LAB ACTIVITIES - IMPROVING LISTENING & SPEAKING

A. Speak English Fluently - Rule 3

Watch the video and anwer the questions below

SOCIAL ISSUES IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN - CHILDREN AT WORK

Children's working conditions

Children had an unhappy childhood. They worked hard to satisfy the needs of their parents because families were very poor and they didn't have enough money, so children worked. They underwent very difficult conditions of employment. Days were long for them : eight or twelve hours a day, six days a week. Children worked in manufactories.

At that time, there was no insurance and when children had accidents or were ill they didn't have any help. Many children often worked with adults : they worked under the same conditions. Children were small, they could go into narrow spaces, children were clever too and employers appreciated these qualities. Nowadays , in poor countries, many children often work to help their parents but the conditions of employment may be better than the industrial revolution in England.

THE GIFT OF ENGLISH BY CORNELIS DE JONG

Break out of the mould. Dare to grasp the most beautiful thing in life: language. English is free - anyone may possess it. He who acquires it at school, if the teacher was good, will have received the most valuable gift of all; more valuable than any other gift he is likely to receive for the rest of his life.

Although language is the most complex subject we will ever learn in our lives, we are perfectly equipped to acquire language from an early age; in fact we have the capacity to acquire several languages of almost equal fluency as our mother tongue. There have been many studies on bi- or multilingualism, but one thing is certain: starting off life (for the first 10-12 years) with just one language is by far the better option.

Just how complex is language, compared to, say, mathematics? We cannot be certain (as yet) but if the volume of connections in the brain invested in language is an indicator, it must be in the order of many, many times more complex. On the other hand, this may be a false indicator as we probably allocate about as much space in our brains to facial recognition: body language is as important to us as verbal and vocal language.  

(go on reading at Cornelis De Jong's site)