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TASK IV

STUDENT 1

The author of your extract favours the idea of exercise. Your partner’s extract presents a totally different point of view. Share your information and discuss the benefits and shortcomings of exercise.

Regular physical activity can make a big difference in your outlook on life. Those who exercise are no strangers to the freedom elicited by movement, to the sense of accomplishment felt at the end of a long walk or a strength workout. The natural tranquilizers secreted during physical activity promote a sense of well-being and help drain off tension in a natural, positive way. People who follow a regular fitness program feel more in control of their lives, appetites and body weight.

Inactivity is hazardous to your health. It's associated with heart disease, stroke, and some cancers. Many people who don't exercise often think they just don't have time. Yet those who do exercise regularly have made fitness part of their routines – just like showering and brushing your teeth.

Another benefit of physical activity is increased energy and overall feeling of well-being. Physical activity promotes good health by helping you to control your weight, reduce stress, and increase your energy level. Exercise also plays an important role in preventing, delaying, and dealing with the onset of various illnesses and disabilities associated with the aging process.

Exercise can actually reverse the aging process and negate the harmful effects of other risk factors such as smoking, high blood pressure, and diabetes. Studies have now proved that with proper conditioning and regular exercise, the human body is capable of repairing itself.

A sedentary lifestyle, in contrast, is a major underlying cause of death.

 

STUDENT 2

The author of your extract is opposed to the idea of exercise. Your partner’s extract presents a totally different point of view. Share your information and discuss the benefits and shortcomings of exercise.

Where's the virtue in sport, fitness and the body beautiful? It’s high time you hung up your trainers and exercised your mind, not your body.

Think about the things that give you most pleasure. Watching television, perhaps, while sipping chilled beer? How about eating your favourite food by candlelight in a restaurant? What do they all have in common? They all involve nothing more strenuous than sitting or lying down.

Why, then, this present mania for sweating and working out? I hate exercise and all forms of sport and I can’t stand the self-righteousness of those who think developing ripping muscles and flat stomachs superior to the cultivation of personality, manners, good taste in art, music, and literature.

I was brought up to believe that physical exercise was bad for one, and this conviction has been reinforced over the years by reports of footballers with torn ligaments, athletes crippled by arthritis, or joggers dropping dead with heart attacks.

Exercise is repetitive and unending; once you stop, the flab returns and the pulse slows down again. It is isolationist. All you get is an obsession with your body. And it’s expensive: in terms of time, effort and material things like club fees, equipment and special outfits.

Exercising makes people think that they can live for ever. It puts off the moment of realisation that we are mortal. Coming to terms with oneself, finding out who one is come from within, not from running round a park with 2,000 other people.

 

TASK V

STUDENT 1

The author of your passage is in favour of banning smoking in public places. Your partner’s extract presents a different point of view. Share the information you have and discuss the issue with your partner.

There is nothing worse than coming home from a bar or club after an evening out and finding that your clothes smell disgusting because they have been saturated with stench of smoke. I'm not the only one who is fed up of this, and I'm not some born again non-smoker, I just wish that I had a choice whether or not I came home smelling like a dirty ashtray.

Another thing that I really hate is walking down the street behind someone smoking a cigarette. Every time they exhale out comes that cloud of stale smoke and bang, you walk straight into it and aside from crossing over to the other side of the street there is very little you can do about it. It is not a pleasant experience and it is one I could live quite happily without.

Scientific research suggests that passive smoking can greatly increase your chances of contracting heart disease and lung cancer. That is not to say that everyone who smokes dies this way, but isn’t it rather selfish to perform an act in public that could impact on the health of other people in the room? Due to tight regulations in the workplace, most office buildings now operate a non-smoking policy, but the real issue is around social venues. I have yet to go to a pub or restaurant that offers adequate non-smoking facilities and as for clubs – frankly, you look like the odd one out if you DON’T smoke. The trade-off is this – if you want to go out and enjoy yourself, then you must expose yourself to other people’s cigarette smoke. On the basis that this could kill you, I think that’s a pretty raw deal – don’t you?
Studies have shown that one of the primary reasons that young people start smoking is to imitate adults or peers who they see smoking. It may seem rather extreme, but by continuing to allow people to smoke in public places, there is a greater chance that children may be influenced to start smoking.

Many people also say that they only smoke socially – purely because everyone around them is doing it. I firmly believe that exposure to cigarettes and smoking can perpetuate the cycle of smoking.
I appreciate that smokers have every right to smoke and that they shouldn’t be persecuted – there are far greater crimes after all! I would dearly love to support a common sense policy, but I seldom see any evidence of this around me, and therefore feel very strongly that smoking should be banned in ALL public places.

 

STUDENT 2

The author of your extract is against banning smoking. Your partner’s extract presents a different point of view. Share the information you have and discuss the issue with your partner.

Across the United States, municipal authorities are enacting anti-smoking laws. One third of all American corporations have instituted non-smoking regulations, and the number is rapidly growing.

As someone who detests cigarettes, I should be pleased at these developments. So why do I find myself concerned that Hunter College, where I spend a good bit of time, has just instituted tough new regulations against smoking? Frankly, I worry that one day the college authorities may well go after me, too. While I don’t smoke, I also don’t do some of the things that many who oppose smoking think I should do – for example, I do not get very much exercise nor do I maintain a healthy diet.

Already some insurance companies offer lower rates to people who exercise and reduce their cholesterol levels. How would I feel if my employers removed egg products and fried foods, both of which I eat regularly, from the menu at the staff lunchroom. Or if I were forced to weigh in or work out each morning before I went to the office?

In surveys, the major reasons smokers give for their habit is that they enjoy it and find it relaxing. Those are exactly the reasons why I eat what I do and spend my spare time with a book in front of a television screen. These choices fit my personality and life style. To oppose a ban on smoking is to object to the demand upon a group of people to give up their particular stance toward life. Social psychologists have found out that, as a group, smokers differ from non-smokers. Smokers are more likely to be impulsive, extroverted risk takers. They take chances in a variety of areas of their personal lives that abstinent types like me shy away from. Smokers tend to drive faster, for instance, and to make more venturesome business decisions.

We all take unnecessary risks at times and behave in ways that upset others. Smokers may do so in more areas of life, or in different ways, than nonsmokers. But we, nonsmokers who believe that we have a right to our own idiosyncrasies, have an obligation to defend smokers’ rights as well.

 

PART V

IT’S A SMALL WORLD

 

TASK I

STUDENT 1

The extract you have describes the benefits of using computers. Your partner’s extract presents a totally different view. Find out what information your partner has by asking questions. Share your information with your partner. Discuss the role computers play in modern life.

We live in spectacular times. The prospects for the future have never been more exciting. Men and women find themselves in command of a technology that helps them to reshape nature to conform to their needs.

Computers have become part of everyday life. Today’s schoolchildren carry around calculating power which would have filled a large room forty years ago. Computer scientists are now working on the next generation of computers: ones which will have true intelligence. At Stanford University a computer has been developed for medical diagnosis. There are computers that can write stories, correct spelling, improve grammar and style and even check for mistakes.

The computer as surrogate teacher may bring even more benefits. Today we must have one teacher to many students. The advantage of a tutor for each student is clear and if that tutor is also endlessly patient and super-humanly well-informed, we may expect a wonderful improvement in the standard of education.

As you all know, the Internet has emerged in recent years as a phenomenal engine for U.S. economic growth and development. The Internet will soon be so pervasive that not having access to the technology, or not knowing how to use it, will be the equivalent of not knowing how to read or write. In short, those segments of population who are not able to use the Internet will be left behind both economically and socially.

All techniques and devices have the potential to become defining technologies because all to some degree redefine our relationship to nature. The computer is the contemporary analogy of the clocks and steam engines of the previous centuries. It is not that we cannot live without computers, but that we will be different people because we live with them.

 

STUDENT 2

The extract you have describes the negative aspects of using computers. Your partner’s extract presents a totally different view. Find out what information your partner has by asking questions. Share your information with your partner. Discuss the role computers play in modern life.

The introduction of computers into offices is indeed a cause for concern, both for health reasons and for the deprivation of job satisfaction that it brings out. Psychologists say that the human body, which has been trained to use many senses over a period of thousands of years, cannot limit itself to just watching numbers and letters moving across the screen.

But the main problem seems that many computer jobs don’t demand human interaction. The employee interacts with a machine, not with other people. Such employees may feel that their work is not human.

Among teachers and education experts there are deep concerns involving children development and personalities. Too much reliance upon computers causes a lack of ability to deal with the outside world and to interact with others properly. It is also acknowledged that excessive computer use makes children at once introverted and explosive, and at times mentally unbalanced.

The social atmosphere in which we work and live is being poisoned by these machines. As our society moves toward the conviction that there is nothing important in the human condition that cannot be fed into a computer, the positive qualities of a humanistic society may well be lost.

With computers becoming more and more involved in everything that we do, it is likely that they will no longer be there to help us. We may possible rely on them to do even the most common or complicated tasks. A power outage or an electrical surge could temporarily cripple entire communities. Something as drastic as a computer virus could possibly cripple the entire nation. With almost everything computerized, people may no longer know how to do the common tasks that keep things running. They may not bother to learn how to do some things because they believe that a computer would always be there to do it for them. Receiving help from a computer is one thing, but relying on them is another matter entirely.

 




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