LISTENING
1.Why are people often interested in the life of celebrities or famous people? Tick the possible reasons and add some more if you can
They are curious.
They can have something to gossip about.
They can criticize or slander the person they do not like.
2. Listen to a talk show with host Cindy Brown and guest speaker Andy Lewis, a sociologist. Choose the best answer to complete each statement.
Bài nghe:
Nội dung:
Cindy: Welcome to our talk show with guest speaker Mr Andy Lewis, a sociologist. Mr Lewis…
Andy: Please call me Andy. I don’t want to be too formal.
Cindy: No problem, Andy. These days, our audience seem to be overwhelmed with stories in the newspapers or on the Internet – stories about celebrities, political figures, or even ordinary people around us.
Andy: You mean we’re living in a world of stories and scandals?
Cindy: Right. As a sociologist, do you have any advice for our audience?
Andy: I think there’re two sides to this issue. We need some life skills to protect ourselves. First, we don’t want other people to take advantage of our stories. They may use our private lives for blackmail or slander… in order to harm our reputation or just for fun.
Cindy: For whatever purpose, it could be extremely damaging.
Andy: Exactly. So we should not reveal too much of our private life on social networking sites.
Cindy: I agree. But how about the stories of other people? Should we read or follow these stories?
Andy: That’s the second point I want to discuss. Another life skill is learning from other people’s lives. Everyone’s life story is like a book that can teach us something. So we should open that book and read it critically.
Cindy: Critically? Can you explain this?
Andy: It means we should make careful judgements when reading a life story and ask ourselves questions like, ‘Why is this story told?’ or ‘What lessons can I learn from it?’
Cindy: Lessons such as…?
Andy: Such as a person’s reasons for failure or success. This may help us to avoid similar failure or to adopt a new way of life so we can improve ourselves and become better human beings.
Cindy: Very interesting. Thank you, Andy, for your advice and for sharing your thoughts with our listeners. Next week…
3. Listen again. Answer the questions
- The audience should have life skills to protect themselves and to learn from other people’s live.
- We should ask ourselves two question : “Why is this story told?”, “What lesson can I learn form it?”.
- We can learn how to avoid similar mistakes or to adopt a new way of life so we can improve ourselves and become better human beings.
4. Do you agree with Andy that everyone’s life story is like a book that can teach us something? Discuss with a partner