the invaluable feedback which they provided: Jonathan Beesley, The British Council, Kuala Lumpur; Chris Evenden, CentroBritánico-Centro Español, Oviedo, Spain; Bob Hastings,

Eurolingua, Córdoba, Spain; Sue Fraser, IALS, Edinburgh;

Elizabeth McCallan, Executive Language Services, Paris, France; Sean Power, ELCRA Bell, Geneva; Tony Robinson, Eurocentres, Cambridge; Zofia Bernacka-Wos, Poland.

Possibly my greatest thanks should go to the authors ofthe 200 or so books that I read while preparing this book and its accompanying volume. I would particularly like to thank the following sources which provided me with a wealth ofideas: Time magazine, The Sunday Times, The Times, R. Ash: The Top 10 of

Everything, The Oxford English Dictionary, The Penguin Thesaurus, Webster's New World Dictionaty (third college edition), C. Wade and C. Travis: Psycholoo.

The author and publisher are gratefill to the following for permission to use copyright material in Discussions A—Z Advanced While every effort has been made, it has not been possible to identi6^r the sources ofall the material used and in such cases the publishers would welcome information from the copyright owners: Mel Smith and GriffRhys-Jones for the extract on p. 9 from The Smith andJones World Atlas; Laurence Pollinger Ltd. for the extract on p. 9 from the Letters ofScott Fitzgerald (UK and Commonwealth rights); US and Canada rights to the extract on p. 9 exerpted with permission of Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster from F. Scott Fitzgerald — A LiJè in Letters by Matthew J. Bruccoli. Copyright (0 1994 by the Trustees under Agreement dated 3rd July, 1995 created by Frances Scott Fitzgerald Smith; Reed Books (UK and Commonwealth rights) and Simon & Schuster (US and Canada rights) fòr the extract on p. 1 1 from How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie; Virgin WH Allen for the extract on p. I l from The Art ofLiving by Princess Beris Kandaouroff; HarperCollins Publishers for the extracts on pp. 16 and 76 from Keywords, the extract on p. 93 from The Book ofTests by M. Nathenson and the extract on p. 29 from Psychology, 2nd ed. by Carole Wade and Carol Travis; Ancient Art & Architecture Collection for the photo (Mereworth House) on p. 17;

Acknowledgements

Popperfoto for the photos (The Beatles, Johann Sebastian Bach) on p. 17 and p. 97; Prentice-Hall for the extract on p. 17 from SOCIOLOGY Understanding Society; the estate ofG.L. Brook for the extracts on pp. 25 and 105 from An Introduction to Old English by G.L. Brook; Oxford University Press for the extracts on pp. 28 and 29 from Phobia — the Facts by D. Goodwin; the University of Natal for the extract on p. 31 from Focus, 1994, Vol. 5, no. 4; Plenum Publishing Corporation for the extract on

p. 32 from Sex Roles, Vol. 23; Simon & Schuster for the extract on p. 33 from I've done so well— Why do Ifeel so bad? by Celia Hallas and Roberta Matteson; The Reader's Digest Association Ltd. for the extract on p. 35 from The Right Word at the Right Time C) 1995; Panos Pictures for the photos on pp. 39 and 99; Funk &

Wagnalls Corporation the in(Ormation on p. 39 from The World Almanac and Book ofFacts; Express Enterprises fòr the extract on p. 41 from the Sunday Express, 19 July 1992; Express Newspapers plc for the photo on p. 41; Open University

Press for the extract on p. 42 from The Skilful Mind by

A. Gellatly; Prion for the extract on p. 47 from Mindwatching by H. & M. Eysenck; Little Brown (UK) Ltd. for the extract on p. 47 from Book ofChildcare by H. Jolly; the British Association of Non-Parents for the extracts on pp. 48 and 49 from their leaflet No Regrets (Ibe Casefor Remaining Childless); the British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF) for the extract on p. 50 from their leaflet; Souvenir Press Ltd. for the illustrations from Signs Make Sense by C. Smith on p. 55; Penguin UK for the extract on p. 58 from Conceptual Blockbusting by James L. Adams (UK and Commonwealth rights) and the extracts on pp. 85 and 104 from Sociolinguistics by Peter Trudgill; Addison-Wesley for the extract on p. 58 from Conceptual Blockbusting by James L. Adams (US and Canada rights); Routledge for the extract on p. 65 from Pros and Cons by M. D. Jackson; National Magazine Company for the extract on p. 67 from Cosmopolitan magazine; Omnibus Press for the extract on p. 69 from Bob Dylan in his own words; Econ for the extract on p. 71 from The Personality Test by Peter Lauster; British Telecommunications plc for the extracts and illustrations on pp. 72, 73 and 75 from their booklet The Language ofSuccess; School of Living for the extract on p. 77 from Go Ahead and Live by Mildred J. Loomis; the Equal Opportunities Commission for the extract on p. 78 from The Inequality Gap; the Academic Press for the definitions on p. 81 from the Academic Press Dictionary of Science and Technolow; Victor Gollancz and Virginia Kidd Literary

Agency fòr the extract on p. 83 from The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin; MIT Press for the extracts on pp. 84 and 104 from

Style in Language by T.A. Sebeok; Piatkus Books and Dr Lillian Glass fòr the extract on p. 86 from Coefzdent Conversation by

Dr Lillian Glass; Stanley Thornes fòr the extract on p. 87 from

Teaching Children to Think by Robert Fisher; W.W. Norton & Company fòr the extract on p. 89 from Robert Adams' translation of Utopia by Sir Thomas More; Brooks/Cole Publishing Company fòr the extract on p. 95 from Social Psycholow on the 80s by Deaux/ Wrightsman; WWF UK fòr the extract on p. 99 from The WWF Environment Handbook; Mary Evans Picture Library for the photos (UFO and When Martians landed) on

p. I l l ; Planet Earth Pictures for the photos (satellite, cluster of colliding galaxy, Vlar telescope, pace telescope) on p. 1 11.

Illustrations by Graham Cox: pp. 29, 33, 63, 65, 85, 95;

Chris Pavely: pp. 13, 55, 57, 61, 81; Graham Puckett: pp. 33 (top),

37 (bottom); David Seabourne and Tommaso Wallwork: p. 83; Peter Seaboume: pp. 49, 51; Gary Wing: pp. 17, 37 (top), 45, 67, 71, 77, 109. Page layout by David Seabourne.

Summary for those in a hurry

•  Structure: There are 26 topic-related units — one for each letter of the alphabet. Topics overlap between units, which means that you can pass from one unit to another, and so give your students a sense of thematic continuity.

•  Level and use: Use the book both for back-up material to your coursebook, or independently as the basis of a conversation course and try it with lower levels as well.

•  Where to begin: If your class is not familiar with discussion activities, the best entry point is Talk which has several activities to get students thinking about how to conduct a discussion. Otherwise start with the warm-ups from Advice or Zodiac.

•  Subject and Links index: Use the subject index to decide what exercises to use. This index is designed to help you locate exercises which will tie in with your coursebook; many unit titles and headings of typical upper level coursebooks are covered in this index. You can use the links index to plan a conversation course — it tells you the various connectlons among units.

•  Choosing exercises: Don't feel you have to do every exercise from every unit. Combine exercises from various units as you choose both from this book and from Discussions A—Z Intermediate. Don't follow the order of the exercises unless you want to (or unless advised in the teacher's notes).

•  Timing: Exercises vary in length from five to about ninety minutes depending on your students' level and interest in the topic. Don't impose any rigorous time limits unless you have to, but don't persevere with a discussion that's getting nowhere. However, it is important that students feel they've completed an exercise and been linguistically productive in the process.

•  Personalisation: Try and relate exercises to current events and things relevant to your own students' lives.

•  Taboo: Some topics may be sensitive for your students — they are marked with a . Don't let this put you off doing them unless you're sure they will react badly. If you think they might, make sure you have back-up material ready (for example, exercises from the Qiizzes unit).

•  Discussion groups: Most of the discussion exercises work best in pairs or small groups. Explain to students that you won't interrupt them while they talk (unless you notice them repeatedly making the same mistake), but that you'll note down mistakes they make for analysis at a later point. In any case, before embarking on an exercise you should anticipate any vocabulary and grammar problems that are likely to arise, and revise these beforehand if necessary. With more reticent classes you may need to drill or feed them with relevant structures useful for the specific discussion task.

•  Other uses: Don't think that you have to use this book just for discussions. Some ideas could lead you on to other areas: vocabulary, grammar, composition writing etc.  Flexibility: Be flexible. Choose your own path through the book. Use the link cross references on the teacher's pages to guide you. Select and adapt the tasks to suit your students' needs. Rework the exercises or use them as models for your own ideas.

•  Comments: Please write to me at Cambridge, or e-mail me (adrian@list.it) and let me know your opinrons and criticisms on the book.

Speaking

Most exercises on the student's page consist of a set of questions to discuss. When these questions are preceded by an introductory reading passage they should not be treated as comprehension questions but as a springboard to discussion. If you see no logical ordering in the numbering of the questions let students read all the questions, and then just select the ones they wish to discuss. Alternatively divide students into small groups and ask them to discuss, say, only the first five often questions. Those who finish their discussion quickly can be asked to move on to the other questions, whilst the more loquacious groups are given enough time to finish their debates.

Don't let students think they have to stick to answering the questions directly. Let them float around the questions and bring in their own ideas.

Questions not discussed in the lesson can be set as titles for compositions for homework; or summaries can be made of those questions that were in fact answered during the lesson.

Reading

Most of the texts are authentic and come from a variety of sources; some have been condensed or slightly modified. They have been kept deliberately short and are not designed for developing specific reading skills. Encourage students to guess:

 where the texts come from — newspapers, scientific journals, women's magazines, letters, interviews, literary works (for sources see PA)  why they were written — to inform, instruct, convince, advise, shock, amuse, deceive  who they were written for — age group, sex, nationality, specialist, casual reader  when they were written (where applicable) Although the aim of the text is not to act as a comprehension exercise, students should obviously understand most of what they read. Before photocopying, underline in pencil any parts that you feel are essential for

an understanding of the text. Check the meaning of these before going on to look at the text in more detail.

[Introduction

Depending on the type of text as a written follow-up, students can:

•   rewrite the text from a different point of view.

•   imagine and recount what happened either before or after the event described in the text. Alternatively they write up an interview with the people mentioned in the text. This interview could even take place ten years later, to find out their new situations or feelings.

•   summarise the text, or simply delete any words or phrases that they consider could be redundant.

Listening

The listening exercises vary in level to a much greater extent than in the reading and speaking exercises and can be used with a good range of classes. These exercise are also designed to provide information and provoke discussion but some listenings can also be used as free-standing exercises to improve listening skills.

None of the listenings are referred to on the student's pages, so you should give clear instructions for the exercises. You will also need to dictate the comprehension questions, or write them on the board for students to copy. Feel free to adapt the questions or invent your own to suit the level or interests of your students. Pre-teach any essential vocabulary that has not already come up during the preceding discussion exercise.

Some listening exercises feature native speakers doing the exercise on the student's page. Ask students to read all the questions but without answering them. Then get them to listen to the first two speakers. On the first listening they identify which point is being discussed. After the second listening elicit the structures and vocabulary used — this will then serve as a basis for the students' own discussions. The other speakers can then be used at the end of the exercise, purely as a comprehension test.

Culture and maturity

I am English, but you will notice that there is a considerable American input too. Most of the subjects covered thus reflect a fairly liberal Anglo-Saxon background, and my age (born 1959). Some subjects may encroach on taboo areas in your students culture and you should take care to consult students in advance about any potentially delicate topics where they might feel embarrassed or exposed. A very simple way to check possible problems areas, is to give each student a copy of the subject             (page 112) and get them to tick any subjects they would feel uneasy about. I would also get them to write their name, so that you know exactly who has problems with what. This means that such subjects could be discussed in such people's absence. This is a good introductory exercise in itself, and combined with the Talk unit, should get your students analysing what verbal communication is all about. Also, check out any extreme or prejudiced opinions your students may have, whilst these could actually be used to good effect (as a kind of devil's advocate), they might upset other students.

Don't attempt subjects that are simply outside the realm of your students' experience — no amount of imagination is going to be able to surmount the problem. But if you ask them to pretend to be part of a doctors' ethics committee, obviously they can't be expected to know what a real doctor would do, but that shouldn't stop them saying what they would do if they were in such a position.

If you do unwittingly embark on an exercise which students find too difficult or embarrassing, or which promotes little more than uneasy silence, just abandon it — but try and predict such events and have back-up exercises at the ready. Feel free just to ignore some exercises completely, but tell students that the nature of the book is not to cover every exercise systematically and in order. You'll soon learn the types of exercises that will go down well with your students. I would suggest letting the students decide which exercises they want to do.

Most exercises in this book have been designed to be very flexible, and an exercise that might appear to be too difficult or delicate can often be adapted to suit your students' needs. In countries where students are likely to seize on a writing exercise, however brief the writing, and use it as a substitute for speaking rather than a prelude to it, you may need to rethink some of the exercise instructions. For example, in one exercise students are asked to rate some moral values (Values) from one to five according to unacceptability. Don't let them get hold of their pen and merely write numbers, but give them clear cut instructions to which they can't avoid talking: 'Look at the situations below and decide if they are wrong. If they are wrong, how wrong are they? Tell your partner what you think and give reasons for your opinion'. (I am indebted to Jonathan Beesley of the British Council in Kuala Lumpur for these and other suggestions.)

If you feel students cannot cope with a certain exercise because they wouldn't know what to say, then you might have to provide them with a concrete stimulus. For example, students are asked to answer the question 'What difficulties do homeless people have?' If they have difficulty in putting themselves in other people's shoes, you could put them into pairs — one Journalist and one homeless person and give them role cards. On the journalist's card you specify areas to ask questions about (e.g. sleep, food, clothes, money, friends, consideration of and by others — but in a little more detail than this). On the homeless person's card put information that could answer such questions (e.g. sleep under a bridge, at the station, hospice, etc.). Alternatively, in pairs again, they imagine they are both homeless people, but from two different parts of the world (e.g. New York and Calcutta). By giving them such obvious differences (climate, lifestyle, culture), you get them focusing their ideas more clearly. This principle can be applied to many of the exercises.

How to conduct a discussion

The word 'discuss' originally meant to 'cut' with a similar origin as 'dissect'. This meaning, along with its current use of 'examining the pros and cons' gives a good idea of what a discussion is all about, i.e. a dissection of an argument into various parts for analysis, followed by a reassembling of all the relevant elements to a draw a conclusion from the whole. Discussions A—Z is based on this principle.

One problem with question answering is that without some coaching on how to answer questions, students may simply answer 'yes', 'no', 'it depends' etc., and then move on to the next question. Many of the questions in this book have been formulated so that they avoid a simple 'yes/no' answer. Others are designed to be deliberately provocative.

Consider the following case. Students are asked whether it should be up to the government or the people to decide on where people can smoke. If students simply answer 'the government' or 'the people', there won't be much to discuss.

Alternatively, students (either alone or in groups) should first write down a set of related questions, e.g. Where are smokers free to smoke now? Why do we need to change this? Why do we need a law to tell us we can't smoke in       certain places? Who would object to anti-smoking legislature? Who would benefit? What should be done with offenders? etc. The process of formulating and answering these types of questions will get the students really thinking, and along with some examples from their own personal experience, should lead to intense language production.

The same kind of approach can be used for brainstorming. Suppose you're brainstorming the students on the ideal qualities of a judge. Without any prior instruction, most people will come up with personality characteristics such as intelligent, well-balanced, rational, experienced — which is fine. But it would be more productive if students first wrote down a set of questions related to judges: Why do we need judges? What is a judge? How old should he be? Even the phrasing of questions can be indicative of how we see a judge — why do we refer to a judge as 'he' and not 'she'? Are men more rational, and therefore better judges than women, and why is it that there are so few female judges? You should add other, less orthodox questions, to provoke your students into thinking about other aspects of being a judge, e.g. how relevant are race, height and physical appearance, hobbies etc.? Students may think that the height of a judge is totally irrelevant; this is probably true (though research has shown               that there is a link between height and intelligence), but

often by saying what is not important we get a clearer idea of what is important. As a follow-up activity students could design a training course for judges.

Now let us see how we can apply the same approach to problem-solving activities. Suppose your students are part of a government board which gives funding to scientific research projects. Their task is to decide which one of the following projects to give money to: (1) a group of marine archaeologists who have found Atlantis; (2) some alchemists who have found a way to convert the Grand Canyon into gold; and (3) some genetic engineers who have developed a way to produce square fruit. In order to generate a valuable discussion students should begin by writing down a series of related questions: Why did the scientists involved propose the projects? Is there a real need for such a project? Is it practical? Do we have the necessary technology to carry it out? Should such projects be funded by the government or by private enterprise? Who would benefit and why? etc. Then, when they are into their discussion, they should try and extend their arguments and reasoning and see where it takes them.

For example, a discussion on Atlantis might, if pre-questions have been written, lead naturally into an analysis of what we can learn from history, how and why legends arise, why archaeology of any kind is important, what things we can learn from past civilisations, how our past affects the present, etc.

In summary, this approach to discussion involves:

•  A pre-discussion activity where students, either in groups or Individually, write down related questions, some of which you, the teacher, can feed.

•  A discussion initiated by answering such questions, and if possible, drawing on students' own personal experiences.

•  The logical or illogical extension of ideas brought up by the discussion.

•  A round-up of conclusions involving cross-group questioning followed by whole class feedback.

•  A written summary for consolidation.

The result is obviously a much fuller and productive discussion, in which you have more time to note down any recurrent mistakes, and students to let themselves go and practise their English. Nor are the benefits solely linguistic: there is a great deal of satisfaction in having your mind stretched and producing interesting and often unexpected ideas and results.

Warm-up

•  This exercise can be used as a first lesson with a new group.

•  In a monolingual class tell your students (in groups) to discuss and write down some advice for foreigners (e.g. you) about living and surviving in their country. Some should be real advice and some should be invented. They then read out their advice and you have to tell them whether you think it is real advice or invented — this will obviously work particularly well if you really have just arrived in their country. Then you do the same to them, i.e. give them advice about your country and they have to identify from what you say whether the advice is real or invented. If this is your first lesson they can also identify which country you are from.

•  As a follow-up reading exercise, photocopy the introduction from a tourist guide (written in English, e.g. The Rough Guide) where it talks about the general characteristics of the people ofyour host country. Students read the extract and then discuss, initially in groups and then with you, whether they agree with what the guide says.

•  In a multilingual class, before students have had the chance to get to know each other and discover where they come from, tell them to write some advice for visitors to their country (only true information). In groups they then read out their advice and the other students have to guess their country of origin.

Writing

 • Students imagine a foreigner has come to their country.  They are in three different historical periods: stone age, middle ages and 19th century. Their task is to write down two or three pieces of advice for each period that they would give to this imaginary foreigner. In groups they then read out at random the pieces of advice. The others have to decide which period the advice refers to and whether they agree with it or not.

1 Tips for tourists

•  Students first identify the maps and flags of the various countries shown in the illustrations. Get feedback and give answers.

Advice

•  Students now read the advice for tourists and in groups identify which country is being referred to (note that there are three extra countries illustrated). Give answers.

1 Australia 2 Saudi Arabia 3 Japan 4 Peru 5 Nonvay (Oslo) 6 USA 7 Kenya

 Finally, students discuss whether they have already visited or would like to visit those countries.

2 Good advice?

   Tell students to read the extracts and in groups to work out where the passages might have come from (book, magazine, play, etc.), who wrote them, who they were for, and when they were written. Get feedback and give them the information below. NB If the Shakespeare extract is too difficult just use the Fitzgerald one.

The first advice is from a letter written in 1933 by Scott Fitzgerald (author of The Great Gatsby) to his 12-year-old daughter who was away at school. The second is from Shakespeare's Hamlet and is Polonius's advice to his son Laertes before Laertes departs for France. Tell students that even most native speakers find Shakespeare's English hard to understand without a little practice. Inform students that thee/thou = you, thy/thine = your.

   Now ask them to decide whether the advice is good.  Finally, do the listening.

Listening

 Students hear some possible modern interpretations of six ofthe seven extracts from Polonius's speech. Their task is to match the version with the original.

lc 2a 3e 4f 5b 6g

 Basically I suppose it means um, well don't get into arguments, but if YOU do, make sure that the person you're arguing with

knows who they're dealing with.

2   I'm not sure em, something like, don't say what you're thinking and think hard before you do anything; is that it?

3   Buy expensive but not ostentatious clothes as people often judge you on the way you look; not sure I agree with that one.

4   Don't give or ask for money: one, you might lose the money or your friend, and hwo you might not keep within your budget.

5   Don't let go of loyal friends — too right.

6   Actually this is pretty much my motto: be true to yourself, if YOU do, YOU will be sincere with everybody else.

1 Tips for tourists

2 Good advice?

© Cambridge University Press 1 997

3 How to win friends

• Before reading the text, ask students to discuss in groups some of the best ways to win and keep friends.

• Tell students that there are 12 pieces of advice, on winning and keeping friends, from two very different books: one is called The art ofliving by someone with the unlikely name of Princess Beris Kandaouroff(basically a book on social etiquette), the other is one of the world's most successful business books, called How to winfriends and influence people by Dale Carnegie (originally published in 1936, with nearly ten million copies now sold).

• Students' initial task is to decide which pieces go with which book. However, it will soon become apparent that most pieces could fit both books, and the prime aim should be to discuss whether the advice is good or not. Students may like to add some more of their own rules of friendship.

Carnegie: 1—6: Beris: 7—12. Don't tell students beforehand that one halfisfrom one book and the other isfrom the other hook.

Follow-up

• Is it possible to have a real friendship with someone of the opposite sex? Is it true that the older you get, the more difficult it is to make friends?

4 Problems pages

• Explain what a problem page is (generally a page in a woman's magazine where readers write in with problems, which are then answered by an expert). Brainstorm students on the kinds of problems likely to be found on such pages and write a list on the board (adding any topics from the letters in the exercise that students don't think of). Students read the letters and match them with topics from the list. In groups students discuss what advice they'd give these

readers.

Listening

• Students hear some advice/opinions on the letters. They identify which answer goes with which problem, and then discuss the opinions.

IE 271 3C 4B 5B 6C 7E 81)

I It sounds to me as if she basically doesn't accept herself. She should stop thinking about altering her appearance and think more about her attitude to herself and her approach to other people. Maybe she should seek professional advice, first from her doctor and then from a psychotherapist. But I do feel sorry for her.

Advice

2  She seems to be trying to make a connection between the gypsy's curse and what happened later. There's no doubt that she's been very unlucky, but the only way to break the chain is to get support from the rest of her family and to think positively. I reckon when people get into the state Of mind she's in, they are almost encouraging, so to speak, negative things to happen. She really needs to break the vicious circle she seems to have got herself in.

3  These days I think people are iudged more on their merits than on their accent* and I think she should realise that it's probably more of a problem for her than for the people who listen to her. Britain certainly is a class conscious society, but things are changing, and anyway who wants to speak like the Queen? Anyone who's thinking of having a child at that age in my opinion is thoroughly selfish, It seems to me that scientists and doctors are really in some kind of perverse competition to see whose patient can deliver a baby at the oldest age possible. Science is enabling us to do things, that quite frankly, it would be better if we couldn't do. Why don't these people think more about the poor children they are going to have, who are going to grow UP with what looks more like grandparents than parents?

5   Why not? I mean we live far longer these days anyway, so it's not as if the child is going to miss out. And why always look at it from the child's point of view? And anyway at least she or he is going to have mature, economically stable parents to be looked after by.

6   1 know exactly what she means. The kids at my school always used to tease me for the way I spoke, and I actually ended UP asking my parents to give me elocution lessons. They refused, so I began to watch loads of old black and white films and tried to imitate the way the rich ladies spoke.

7   This woman needs her head seeing to. Does she realise how many women would give their left arm, so to speak, to look like her?

8   1 feel terribly sorry that we live in a society that cannot accept the inconvenience of having an old person in their house — and we're not talking about any old person, but a member of one's own family. There are still some tribes where the oldest member is considered to be the wisest, and I think that people forget that even in this age of advanced technology we can still learn a lot from the older members of our society. I remember that my old granny got shoved in an old people's home, but she kept ringing UP for a taxi to take her home. It was so sad. And they lose their spirit so quickly in those places. They're like waiting rooms for a cemetery. Horrible. I'd tell her to emigrate to Australia and live with her son.

3 How to win friends

4 Problems pages

© Cambridge University Press 1997

Warm-up

• Brainstorm students on what they associate with the word 'body'. For example, the various sciences use the word in different ways: in anatomy it is the largest and most important part of any organ, whereas in zoology it is the trunk of an animal, excluding the head, limbs and tail; in astronomy it is a moon, planet, star or other heavenly body; in graphics they talk about the body of a text, as opposed to headlines, captions, etc.; and in mechanical engineering it is the part of a vehicle in which passengers ride or a load is carried.

1 Can you live without it?

• Students look at the illustration of the exterior part of the human body on their page. First check that they know the names of the parts of the body. Then get them to choose the three most essential parts; not only in a physical/ utility sense but also in terms of how essential they are to one's sense of self. This is basically a prioritising exercise which should also include analysing what parts of our body we could manage without. You can extend this exercise by getting students to imagine how much they would insure various parts of their body for.

• Now get students to guess how much the interior parts weigh.

Weight in kilos: liver— 1.5, brain — 1.4 (male), 1.3 (female), lungs

 1.1 (total), heart — 0.3 (male), 0.26 (female), kidney — 0.3 (both).

Follow-up

• Students draw a (humorous) version of the human body with improvements; they then compare and discuss their pictures. Alternatively, students discuss how they would improve the human body (e.g. ability to fly, removable and replaceable/regrowable parts, ability to see in the dark, extra arms and legs, eyes at the back of or on top of head). They then talk about the consequences of these changes (e.g. If we had eyes at the back of our heads we would have to change our hairstyle; I wish I could fly then I wouldn't have problems finding a parking space).

2 Body language

• Focus students' attention on the illustrations on their page, but without analysing each illustration individually. Brainstorm students on why we need body language — aren't words good enough? Then orient the discussion in terms of what they can do with their hands (e.g. beckon people, put them in their pockets), what they can't do (vulgar signs), how they show respect, when laughing is permissible and what it means, how to show approval, how they kiss each other when meeting, etc. This activity should be more interesting as a whole class activity, rather than in groups.

Listening

 Students hear two teachers discussing their teaching experiences around the world in relation to body language. Students may like to guess the answers to these questions before listening.

Questions: 1 What may smiling mean in Japan? 2 What things do men do in Italy that the speaker found strange? 3 What does the hand gesture the speaker refers to mean in Italy? 4 How should you point to someone in India? 5 How should you beckon someone in Korea?

1 embarrassment 2 walking arm in arm, kissing 3 What do you mean? What's happening? 4 with chin 5 palm down

• After the listening students get into pairs to describe the illustrations to each other. The other student has to guess which illustration is being described, and what the meaning is.

 Finally, get students to read the facts on their page. To make the exercise more interesting white out the numbers and other interesting information, and get students to fill in the gaps.

A  ... and it was really embarrassing because winking means that YOU want a child to leave the room.

B  That's, that's really odd. YOU know one of the most embarrassing experiences I had was when I first arrived in Japan. I had this

all girl group, right, and I was telling them some stupid ioke, I don't remember what it was now, anyway because they were all smiling I thought that not only were they understanding what I was saying but that they were also enjoying it too. But I discovered afterwards that the more they were smiling the more they were getting embarrassed. Anyway that was the last time ( tried to be funny

A  Yeah, well in Italy where I taught for a couple of years you can say and do almost anything

B  YOU know, whenever I've been in Italy on holiday I've always been struck by the way the men go around arm in arm, and they kiss each other when they meet.

A  But did YOU notice how many gestures they Use ^e

B  Um,

A  There's one hand gesture that means 'What on earth are YOU

talking about?' or 'What's going on here?', a kind of incredulity sign; then there's one meaning that you're wanted on the phone, and .

B  Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course in Japan they don't use many hand gestures, in fact it seems to be like that pretty much all over the Far East. I know that in India they use their chin to point rather than their fingers; in Korea and think Hong Kong too, if they want to beckon YOU they'll never use their finger, but their entire hand with the palm down.

A                   I think in the Middle East they never Use their left hand at all.

B                    It, eh, must be a bit awkward if you're left-handed. A Yeah, right.

2 Body language

People in Britain stand about 0.5 m away from a person in an intimate context, 0.5—1.5 m (family, friends), 3—4 m (others).

Tests have shown that people are more influenced by how people say something than what they say. For example, if someone says something friendly but with an air of superiority (not smiling, head raised, with a loud dominating voice), it is the attitude of superiority which will have the lasting effect, not the words themselves.

People form 90% of their opinion of someone in the first 90 seconds.

In a conversation, the speaker should look at his/her interlocutor about 40% of the time, while the listener should look 65 ⁰/0 of the time. Direct one-to-one eye contact should last one and a half seconds.

Mothers touch their sons more than sons touch their mothers.

Fathers touch their daughters more than they touch their sons.

The number of times people touch each other depends on where they were born. During a one-hour conversation between two people in a bar in Puerto Rico the number of touches was 180 (in Paris 110, in London 0!).

                                                            13

3 Medical ethics

This exercise touches on some sensitive issues.

• Get students to focus on the title Medical ethics and elicit explanations. Inform them that health service costs have become so expensive that it is becoming impossible to treat all cases and soon they will have to be ranked in order of importance. Doctors are having to weigh up the cost of the operation and the benefits to the patient in terms of quality and duration of life. Doctors faced with these choices give high priority to prenatal care, birth control and immunisation; organ transplants, cosmetic surgery and eating disorders get low priority.

• Before they read the seven cases, students imagine they are on the ethics committee of a hospital. An ethics committee is a group of people who have to decide what is 'morally' right to do in circumstances connected with a patient's health. In this case students have to prioritise the seven cases. They should go on the assumption that if an operation is needed, and it is not done now, the opportunity will not arise again (though they may find this an unrealistic      constraint, it might happen in the future).

• I suggest two ways to approach this exercise. Give students a certain amount of money that they can spend (e.g. a total of $10 — obviously the total real cost would be several hundred thousand dollars.) Allocate a cost to each case. For example (1) $3 (2) $2 (3) $2 (4) $1 total (5) $1 total (6) $3

4 Out-of-body experiences

• Students read the text and discuss the questions in groups.

G) A 'rakehell' is a sorcerer or scoundrel.

Body

3 Medical ethics

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

4 Out-of-body experiences

1    What are the implications of being able to leave your body temporarily and visit the afterlife?

2    What benefits would there be of being able to be in two places at the same time, or of being able to materialise wherever you want? (And if you were the only person who was able to do this?)

3    Do YOU believe the story of Wilmot and his wife? Why? Why not?

4    Do you practise any activities such as yoga, transcendental meditation, hypnotism, etc.? I f you don't what do YOU think of people who do ^e

                  PHOTOCOPIABLE                                                                                                                                      15

This unit covers the concept of class in many of its different meanings. There is no logical connection between exercises; they can all be used separately.

'Class' originally referred to the six divisions of people in the         Roman constitution, which was then extended as a general term for a division or group. One of its main uses in England in the 17th century (it had been borrowed from Latin the century before) was connected with authoritative and scholarly study, and this sense of course remains today in terms of classes in schools, along with its other sense of ranking. Class with its social meaning really came into being in the Industrial Revolution, in which society was reorganised (1770—1840). Until that time, 'rank', 'estate' and 'order' had been used to express social position, and some snobs still refer (not always with tongue in cheek) to the 'lower orders'.              

At that time, people were born into a particular class and were stuck with it; social mobility was virtually unheard of. But our modern division into upper, middle and lower or working (plus all the subdivisions, e.g. lower middle) took a while to evolve. At one point some people distinguished between the 'productive or useful classes' and the 'idle or privileged  classes'. The term 'working class' was disliked by many because it implied that only those who belonged to such a class (typically manual labourers) actually worked. This gave rise to further distinctions; for example, the 'professional' and       'trading' classes, who did work, but not with their hands.

Warm-up

• Brainstorm students on what they associate with the word 'class' (see (Ð above + first-class transport/degrees/hotels/ food etc., i.e. a division according to grade or quality).

1 Social class and opportunity                   

• Students read the passage. As a whole class activity get students to hypothesise on the questions below. This, combined with the quetions on the student's page, could then lead on to a discussion on the USA, and students' opinions of the American dream.

Questions: 1 What kind of book does the extract come from? 2 In which country was it set? 3 When was it written? 4 Who are the two speakers? (age, sex, position in life) 5 Is what speaker one says true?

1 The Store Boy by Horatio AlgerJr, a 'rags-to-riches story ' 2 USA 3 around 1900 4 Ben is ayoungman who hasjust saved this wealthy oldish womanfrom the hands ofapickpocket. 5 This is basically the American dream, whichpresumably a lot of people must have and still do believe in.

Class

actually like to do these jobs? You may need to change the list to suit your students.

A survey in America ranked them in the following order: judge, physician (doctor), university professor, mayor of a large city, priest, novelist, police officer, carpenter, barber, truck (lorry) driver, restaurant cook, nightclub singer, taxi driver, garbage (rubbish) collector.

Students then decide if there is a direct correlation between the prestige ranking, and possible rankings in terms of money, responsibility and job satisfaction. They then answer the questions.

Listening

Students listen to an Indian student talking about the caste system in India. First brainstorm students on what they know about caste in India and then get them to answer these questions. (The tapescript is on page 18.)

Questions: 1 W'ho are the untouchables and what did

Gandhi call them? In what sense are they untouchable?

2 What kinds of things were untouchables not allowed to do? 3 Why didn't the British government do anything to help?

1 Lowest caste, 'harijan' or 'children ofgod: considered to be spritualpolluters. 2 They couldn't use water wells, wear certain coloured clothes, go into temples, send children to certain schools. 3 They didn 't want to risk revolt and thus become unable to exploit the country.

Follow-up

Students discuss what the Indian had to say about laws changing the way people think. The discussion could be extended to women's rights — do men still think it strange that women have the vote?

2 Classic and classical

Tell students to look at the illustrations (or bring in your own), and choose the element they like best in each pair (modern or classical). They then explain their choices to the other members of the.gróup. Discussion should move towards taste and changing fashions, tradition, etc.

Students will probably ask you the difference between 'classic' and 'classical'. If you look at the examples in the complete Oxford English Dictionary, the two would appear to have identical meanings. In modern English 'classic' generally refers to the best of its kind, an acknowledged level of excellence (as in a classic film or football match, or indeed the Classics themselves), whereas 'classical' is often used in a more artistic context to refer to a particular historical (but not historic!) period. For definitions of these and other -ic/-ical words, see Swan, Practical English Usage.

1 Social class and opportunity

1    In your country does a person's social position depend solely on merit and achievement (as i t purports to in the USA)? Is there such a thing as a classless society? Would YOU like your society to be classless?

2    What social class are YOU in and what effect does this have on your life? s i t the same as your parents? Will i t remain the same in the future?

3    Which kinds of people are the most respected and powerful ^e And who are the poorest/ most reiected, unemployed      Which class has the

6 Would YOU prefer to belong to a cultural/ social elite, or to be simply a member of the masses?

7 Is everyone born equal with equal opportunities? Should we all aspire to equality?

2 Classic and classical

PHOTOCOPIABLE

      3 Classroom                                                  4 Classification

• The illustration shows various ways of arranging desks in a classroom. Students should examine the pros and cons of the various solutions, and then decide which is best for their needs. They should think in terms of desk size,^xshape and location; the position of the teacher and whiteboard; the constraints of their own particular classroom; and most importantly how all these factors affect teaching, learning, understanding and general communication (both teacher— student, and student—student). They also need to decide whether different subjects require different kinds of classrooms, ideal numbers in a class, etc.

Listening

• Students hear two teachers discussing which layouts they prefer. Students should identify which layouts are mentioned (some are mentioned twice) and whether the teachers approve or not, and why. One layout (3), mentioned by one of the teachers, is not drawn on the student's page. After listening once ask students to identify which one it is, then play the piece again and get them to draw how they imagine  it is. They can then compare their drawings.

O O O O Oo OO oO oO

OO

I I think the two rows of desks could be good maybe in an exam situation where the teacher can control what's going on and make sure that nobody's cheating.

2  1 really like the one where the teacher's part of a circle and they're not predominant, they're not dominating the lesson in any way, they're lust one of the students and everybody can say their turn.

3  This is one that I thought would be good for project work, where you need a big work surface in the middle so pushing all the tables together, four tables all together to make one big square and the students all the way around the outside.

4  1 really don't like this one with two rows of students some of them sitting behind the other, the ones in the back row wouldn't be interested in the lesson at all.

5  1 think this one would be good for eh group discussions, small groups of people sitting round tables and the teacher sort of moving around, sometimes in the middle, and sometimes moving around the outside.

Class

Students decide their own criteria of judgement for classifying and comparing the categories (e.g. most useful/ essential, important, efficient etc.). For each group they should do two rankings, both of which they should be able to justify. With talkative classes you may need to reduce the number of categories; In any case you may find students wandering off the main task of ranking and merely chatting about the subjects — it's up to you to decide whether this matters or not.

Alternatively, tell students that there is one Item in each class that does not fit with the others; their task is to spot the odd one out. There are no correct answers to this exercise.

3 Classroom

cd

O                   o

                                                      O O                  0 o

o       oO O O O O         o       OO

0

                   O                 o                                    o           o o

o                    O                                     O O                                        o o            O O

4 Classification

drug               aspirin, cigarettes, cocaine, love food         flour, milk, salt, sugar

Warm-up

• Brainstorm students on what they consider to be difficult — don't be any more specific than that; just let the ideas flow, and write down the difficulties on the board. Then get them to copy the list and in groups rate the items according to difficulty.

1 Countries

• Students discuss which of the problems listed are currently or have been major difficulties for their country. Politicallyminded students might like to discuss solutions to some of thc problems.

Listening

• Students hear some people give their opinions on the difficulties of living in particular countries. Their task is simply to note down what these difficulties are.

1 political uncertainty 2 AIDS, gap between rich andpoor 3 unemployment and racism

1    The biggest problem, politically and socially speaking of China, is that it's not governed by laws but it's governed by people, and with the great political changes and instability in China, nobody can be sure of what is going to happen in the afternoon. So, it's a complete chaotic society,

2    The biggest problem in Uganda right now is the problem of Aids which is eh devastating the country a tot. There are lots of people dying and eh unfortunately nothing much can be done about it.

3   
1 think the most difficult thing in my country, in England, must be eh unemployment, it gets worse every year, and that's very hard to cope with. Also racism, despite all the different races that are there, racism's a big problem nowadays.

Difficulties

2 Brainteasers?

Students look at the problems illustrated on their page and without actually beginning to solve them, try to estimate very quickly which looks the easiest to solve and which the most difficult (rating them easy, quite hard and difficult); students should also identify the type of problem it is (mathematical, general knowledge, etc.). Get feedback from the whole class.

Now in groups, students have to resolve the problems. Give them a time limit, and see which group does the best. Then get feedback again to find out whether their estimations of difficulty coincided with reality.

1                   Suppose that the trainfor Manhattan left at 10.00, 10.10, 10.20 etc., and/or Bronx at 10.01, 10.11, 10.21. This means thatfor the man to catch the Bronx train he must arrivejust before 10.01; ifhe arrives after 10.01 but before 10.10 (i.e. a span ofnine minutes as opposed to one) he will always catch the Manhattan train. Simple really!

2                   This is part ofa children 'sjoke, which ends (i.e. after the question 'Doyou give up?) with 'So did the donkey.' Mostpeople tend to think that ifyou give them a problem to solve then there has to be a solution.

3                   (a) man — as children we crawl onfourfeet, as adults two, as old people we may need a walking stick or two (b) in the dictionary

(c) a bald head

4                   children, data, mice (this like 5 cannot be reasoned over, eitheryou know them oryou don't).

5                   9: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. However, new planets are still being discovered: two in 1995/6.

6207

7

1 Countries

birth control           gap between rich and poor    inflation                         political uncertainty        terrorism

2 Brainteasers?

1    A man who lives in New York has two friends, one who       6 How many squares are there in this picture?

2    There was a donkey alone on one side of the river and on the other there were some delicious carrots. The river was very wide and deep, so the donkey couldn't turnp over it, and so long he couldn't walk round it. There was no bridge or boat and he couldn't fly and he couldn't swim. So how did he get across? How? 7 Can you divide this figure into four equal parts?

Do YOU give up?

3    Answer just one of the following

a  What goes on four feet, then two feet, then three But the more feet it goes on the weaker it be?

b Where does Friday come before Thursday?

c  What is it that no-one wishes to have, yet which noone wishes to lose?

4    What are the plurals of these words: child, datum mouse2

5    How many planets are there? Can YOU name them?

3 Proiects

•  Do the warm-up first. Then students imagine that they've been given the projects to do for their boss/teacher/leader or whoever. Their task is firstly to decide very quickly which would be the easiest project to do (in terms of skills and knowledge required). Get class feedback.

•  Then in groups students should choose one or two projects, and do an in-depth analysis of what such work would entail. You might consider excluding projects 9—11, ifyou feel they might go against your students' values.

•  Alternatively, or in addition, they could classify the projects      according to which is the easiest, most difficult, most fun (or the one they'd most like to do), most time consuming, most dangerous, etc.

•  In all cases, students should think ofwhy these projects might have been conceived in the first place. Examples: Project 3: What is the current school leaving exam? How does this compare with exams in other countries? What are the problems with these exams? How could these problems be resolved? Do we really need a final exam anyway? Project  10: Why might they want to kidnap the child? What do they want to obtain? What would be the consequences for the child? How would students themselves feel about doing it?

Listening

• Students hear one person discussing which he would find the most difficult and why. With low level students simply tick off the ones he mentions and whether he thinks they are difficult or not. More advanced students should also list his reasons, where possible.

7 most difficult 1 difficult 5 difficult 10 easy 9 easy

Difficulties

4 Dilemmas

First, ask students to insert appropriate verbs into the gaps; they can do this either individually or in groups. You can make it easier by writing the verbs on the board and getting students to insert them into the appropriate places. Get feedback and give students the answers.

1 learn 2follow 3 be 4 obey 5fake (show) 6 do 7 read 8 acquire or achieve 9 keep 10 accept

Now get them to choose the answers. In some cases they have to simply choose one of four possibilities (e.g. l), other times they have to underline one of two possibilities (e.g. 4). They should then discuss the questions. In addition, they can also decide (where appropriate) which are the least (rather than the most) difficult. Some of these are a little heavy; you might need to be selective in the ones you ask your students to do. On the other hand, you might also like to add items.

As class feedback, ask students which ones they had most difficulty in answering, either in terms of category or the elements within each category.

1    Calculate the exact distance beM/een New York and your birthplace.

2    Design a house specifically for old people.

3    Devise a new form of examination for school leavers.

4    Dub an American film into your own language.

5    Find and interview the oldest man in the world.

6      Raise $ 1 00 000 for an extension to your school

7      Select the three most important books ever written.

8      Write the script for the first episode of a soap opera

9      Hijack a plqne

10 Kidnap an important politician's child

1 1 Rob a million dollars from a bank

1 Which is the most difficult to

(a) to ride a bike

(b) to swim

(c)  to drive

(d) to Use a computer

2      Which is the most difficült to

(a)  an instruction manual

(b)  a recipe

(c)  a road map

(d)  your teacher's explanations

3      Who is it most difficult to

(a)  a parent or a child

(b)  a teacher or a student

(c)  a woman or a man

4      Which are the most difficult to

(a)  religious laws or state laws

(b)  your conscience or your desires

(c)  your parents or your teachers

5      Which is the most difficult to

(a)  intelligence

(b)  interest

(c)  laughter

(d)  surprise

(e)  sympathy

6      Which is the most difficult to

(a)  give or take

(b)  listen or talk

(c)  praise or criticise

(d)  speak in public or confide in private

7      Which is the most difficult to

(a)  newspaper

(b)  novels

(c)  poetry

(d)  religious texts

8      Which is the most difficult to

(a)  friendship or love

(b)  happiness or wealth

(c)  intelligence or beauty

(d)  a successful marriage or SUCCeSSfUI career

9      Which is the most difficult to

(a)  a secret

(b)  a vow

(c)  one's health

(d)  youth

(e)  principles

10Which is the most difficult to

(a)  rejection in love

(b)  loss of all possessions through an earthquake

(c)  never having one's prayers answered             

(d)  death of a close relative or friend

1 Old English

•  Before handing out the photocopies, do the listening exercise.

Listening

•  Students hear the first lines of an English poem — The Battle ofMaldon. The poem begins mid-sentence - it is only a remnant. Offer a prize to whoever guesses what language it is.

(There is no tapescriptfor this listening.)

•  Now get students to look at the text (from the first history book written in English) and discuss the questions.

G) Old English (OE) was considerably more complex than modern English and to modern eyes looks like a mixture of German and Latin. OE had the advantage of being much more phonetic (i.e. words were pronounced pretty much as they were written). Odd plurals in modern English (e.g. mouse - mice) are remnants from OE where many nouns had different singular and plural forms.

2 Spelling

•  Write the following words on the board: bough, cough, enough, thorough, though. See if students know how to pronounce them. Ask them if they know why words that have a very similar spelling actually have a very different pronunciation.

•  Now write the word 'ghoti' on the board and ask them how to pronounce it. Tell them it's pronounced 'fish' (fas in enough , i as in women, and sh as in nation). This word was actually invented by G. B. Shaw to prove how absurd English spelling is.

•  Students now read the text, which is an explanation of why English spelling is so absurd.

⁶) During the Second World War, Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, reputedly told his listeners that if they lost the war they would havc to learn English and English spelling, he said, is very, very difficult. Goebbels wasn't joking, apparently there are ten ways to spell the sound ah /a:/ as in father in English, 32 ways to spell ee /i:/ as in tree,

in sheep. With regard to the computer study on English spelling, I conveniently forgot to mention in the passage that the 3 ⁰/0 totally unpredictable words are also among the most frequently used in the language (e.g. answer, are, come, could, does, gone). The reason why 'c' and 's' are often pronounced the same (as in nice and house) is due to their alteration by analogy with French words like grace — Old English is and mys became ice and mice.

Latin too, has also had a considerable influence on English. When the Romans invaded England in 55 BC, they brought with them many military words, they even renamed some English towns, in fact all English towns that end in -Chester,

£ester etc. were originally Roman military bases from the Latin castra (meaning military camp, which is itself the plural of castrum meaning castle, fort or fortress). In 697 AD, St. Augustine went from Rome to Ireland and then to England to convert the heathens to Christianity, thus beginning the introduction of many Latin religious words. The monks, who were some of the very few who could write until the end of the Middle Ages, wrote of course in Latin. During the Renaissance many English scholars went to Italy to learn Latin. When they came back to their homeland they found the English language barbaric in comparison to Latin and they began altering some English spellings to make them look more like Latin, for example the Old English word for debt was dette, the b, which has always been silent, was introduced because it made the word look more like the original Latin debitum, and thus less vulgar. In more recent times, Latin (and Greek too) has been the root of many new scientific and technical words.

Confusion in English spelling is also due to a phenomenon called the 'Great Vowel Shift', in which although certain spellings had become fixed, the pronunciation changed — all the long vowels gradually came to be more pronounced with a greater elevation of the tongue and closing of the mouth. Scholars claim they can prove this by comparing the rhymes in poetry and determining whether the same words rhyme over the centuries.

Follow-up

Give students a spelling test containing mistakes they typically make (e.g. ordinal numbers, Tuesday/Thursday, doubling, plurals and gerunds of words that end in 'y').

1 Old English

1    Do YOU think it would have been better if English had remained as it was 1000 years ago?

2    Can you read and understand your language of 1 000 years ago? Is it important to be able to do so?

3    Has your language become simpler over the years?

4    Is your language phonetic, i.e. is it pronounced as it is writtene

5    Are there many differences between your written and spoken language?

6    Do you think it is important to study your language, in terms of its origins and history, its literature and its grammar?

2 Spelling

Who says English spelling is difficult? A computer analysis of 17,000 English words has shown that 84⁰/0 were spelt according to a regular pattern and that only 3 ⁰/0 were so unpredictable that they would have to be learned totally by rote. Yet a professor at Cambridge University once declared that: 'I hold firmly to the belief ... that no-one can tell how to pronounce an English word unless he has at some time or other heard it.'

Believe it or not English spelling was at one time virtually phonetic: even the 'k' in 'know' was pronounced. At that time, the Old English period, words which now look as if they should rhyme (but don't), for instance, bough, cough, enough, thorough and though, actually all had a different spelling and it was therefore natural that they should be pronounced differently (boh, couhe, 3en03, þuruh, þeah).

 (O

responsible for the capital 'I' as in 'I am', and for introducing extra letters into existent words, such as the 'u' in tongue and guess.

The Dutch were also masters at introducing extra letters, but for economic not patriotic reasons. In 1465 printing was introduced into England, by a certain William Caxton, whose printing machines were manned by Dutch technicians. At that time printers were paid by the letter and as these technicians were a cunning bunch they knew that all they had to do to get more money was to make words longer; it is they in fact who are responsible for some of the ^G oughs' which they added indiscriminately. They also had the excuse of not being able to understand English handwriting, so when in doubt they just added a few letters here and there. Until the 16th century line justification was achieved by abbreviating and contracting words, and also by adding extra letters (usually an 'e') to words, rather than extra space.

During the same period, with Latin and Greek becoming of renewed importance due to the Renaissance, many strange spellings were introduced because the people employed to copy the books became confused between English, French and Latin — there were no spelling rules or guides to help them. Then someone had the bright idea of producing a dictionary, yet this was little more than a list of 'hard words'. After all, it was reasoned, why should a dictionary include the words everyone already knew?

3 Fun with English

• This is a good exercise for the last lesson with an advanced group. Make it competitive by seeing which group manages to answer the most questions correctly. If you're short of time, only do the first part (questions 1—9).

• In groups, students match the explanations (1—9) to the words, phrases and figures on their page. This should produce a lot of deduction language, as some questions initially seem to have more than one answer (e.g. 'radar' fits into two categories: acronym and a word that is spelt the same backwards and forwards); students may think that 'casanova' and 'saxophone' are composite words rather than being eponyms.

1 noon 2 close, lead, live, minute, row, tear, wind 3 brunch, motel 4 radar (radio detection and ranging), laser (light amplification by the stimulated emission ofradiation) 5 boycott, casanova, saxophone 6 rhythm 7 redivider (noon, radar) 8

  A man, a plan . . .; Was ita          9 boot, party

Again in groups, they answer the other questions.

10 It's a pangram, i.e. it's a sentence that contains every letter ofthe alphabet. People have invented shorter ones, butgenerally they 're totally meaningless.

11 The top 25 are: the, of,' and, to, a, in, that, I, it, was, is, he,for, you, on, with, as, be, had, but, they, at, his, have, not— nearly all these words derivefrom Old English. The most common letter is 'e: most common initial letter 't.'

121 (thefirstperson pronoun)

13forty, although, Wednesday

14 bet, get and set all rhyme, are all infinitives (met isn 't), and are all irregular (wet isn 't, jet is a noun).

15 The Oxford English Dictionary has around 615,000 words, but scientific words would add a million or so more. Wê have about 200, 000 words in common use (the result ofso many invasions in the early history ofthe language). According to Bryson, German has about 184,000 words in common use, and French around 100, 000. I know that the biggest Italian dictionary lists around 190,000 words. But, askyourself and your students: Does having more words imply thatyou can expressyourselfbetter? And does it mean thatpeople whose languages havefewer words can 't express themselves as well as us? I suppose it really depends on how many wordsyou know and how wellyou use them.

16 According to an article in The Guardian at twoyears ofage we have a vocabulary of300 words, atfive 5, 000, at twelve mostpeople reach their maximum ofabout 12, 000 (the number as used by tabloids). Graduates: 23,000, But other experts believe we have around 15, 000, about halfthe number Shakespeare used. A method outlined in Crystalfor establishing words known estimated that afemale office secretary in her 50s had a passive vocabulary Of38,300 and an active one of 31,500.

17 Give students some help before they give up. Tell them thatJames andJohn were doing a translationfrom Latin into English, and they had to translate the Latin equivalent of ^Shad had.' Anyway the answer is, ifyou haven 't managed to work it out byyourself James, whereJohn had had ^Shad: had had 'had had.' Had had' had had the examiner's approval. Easy really! Did anyone win the prize?

Writing

Give students the following instructions. (a) Write a sentence that makes sense using all the letters of the alphabet — the shorter the better. (b) Write a short story (about 100 words) without using the letter 'a'.

Useful further reading: Baugh: A history Qfthe English language; Bill Bryson: Mother tongue; Strang: A history of English; David Crystal: The English language.

1    A word which reads the same backwards, forwards and upside-down

2    Seven words with the same spelling but a different meaning and different pronunciation (homograph

e.g. live /IIV/ is a verb and /law/ is an adjective as in live concert)

3    Two words that consist of two words blended together,

e.g. smog = smoke + fog.

4    Two acronyms, e.g. AIDS = acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

5    Three eponyms, e.g. sandwich was named after the Earl of Sandwich

6    A word with no vowels.

7    A WOíd which is spelt the same backwards as forwards

8    Two sentences that read the same backwards and forwards (palindrome), e.g. Madam I'm Adam.

9    Two words, each of which can have several meanings, but whose spelling and pronunciation are the same (homonym)

• PHOTOCOPIABLE e

lazy dog.

1 1 What do you think are the five most commonly Used written words in English? And the most commonly  letter?

12  What word is the most commonly used in telephone conversations?

13  Which of the following words are spelt incorrectly? fourty, althought, misspelt, Wensday

14  What three things do three of these six words have in common? bet, get, jetf met, set, wet

15  How many words do YOU think there are in the English language?

16  How many words do YOU think the average English person knows?

17  Punctuate this sentence and win a free English course at your school!

In a Latin examination James where John had had had had had had had had had had had the examiner's approval.

1 Phobias

•     Before looking at the student's page, brainstorm students for a list of fears, theirs or other people's. These should include all kinds of fear from funfair attractions to snakes to open spaces. Write these on the board as they are called out. Students then copy the list and in groups discuss whether they suffer from any of them.

•     Below is a list of common fears, some of which you might like to add to the students' list:

AIDS, asking favours, bats, being a car passenger, being alone, being criticised/humiliated, being ignored, being in a strange place, being teased, being touched, being watched at work, blind people, blood, blushing, boredom, complaining about bad service, computers, crowds, dead animals, dead people, dentists, failing a test, fairground attractions (e.g. Big Dipper, etc.), God, growing old, high speeds, hospitals, hypodermic needles, impotence, job interviews, lifts, losing control, losing in love, losing parts ofyour body, making a fool of yourself, making speeches in public, mice, noise, not understanding jokes, people who seem insane, people with deformities, rape, snakes, suffocating, taking chances, taking exams, the dark, the opposite sex, the unknown, ugly people, using public lavatories, violence, water.

•     Students should also discuss what problems their fears cause, whether their fears are totally irrational or not, how they manage to overcome them, and what physically and mentally happens to people when they're afraid.

'I was so scared that my hair stood on end'. Why? When a cat's hair stands on end the cat looks bigger, so that with a bit of luck its enemy will be scared away. Other physical changes: your pupils dilate so that you can see better; your heart pumps your blood faster to give you more energy, and at the same time you become pale because the blood goes from your skin to the places it is needed — to the muscles, so that you can physically escape; and to the brain, so that you can think more clearly. You start to breathe faster because you need the oxygen. You stop digesting your food and you begin to sweat as this will evaporate and cool offyour muscles.

•     Alternatively, students look at the phobias in the first column on their page and decide which they think are the most common and whether they themselves suffer from them.

In the UK the order of commonness is: spiders, people and social situations, flying, open spaces, confined spaces, heights, cancer, thunderstorms, death, heart disease.

•    

Fear

Writing

 Students write a short story about a person who had one or more of the phobias.

G) The word 'phobia' comes from Phobos, a Greek God who was called upon to frighten one's enemies. His likeness was painted on masks and shields for this purpose. The medical terms for some of these phobias are: pogonophobia (beards), scopophobia (being stared at), gephyrophobia (crossing bridges), sitophobia (food), phasmophobia (ghosts), gamaphobia (marriage), eisoptrophobia (mirrors), neophobia (newness), triskaidekaphobia (number thirteen), hypegiaphobia (responsibility).

2 Childhood fears

 Students read the text and discuss the questions in groups.

(1)    The most common childhood fear is animals, beginning between the ages 2—4 and gone before age 10. The next most common is darkness, or rather what might be hiding in the darkness (ages 4—6). Other early fears: storms, thunder (and other loud noises), and lightning; being left alone for very long (until age 5). Fear of snakes, which affects about one third of children, is one of the few childhood fears which persists into adulthood. Little children don't have an innate fear of spiders, rats, and creepy crawlies (this is important to know for the experiment with Albert), yet for some unknown reason, by the time they're adults such fears may be very strong.

(2)    Other examples of conditioning: Pavlov's dog, religious sects, advertising, family pressures, subliminal messages, etc. The experiment with Albert took place in 1920, and for some reason, the psychologists did not have the opportunity to reverse the conditioning.

Writing

 Students choose one of the following as a composition title: (a) As a rule, what is out of sight disturbs men's minds more seriously than what they see. (b) Have you had any really terrifying experiences? Describe one. (c) Analyse why people like and dislike horror films.

3 Dirt

 Students read the text then cover it and try to remember (in groups or writing) all the strange things she does. They then re-read the text and finally discuss what life must be like for the woman's husband.

1 Phobias

cancer confined spaces

2 Childhood fears

1  

2   Assuming such experiments as the one with Albert are useful, should individuals be 'sacrificed' for the progress of science/ mankind?

3   Can YOU think of any other cases where conditioning is Used ² Can YOU resist conditioning?

3 Dirt

,

4 Manias

• Students read the text and discuss the questions. Students might find this exercise a little repetitive if they have already done the Phobias exercise.

G) (2) Other well-known manias: egomania, megalomania, nymphomania.

Listening

• Students hear a conversation, based on fact, about one woman's strange manias. Students answer the questions.

Questions: 1 Was the wife or the husband the first to be scared of going in lifts? 2 Name one of the rituals the wife went through before going to bed. 3 Did the husband know about these rituals before marrying her? 4 Did the therapist cure her? 5 What is the husband's problem and does his wife help him?

         1 wife 2 slippers; lights on and offthree times 3 probably not

4yes 5 now dependent on his wife, who in turn ignores him

 Gosh, did you see how that man was shaking in the lift? Sweat was just pouring off him.

B Yeah, I know. He's terrified of going in the lift without his wife.

A  Without his wife. That's an odd one.

B  Actually it's a really bizarre story, because she was the one who was originally scared of going in lifts on her own.

A  She was?

B  She must have had a traumatic upbringing or something but I know from a friend that it all began a few years ago when she started developing these strange manias. Like she had to walk upstairs with her eyes shut and if for some reason she had to open them while walking up, then she'd have to go back down and start again. Then before she went to bed she went through this ritual of having to put her slippers exactly in the mid point between the bed and the door, she even took a measuring tape with her when she went on holiday, so she could measure the distance out in hotels.

A  You're iokinge

B  No, and then she goes through this routine of turning the fights on and off three times before she goes to bed. Then soon after she got married .

A  Did her future husband know about all this?

B  I doubt it. Anyway soon after she got married she started to become dependent on her husband to do various things. And one of them was not being able to go in the lift without him. She iUSt panicked without him. Anyway the husband eventually persuaded her to get help from a therapist who miraculously managed to cure her.

Fear

A 

B  Oh right. Well probably the strangest thing in the whole of this story is that when his wife felt OK about going in lifts alone, or going shopping or whatever without him, he iUSt couldn't cope.

A  What do YOU mean?

B  Well, iust as she was totally dependent on him for doing virtually anything this apparently created a kind of co-dependence in him. So that when she no longer needed him, the iustification almost for his existence as a separate entity disappeared, you know he thought he was indispensable and all that, with the result that now he can't do anything without her. The sad thing is that she's totally callous and virtually ignores him.

A  That's terrible. But couldn't he just, YOU know, go to the therapist and get himself sorted out?

B  You would have thought so, yeah

5 The culture of fear

Students may find this exercise sensitive.

 Students read the passage and discuss the questions.

Natal (South Africa). Students should be able to work this out

from the names ofthe places, people and the black/white references. The piece was written in 1994 (i.e. during the big changes in South Urica).

Listening

 Students hear a father's fears for his young son. The task is simply to note down these fears.

loss oflimbs, drugs, abuse, narrow-minded teachers.

I think you fear totally different things for your child than YOU do for yourself. I suppose the thing that worries me most, more than him dying almost, is that he might have some kind of accidenf and lose his arms or legs or something. When that kind of thing happens to you, I think you learn to accept it, when it happens to youcchild, you feel directly responsible, even if you weren't there at the time. I also worry that he might take drugs, get abused by some maniac; but even less dramatic things, like his teachers might try and curb his imagination and make him conform too much to their way of thinking.

4 Manias

Some people's insecurities manifest themselves in obsessive

behaviours. A dipsomaniac, for example, has an abnormal and insatiable craving for alcohol. Those afflicted with kleptomania have a compulsive desire to steal things they don't actually need. More dangerous are pyromaniacs who feel compelled to start destructive fires. Other kinds of manias involve strange rituals to be performed when doing certain things. People who have developed rhythmmania, for example, give themselves a rhythm while doing something. This means that they will pace themselves to the door saying 'one two three, one two three' until they reach the door, then 'one two three' while they open it. This procedure is repeated for everything they do and if they get interrupted in the middle, i.e. before they've reached three, they have to go back and start again.

5 The culture of fear

1    Analyse the implications of the four manias in the text both for the people afflicted, their immediate family, and society in general

2    Do YOU know of any other kinds of mania?

3    What would be the consequences of having any of the following manias?

anglomania (exaggerated liking for and imitation of English CUStOmS/ manners, institutions), ca/lornania (the delusion that one is beautiful), chronomania (perfectionism in time keeping), metromania (obsession for composing verse/ poetry), dromomania (wandering) hypomania (being always on the go), monomania (excessive interest in one thing), mythomania (compulsively telling lies and believing them) nostomania (excessive nostalgia), sophomania (belief in one's own wisdom)

Children suffer intolerably for the action and follies of their elders.

The horrors of the lives of some of the township children which

Pietermaritzburg, has come across, can make one weep. They live in a society which journalist Khaba Mkhize described as 'a community at war with itself. There have been so many deaths that most people have lost their sense of weeping.' White children also have been brought up in a culture of fear, many taught that the world is unsafe and that they should not trust anyone.

'It is not only the political and criminal violence. Studies have shown that one in ninc boys have been sexually abused, defined as any unwanted sexual attention by an adult. Domestic violence agamst children is not limited to any social group, occurring m thc richest and poorest of households,' says Killian.

'Thc fear of today's children is primarily an interpersonal fear — a fear that somc othcr pcrson is going to harm them — which is a far more strcssful than a fcar, for cxamplc, of a nuclear war, the overwhelming fear cxprcsscd by the youth in Europe a dccadc ago,' says Killian.

 ©

1    What country do YOU think is being referred to in the article? What led you to this conclusion?

2    Do the fears mentioned reflect any of your own or your children's fears?

3    Who has the most to fear in your country?

4    What are the big fears of your generation? How do they differ from previous and future generations?

5    Which of the following figures do you fear: your parents partner, teacher, classmates, priest, police, army? 6 On what occasion in your life have you been the most

G) 'Gender' was originally used to classify nouns. Gender is now also used to distinguish between male and female behaviour: 'gender identity' (self awareness that one is either a male or a female), 'gender role' (the image that an individual presents to others based on culturally defined concepts of masculinity and femininity), 'gender specific' (of or limited to either males or females, e.g. eyes and hair colour are not gender specific), and 'gender gap' (the apparent disparity between men and women in values, attitudes, voting patterns, etc.).

Warm-up

• Before handing out photocopies or introducing the subject of gender, dictate these sentences: 1 A business executive discovers that a long-time employee has been stealing from the company. What should the executive do first? 2 A robber pulls a gun on a bank teller. What should the executive do first? 3 Someone witnesses a pedestrian being hit by a car. What should this person do first? 4 A relative is trying to give up smoking. What should the relative do first? 5 A nurse discovers a hospital patient has been given blood contaminated with the AIDS virus. What should the nurse do first?

• Students then try to 'image' or 'visualise' the situation and then write down one or two sentences to describe what the various people should do in the various situations. Don't let them ask any questions that might give the game away. The aim of this exercise is not immediately obvious. It is a test to see which pronoun students use when they describe the situation and what gender they see when they are imaging it. This exercise was invented by the author of a university paper on sexist language.

• Get some students to read out their sentences and ask them why they used 'she' for the 'nurse' and 'he' for the executive, and 'he' for the witness and member of the family (especially as in the last two cases we have no indication at all as to the sex of the person). Ask them if they think that the use of 'he' might bc helping to perpetuate a maledominated society, and whether they think it is important or not. Students will probably say 'no'.

1 Gender identity

Gender

Listening

 Students hear three people (from China, Uganda and England) talking about how girls and boys and sisters and brothers are treated. There is no specific task, though what the speakers say should stimulate a discussion.

 Boys can do many more things than girls can. And they, I mean, people expect from boys to become successful persons in their life and to provide for the family. Where the girls are supposed to end up getting married, bearing children and doing housework, and not having a career. So people are happy when they have a boy and they are not that happy when they have a girl

2   In the past it, there used to be this difference because er . the roles were different, like for a girl she would have to learn how to care for the house, to cook, and care for the children; and for a male, he had to learn how to dig and raise cattle, and do all kinds of heavy iobs that the woman wouldn't be able to do.

3   My parents always tried to treat me and my two younger brothers in exactly the same way, and they made a big point of saying that they were all treating us the same, but they did actually treat us differently, because I was a girl and they were boys.

2 Are you a woman or a man?

 The test is designed to be deliberately provocative. Students do the test individually and then compare their answers in groups. They should then redo the test, trying to decide which are the stereotypical female answers.  Get class feedback, and find out which male students initially gave female answers, and vice versa. The conclusion should be that we all have both female and male characteristics.

3 Female facts

 Students discuss the facts.

Listening

 Students hear the answers to the facts about women. Students note down if they were true or fhlse, plus any other infbrmation they hear. (The tapescript is on p. 34.)

IT 2T 37? 4F 5T 6 notmentioned also mentioned: womenfloat better; twice as mauy women diet; 44% ofwomen in Britain workparHime, and only 6 ⁰/0 Qfmen; women hate lack ofcommunication and untidiness.

3 Female facts

1    Women live longer than men.

2    Women hear better than men.

3    Women communicate better than men. 4 Women need men more than men need women.

5  Women get married younger than men do.

6  Women are more intelligent than men.

4 HIStory, HERstory, or HYSteria?

 Make sure you've done the warm-up. Before students read the text, tell them to write down as many words as they can connected to gender-linked jobs (e.g. actor/actress, fireman/firewoman) and gender-linked relationships (e.g. wife/husband). Then discuss if and when and how these should be made gender-neutral (e.g. firefighter). Students read the text and answer the questions in groups.

Possible solutions to question 5

(a) We will ... No one ... (b) Our origins; the origin ofthe human speczes ... (c) Shall I let them in ? Shall I let whoever it is in? (d) All students must have their own books. (e) Our neighbours are ... (f) ... their head ... (g) The English are very reserved. (h) An English person's home is their castle (sounds awful now, but in a 100years or so people won't think twice about it). (i) Ask the average person and they would say ... (j) Users can use their mouse to move the

cursor.

The use of they and their with a singular subject is frowned upon by purists, but is becoming Increasingly common and serves a very useful purpose. But there are circumstances where it is impossible to avoid he/she situations, and feminists have answered this by coming up with new gender neutral pronouns.

Extra

The doctor, ofcourse, was the boy 's mother!

Gender

4 HIStory, HERstory, or HYSteria?

Many feminists have tried to rid the English language ofwords containing the word 'man' or any word which indicates the gender of the person it refers to. For example:

woman/women —+ womyn/wimrmn fireman —+ firefighter craftsman —+ artisan waiter/waitress -9 waitron history —+ herstory

'Neighbour' and 'survivors' (below), which should be neutral terms for both sexes, here obviously only refer to men, women being excluded as second class citizens.

including 10 women

Here are some words that people have invented to avoid the

generic 'he' problem; only the first is ever really used:

s/he, xe, tey = he or she                 per = person = he or she

peep = singular of 'people'             herm, wrn = her or him

Literature and television are often blamed for the tendency towards male protagonism. Nearly 80⁰/0 of the action in books (particularly children's books) and TV programmes is carried out by boys and men, so that female readers/viewers, consciously or not, see themselves in a subservient role.

1    Feminist scholars maintain that the generic 'he' and similar words 'not only reflect a history of male domination' but also 'actively encourage its perpetuation'. How do YOU think this is possible?

2    Does your language have a generic pronoun which is neither masculine or feminine, and which can refer to the two sexes indiscriminately? If you don't have one, how do women feel about having to use 'he' to describe a

generic person? If nobody cares about it in your country, why is it that people care so much about it (almost to the point of obsession) in English-speaking countries?

3    Feminists coined the word 'Ms.' as an exact equivalent to Mr. Why do you think 'Ms.' was invented? Do you think it was needed? If you are a woman, why would(n't) you use this word?

4    Male words have tended to retain their connotations of power and independence, whereas female ones have become associated with triviality, dependence and sex. Compare, for example, bachelor spinster, governor/governess, master mistress. Do the same kind of distinctions exist in your language? Now do you agree that even one's language can contribute to the way we see the world, i.e. a male dominated world? YOU don't? Sigh!

5    How could you convert the following sentences into gender neutral' sentences?

a       Man will never conquer space.

b       Man's origins are still not fully understood c Someone is at the door. Shall I let him in?

d Each student must have his own book

       My neighbour and his wife are on holiday.

f          Anyone who thinks that needs his head seeing to.

g        Englishmen are very reserved h An Englishman's home is his castle.

                 Ask the man in the street, he would probably tell you

           The user can Use his mouse to move the cursor.

(D The original meaning of the word 'home', in English and many other Indo-European languages too, was of a safe dwelling place, a village, even a world. In Old English it came to mean a fixed abode where people habitually lived and sometimes was extended to include members of a family (home circle). Webster's says that 'house' (from a reconstructed Indo-European base meaning) comes from the same root as 'sky' and was used to mean a 'covering and concealing'. Our modern usage of these two words can be traced back to these original meanings. 'Home' has connotations of a feeling of belonging, a centre of affection, a place where you can find refuge and rest, it is something intimate and private. If you think about the words 'homely' and 'homemaker' (as opposed to 'housekeeper'), you immediately get the feeling of an atmosphere, a family (in fact we talk of a 'broken home' where the parents are separated). It even has the sense of a destination — 'homeward bound' (old hippies will remember the Simon and Garfunkel song), and also a nation (home vs. foreign policy; Browning's poem Home thoughtsfrom abroad). Generally, 'home' only refers to one's own place; we'd say 'I went round to Adrian's house' not his 'home'. House, in the meaning of a covering or storage place, is clear in such things as a greenhouse, henhouse, the House of Commons, a clearing house, etc. It is a physical structure not a place where one should supposedly receive kind treatment and feel relaxed ('Make yourself at home.').

Ever wondered why we say to go/arrive/get home (i.e. without any preposition)? This is a remnant from Old English where the accusative case was used without a preposition, like the Latin 'domum', with the sense of 'to one's house, to home'.

Warm-up

• Brainstorm students on the difference between 'house' and 'home'. Then get them to think of all the compound words beginning with 'home' (e.g. homebred, -coming, -land, -less, -made, -maker, -stead, -stretch, -video, -work) and compare these with any expressions they can think of containing 'house'. This should confirm and consolidate the difference between home and house. Then go on to Homesick?

1 Home sweet home

• Do the listening exercise before students look at their page.

Listening

•

Home

• Well in South Africa there are many more blacks than whites, and a lot of the blacks, most of them I think live in rural areas, and they have round houses with thatched roofs, and em mud walls, and em no chimneys, and there's a gap beM'een the wall and the roof for ventilation.

2 In Uganda we live in a thatched house, that is the roof is made with sticks and grass, the wall is made of, of mud, covered, of sticks covered with the mud wall, the floor is also smeared with mud to make it smooth; and between the roof and the wall there is a space of about half a metre for ventilation. There are two windows usually on the sides.

    After the listening, students discuss the other illustrations. In groups they decide in which countries such houses would be typically found.

    Students now discuss why they were built in such a way (and with what materials), and what the advantages and disadvantages are of such houses (in terms of living conditions, cost, maintenance, appearance, etc.).

Follow-up

 Students discuss the housing situation in their country — where is the best place to live (both on a national, regional and city level), whether it's easy to rent or buy.

2 Homesick?

 Students read the passage and as a whole class discuss questions 1 and 2.

6)  The passage comes from a boy's story, Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain, a very famous American novelist. In this particular extract Tom and his friends have gone camping.  Students now discuss the other questions and then do the listening exercise.

Listening

    Students hear what three people (from Uganda, South Africa and China) miss most when they are away from home. They should fill in a table like the one below.

    What I miss most is about Uganda is er the culture I grew up in, the people I grew together with. I miss a lot my family because I don't get to see them very often.

2   I miss family and friends but I also miss the beautiful beaches and the mountains and the lovely countryside. I don't miss the racism a\though it is a very different place since the elections in 1 994.

3   f don't miss the lack of freedom. I don't miss the difference between men and women, I don't miss the class differences, censorship, things tike that, but do miss all the traditional cultural part, even food, festivals, the atmosphere.

1 Home sweet home

                    b                                                    c                                 d

a

1

2 Homesick?

1    Who are 'they'? Where are they?

2    How are they feeling? Why are they ashamed of the way they are feeling?

3    Have you ever been camping with some friends? Have YOU ever been exploring?

4    When was the first time YOU slept away from home? How did YOU feel? What home comforts did YOU miss the most?

or abroad, what do you miss the most about your home town and country? (family, friends, pets, house, food and drink, culture, sense of humour, TV, shops institutions, not being able to speak your native language?)

6 How often do you phone and write home when you are awaye

3 Homeless and homeland

'O This could be a very touchy subject for a lot of people. Test the ground before embarking on it.

•   Students look at the picture of the refugee camp and imagine how life must be for such people. They should then answer the questions.

Writing

•   'Charity begins at home'. Discuss.

4 Home, language and nation

        This could be a very touchy subject for a lot of people. Test the ground before embarking on it.

Language has not always been a uni9ing element in Europe either (e.g. Ireland and the former Yugoslavia), but it has been in separatist groups in Spain and France. Language is, in any case, certainly something people feel very strongly about — the Flemish used to object to their children being taught French in French.

• Students read the passage and discuss the questions.

Home

3 Homeless and homeland

1    Is your country currently home to any refugees? How well has your country accepted theme

2    What kinds of conditions do refugees live in? What problems do they face? Imagine a typical day in the life of a refugee.

3    Leaving aside refugees, and concentrating on general immigration, imagine you are members of a government department which decides who to give permanent visas to. Put the following in order of preference: English teachers married sons and daughters of citizens of your country people escaping from a war people seeking political asylum from countries that are not at war people who are prepared to do very humble jobs (e.g. cleaning, refuse collection) at a cheap price people with an internationally recognised extraordinary ability in (four separate categories)• science, art, business, athletics spouses and unmarried children of lawfully permanent residents (i.e. people who were not born in your country, but who can legally live there indefinitely) unmarried sons and daughters of citizens of your country

4 Home, language and nation

Most people tend to feel at home where people speak the same language as they do. In fact, boundary disputes at the end of the two World Wars were generally based on linguistic groups, and this was reflected in the subsequent transfèrs of populations. Dictators, such as Mussolini and Hitler, exploited this principle when they tried to introduce speakers of their languages into areas which they claimed belonged to them. So Mussolini urged Italians to migrate to the South Tyrol, and Hitler called on

German-speaking people in Austria, Poland and Alsace to unite. However, In many parts of the world, there are communities which are defined by the religion they share, rather than the language they speak.

The number of refugees in the world varies from year to year, and figures can never be very accurate. In the early 1990s, for example, nearly 7,000,000 Afghans had already left or were leaving their home-

land, and another two and .žE•ž;;;:. .

a half million Palestinians had no fixed home. In many African countries people were on the move (Mozambique, Eritrea,

Somalia, Liberia, Angola, Rwanda, Sudan etc.) and in the Far East as well

(Cambodia, Vietnam and China). In this period too, we saw the beginnings of the problems in what used to be Yugoslavia.

The countries which accommodate refugees tend to be neighbouring countries (e.g. Thailand accepted half a million people escaping from Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia, Pakistan 3.5 million from Afghanistan, and Iran 3.0 million from Afghanistan and Iraq). Other countries, such as the United States, accept people from a variety of countries and have strict laws on who can and cannot be accepted.

1    How long has your nation existed with its present borders ² Are these fair borders?

2    Does everyone feel at home in your country or are there some who would prefer either some kind of home rule (i.e. local self government) or to become a separate state ^a Do YOU personally feel you belong to your country?

3    What do you think binds people together most language, religion Of something else?

4    Did your country ever colonise other countries? When and why? Are these countries still colonisede What rights do their residents have in your country? Was your language ever adopted there?

5    Was your country ever colonised by another countrye How do YOU feel about this? What were the advantages and disadvantages of such a situation?

Warm-up

• In groups, ask students to define intelligence.

G) Here are some psychological definitions: the ability to adjust to the environment and to new situations; the ability to learn or the capacity for education; ability to employ abstract concepts and to use a wide range of symbols and concepts; ability to solve problems; verbal facility. But your students should come up with some more down-to-earth definitions. One American researcher, J. P. Guilford proposed no fewer than 120 separate kinds of 'intelligence', grouped under main general headings like memory, reasoning, and divergent and convergent thinking.

1 A born genius?

• Get students to read the extract and then immediately proceed to the listening exercise before they answer the questions.

G) (3) Is the fact that Shakespeare was born in England and not Siberia relevant? (5) Experiments have proved that the more intelligent a dog is the less likely it is to crack up under pressure. Similarly, war experience has shown that intelligent              soldiers are less prone to shell shock and other psychological pressures than their less intelligent companions. The photo shows Ganesh Sittampalam who got a first-class degree in Mathematics at the age of 13.

Listening

• Students hear three possible versions for the final paragraph of the reading extract. They have to decide which was the ortgnal one, and whether the other two contain reasonable ideas or not. Students then discuss the questions.

1

Intelligence

 It's a mistake for parents to think their child is a genius. Let time decide that. But it is an even greater mistake for parents to think their child has no talent at all. The geniuses of history are telling us how much higher we could reach if only we believed in ourselves.

2   Parents should thus waste no time in finding out whether their child has hidden talents or not. If they do not do so, the world may be deprived of someone, who, given the chance, might have been able to find a cure for cancer, a solution to the world's energy problems, or simply a way to bring warring nations to their senses.

3   Don't listen, then, to those who would foist piano lessons on children who have barely begun to talk, or cryptic crosswords on kids who've only iust begun to read, or mind-bending mathematical problems on youngsters who have only just learned to reason. Think above all about your child's happiness and ask yourself whether a child who studies the violin six hours a day is more content than one who spends the same time with their friends and toys.

2 A head start

 Students read the text and discuss questions in groups.

(5) Parents who were motivated enough to use the devices have probably done a lot of stimulating of their child after its birth as well.

1        A born genius?

Are people born intelligent or do they acquire intelligence?

2        Is talk of genius elitist? Are not ail children equally important2

3        How much effect does someone's environment bear on their intelligence?

4        Is it possible to distinguish intelligence from imagination creativity and common sense?

5        Is a person's happiness and ability to adapt in any way related to how intelligent they are?

3 Intelligence test

• The intelligence test is best done in groups. Make it competitive by giving a 15-minute time limit and see which group has got the most correct answers.

The first serious intelligence tests were conducted in 1905 by Alfred Binet. They were done at the request of the French government who wanted to identify children with learning disabilities so that they could be given extra tuition. In 1916 Binet's tests were adapted by an American psychologist from Stanford University. IQ or 'intelligence quotient', tests had begun. The questions mainly related to numbers, words and objects. The average IQis 100. Research has shown that cultural background, motivation (or lack of it), class differences, changes in family structure and home conditions, even the relationship between the tester and the person being tested, all affect the final IQscore achieved. Binet was convinced that a person's intelligence changes during their lifetime, but others believe it is inherited and doesn't vary.

Here are some answers. Ifyour students come up with other answers make sure they canjustify them

1      (a) You are more likely to do one activity, than that same activity plus another one. People who base their answer on Katie's interest in animal rights are ignoring the mathematics oftheproblem (i.e. probabilities).

2      0. They are thefirst letters ofthe numbers one to twenty (One, Two, Three).

3     

Intelligence

4      They are Siamese twzns.

5      They depend on the position ofthe letter 'h': hospital, those, ethics, eigkt, teach, enough.

6      (a) Aunt. The onlyfemale. (b)y (the others are in alphabetical order) (c) woman: wife (the others arefamily relations).

7      Do exercises like this really prove anything? These kinds oftests don't necessarily demonstrate intelligence.

8      (a) Not necessarily, it may go in one ear and out the other. The news only informs us about whatjournalists think ve might find interesting. (b) Studying hard doesn't necessarily mean good results, the opposite is also true. (c) She mightjust be playinggames. (d) They could equally be brothers, or brother and sister. (e) He wasn 't an orphan before he murdered his parents. (D Biographical is more likely. (g) Unless her daughter was adopted, this sentence is nonsense. (h) How canyou see an iceberg ifit's already melted?

9      None, an unlisted number doesn 't appear in a phone book.

10  Yes,freeze the water in the two cans before putting it into the empty container.

Writing

Students write the answers to question 8. This involves using conditionals and modals for deduction.

Usefulfurther reading:

A. Gellatly: The skilful mind; J. F. Fixx: Solve it.

3 Intelligence test

Discussions A—Z Advanced,

Warm-up

• Students discuss qualities of an ideal judge.

G) The spirit of justice was female in classical paganism, are women therefore innately better at judging than men? How has our sense of justice changed over the centuries? Does one's own sense of justice change much during one's life?

1 Juries

• Brainstorm students on what kind of people should and should not be able to serve on a jury, and should be allowed to be excused. Should work be compulsory? Should compensation be given for loss of time and money? Then do the listening.

Listening

• Students hear about the origins of the jury system in England. After listening twice, choose a few students and ask them the following questions.

Questions: 1 In what way were the original juries different from today's? 2 How do you qualify for jury service? 3 Who is exempt?

Back in the middle ages, a iury was a group of neighbours who were asked questions Under oath by one of the king's men to find out what rights the king had in that area. For example, they might have to name all the landowners of their district and say how much land each of them had; or name all the persons in their district who they suspected of murder, robbery or other crimes. The iob of these people, usually twelve, was not to pass any iudgement but simply to declare the truth. This system gradually evolved into a group of twelve people who had to give a verdict in court on an accused person or people. Until 1974 in England jurors had to be house-owners and the age was restricted, which basically meant that they were male, middleaged and middle class, with all the ideas that belong to such a group. Now to qualify you have to be on the electoral list, no older than 65, and a UK resident. Various people are ineligible for iury service such as members of the legal profession, police officers, ministers of religion, the mentally ill, and anyone who

Justice

has served a prison sentence in the last 10 years. Members of Parliament* members of the armed forces, and doctors can be excused from iury service. Because of the length of some trials, iurors are paid traveling and subsistence allowances, along with some compensation for loss of earnings.

Finally in groups students imagine that they are members of a jury whose task is to consider the five cases (on the student's page). Before beginning the trial students need to decide together what options are available as sentences (from acquittal to life imprisonment). Students also need to take into account the circumstances.

• Alternatively, students could think of non-prison punishments to fit the crime.

G) (l) Would it change things if the woman had shot the man dead, or paralysed him for life? What is legitimate defence?

(2) Would it make any difference if the lights had been on green? If the man's wife had not been pregnant? What if it had been an ambulance that had killed someone going through on red? What if the people killed were deaf/blind? In any case hasn't the man paid enough just by what he will have on his conscience — maybe just taking away his driving licence would be enough. (3) Discuss whether it should be 'finders keepers' when discovering ancient artefacts, whether such things belong to the person on whose land they were found, or whether they are part of the national heritage. (4) In May 1993 Lee Jang Rim was sentenced to one year in prison for predicting that the world would end on 28 October 1992. Tell students Rim's sentence after they have had their discussion. Consider why the judge sentenced him for one year only. Was Rim directly responsible for the suicides? Do we need to protect people from their own gullibility? (5) The company in question, initially explained that they didn't have the $32 billion needed to pay all claimants, so merely offered losers their apologies. Then, after death threats to employees, riots and stonings, they paid out $20 in 'goodwill prizes'.

2 Punishing children

Students read text and discuss questions in groups.

1    Were YOU naughty as a child? How did your parents punish YOU?

2    Should parents use corpora! pun;shment (slapping, smacking, belting, caning)?

3   

4    Imagine that punishments did have to fit the crime. Think of some typical childish misdemeanours and how you would punish them

5    How would you punish parents who abuse their children? Should their children be taken away from them?

3 Prisons

• Students read the first passage (A) and in groups discuss questions 1—4.

(l) & (2) If students lived in a small community and had to pay for the upkeep of the local prison from their own pockets (keeping a criminal in a prison is more expensive than paying for one to stay in a four star hotel), would they still send offenders to prison or would they come up with some valid alternative? (4) Answering this question entails firstly discussing why we have prisons (to lock people up and keep them out of harm's way, as a punishment, deterrent, for rehabilitation, because we've got nowhere else to put them). Students should also consider the causes of crime.

• Students now read the second passage and discuss questions 5 & 6, the answers to which are contained in the listening exercise below.

Listening

• Students hear about the prison experiment and answer these questions.

Questions: 1 How were the participants found and selected? 2 How long was the experiment supposed to last? 3 What happened after two days? 4 How did the 'guards' behave? And the 'prisoners'? 5 Why was the experiment stopped? 6 What did it supposedly prove?

7 What other explanation is there for the guards' behaviour?

1 newspaper advert; those considered most mentally andphysically stable 2 14 days 3 rebellion + violent repression ofthe rebellion 4 sadistically; after initial rebellion prisoners became submissive and emotional (some having to leave).

5 The head researcher's girlfriend had it stopped. 6 That it is the environment that makes people awessive ('thepower ofsocial and institutionalforces to make good men engage in evil deeds'). 7 Thatparticipants were acting out stereotyped roles.

A  ... so they were fingerprinted, given a uniform and so on, just as if they were convicts in a real prison.

B  But how did the researchers choose the pretend convicts and prison guards?

A 

Justice

B  And did they get any money for it?

A  Well, they were they were supposed to get fifteen dollars a day for the week period, and the ones that were selected to be prisoners were warned that they could expect to be under surveillance, they might be harassed, and they might have some of their basic rights curtailed during imprisonment.

B  Not sure I would have agreed to do something like that, especially for weeks.

A  Well, in fact already within two days there was a rebellion which the guards put down so severely that one prisoner began crying uncontrollably and screaming, and only after one day he had to be released and three others soon followed.

B  So the guards really got into playing the part?

A  Yeah, in fact as time passed, some of the guards seemed to derive great satisfaction from exercising power and acting really sadistically; they became more and more forceful and violent each day, despite the fact that most prisoners by this time had given up resisting. The guards even changed their mannerisms, like they began, they began swaggering around and the prisoners too began to SIOUCh aad keep their eyes fixed on the ground.

B  God, it sounds so dehumanising. So then what happened?

A  Well it was actually the chief researcher's girlfriend who put a stop to the whole thing. She'd gone to the prison to help out em interviewing the prisoners and she was so appalled and upset by what she saw that she pleaded with them to stop the experiment.

B  Well, did the experiment prove anything after all this?

A  Yeah, i suppose it did. I mean the people who took part were supposedly decent human beings with a good moral sense, I mean not deviants at all. So the researchers put down what happened to the environment.

B  Yeah, but to a certain extent I suppose the guards were just acting like they supposed guards would act, I mean that's how we all see guards isn't it, as kinds of violent unthinking robots.

A  Yes, yes, but that doesn't explain why the prisoners reacted so badly, I mean after all they knew that it was only an extended piece of role-playing.

B  Well, all I can say is I hope to goodness I never end up in a prison.

4 The final iudgement

 Students read the text and discuss the questions in groups. Students can compare the Bible's versions with their own religion's equivalent.

3 Prisons

1         What are prison conditions like in your country?

2         What are the pros and cons of detection, conviction and punishment being in the hands of the whole community?

3         Would having to pay to stay in prison be a good deterrent in modern society?

4         The final iudgeme

1    What evidence can you see

YOU for and against an idea

2    How would you answer

3    Is it right that some people beautiful, and others poor,

4    Is your life predestined by born and the parents who you are born to?

5    Is it fair that we only live once? Or do we only live once ^e

6    Should famous people be sentenced more severely than others to set an example?

4   Imagine that prisons were abolished, what could be used in their place?

5  

6   How do YOU think the 'guards' and the 'prisoners reacted?

1

     Warm-up                                                                        2 Parents

• Students first do question 1. At the same time they analyse or pollution. I don't care to consider whether I will make a how children are cliffërcnt from adults, in terms of general good parent. I want a child no matter what It costs to behaviour, inter-personal relationships, needs, wishes, society, myself, my marriage and my child'. creativity, curiosity etc. The adjectives are supposed to bc antonyms (to some extent), so encourage students to find

IA 2C 3C 4B 5B 6A 7A 8C 9C 10B

the opposites. Get fècclback, after which you might like to use questions 2 and 3 as a class discussion; or ifyou think they would bc too difficult, tell students to begin their discussion of the other questions from question 4. In multilingual classes It might be interesting to get some more class feedback on some ofthe questions. Discussion of the last few questions should then lead nicely on to Parents.

(Suggested answers to l, others may be possible): Antonyms: caulzous —jèarless; curious — indi¶èrent; dull — imaginative; ea.y to please — intolerant;Jimny— senous; innocent tainted; narrow^Þminded open-minded; predictable — sponlaneous; sour — sweet   

1 Kidz quiz

1    Decide which adjectives are appropriate for describing children and which ones for adults. Give reasons.

2    Children should be seen and not heard. (English saying)

3    Children should not eat with their parents, nor be allowed into restaurants.

4    From the age of six children should help to do the housework

2 Parents

In our society a high value is placed on 'parenthood at any price' rather than on responsible parenthood for those who freely choose it without being pressurised. Most couples are inevitably asked 'When are we going to hear the patter of tiny feet?' and other such comments as soon as they are married. The media, and especially advertising constantly push the message that having children is fun, natural and necessary. There is a strong implication that if you do not conform, there IS something wrong with you! The question everyone should ask themselves is not 'Why don't I ....,' but 'Why do I want a child?'

5       Children Under the age of 1 0 should be in bed by 7.30 p.m

6       It is up to the parents to decide how their children should dress.

7       Children should be allowed to have a TV in their bedroom.

8       The more pocket money YOU give a child the more responsible they become.

9       Children cannot decide for themselves what friends to have.

10  Parents have the right to keep their children at home to work, rather than send them to school

In the box below are 1 0 questions

British Organisation of Non-parents (BON)

The questions were organised under three headings:

A   What sort of a parent would

B   Would a child fit into my way of life?

c What do I expect to gain from the experience of being a parent?

Your task is to match the questions with the titles and then to decide whether choosing not to have children is selfish or not.

3 Adoption

•  Begin by brainstorming the question of what couples who are unable to have children can do to resolve their problem. This will probably lead you on to a discussion on adoption but may also elicit artificial insemination and surrogacy.

• 

Listening

• Students hear about adoption in Britain. Students predict the answers to these questions before listening. Qiestions: 1 What percentage of adopted children are under the age of one? 2 NThat has changed in the last 30 years? 3 ^XXQ1ich are the biggest and second biggest age groups for adoption (1—4, 5—9, 10—14, 15—18)? And the percentages? 4 What colour adoptive parents should black children be given to? 5 Y^Thich kind of children most need adopting but are least likely to find adoptive parents? 6 What is the woman's hope for the future?

1 10% 2 Attitudes to andpressures on unmarried mothers. 3 5—9 (33 ⁰/0), 10—14 (20%) 4 Black. 5 Handicapped andvictims of parental abuse. 6 That more people will adopt children to help someone who really needs love and attention.

Most people still seem to have the idea that adoption is about a couple, who can't have their own children, going to an agency, being given a virtually new-born child, and then taking it home and bringing it UP. About thirty years ago it may have been like that. The fact is that now only about ten per cent of children adopted are under one year of age. In Britain, at least, this is due to the fact that attitudes have changed and unmarried mothers now keep their children, that is unless they haven't already decided to abort beforehand. There used to be a lot of pressure on women like this to give up their baby, but now there isn't. The biggest age group is in fact from five to nine, and about a third of adopted children fall into this group. And ten to fourteen year olds are the next biggest group — representing about twenty per cent of the total number. People, well, at least white people, also tend to think of adopting healthy white children. But by far the majority of children for adoption are neither one nor the other. A lot are black children, who if possible are adopted by black parents. This is because a child needs parents who share the child's CUIturaf heritage. It's much easier for the child if the new parents have the same religious background and language, attitude and CUStOmS as the child's birth parents would have done. Adopted children need to retain a sense of their own identity, which would be difficult if they were brought up by white parents with a completely different background. The sad thing is that a lot of the children who really need a new family are the least likely to get one. I'm talking about handicapped children, both mentally and physically, and of course those who were abused by their parents. Very few people, understandably I suppose, are prepared to take on a

4 Children and ethics

Test the ground before starting this topic. Some of your students might not wish to discuss it.

Listening

 Play the extract once and then get students to read the five cases 1-5. Get them to note down which situation (          2) was being talked about. Play the extract again, and ask if the male speaker was for or against conceiving the child. Then in groups get them to summarise the speaker's argument and then continue the discussion themselves.  Now let each group choose two more situations to talk about. Finally, get them to match the situations with the information a—d. For situation 4, get students to discuss the pros and cons of the operation on the assumption that the operation is successful from a medical point of view, i.e. there are no problems of rejection because the toe is reattached to the person who it is taken from.

Id 2 (discussed in listening) 3b 4a 5c

A  .... so they had to do it themselves.

B  Wow! Actually that reminds me of that couple who needed a donor for their child, a little girl I think she was, to give her some transplant or other. They waited for so long that in the end the mother decided to have another child, and she was in her forties I seem to remember, and

A  They operated on the new baby I suppose.

B  Yeah that's right, and the little baby managed to save the life of her sister.

A  You know I'm not sure I agree with that kind of thing.

B  What do you mean?

A  Like suppose they'd analysed the fetus of this baby and the test showed that the tissue wasn't compatible for transplant, I mean, do they abort and try again?

B  Yeah, I hadn't thought about that.

A  And you know is it right to conceive a child, subiect it to some operation, without ever asking it how it feels about all this? In any case it seems a bit of a strange reason to want a child, iUSt for the sake of

B  Yeah but Al, people have babies for much less serious reasons, which may be totally frivolous, sentimental or whatever. Some folks have kids just so that when they grow up they can work for them, YOU know like on farms. I mean supposing that they'd iUSt said — OK we're going to have another child so that, Meryl, or whatever the kid's name was, can have a little sister — you know nobody WOUid have said anything. mean it's ironic that people can do that, but they're not supposed to have a child to save another child's life. Well, don't you think?

Kids

3 Adoption

1   Would YOU adopt even if YOU could have, or already have, your own children?

2   Why might some couples prefer to have children which are biologically their own? Why do other couples choose to adopt?

4 Children and ethics

3 If you want to adopt a child, do YOU think you have the right to choose your own child (i.e. choose the age, sex and race)? Would you consider adopting a handicapped child?

4 When should parents tell the child that he/she was adopted?

5 Where possible, should the adoptive parents maintain contact with the natural parents? Should the natural parents be allowed to visit their child ^e

6 Should the adoptive parents try to let their child be aware of and interested in his/her original cultural backgrounde

1   These six women wish to have an abortion. (a) 26, unmarried and is pregnant after a casual relationship. (b) 45, not very wealthy, married and already has five children. (c) A 1 6-year-old girl who has been raped. (d) 35, married, doesn't want children and believes that having a child would destroy her career, her husband however would like a child. (e) Stands a 50% chance of dying herself if she gives birth (f) Married, and pregnant after a one-off extra-marital relationship with someone of a different colour skin

2   These parents wish to conceive a child in order to obtain an organ to save the life of another of their children

3   This physician from a mental institution wishes to sterilise a sexually precocious 1 5-year-old girl who is severely mentally retarded and has already had two abortions

4   This doctor wants to transplant children's toes to their hands to create fingers, for those who have been born without fingers or have lost them in an accident.

5   These parents have 3-year-old Siamese twins, with two heads but only one set of arms and legs. They advice about separating the children.

 C)

a   Mr Kay, an English surgeon, has successfully transplanted a total of 32 toes, on to 22 patients with a 100⁰/0 success rate. Some parents reject this system as being a further mutilation of the child, but Mr Kay quotes the case of an 8-year-old girl who had only one finger on one hand. By transplanting a toe she was provided with a thumb, and within months she was able to dress herself for the first time.

b   In 1992 the European Parliament passed a resolution giving parents the permission to decide to sterilise their mentally handicapped children. But the consequences of the abuse of sterilisation call to mind the Spartans and

Hitler. Churchill, in his early years as an MP, wanted to sterilise non-productive and immoral members of British society.

 An Irish couple, faced with this dilemma, separated the children, but one of them died.

d There are 1.6m abortions carried out in the U.S. each year, representing almost one-fòurth of all pregnancies. More than 46% of American women will probably have had one by the time they are 45.

Many militant 'pro-lifè' groups issue death threats to doctors who provide abortions.

Warm-up

• Get students to try reading the tongue twisters on their page.

Listening

• Students hear some people trying to do the tongue twisters. Their task is to decide if they are said correctly or not.

1 She sells (0K) 2 Double... (OK)  (0K) 4 Areyou aluminiming them my man no I'm copperbottoming them mum mum 5 The stinking steamer stank. 6 The sick sixth sheep sick sheep's sick. 7 Around the rowd rocks a rogged rascal rim

1 As simple as A B C

• Students look at the Chinese ideograms. Get them to guess what the ideograms represent, then brainstorm students on the difficulties of learning and speaking Chinese.

a hand b eye c see d lesson

Listening

• Students hear part of an interview with a Chinese woman talking about her language (point out that she is multilingual). Get them to prepare a list of their own questions, and then to see if any are answered in the listening. Alternatively, after hearing each extract, ask students to write down a possible question for each answer. With lower levels, give students the questions below. They listen to hear the order in which the questions were

answered.

Questions: a Of all the languages you've learned, which is the most difficult? b Has the written language changed much over the centuries? c What connection is there between the written and the spoken language?

d Does the fact that it's a visual language influence the way you think? e Will China ever adopt a Western script? And would this be a good idea? f How big are the keyboards needed to type in Chinese? g What have you learned by knowing so many languages?

If 2a 3c 4b 5e 6d 7g

Um, it's bigger than the normal one apart from the fact that we there are a lot of softwares on the computer which make use of phonetic transcription, the sound. They search by sound, so YOU don't need a particular keyboard. But typical typewriters are actually quite big and you can change the keyboard two or three times and it's quite difficult and quite cumbersome.

2  1 would still say Chinese even if it's my first mother tongue. Yes, apart from difficulty in learning it, it's difficult to keep it, to remember that. I mean, if you stop using it for some time you do forget it.

3 

Language

word, so YOU simply don't know the word and there's no element to help you, to imagine how a word can be written if you don't/ if YOU haven't learned that word.

4  Yes, because under Mao, he invented a system, a, a, a new sort of handwriting, which is simplified, quite simpler, but it is also quite confusing to Chinese living abroad, I mean, outside mainland China.

5  If it will ever happen it will happen in the very, very, very far away future, not right now. I think it wouldn't be that good if YOU want to maintain the culture of China, because Chinese language is typical because it is visual and all the old poetry, for example, depends a lot on the words as they are written.

6  We tend more to think in, if YOU can say that, in images too, and not only in words and; we tend to associate things with the sounds that we hear.

7  1 do believe that in the learning the language YOU also learn, how how people from that country think, how they behave, and YOU learn part of their culture.

2 Do you speak Esperanto?

    Having done As simple as A B C, students should now be able to decide on what targets to set for an ideal language. Tell them to think of the five most important things an ideal language should have (or not have): if they need help tell them to think in terms of vocabulary, use of articles, tenses etc.

    Get class feedback and write their suggestions on the board. Elicit Esperanto, by asking them if they know of any artificial languages. Get them to write down three questions that they'd like answered about Esperanto (these may then be answered in the listening below).

Listening

    Students hear a few facts about Esperanto. They simply check whether their questions were answered. Alternatively, after the first listening, students write their own questions (as many as possible) which they then pass to their partner who has to answer such questions after the second listening.

(The tapescript is on page 54.)

    Students read the descriptions ofEsperanto on their page. They should go through each element critically, deciding if it matches their own targets and whether it represents an improvement on existing languages.

(I) Is this communication on an equal fòoting? (2) Why have accents? They are problematic and cause difficulties when typing. (3) Do we need an indefinite article? Do we need articles at all? (4) Is this really necessary?

(5) Unnecessarily complicated by consistency. (6) Couldn't intonation replace cû? (7) Most languages do without them. (8) Which is more logical — English or Esperanto (and most other languages)? (9) This leads on to the question of translation, which is covered in the next section.

1 As simple as A

1    Is English easier or more difficult than your native language? Why and how?

2    Compare English with any other language you have to learn, in terms of grammar, spelling and pronunciation.

3    How should foreign languages be taught in schools? What should be typical elements of a good esson?

4    Should foreign languages taught in schools in America, Australia and Britain?

5    When YOU learn a foreign language, apart from the language what else do learn about?

a

 ©

3 Translation

• In groups students discuss those words in their language that they find difficult to translate and for which they believe there is no direct English equivalent (e.g. the French 'sympathique'). In monolingual classes students produce a list of four or five of such words and together try and find the nearest English equivalent. They should then discuss possible reasons why English has no word for that particular concept. Then get feedback from whole class and suggest your own translations where necessary.

• In multilingual classes, group different nationalities together. Each student explains the meaning of one word fòr which he/she believes there is no equivalent, the others suggest possible translations. Then get feedback from whole class and suggest your own translations where necessary.

• In groups students now discuss why we need translations.

• Now ask them to read the passage, without giving them any indication as to what the passage is about. When they have finished reading ask them if they found anything strange about it (they should at least have found it amusing and spotted some English mistakes). Now get them to underline any examples of irony (e.g. 'incredible to think', 'it's obvious isn't it', 'obviously', 'moving'), and any mistakes in the English and in the spelling. Finally, ask them to rewrite Carolino's dedication into good English (not an easy task); you should prepare your own version to read to them.

• Students now define the meaning of translation — what does translation involve? What types of work are generally translated? To help them in their discussion, they should decide whether the sentences on their page are true or false.

Writing

• Students write on one of these subjects: (a) Translation is a valuable aid to language teaching. Discuss. (b) Translation is a science not an art. Discuss. Alternatively give students a translation to do.

Usefulfurther reading:

Alan Duff: The third language;

Peter Newmark: Approaches to translation.

4 Sign language

• Brainstorm students on other means of communication besides written and spoken language. Elicit body and sign language.

• Brainstorm them on what the various signs on their page mean, and who they are for (i.e. the deaf). If this draws a blank, tell students that the signs illustrate the fòllowing concepts: America, disagree, doubt, dream, must, silly. In groups, see if students can match the words with the signs.

aAmerica b must c doubt d dream e silly fdisagree

Language

G)     The rationale behind the America sign, is that the meshed fingers represent the United States. Another explanation is that the fingers represent a log cabin.

Listening

Students hear two people describing how to make the signs.

Students' task is to match the descriptions with the signs. NB The first two listening pieces could be used as an alternative introduction to the whole exercise. Play the first piece and get students to actually do what the speaker tells them to do, not all students will follow the instructions in the same way. Then brainstorm the students on what they think the purpose ofthe exercise is — they may think it's part of a fitness programme!

1b 2d 3a 4/

Hold, hold up both arms and extend your arms slightly in front of YOU with your hands flat and your palms facing inwards, then move your arms UP and down.

2   Hold your right arm out to the side, bend it at the elbow, and keep your three middle fingers extended, and fairly straight, your baby finger and your thumb should be down touching the palm of your hand. Then with a slightly curly movement, spiral almost, bring it to your forehead over your right eye and back again.

3   This person's standing with their hands in front of them, their fingers intertwined, and then with the thumbs pointing upwards, and then moving the thumbs around in circles.

4   They're standing again with their hands in front of them, but this time their fingers clenched and thumbs UP, em holding their hands in front of their chest, and then moving them out and opening the palms out, away from their body and opening the palms.

3 Translation

1        A translator must think about the intent of the writer and the types of reader.

2        Every word should be translated and the original word order should be kept to as close as possible.

3        Names of people, towns and institutions should not be translated, nor should titles of works of art.

4        Idiomatic phrases should be translated literally.

5        The style of the original should be kept as much as possible.

6        The original structure and layout should remain intact.

7        Book and film titles should be translated literally or not at all

8        There is no point trying to translate poetry.

9        It is better to read a book or watch a film in the original language, subtitles are preferable to dubbing

10    
Automatic translation using computers will eventually replace human translation

4 Sign language

C)

Warm-ups

•  Put 20 objects/photocards (perhaps related to a particular lexical set you want to practise) on a tray. Cover the tray after one minute, students then have two minutes to write the objects they remember. Get students to guess the topic of today's lesson. Skip the next activity.

•  Put students in pairs back to back. They have to describe what each is wearing. Students analyse why such an apparently easy task is so difficult.

•  Write the following words on the board (or elicit from students): forget, memo(randum), memorable, memories, memorise, memory, memento, nostalgia, recall, recollect, recollections, remember, remind, reminder, reminiscence, unforgettable. Get students to prepare a chart with three headings (verb, noun, adjective) and ask them to put the words into the appropriate columns. Then as a whole class, analyse the differences between the various words. Alternatively, give each group a pair/set of words (e.g. memorise/remember/remind; memories/memory; memory/nostalgia/ reminiscence) the same word can appear in more than one set. Each group analyses their own particular set and then reports back to the class.

 I remember your name perfectly but I iust can't think of your face

•  Brainstorm students on what we need memory for. What would happen if we lost our memory?

•  Move on to student's page. Check that students understand the meaning of the quotation. They then answer the questions.

The title of this section is a quotation from Rev. Spooner (1844-1930), an Oxford don famous for muddling words up. His name has given rise to the word 'spoonerism'. When announcing the hymn in New College Chapel in 1879 he said: 'Kinquering Congs their titles take'; and when dismissing a student: 'You have deliberately tasted two worms and you can leave Oxford by the town drain'. (4) A logical reason might simply be that the visual information we have on first seeing an object gets mistakenly sent to the wrong place (where it is subconsciously registered), before arriving at the correct place (where it is consciously registered). So we have actually seen the place before, but only milliseconds before, not in a dream or another life.

2 Mental filing system

•  If you think the passage has interest value, ask students to read it and discuss any other implications of ignoring information that doesn't conform to our filing system. If not, in groups, students read all the questions then choose and propose one question they'd like to discuss.

Writing

 Students choose one of these titles: (a) Is it more important for an individual or for a nation not to forget the past? (b) Is a memory sometimes better than the real thing?  

Listening

    There are two aims to this listening exercise. One is as a straightforward test of comprehension, and the other is to promote further discussion on memory.

    Play the tape once, giving students the following instructions.

(The tapescript is on page 58.) You are going to listen to twins (Jo and Ed) who talk about the same event. Your task is to spot the differences between the way the twins remember what happened. Explain what the FWA (see script) is and how tides work.

    All but the best students will find this task rather difficult — as a whole class discuss why. Possible reasons: the piece IS rather long (but is nevertheless typical of many advanced             level listening exercises); students were probably unable to memorise the information, due both to lack of concentration i (along with a degree of boredom probably!), and to the fact that they were given no tools to help them in the exercise.  Now play the piece again, but write the following table on the board (without the answers!) for students to fill in.

    Check answers; students will have found that they understood much more. Why? You have to create a kind of framework to store the information you receive; perhaps memory techniques should be taught in school — what do your students think? What techniques do they use?

We tend to remember better the beginmngs and endings of things (films, books, jokes, even words and sentences) — this means it is important not to lose concentration in the middle of reading and listening exercises. Studies have also proved that we remember things better if we put them in a meaningful context; for instance, it is easier to remember a long complex but meaningful sentence than a short, simple meaningless one — this obviously has implications for vocabulary learntng.

Memory

I remember your name perfectly, but I just can't think of your face.

3 Do YOU buy souvenirs when YOU go to new places? Do you take photographs to remind you of places and people2

(O

3 Improve your memory

• This is essentially a reading exercise. Students discuss equivalents that they have in their own languages. If you are going to use the geometrical symbols exercise, make sure this is covered while students are reading the texts.

• Students look at the geometrical figures for 30 seconds, then try to reproduce them in the same order. Alternatively, pre-teach language connected with geometrical figures. Allow one set of students only to see the top row and the others the bottom row. They study their pictures for 30 seconds, and then have to dictate what they remember to their partner.

Extra

• Read out the pairs of words opposite allowing about a two-second pause between each word. Students have to remember the pairs from the first column simply by mentally repeating them as they hear them, the second set by inventing a sentence which in some way connects them and the third set by some kind of visual association between the two words. In each case the speaker repeats the first word of each pair and students have to write down the second word.

Most people find the first set the most difficult, then the second, with best results in the third. Perhaps students should bear this in mind when learning new vocabulary in English.

Memory

3 Improve your memory

One way for remembering simple pieces of information (chemical formulas, historical dates and rulers, geographical facts and figures) is to use a mnemonic (Mnemosyne was the Greek goddess ofmemory).

AOo=X ovovo

                   C)                                                        1

Warm-up

• As a whole class, ask students to define the word 'no'. Is 'yes' basically just the opposite of 'no', i.e. can you merely substitute 'yes' for 'no' and get the opposite meaning? A few examples should prove that you can't (e.g. you can't transform 'There's no bread' into 'There's yes bread' — 'some bread' would be OK. 'There's no point in going' could be converted into 'It might be a good idea to go' and certainly not 'There's yes point'!). Any student who comes up with a definition of 'yes' being the opposite should be asked to prove their point. Subject any other definitions to the same scrutiny.

• Ask students to think of any other ways to say 'no' in conversational English (e.g. yep/nope, yeah/nah, aye, etc.).

Are 'yes' and 'no' adequate, do wc need a 'yo' or a ^Gnis'? Then brainstorm students on expressions containing 'no' (e.g. by no means; no doubt you make no bones about it).

     'No' was originally used before consonants (e.g. no bread), as it was a reduced form of'nan' or 'non' (which then gave us 'none'). 'No' is used in various contexts, some of which are listed here. It indicates objection, opposition or denial of something (No, I'm not going to do my homework.); it denotes the absence of something (but there are some exceptions: 'it was no distance' means that it wasn't very far, but the distance can still be measured); when qualifying a noun it suggests impossibility (There was no going back.).

1 Rules

• Students look at the illustrations and answer question 1.

Get class feedback before they answer the other questions.

• Students now look at the box, which shows a jumbled list of rules for various situations. In groups students decide what situations the rules refèr to. If you wish you can give them the catcgoncs: school, religion, diets, parents' rules to their children, museums. Get class feedback and give them the answers (obviously some items can fit morc than one category). In groups again, students discuss questions 2—6.

Jàmi(y: a, c, l, n, s; religion (from the Books ofExodus and Leviticus in the Old 7èstament): d, e, i, k, o, q, r, u; school: b,J,-

Listening

No

going to ask someone who's been to a prep school some questions on the rules and life of the school. Write the questions on the board, giving suggestions where necessary so that you cover most of the speaker's answers. Students' task is to see which of their questions are answered.

 Incredibly early — I mean I remember in my first year, so I would have been eight at the time, we had to be in bed by 7.30. By the time I left, when I was 1 3, I think we were going to bed at around nine. And then you weren't supposed to talk after lights out, if YOU got caught you were punished, given a good beating. 2 You weren't allowed to talk to anyone older than YOU unless they spoke to you firsh And in any case you weren't allowed to use first names with anyone. I remember that if two or three people had the same surname, like Smith for instance, then they'd be known as Smith l , Smith 2, Smith 3 etc., just like a prison.

3  We wore black, black iackets, black trousers, black ties, shoes everything apart from a black shirt. And this was all supposed to be in mourning for Queen Victoria. And YOU weren't allowed to deviate at all. I remember I once got my Mum to sew gold buttons on my iacket, and I think within half an hour of getting back to school they'd already been removed. The only thing they did let YOU do was to vary the thickness of your tie.

4  It was really revolting, I mean almost inedible. YOU were supposed to eat everything you were given, YOU couldn't leave anything on your plate, but it was so bad that I used to take a plastic bag in with me and fill it with the things I couldn't manage to eat, which was pretþy' much everything.

5  Not more than once a month, it was almost like having visiting hours in a prison. And when you first arrive it's terrible because you're Used to seeing your parents every day before that. And the incredible thing was that they wouldn't let YOU write what you wanted to in your letters home, they'd actually censor your letters. So if you wrote 'Dear Mummy and Daddy I really miss you. I want to come home', they'd change it into 'I'm enioying school so much that I hardly ever even have time to think abouf you.

6  YOU weren't supposed to have any money at all. Not that it would have been much use, as you weren't allowed out into the village to buy anything anyway.

7  1 suppose the rules that strike most people as being odd were things like that the fact that YOU weren't allowed to use umbrellas, you couldn't have a tape recorder until you'd been at the school three years, YOU couldn't phone your parents, and YOU weren't allowed to speak to the local children, and the fact that the older boys had the right to punish the younger boys, physically too.

Writing

 Students do one of the fòllowing tasks: (a) Students write rules to a particular game they like. They read out the rules and other students have to guess what game it refers to. (b) Write an essay outlining on what occasions our freedom needs to be curbed by rules. (c) Write some rules fòr life for a martian who has decided to emigrate to Earth. (d) Rules are made to be broken. Discuss.

1 Rules

              b                                               c

o

1    Where might you find these signs? Who wrote them and why?

2    Which ones express rules? What would be the consequences of ignoring the rulese

3    Do we need rules? What happens to children (and adults in general) if YOU don't give them rules?

d

No comment

4    What's the difference between a good rule and a bad rule?

5    Is it sometimes right to break rules? What rules have you ever broken?

6    What should we do with people who break the rules?

2 Antonyms

• Students try to find one word antonyms for the words listed. Most of the words were obviously chosen to get students discussing whether the words actually have opposites or not. Where students can't find a one-word equivalent, they should discuss why it's not possible. In some cases, there may even be discussion of what the word means or whether it's a noun, a verb or adjective (e.g. book, dream, fear, fire, man, present). Thus, make sure students analyse the words in all their possible meanings (e.g. 'off' could be 'on' if you're talking about the TV, but 'OK' or 'fresh' if you're talking about milk).

3 Noway

•  Students read the items on the list and tick the ones that there is no way that they would consider doing. They then discuss these with their partner (you might need to pre-teach inversions, i.e. 'No way would I ever accept a bribe'; 'Nothing would ever make me drink alcohol', etc.).

• 
This is actually rather a tame exercise which could certainly be livened up either by you inserting some more interesting items onto the list, or simply by getting students to come up with their own lists to ask each other (but go round checking their lists for any items which may be too taboo for that particular class).

No

4 Nonsense?

 NB This is the kind of exercise that really needs to be adapted to suit your own taste. Although these proverbs were initially chosen because they all contain negatives (i.e. to be in theme with the rest of the unit), my students found them very provocative but this doesn't mean yours will. So, as with the rest of this book, feel free to replace all or some of them with your own favourite proverbs, quotations or whatever.

• Get students to look at the proverbs and sayings, some of which at first sight (and second too!) may appear to have no sense. The students' task is to paraphrase all of them (most paraphrases could begin with 'if'). Even if students don't understand the meaning, they should attempt to rewrite them. In pairs, students then compare their interpretations. Finally, get class feedback and give them the answers. Find out if students have equivalents to these proverbs in their own language.

Most ofthe proverbs arefairly selfexplanatory. Here are explanationsfor some that may be difficult. 'No hate ... ' means that ifyou are incapable offeeling hate thenyou won 't be able tofeel love either. 'Nothing question ... ' ifyou don't doubt and question things, thenyou will never truly learn. 'The apple neverfalls . concerns heredity, i.e. that we are basically the same as our parents; 'You can't haveyour cake ... ' meansyou can't have things both ways.

Follow-up

 In a multilingual class, get each student to write down three or four popular proverbs from their country and to translate them into English. They should then read them out to their group who have to understand the meaning, discuss it and say whether they have equivalents in their own language.

Writing

 Virtually any of the proverbs on student's page could be set as an essay title fòr homework.

2 Antonyms

book fear learn one straight dream fire man present think earth good off serious white

3 No way

cry in public

4 Nonsense?

Better the devil you know than the devil you don't.

Better to have been an old has been   Nothing is impossible.

than a never was.   IQ.^V.ê. No pleasure without pain.

'Iou can't have gour       No one is cake and eat it.

indispensable,

 Nothing

comes of

Nothing,

The apple never falls far from the tree,

                              ©                                          1

Warm-up

• Brainstorm students on what opinions have changed over the centuries and also in the recent past. Put the following prompts on the board: beauty, marriage, education, tastes, manners etc. Do they think that any of the fixed ideas we have now will change in the future — is it right (or normal) to assume that everything we think now is bound to be right and what previous generations thought is bound to be wrong? There could be enough material here to keep you going for several weeks, so keep the discussion brief if you have other plans in mind.

1 When I want your opinion, I'll give it to you

• Brainstorm students on meaning of quotation (i.e. I'm only interested in what I think, and you have to think like I think).

• Students then answer questions alone, and discuss their answers in groups. NB They can give more than one answer except for the first two questions.

Listening

• Students hear five people's opmwns In answer to the question: 'In a relationship is it OK for you to have different opinions and beliefs from the other person?' Copy the table in the key on to the board (without the answers!). Students should write Y, N or ? where appropriate.           

(There might be some argument over the answers in the key.)

I I mean it really depends on how far you expect the relationship to go on for. If it's not going to be anything permanent then I don't see that it matters, in actual fact it's probably far more stimulating that way.

2  OK for friends, but I think in a love relationship there need to be some fundamental things you need to agree on. I could never go out with someone who had a different political outlook for example or who had different musical tastes for that matter.

3 

Opinions

going with each other, and while this tension can be kindled by love, it is only really fed by having differences of opinion and respecting those differences.

4  Not a good idea. Relationships only work where you know where you stand in some basic situations. I could never go out with anybody who didn't have a fundamental respect for family values. Nor could I stand someone with extreme political ideas. That's not to say that you can't have different interests, you may like football, I might hate it, that doesn't matter, in fact it would be really boring if we both always did the same things and thought the same things. But you do need to share some basic values.

5  I've got friends whose opinions share and friends whose opinions I quite frankly detest. I've had love relationships with girls who shared my fundamental beliefs, and with girls who were on a totally different wave length. And they all ended in tears. Conclusion? I'm not made for relationships. No seriously, I certainly don't think it matters with Friends, and with lovers; I just think there has to be something magical, something inexplicable, something almost spiritual but physical too, that has to click. And I'm still waiting.

FOIIOW-UP

 Students discuss which of the five opinions they agree with most — do they think there should be an element of conflict and magic in a relationship?

2 How liberal are you?

Some students may find this exercise sensitive; in any case you can adapt the style of the exercise to topical subjects that your particular students would find interesting.

 Tell students that the statements refer to some arguments for and against three of the following topics: anarchism, animal rights, birth control, euthanasia, forced sterilisation of the unfit, state-registered brothels and surrogate mothers. They are to decide which argument refers to which topic, and whether the arguments are pro or con. Students then discuss the three subjects further, adding any more pros and cons they can think of.

The three subjects are birth control (A), forced sterilisation (B) and euthanasia (C).

1 Apro 2 B pro 3 B con 4 Cpro 5 B pro 6 A con 7 C con 8 C con 9 A con IOA con

Usefulfurther reading:

M. D. Jacobson: Pros and cons.

Follow-up

 Students work in pairs and choose one of the other arguments (or any others you choose), and decide what their opinion is. Sl then imagines they were someone who held the opposite opinion (i.e. devil's advocate) and has to convince S2 of this opinion.

1        

2         How liberal are you?

, - ,

3         Which is worse?

• In groups. Encourage students to use all kinds of comparative structures (as ... as, nothing like as, far more, etc.) rather than just 'worse than'.

Writing

• Students choose one of the six subjects and write a composition comparing the four elements.

4 Opinion polls

•  Give students the survey (but don't tell them it camc from Cosmopolitan), and tell them to follow the instructions, i.e. read, then discuss in groups.

•  In addition, you could allocate one member of each group as a pollster. Then get feedback from each pollster, collate the results, and compare them with the Cosmopolitan results. You can then draw conclusions on what kind of class you are.

1 onlyfemales, see questions 2 and 8 2 Yes, infact they surveyed 714female students, and originally published the answers to 58 questions. 3 Their conclusion was: This generation is liberalish butpersonally ambitious rather than broadly idealistic.

Follow-up

• Ask students to prepare a short survey on petrol and parking problems. Get them to start in pairs, then in groups of four, finally in groups of eight. Each group then selects eight questions. Groups then poll each other, and prepare short reports on the results. Now proceed to the listening.

Listening

• See Follow-up befÒre doing the listening. Students hear a discussion around a survey on petrol and parking problems. Afterwards they can continue the discussion in their groups.

Questions: 1 What doesn't the first speaker understand about the percentage results in polls? 2 What were the three percentage results and what were they related to? 3 Summarise the ideas ofthe second person in relation to parking, petrol and transport.

I W7.?Y only a relatively smallpercentage ofpeople think thatpetrol prices andparking charges are too high. 2 Petrol 70⁰/0, reduced traffic 60⁰/0, carpark charges 65%. 3 Basical(y to discourage peoplefrom usingpetrol In doubling its price and making inner city parkingprohibitive. This can be done by resorting to trains both]òr personal andgoods transport.

Opinion

A  DO you know the thing that's always struck me as odd about opinion polls?

B  What's that?

A  The percentages. Like recently there was a survey about what people thought about traffic, and petrol prices, and public car parks, I mean the charges, for instance in some car parks now it costs something like £5 for half an hour.

B  Yeah, but I don't see what you're getting at.

A  What I mean is the percentages in the results. So there might be 70% of people who complained about high petrol prices, and 60% who want to see the traffic reduced, and 65% who think car park charges are too high. Well so does that mean that there are 35% who actually think the charges are OK and would even be prepared to pay more, and another 30% who think petrol prices are OK? I mean that's absurd, I don't know anyone who doesn't think they're not too high

B  Well actually I think we should pay more.

A  Come on, you're ioking.

B  No seriously, more for petrol, even twice as much maybe, and certainly far more for inner city car parks.

A  But why?

B   More taxes on petrol to discourage people from Using cars, and a kind of graded charging system for car parks depending on how far they are from the city centre.

A  What do you mean?

B  Well, if you park your car quite far from the centre then you pay a minimal amount as a kind of reward for not polluting the centre, then the further you get nearer the centre then the more YOU are penalised. Prices in the centre should be totally prohibitive. I mean with an efficient bus or tram service there's no excuse for using cars.

A  Yeah, but you can't penalise people who don't Use their car to go in town, I mean if you doubled the price of petrol it would cost you a fortune to go anywhere, even on short trips, and especially on holidays.

B  Don't use your car then. Use a train.

A  But what about lorries, I mean they use a lot of petrol to transport goods from one place to another.

B  So what's to stop these goods being transported by train or even via canal?

A  Well anyway, I still can't believe that 30% of those people who said car park charges were OK all think the same as YOU.

B  Well, maybe that's where YOU are wrong. Just think about what I've said and you'll realise that perhaps it's not so stupid as it sounds.

3 Which is worse?

1     A writer earning $ 1 m a week A football player earning $ 1 m a week.

A film star earning $ 1 m a week.

A business man earning $ 1 m a week.

2     Pouring toxic chemicals into a river.

Segregating blacks from whites. Building nuclear power stations. Selling arms to dictators.

3     Drinking over the limit and then driving.

Smoking in a non-smoking department.

Dropping litter in a park.

Spitting on the pavement.

4 Opinion oils

4   Growing old

Growing Ugly.

Going senile.

Growing intolerant.

5   Losing your health Losing all your money. losing your religion.

Losing your reputation.

Warm-ups

•  In groups of four, students write down whether they think the other three members are predominantly governed by their heart, head or wallet. They then discuss their ideas.

•  In a class that knows each other well, put students in groups of four. Dictate the list below adding or deleting elements as you think fit. Students write down which member of the class they think: is best at English, is the most eccentric, is most likely to make a lot of money, has the most expressive face, would make the best prime minister, the teacher likes the most, was naughtiest as a child, etc. They then discuss their ideas.

1 Personality traits

•  Students classify the adjectives into those with positive connotations (+), neutral   and negative (-). They then compare their answers in groups, and should also decide when certain normally unpleasant characteristics may be acceptable in certain circumstances, e.g. aggression (when a police officer shoots a terrorist?), being cruel to be kind (when someone tells a bad actor that they will never make Hollywood?). They should then try to identify the differences between related concepts, for example: ambition/competition, logic/rationality.

•  With students who are more willing to talk about personal issues, get them to rate themselves from one to three (e.g. 1 not aggressive, 3 very aggressive). In pairs they either compare and discuss their own characteristics, or decide which five characteristics they'd look for most in a friend.

•  An alternative, less personal, approach is to give students a list of jobs (comedian, dictator, police officer, Pope, stuntman/woman, etc.) and to decide which positive and negative traits are typically associated with such jobs.

Writing

Personality

2 Fame

 Explain that a 'personality' is also another word for a celebrity or famous person. Before students read text, in groups they discuss well-known personalities in their country or in the world in general and work out what such people have in common (including what kind of personality, in the other sense, these people have).  Students now read the text, then ask them where it may have come from — the kind of language should give some clues to the fact that it is from an interview (with Bob Dylan). Tell students that all the quotes come from a music magazine's interviews with various musicians. The musicians were all answering the same question; students should try and work out what the question was and then try to understand exactly what the musicians meant.

The question was: 'What is the greatest myth aboutfame?.'

G) (1) Tori Amos (2) Mark Pellow (3) Alison Moyet (4) Roland Orzabal (with reference to ßandAid type concerts) (5) Jackson Browne (6) Shaking Stevens (7) Ice T

(8) Paul Weller (9) Sinéad O'Connor (10) Peter Gabriel

(i.e. gaps in your life or personality perhaps) (11) Lemmy

    (12) Chrissie Hynde (13) Billy Bragg                                          1

Follow-up

 Brainstorm students on the pros and cons of being famous,

e.g. being instantly recognisable, being hounded by the press, never knowing whether people like you for who you really are or only because you're rich and famous. Finally get them to decide whether the negative things outweigh the positive ones.

Role-play

 One member of a group of four to six students chooses a famous personality that he/she would like to be (alternatively, you can choose someone for them, e.g. a member ofthc royal family, a prime minister or presidenth a film or music star; the person needn't necessarily be alive). The other students imagine that they are at a press conference interviewing this VIP. Give the interviewers a fèw minutes to prepare a fèw questions and the interviewec to reflect over answers to possible questions.

Writing

 Students choose one of-these options: (a) Conduct a written interview (either in direct or indirect speech) with one or both ofthe fÒIlowing people: the partner ofa famous person, the child ofa famous person. The idea is to understand what it's like to live in someone's shadow. (b) Write a fan letter to your favounte pop or sports star.

Personality traits

aggressive confident dependable imaginative modest prejudiced sincere understanding ambitious conscientious discerning impulsive nervous rational snobbish unpredictable broad-minded creative generous logical observant reckless stubborn vain competitive cruel idealistic materialistic pessimistic servile tactful wise

2 Fame

1          That i t ' s gonna take away the pain .

11         That it's important. That it somehow makes you feel cleverer or better than before.

3 PsychoDraw

• Before students look at their page, ask them to draw a tree with a pen — very quickly, nothing elaborate and no crossings out.

Listening

• Now tell them that this is a psychological game and that they're going to learn how to interpret each other's trees. Get them to look at their page. The speaker describes how to interpret the various parts of the trees illustrated on their page, starting from the roots. At the first listening, the students' task is to note down in what order the speaker describes thc pictures in each group (e.g. with reference to roots, the speaker describes thick, then thin and then no roots). Secondly, students note down what the speaker says about the various parts so that they can then use this information to interpret their pictures. The fifth extract relates to how to assess someone's imagination. With lower levels, you can skip the listening and just outline the interpretation yourself.

l a, c, b 2 e, d,f 3 j, g, i, h 4 1, k, n, m

I The tree represents intelligence and imagination. Basically there are four things to look for: the roots, the trunk, the branches and the foliage or fruit. The roots tell you literally how well grounded your intelligence is, so if you've drawn thick strong roots, then you've got a solid base to your intelligence and you're likely to be resolute in your decisions, you've got your feet on the ground so to speak Thin straggly roots indicate a less well founded intelligence, but even if you've got no roots at all, this doesn't mean you've got no intelligence though it may mean that YOU don't look much beneath the surface, that you're not very analytical.

2  The trunk represents the amount of intelligence, but remember to look at the trunk in proportion to the other parts of the tree. For example, a thick trunk with little foliage or fruit on top, means a potentially high level of intelligence which isn't being exploited, In fact, it's far better to have a thin trunk with a mass of foliage on top, which shows that you Use your intelligence to the full, If your trunk kind of bends to one side, it probably means that YOU were pressurised into following a particular direction in your life that YOU didn't want to.

3  The branches tell you what direction your intelligence is taking you. If some branches have been cut off, it could either mean that you decided to change direction yourself, or that someone literally cut your way and made you do things against your will. A lot of branches indicates a lack of direction and vision, whereas two or three branches means that you leave your options open to follow more than one career path. No branches may mean that you've channelled all your energy and intelligence into one area, you may be rather narrow minded as a consequence.

4  But the really important thing is the foliage and fruit; in proportion to the trunk, the more you have the better. Someone

Personality

who draws a lot of individual pieces Of fruit, is probably someone who is successful in all the various things they have to do at school or work or whatever. A mass of unclearly defined foliage may mean unfocused intelligence. No leaves, even if YOU do the drawing in winter, means that you're not exploiting your intelligence at all. The best thing is to have a balance of a few clearly defined branches with a good amount of leaves.

5  Your imagination can be seen from what kind of tree you draw and how original your tree looks. If, for example, the foliage on your tree looks like a cloud, it means that your imagination hasn't developed much since you were a child, as that's the kind of way children draw trees. If YOU draw a pine tree and you live in a country where pines abound, then you're lacking in both imagination and an ability to see outside your local reality,

4 Psychological tests

Tell students that the questions were originally part of a personality test called 'Do you have social empathy?' Social empathy is the ability to re-live the experiences of others or, in other words, the ability to feel for oneself the emotions, moods and thoughts of another human being. Students read all the items, mark their answers and then discuss their answers in their group. Each group has to reach a decision on which is the best answer. Now give them the answers.

la 2b 3a 4a

Follow-up

Tell students that the questions are based on some true social psychology studies. Get students to think about why some of the studies were conducted in the first place and what the implications of the findings are.

3 PsychoDraw

2

  a                             b                               c                                             d

t)

4 Psychological tests

I An American research team played tapes which relayed who experienced the bitter taste very strongly and identically worded information. The speaker was introduced unequivocally. When this person described this sensation, as (a) a professor, (b) a member of the public, and (c) a how will the other nine group members behave?

delinquent. Who was best able to influence the listeners and a His unshakeably firm conviction influences the bring about a change of attitude? 'non-tasters': at the second sip they suddenly discover a the professor    a slight bitter taste.

b the member of the public b The nine persons are not influenced by the 'taster' c the delinquent c The 'taster' is influenced by the nine subjects, so that at the second sip he no longer notices the bitter taste.

2      A team of English psychologists gave a group of teenagers information to the effect that in ten minutes' time they would          4 The American social scientist Marple asked three groups of hear a lecture on 'Why teenagers should not be allowed to          people to give their opinion as to the correctness of a number drive cars'. A second group received no information before             of statements. The groups consisted of school pupils, the lecture. Which group of teenagers was more strongly          students, and adults (care was taken to ensure that all had influenced by the lecture?   the same level of education). Four weeks later, the a Teenagers who received the information before the                statements were once more put before the same people. They lecture. were again asked for their opinion, but this time with the b Teenagers who received no information before the                additional remark, 'The majority of the other group did not lecture.    share your opinion'. What influence did this additional c Both groups were equally strongly influenced.   remark have? a 64% of pupils, 55% of students, and 40% of the adults

3      Subjects were meant to find out whether a liquid tasted now changed their minds. bitter. Social scientists diluted water with a bitter b 64% of the adults, 55% of students, and 40% of pupils constituent. To 70% of the population this solution conveys a now changed their minds. bitter taste, while it is tasteless to 30%. A group of ten c There was no difference between the groups. subjects was composed of nine 'non-tasters', and one person

1

This unit is basically a set of fill in or emergency exercises, between which there is no logical connection.

1 Phone calls

•   Tell students to look at the six designs and to complete them in whatever way they want, but quickly and without asking any questions.

•   When they've finished, brainstorm them on what the purpose of the quiz might be. Some students should come up with 'phone calls', it is, after all, the title of the exercise. Get them to try and relate what they've done to phone calls. If you get no response tell them that the quiz was invented by British Telecom, who claim that 'research has shown that when it comes to making telephone calls, most of us have a certain style. This simple test will give you an indication of your telephone approach and shed a bit of light on what makes you tick.'

•   Can students now see a connection? Not even if they imagine that they are psychologists? No? OK. Look at the bottom of page 75 for the solution, which students should now read. Can students now see the connection? If they can't, and there's no reason why they should be able to, then you could discuss the whole theory of psychological tests and whether actually they're just fun for the people who invent them.

Follow-up

• Talk about phoning in general. Do students like the phone? Would they like to have a video phone?

Writing

Quizzes

2 All mixed up_

Brainstorm students on whether they do psychological quizzes in magazines. Ask them whether it is possible to learn something constructive from such tests. Now proceed to the exercise.

Tell students that in this exercise the 12 questions were part of four different quizzes (three questions for each quiz). First the students need to be clear about the titles of the quizzes. Brainstorm the class to imagine the kinds of questions which would be applicable for such titles. Then they have to read and answer the questions and in pairs decide which questions refer to which title (some questions may appear to overlap, but this should promote discussion). Next they decide how the questions should be answered to score full marks in that quiz (e.g. if you are ambitious you would answer 'no' to c, 'no' to d, and 'yes' to b). Finally they can discuss their own personal answers. You may decide to drop some of these stages.

ID 2C 3C 4C 5B 674 71) 81) 9B 10B

11 A 1274

Follow-up

Put students in groups of four. Give them the titles of other possible questionnaires: Are you a good friend? Are you an optimist? How much stress is there in your life? Will you live to be a hundred? Are you satisfied with your job? In pairs get them to invent two or three questions for three of the titles. They then read their questions to the other two members of their group who have to guess which questions refer to which titles. They should then answer each other's questions.

2 All mixed up

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3 General knowledge

•  NB Before doing quiz, make sure you know the answers to questions 13, 22 and 25.

•  Students do the quiz in groups. Make the exercise competitive by giving a prize to the group that answers the most questions in five minutes. Check answers.

I power/electricity measurements 2 Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto (in 1995 two newplanets were discovered.) 3 1914—18, 1939—1945 (though this will depend on when certain countries entered the war)

4 Compact Disk, International Monetary Fund, Random Access

Memory, Worldwide FundforNature 5 e.g. UK, Belgium,

Denmark, Netherlands, Spain etc. 6 mile, litre 7 Pacific 8 Shakespeare 9 elephant (660 days), cow (278), dolphin (360), human (267) 10 economicgroup ofEuropean countries, Brussels 1 1 iron, lead, silver, gold 12 the British Prime

Minister 13 al time ofwriting Brazil 14 black belt

15 Argentinian dictator, died 1974 16 French 17 Japan 18 ninth month ofMuslimyear, throughout which a strictfast is observed during hours ofdaylight 19 USA, independence from Britain 20 no, an arachnid, 8 legs (insects have 6)

21 mostfamous pop group in the world, John Lennon 22 ? 23 Britain 24 English comic who became successful in Hollywood 25 ?

Follow-up

In itself the quiz may not generate much talking. Below are some ways of promoting more discussion.

•  Individually, students decide which are the three most and least important facts to know. They then justify their choices to the other members of their group. Then as a group they should formulate one common list. Get class feedback and see if whole class can reach a consensus.

•  In groups, students categorise the questions into subject areas (which students themselves should decide). They then discuss what they consider to be the most important subjects to be knowledgeable about, decide whether they themselves are knowledgeable in these areas, and which areas they would like to be more knowledgeable in.

Writing

• It is better to know something about everything, than everything about something. Discuss.

Quizzes

4 Schedule P

Another mystery quiz for students to find the meaning of! Tell students to complete the quiz individually. They must choose only one answer; they cannot write 'it depends'.

Brainstorm students on the possible purpose of the test and who it is aimed at (age, sex, nationality, etc.). Now tell them that it is based on tests created by consultant psychologists to use at job interviews. Discuss with your students:

l) what each question aims to discover about the candidate 2) as prospective employers which statements they think would be the most suitable for a candidate to agree with 3) the validity of such tests in job interviews

Follow up