What meaning does the word world have? Can a person's family be considered his/her small world?
Explain your point of view.
Lesson 4. You and your Parents
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Do you remain close to your home?
What about parent-child relationship in your family?
Is it important for you to be understood by your parents? Why or why not?
Do you always understand your parents?
Vocabulary
Replace the underlined words with the words given below. Use a dictionary to check your answers.
amenities ambivalent perceive aspiration considerable range confidence distinct constraints friction
1. Children depend on their parents for money, food, and all the necessary comforts.
2. Teen-agers spend a lot of time with their friends.
3. As children enter their teens you tan see noticeable changes in their behavior.
4. To develop their assurance teen-agers need friends.
5. Teen-agers hobbies vary from music to sailing.
6. Adults and teen-agers may have different desires. ^
7. Many teen-agers still view their parents as models for themselves.
8. Friends may become the cause of conflict between teen-agers and their parents.
9. Teen-agers have a double-minded attitude to their parents.
10. Teenagers argue with the parents about parental control.
Listening Comprehension
Listen to a psychological survey of the British young people aged 13-19 conducted by the National Youth Agency. Answer the following questions:
1. What is most British teen-agers' attitude to the home?
2. How do they view their home and their parents?
3. How do British teen-agers spend their leisure time?”
4. What becomes more important as children enter their teens? Why?
5. How does street life range?
6. What does the term generation gap refer to?
7. How does the generation gap result in parent-child relationship?
8. What do survey findings show?
Post-listening activity
Look at the chart. Put +, if you join. Put -, if not. Compare your answers with your classmates’.
What are the results? What do they mean? Give the conclusion.
You may start with:
From the survey/answers of our group, it may be concluded/inferred that…
The survey of our group implies that...
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What do they do? 91% said they helped with housework
58% listened to music
52% watched television
37% read books and magazines
37% regularly visited friends’ homes
27% had friends to their homes
54% liked to spend most of their spare time either at home or at their friends’ houses
43% preferred to be at home because they did not feel safe on the streets
23% said they would do anything rather than stay at home
What do they think?
68% would seek advice from their parents about personal problems
62% said they learnt about adulthood responsibilities from their parents
55% perceived their parents as the main source of income
30% wanted to stay in the same area after living school to be near their home
Reading
Memo from: A Child
To: Parents
1. Don't let me form bad habits. I have to rely on you to detect them in the early stages.
2. Don't make me feel smaller than I am. It only makes me behave stupidly "big".
3. Don't correct me in front of people if you can help it. I'll take much more notice if you talk quietly with me in private.
4. Don't make me feel that my mistakes are sins. It upsets my sense of values.
5. Don't protect me from consequences. I need to learn the painful way sometimes.
6. Don't be too upset when I say, "I hate you". Sometimes it isn't you that I hate, but your power to thwart me.
7. Don't tell me my fears are silly. They are terribly real, and уou can do much to reassure me if you try to understand.
8. Don't ever suggest that you are perfect or infallible. It gives me too great a shock when I discover that you are neither.
9. Don't ever think that it is beneath your dignity to apologize to me. An honest apology makes me feel surprisingly warm toward you.
10. Don't forget that I love experimenting, I couldn't get along without it, so, please, put up with it.
11. Don't forget how quickly I am growing up. It must be very difficult for you to keep pace with me, but please do try.
12. Don't nag. If you do I shall have to protect myself by appearing deaf.
13. Don't forget that I cannot explain myself as well as I should like to.
That is why I am not always accurate,
14. Don't put me off when I ask questions. If you do, you will find that I stop asking and seek my information elsewhere.
15. Please keep yourself fit and healthy. I need you!
ABC'S OF PARENTHOOD
1. Always find sometime exclusively for children each day.
2. Broaden their horizons through varied experiences.
3. Find something good to say about your children each day.
4. Have a listening ear for their problems and concerns.
5. Insure that you pay attention to their fears.
6. Joyfully forgive their shortcomings.
7. Keep their confidence.
8. Live a life that serves as a positive model.
9. Manage your time as to make them your best friend.
10. Open your home to their friends.
11. Remember that they have needs to be met.
12. Show them love.
13. Teach them to treat others, as they want to be treated.
14. Understand they are young and learning to adjust.
15. Very carefully mean what you say.
Comprehension
Skimming for Main Ideas
Circle the letter of the title that suits best both texts.
a. Suggestions for Promoting Good Behavior.
b. Advice for Family Relationship.
с. The Peaceful Home.
Scanning for Details
Scan the texts for detailed comprehension.
Use a dictionary if necessary.
Choose five items from each text to answer the following questions:
1. What are your personal messages to your parents?
2. How do you want your parents to treat you?
Compare your answers with your classmates'. Which items are the most popular?
Discussion
Discuss in groups the following questions. Select a moderator to lead the discussion, a secretary to make notes, a spokesman to present the results of you discussion to the rest of the class.
1. Do you think that a “generation gap” is a problem? Why or why not?
2. How much of a “generation gap” is there between you and your parents? What do you argue about? Why? How are the conflicts resolved?
3. Have your parents brought you up in the way their parents brought them up? Would you want to bring up your children in the same way?
4. How does a parents' wisdom generated by past experience and culture affects a child who wants to make her or his own way? How is it for you, in your family? What will you bring with you as you become more independent? What will you choose to leave behind? How are your choices manifested?
5. Is it possible for parents and children to solve their day-to-day conflicts without arguing? Can people be educated to live in peace?
Writing (this activity can be done at home)
"Dear Abby" is an advice column that appears in many American newspapers. A teenager wrote the following letter to Abby.
Read the letter and write a reply, advising the teenager how to solve her problems.
Dear Abby:
I am a fourteen-year-old girl and I hate my mother. It may sound terrible to you, but I really hate her. I used to think I would get over it, but now I know I never will.
Sometimes I think I will go out of my mind if she doesn't quit picking on me. I never do anything to suit her. She doesn't like my clothes, my hair, my friends, or anything.
My friends are not bums, either. They are good kids, and my mother says they look like trash. They aren't.
Please help me, Abby, before I run away from home. I cry myself to sleep at night because my mother is so hateful. If I baby-sit, she makes me put the money in the bank. Other girls can buy something or do whatever they want with the money they earn.
Don't tell me to talk to my father. He's always on her side. And don't tell me my mother "loves" me and is only doing things for my own good. If you print my letter, don't sign my name or I'll get killed.
Miserable in Phoenix
Research (this activity can be done by advanced students or by those who wish to)
Find a Russian equivalent of the following saying, "If you good to others, you are best to yourself.”
Creative Task
Give a literary translation of the following items:
If you are good to others,
You are best to yourself.
If you are best to yourself,
There is beauty in your person,
If there is beauty in your person,
There will be harmony in the home.
If there is harmony in the home,
There will always be order and peace
In this your small world.
Appendix
Lesson 4
Listening Comprehension
A Psychological Survey of British Teen-agers
The home is still the central focus of most young people's lives, particularly those who are still attending school. The majority of young people between 16 and 19 also remain at or very close to home whether they are working, taking part in special employment training schemes, or unemployed. During this period young people rely upon their home as a place of safety and security and upon their parents as the main providers of money, food, and all the necessary amenities for life.
Most young people's leisure time is spent in their home shared with other members of the family, watching television, or doing domestic chores, or spent in their own rooms listening to music or reading. Young people also spend considerable time with their friends in other people's homes.
Also in common with young people in other countries, life on the streets is very important. As children enter their teens there is a distinct graduation from the playground, garden, or home to the street where young people meet and talk, and start to develop confidence. Street life ranges from groups of friends who meet together in streets, squares and parks, to visit to town centers to do window-shopping and see what's going on. Teen-agers look to their friends, rather than to their parents, for acceptance and approval.
In recent decades much has been made of the term "generation gap" referring particularly to the "gap" in age, aspiration, and understanding between young teen-agers and their parents that often appears to be a cause of friction.
However, research indicates that many young people still perceive their parents, rather than teachers or other adults, as models from whom they draw their main beliefs and attitudes. Parents are also regarded as the main providers of advice about general problems as well as about employment.
Survey findings show that many young people have an ambivalent attitude to the constraints of parental authority. They inspire to the independence to go out where and when they want, but they understand the fact that parents are concerned about where they are going and set times for them to return.
Key Answers
Vocabulary
1. amenities
2. considerable
3. distinct
4. confidence
5. range
6. aspiration
7. perceive
8. friction
9. ambivalent
10. constraints