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LESSON 10.4
EXERCISE 7A (P.103)
STUDENT B
LESSON 11.3
EXERCISE 7A (P.110)
STUDENT B
Make sentences from these prompts.
•
Invite your partners to dinner on Saturday evening.
•
Apologise for interrupting too much.
•
Refuse to share your sandwiches with your partners.
LESSON 11.5
EXERCISE 7A (P.114)
STUDENT B
To:
Professor Bright
Subject: Bullying at work
Dear Professor Bright,
I really need your help and advice.
I’m 30. I’ve just got a ‘dream’ job working in the
clothing department of a large store. I’m good at the
job, but maybe I’m too good; it certainly hasn’t made
me popular. My problem is, the younger staff don’t
like me and make nasty comments about me. They
say I need to lose weight, and they criticise the way I
dress and talk.
The manager’s no help. She’ll do anything to be
popular with her staff. So when I complained the staff
were making fun of me, she just said, ‘Can’t you take
a joke?’
A couple of weeks ago, she said my timekeeping
was bad. What did she expect? I live a long way from
the store, and also I’m depressed and not sleeping
properly. I don’t want to leave this job, Vanessa. I just
wish they’d stop bullying me.
How can I deal with this situation, Professor Bright?
To:
Professor Bright
Subject: Feeling lonely
Dear Professor Bright,
I hope you can help me with my problem.
I left university last year. At school and at university,
I had lots of friends and found it easy to get to know
people. I found a great job overseas. My mum and
dad were worried about me but I convinced them that
it was a great opportunity and that I would be alright.
Now, though, I am starting to regret my decision. The
problem is that I haven’t managed to make any new
friends. I work long hours and live in a worker’s hostel
so the only people I meet are other people who work
with me. However, they are all much older than I am
and most have families at home. They spend a lot of
time talking to their wives and children on computers,
they send a lot of money home and try not to waste
any by going out.
I sometimes go into the local town on my own but it
is difficult to start up conversations with people I don’t
know. Even when I have tried, I just get strange looks
as if I am doing something wrong. How can I meet
locals of my own age? What should I do, Professor
Bright?
What is youth culture?
With the development of post-World War II affluence
and the subsequent baby boom in the United States
and Europe, young people began to gain considerable
influence and buying power. Throughout the 1950s,
the growing numbers of young people in the USA and
Europe began to greatly influence music, television
and cinema, spurring the explosion of rock and roll
in the late 1950s and a full-blown youth culture by
the mid-1960s. Examples of the new youth cultures
included mods, rockers and hippies. As teenagers
and adolescents created their own identity and their
disposable income increased, marketing companies
focused their efforts on this emerging subset of society.
Given this commercialisation, it is perhaps surprising
that this activity did not kill off youth cultures. On the
contrary, in the 70s and 80s, new youth cultures from
the UK such as punk and goth developed and travelled
around the world.
The tastes of young people began to drive fashion,
music, films and literature. Corporations and businesses
quickly took note and adapted to the shift by devising
new marketing strategies. For young people, being
more open to change and challenge, technology came
more easily and their fashions changed more quickly
than their adult counterparts. Baby boomers began to
enter the workforce in the 1970s, and thereby had even
greater influence, helping to innovate the computer
revolution. Their children similarly provided the next
generation of youth cultures. In the 90s and beyond,
grunge style and hip-hop culture from America became
popular around the world. Despite the fact that we
live in an age of instant communication, it is still very
difficult to predict what the next youth culture to
sweep the world will be.