How much have the British changed?

You are going to

• watch a video and read about recent changes in British social attitudes on marriage, relationships, religion and welfare
• practise numbers, percentages, fractions, the language of graphs and statistics
• listen to people giving opinions

1) Discuss

• What are the British like? 
• Are we conservative and traditional or liberal and tolerant?
• Do you think the UK has changed in the last 30 or 50 years?
• Has your country changed in the last 30 or 50 years?
• What changes do you think have happened in the UK in the last 30 or 50 years?

2) Discuss
Look at the opinions in the exercise below.
How many do you agree with?

3) Watch
Changes in British social attitudes since 1983

Watch the video.

1) Put the opinions in the exercise above in the order you hear them.
2) What other information does the video tell you about British views on marriage, religion, welfare and relationships?

source http://www.bsa-30.natcen.ac.uk/





3) Watch again and answer these questions.

4) Discuss
What language do we use to describe graphs, data and statistics?
Look at the words in the questions above. In 60 seconds how many more words or expressions can you think of?
In pairs write a list.
eg  a sharp rise, drop, double, per cent ...







5) Read  
A) How many of these words do you understand?

B) Look carefully at the diagram and do the exercise below.

Changing Attitudes - The 1980s and 2012

6) Read
A) Read the text below and answer these questions. 
Compared with 50 Years ago;

1. Is class still important in British life?
2. Are the British more or less interested in politics?
3. Are the British of today more or less optimistic?
4. Do people think the Queen is still important?

Poll shows our views on class, politics, unions and royalty have all moved on since 1963

Britons are more interested in politics than 50 years ago, but less convinced that the government pays much attention to their views. The survey also found that while trade union power has become less of a concern, the influence of big business persists as an issue for 61% of people, slightly up on half a century ago.

Half a century on, the survey suggests, the influence of class over British politics has diminished, along with a feeling of engagement with Westminster, but it has not been accompanied by a loss of interest in politics – rather the reverse. Significantly, in 2013 only 17% think that "having elections makes government pay a good deal of attention to what people think", against 46% in 1963. Yet in contrast, 28% now say they take "a good deal" of interest in politics, up from 16%, while 43% take "some" interest, compared with 37% in 1963. Politics is alive and well, it appears, but the House of Commons is not the focus.

Among the findings, the 1963 and 2013 polls also underscore the shift in public opinion on social security. In 1963, 77% thought the government should spend more on pensions and social services, while that figure is now 42%. However, given the choice between tax cuts and increases in social services, there has been a small decline in support for tax cuts, from 52% to 46%, and only a similar fall in support for more social services, from 42% to 37%.

The comparative figures reveal a sharp decline in optimism. Today 11% think they are better off than they were a year ago, and 38% feel worse off. The figures for 50 years ago were 33% and 21% respectively.

In 1963, 36% of British people thought Britain should have very close ties with the US. That has fallen to 14% in 2013.

The survey also underlines the decline in support for the monarchy as a political entity – 63% thought the Queen and the royal family were very important to the nation in 1963, compared with 41% now.

Adapted from http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/nov/17/1963-opinion-poll-westminster-public



B) Vocabulary. Look at the text again and do the exercise below.

Printable worksheets here




More
Practice.
The language of graphs. 
Look at the presentation. Try and describe the graphs.

IELTS Task 1 vocab from David Mainwood

Reading.
NatCen Social Research site http://www.bsa-30.natcen.ac.uk/

News
http://www.channel4.com/news/british-attitudes-towards-health-family-sex-and-benefits

http://www.getreading.co.uk/news/local-news/british-social-survey-shows-changing-5873917





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• Visit Britain - Webquest (Reading / Scanning) Elementary, Intermediate, Life in the UK, Reading, Scanning, Visit Britain, Webquest

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What do you know about YouTube?

You are going to

• watch a video and read text in the video
• look at an infographic about YouTube
• do some quiz comprehension activities
• practise reading quickly / scanning for information
• practise the past

Discuss

• What do you know about YouTube?
• Do you use it?
• What do you watch on it? 
• What is your favourite clip?
• Have you ever uploaded a clip to YouTube? 
• Have you ever been "Rickrolled"? What does it mean?

Vocabulary check
Drag and drop to match the words on the left with the definitions on the right




Watch
Watch the video and answer the questions.

• Who founded YouTube?
• What gave them the idea to start the site?
• When was the first YouTube video uploaded?
• How many people use the site?

Quiz
How much can you remember from the video?
Do this quiz.

Read
Read the text below about the history of YouTube from 2005 to 2010. Don't worry if you don't understand everything. Find the answers as quickly as you can.
You can answer the questions in the interactive exercise below

Find out

1. When did YouTube officially launch?
2. How much did Google buy YouTube for?
3. Which Queen has her own channel?
4. Which famous rock band performed live on Youtube?
5. How long does the average person spend on YouTube?
6. How many views a day did YouTube have in 2010?
7. What percentage of internet traffic does YouTube have?
8. How long was the first video?
9. What age group uses YouTube the most?
10. How many languages does Google's Automatic Speech Recognition Technology translate?

Infographic: The History of Youtube by Infographiclabs


Now answer the questions

Printable version here

Write / Research

What's your favourite webpage on the internet?
Write a short paragraph about it.
Intro

• What is it? 
• What can you do on it? 
• Are there other websites like it?

Find out

• Who founded it?
• Why?
• How old is it? When was it launched?
• Is it popular? How much traffic does it have?

Conclusion
Give you opinion of it. Say what's special about it



More
What are the most watched clips on YouTube?
Can you guess any?

Watch the clip below

• How many clips have you already seen?
• What activities are the people doing?

Supersize Me!

You are going to 

• watch a clip from the film "Supersize Me" about fast food
• do a gap-fill listening exercise
• discuss the health aspects of eating fast food
• discuss whether the state should prohibit unhealthy activities
• write an argument essay based on the topic

1) Discuss

• Do you ever eat in fast food restaurants?  Why / Why not?
• What does “Super size me” mean?
• Have you seen the film?
• Is Fast Food good for you?  Why / Why not?
• Do you think Fast Food restaurants are responsible for making people fat or ill?
• What would happen if you only ate Fast Food for 1 month?

You are going to watch 2 clips from Morgan Spurlock's documentary Supersize Me. For 30 days Morgan Spurlock only ate at McDonald's, eating everything on the menu at least once. At the end of the film he examines what effect this diet has had on him.
You can buy the DVD on amazon here




2) Before you watch / Vocabulary Check
Do you know these words?
OBESE = FAT
SUED (To Sue) = To take someone to court for damages
CORONARY = Heart attack
JOINTS = Restaurants
FRIVOLOUS = Silly
STRAIGHT = Consecutively, following = 30 days straight.

3) Watch the clip

Why did 2 girls try to sue McDonalds?
What is Morgan Spurlock going to do for 1 month?

4) Gap-fill

Now do the gap-fill. Fill in the gaps with the right number or word.
Watch the clip again if you need to.

5) Discuss
What do you think happened after 30 days of eating nothing but fast food?

• Did he get fatter?
• Was he ill?
• How did he feel?

6) Watch
Watch the end of the film.

1. How much weight did he gain?
2. What happened to his liver?
3. What happened to his cholesterol?
4. Did he get fatter?
5. How much more likely is he to have a heart failure?
6. How did he feel?
7. What happened to his sex life?
8. Did he become addicted to fast food?

Answers and printable exercises - here

7) Discuss

• If fast food is unhealthy, should it be banned or restricted or is eating it a matter of personal choice?
• If you think it is a matter of personal choice, should people also be allowed to do other unhealthy or addictive things like drink alcohol, smoke or take illegal drugs? Where do you draw the line between allowing one unhealthy activity and prohibiting or restricting another?
• Should the government or state tell us what not to eat, drink, smoke or do with our bodies? Is the state trying to interfere with the individual's personal freedom and choice? Can these initiatives ever be successful or are they a waste of money?
• How do a person's unhealthy habits affect the state or society?

8) Write
Write an answer to this question.
To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement? "Fast food is addictive and unhealthy and it should be restricted in the same way that alcohol, cigarettes and drugs are."

More
 

Originally via: OnlineSchools.org

Fast food facts
http://www.vivavegie.org/101book/text/nolink/social/supersizeme.htm

What would happen if..? (2nd Conditional)

You are going to practise the 2nd conditional by

• discussing some imaginary situations
• reading some texts and doing some comprehension activities  featuring conditionals

Note; Conditionals can be revised here  Conditionals 1 and 2


1) Introduction

Look at the presentation and answer the questions in pairs or groups. Click to go to each new question.

If... 2nd conditional from David Mainwood

2) Discuss

What do you think?

1. What would happen if you stopped sleeping?
2. If the ice caps melted, would it flood Earth?
3. What would happen if you were locked in an airtight room? How long would you survive?
4. What would happen if a large meteorite hit the Earth?

3) Reading / Webquest

Read the questions for each text and then find the answers

1) What would happen if you stopped sleeping?

Look at these questions

1. What happens if you don't get enough sleep?
2. What are the 3 theories of why we sleep?
3. What do you think happens after three days of no sleep
4. What would happen if you were forced to stay awake?

Now read here to find the answers

To answer this, we need to look at some basics about sleep. The amount you need depends on your age. A newborn baby might sleep 20 hours a day while a 4-year old might need only 12 hours. The average for 10-year-olds is 10 hours a day and most adults seem to need seven to nine hours of sleep a night. And the average senior citizen can often get by with just six or seven hours a day. Whatever amount you need, you know you feel great after a good night of sleep. But, why is that? Does anything important happen during sleep? Yes, scientists have found that two key things happen during sleep: growth hormone in children is secreted and chemicals important to the immune system are secreted. If you don't get enough sleep, you're more prone to disease, and a child's growth can be stunted by sleep deprivation.

Beyond the immune system and growth hormone factors, no one really knows why it is that we sleep, but there are all kinds of theories, including the following. For one, sleep gives the body a chance to repair muscles and other tissues, replace aging or dead cells. Also, sleep gives the brain a chance to organize and archive memories (dreaming is probably a part of that process). Furthermore, sleep may be a way of recharging the brain. And finally, in very early times, sleep made sense in that people couldn't really do anything in the dark anyway, so they might as well "turn off" and save the energy.

A good way to understand why you sleep is to look at what happens when we don't get enough. If you've ever pulled an all-nighter, you know that missing one night of sleep isn't fatal. A person will generally be irritable during the next day and will become tired easily or will be totally wired because of adrenalin. If a person misses two nights of sleep, it gets worse. Concentration is difficult and attention span falls by the wayside. Mistakes increase. After three days, a person will start to hallucinate and clear thinking is impossible. With continued wakefulness, a person can lose grasp on reality. A person who gets just a few hours of sleep per night can experience many of the same problems over time.

It only takes three days of sleep deprivation to cause a person to hallucinate. Obviously, if you were to go for a longer period of time, the symptoms would worsen and in time, would most likely prove fatal. Rats forced to stay awake continuously will eventually die, proving that sleep is definitely essential. So, unless you were being forced to stay awake, you'd probably fall asleep before something as drastic as death could happen.

It's interesting to know that some people can function on very little sleep if necessary. A portion of a Navy SEAL's rigorous training program is a good example of this phenomenon. During a particularly rigorous week of training, the trainees must engage in highly physical activities for about six days - all of their hard work is accomplished on about four hours of sleep for the entire week!

From http://express.howstuffworks.com/ask-mb-stop-sleep.htm

2) If the ice caps melted, would it flood Earth?

Read the text below. Fill in the gaps with these sentences endings;

a) sea levels would not be affected.
b) it wouldn't flood all the Earth.
c) it would add another 20 feet to the oceans.
d) all of these cities would be under water.
e) sea levels around the world would rise about 200 feet.




Full text here http://express.howstuffworks.com/ask-mb-ice-melt.htm

3) What would happen if you were locked in an airtight room? How long would you survive?

Read the text to find the answer 

In order to answer this question, we need to figure out how much oxygen you actually use in a normal day. First, let's assume that you're sitting in a chair, just hanging out. Maybe you're watching TV. You are not panicking, and you are not exercising. You might take 10 to 12 breaths per minute. That means that you will inhale and exhale seven to eight liters of air (about one-fourth of a cubic foot) every minute.
You could actually measure this yourself by holding a garbage bag in your hand and exhaling each breath into it. A typical white garbage bag that you find in the kitchen holds 50 liters or so. It would take you five to ten minutes to fill it full of air, depending on how big you are, and what you are doing. If you do the math, you can see that in a day you breathe something like 11,000 liters of air. That's roughly 200 garbage bags full of air, or 388 cubic feet of air.

Now, what if someone were to completely seal your bedroom with plastic and lock you inside. How long would you last? A typical bedroom is roughly 12 feet by 12 feet by 8 feet. That is 1,152 cubic feet or 32,621 liters. It would take you three days to inhale and exhale 1,152 cubic feet of air. However, that does not mean that you would actually be able to live in your sealed room for three days.

If you could somehow use your room as a giant "air tank" -- so you only breathed the air in it once -- that would be one thing. This is what people do when they go scuba diving. They breathe air out of their tank and then exhale it into the water. But you're not just breathing in - you're breathing out into the room, too.

Since you are sitting inside a sealed room, you have two problems. The first problem comes because you are breathing out carbon dioxide with every breath. You are "polluting" the room with carbon dioxide. The other problem is that, with each breath, you are consuming oxygen. So the amount of carbon dioxide in the room is rising with every breath, and the amount of oxygen is falling.

When the person first locks you in the room, about 21% of the air in your room is oxygen. The rest is nitrogen. There is hardly any carbon dioxide at all in the room (0.05% or less). Now you take a breath. What goes in is 21% oxygen and 0% carbon dioxide. What comes out is 16% oxygen and 5% carbon dioxide. Once you get to the point where the room's total oxygen falls to 19% and the carbon dioxide level reaches 2%, you're in trouble. Not only are you getting less oxygen, but you're now also taking in carbon dioxide, which is actually a poison.

Therefore, in reality, you will only last a day and a half or so. Then your body will begin having problems. So, you had better start working on finding a way out of that room! 

From http://express.howstuffworks.com/ask-mb-oxygen.htm


Read again. Match the numbers and sentences in the exercise below.

4) Finally (very), what would happen if a 500km asteroid hit the Earth?

• Would we survive?
• What would happen to the oceans?
• What would happen to life on Earth?

Watch the video and find out. Turn the captions on and read the subtitles.






More practice
More here  http://express.howstuffworks.com/ask-marshall.htm
What other interesting facts can you find?

Can you make any more questions with what would happen if..?
Ask the questions and give answers.

Go here for more conditionals practice  Conditionals 1 and 2


Printable exercises here



Answers for Ex1 and Ex4 highlight below

Ex1

1. You're more prone to disease, and a child's growth can be stunted by sleep deprivation.
2.    A) Sleep gives the body a chance to repair muscles and other tissues and replace aging or dead cells.   B) Sleep gives the brain a chance to organize and archive memories (dreaming is probably a part of that process).   C) Sleep may be a way of recharging the brain.
3. A person will start to hallucinate and clear thinking is impossible. With continued wakefulness, a person can lose grasp on reality.
4. You'd probably fall asleep before something as drastic as death could happen.

Ex 4 

Life would not survive and the oceans would be vaporized

60 Seconds - Things That Happen On The Internet Every Sixty Seconds

You are going to

• Practise using the passive 
• Look at an infographic on internet use
• Do an interactive exercise practising the passive 

1) Discuss
What do people do on the internet?
What do you think are the most popular activities that people do on the internet?






2) Look at the infographic below
In 60 seconds

• How many emails are sent?
• How many tweets are generated?
• How many status updates are published on facebook?
• How many search queries are made on google?
• How many new videos are added to youtube?

Infographic by- Shanghai Web Designers

3) Practise the Passive
Fill in the gaps in the sentences below with one of the participles and the correct form of the verb to be (is / are) to practise making passives. You can use some of the participles more than once.

Do you find any of the figures surprising?

Source http://www.go-gulf.com/blog/60-seconds

If you are not sure how to make the passive look here

Passive present simple

View more presentations from David Mainwood

4) Discuss
What do you like doing on the internet?
What are the good things and bad things about using the internet?