Нижний Новгород, 2005 Печатается по решению редакционно-издательского совета гоу нижегородского государственного лингвистического университета им. Н. А. Добролюбова
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| Part 3. Extensive Reading T  oday’s children are tomorrow’s adults. The government in the USA is all too aware that a stable and happy upbringing is likely to make stable adults and sees the family as central to the wellbeing of society. But parents do not always know how to cope with diverse and multiple tasks of upbringing.The following article highlights the latest findings in the sphere of early childhood development and what is being done by the USA government in order to enlighten parents. They should get special knowledge how to maximize the child’s potential. Text 1. Teach Your Parents Well (By Sharon Begley and Pat Wingert) For more than 50 years it has been Dr. Benjamin Spock’s mantra to new parents: “Trust your own common sense.” In slightly different forms the advice is about as old as the human species: follow your instincts with your baby. Last week, as the morning news programs featured segments on how early experiences wire a child’s brain, at least one interviewer ended the chat with some version of “But Doctor, in the end, what’s really important is that you love your child, right?” If only it were so. For more than a year now scientists have been trying to educate parents, teachers and public officials how the foundations of social, emotional and intellectual development are all laid early, in the first ten years of life. Whether a child learns how to soothe herself when she’s distressed or needs the comfort of others, whether she learns to think abstractly or is mired in the concrete, whether he learns to emphasize or never opens his heart to friendship – all are influenced by early experiences. At first glance that message is powerfully optimistic, since it means that a child’s potential is almost unlimited. But there is a catch. A stream of new research suggests that, for the majority of fathers and mothers, doing the things that maximize a child’s potential is not intuitive. Despite the media attention given to research on how early childhood experiences determine the brain’s wiring, many parents have not heard the message, or are confused by it. “There is a wide gap between scientific knowledge and the public’s,” said David Hamburg, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, at last week’s much anticipated White House Conference on Early Childhood Development and Learning. And instinct alone does not guide many parents to teach their children well. “Parents have to learn to read their child’s temperament, like a language,” said pediatrician and best-selling author T. Berry Brazelton. “They have to learn how to follow a baby’s behavior and adapt the tone of their interactions to the baby’s capabilities.” At the White House conference, which was beamed by satellite to almost 100 sites in 37 states and presided over by President and Mrs. Clinton, scientists and physicians summarized research demonstrating beyond doubt that “the minds of infants are active from the time they are born and are shaped by their early experience,” as Donald Cohen of the Yale Child Study Center put it. None of this was new, as even the First Neuroscientist realized. How, Clinton asked, can we educate parents and others so they take advantage of the findings? It won’t be easy. According to a report released last week by the national research and advocacy group Zero to Three, 25 percent of parents of young children do not know that what they do with a child can affect his intelligence, including increasing curiosity, confidence and problem-solving ability. And 87 percent think that the more stimulation the baby receives, the better off he will be. In fact, talking, reading, singing and playing must be carefully matched to a child’s level of development, temperament and mood, or the child will tune out or even cringe from the interaction. “Only 20 to 30 percent of parents know how to do this instinctively,” says child psychiatrist Stanley Greenspan of George Washington University. One scientist has documented how the size of a toddler’s vocabulary reflects how much her mother talked to her; the conclusion was possible only because hundreds of children in the study had parents who did not speak to them much and who had small vocabularies. Another team of researchers found that children of professionals heard 75 percent more words per hour than did the children of working-class parents, and more than three times as many words as did the children of welfare parents. The privileged kids got positive feedback two to five times as often. Tested at the age of 3, children who heard many words and had more positive experiences scored higher on standardized tests. Yet there is no reason to believe the welfare and working-class parents loved their babies any less than the lawyers. Opening the conference, Clinton announced several modest initiatives to bridge the information gap between science and those who care for children. He is asking the Pentagon, whose child-care facilities are considered among the best in the country, to train civilian day-care workers and, working with local governments, to make its child-care facilities training sites where people being pushed off welfare can learn to care for children. Perhaps the Pentagon can fight a couple of land wars and simultaneously save the nation’s children. It will take all this and more. For love, sadly, is not all you need. * * * Skimming 3.1. Formulate the controlling idea of the article. 3.2. Divide the text into 7 logical parts. Pick up the key-sentence of each part. Entitle each part. 3.3. Using the key-sentences outline the text. 3.4. Give the summary of the text using the outline as a prop. 3.5. Make up a list of keywords to speak on the points of 3.11 – 3.14. Before it do the following vocabulary exercises. Word Study Activities 3.6. Explain to your fellow-students the meaning of these words: Mantra, a toddler, to mire, find oneself in the mire, to empathize, to cringe, child-care facilities, feedback, problem-solving ability. 3.7. Find synonyms in the text for: To stimulate the child’s early development, to look after, motto, to soothe oneself, to find oneself in a difficulty, well-to-do, a trap, to influence, to be formed, to direct. 3.8. Give the corresponding nouns: To maximize, to wire, intuitive, essential, to cringe, to influence, civic, simultaneous, to guide, to affect, to effect, psychiatric, to soothe, psychological, to empathize. 3.9. Give antonyms: Abstract, civilian, modest, trust, to care for, scientific, simultaneous, welfare, to cringe from the interaction, to be confused, a child’s abilities are almost boundless, as old as hills. 3.10. Transcribe the following: Pediatrician, psychiatric, psychiatrist, standardized, civilian, affect, effect, concrete, abstractly, empathy. 3.11. Agree or disagree with the following: 1) For the majority of fathers and mothers doing the things that maximize a child’s potential is not intuitive. 2) Early-childhood experiences determine the brain’s wiring. 3) Many parents have not learnt the message or are confused about it. 4) An instinct alone doesn’t guide most parents to teach their children well. 5) Parents have to learn to read their child’s temperament like a language. 6) The minds of infants are active from the time they are born and are shaped by their early experiences. 7) In fact, talking, reading, singing and playing must be carefully matched to a child’s level of development, temperament and mood. 8) The foundations of social, emotional and intellectual development are all laid early, in the first ten years of life. 9) A toddler’s vocabulary reflects how much her mother talked to her. 3.12. Answer the questions: 1) What was Dr. Benjamin Spock’s mantra to new parents? In what way has it been shattered by the latest findings? 2) Why is it important for a child to know how to soothe herself when she is distressed? 3) Do you really find this an essential problem? Why? 4) Why is it important for a child to learn to think abstractly? 5) Do you think special techniques are necessary to teach parents to maximize a child’s potential? 3.13. Do you think A. Pushkin’s phenomenon might be a weighty argument in favour of the latest research in babies’ brain development? It is a universally acknowledged fact that A. Pushkin’s gift was wired in his early childhood by his nanny who was a talented story-teller and told him a lot of Russian fairy-tales, riddles, and songs. Do you know any other similar examples? 3.14. Discuss in groups of 2 or 3 what could be done in this country for the purposes of educating parents how to teach their children. Make notes of your suggestions and discuss them with your classmates. 3.15. Read the following passage from a book called “Childhood: Pathways of Discovery” by Sheldon White and Barbara Notkin White. The paragraphs are in the correct sequence, but the sentences in each one have been printed in the wrong order. Read the passage and put the sentences in the correct order. 3.16. Look at the passage quickly and decide which of the following chapters in the book it is likely to be found in. 1) The challenges of growth. 2) Parents’ societies and children. 3) Knowing the world. 4) Going to school. 5) Who am I? 6) Problems of development. Text 2. Childhood: Pathways of Discovery Some people have drawn the conclusion from Bowlby’s work that children should not be subjected to day care before the age of three because of the parental separation it entails’ and many people do believe this. But there are also arguments against such a strong conclusion. It has been argued that an infant under three who is cared for outside the home may suffer because of the separation from his parents. The British psychoanalyst John Bowlby maintains that separation from the parents during the sensitive “attachment” period from birth to three may scar a child’s personality and predispose to emotional problems in later life. But traditional societies are so different from modern societies that comparisons based on just one factor are hard to interpret. Firstly anthropologists point out that the secluded love affair between children and their parents found in modern societies does not usually exist in traditional societies. For example, we saw earlier that among the Ngoni the father and mother of the child did not rear the infant alone – far from it. But Bowlby’s analysis raises the possibility that early day care has delayed effects. The possibility that such care may lead to, say, more mental illnesses or crime 15 or 20 years later can only be explored by the use of statistics. Statistical studies of this kind have not been yet carried out, and even if they were, the results would be certain to be complicated and controversial. Secondly, common sense tells us that care would not be so widespread today if parents, caretakers or paediatricians found that children had problems with it. But tests that have had to be used to measure this development are not widely enough accepted to settle the issue. Thirdly, in the last decade, there have been a number of careful American studies of children in day care, and they have uniformly reported that day care had a neutral or slightly positive effect on children’s development. But whatever the long-term effects, parents sometimes find the immediate effects difficult to deal with. At the age of three or three and a half almost all children find the transition to nursery easy, and this is undoubtedly why more and more parents make use of child care at this time. Children under three are likely to protest at leaving their parents and show unhappiness. The matter, then, is far from clear-cut, though experience and available evidence indicate that early care is reasonable for infants.  (Note: “day care” means the same as “nursery school”.)* * * 3.17. The passage discusses two contrasting views on whether children under the age of three should go to nursery school. Decide which two of the following statements best summarize these contrasting views. 1) If pre-school for under three year olds caused problems, it would not be so widespread. 2) There is no negative long-term effect on infants who are sent to school before they are three years old. 3) There is no negative effect on children who are sent to school after the age of three and a half. 4) Traditional societies separate the child from the parent at an early age. 5) Infants under the age of three should not be sent to nursery school. 3.18. Write a sentence in your own words summarizing the writer’s conclusion. 3.19. Express your own opinion in a lengthy monologue, using various ways to support it (see 2.20) 3.20. Comment on the following paradox: Families with babies and families without babies envy each other. Writing Activities 3  .21. Write a summary of text 1. See Appendix 4 for the necessary information.3.22. Write a narrative-descriptive essay “The Way My Early Childhood Experiences Have Been Projected into My Grown-up Life.” Use the following questions as props: 1) What are your earliest childhood reminiscences? 2) What (who) are they connected with? 3) In what way did they affect your state of mind, your feelings and personality? Make use of the questions and the information you have got discussing things in 2.22. 3.23. Write an argumentative essay ”Kindergarten or Your Own Granny?” Part 4. Listening Comprehension P  arents should begin bringing up their children from an early age. A small child is already a personality and demands subtle handling.Listen to the text “A Special Occasion” by Joyce Cary. Pre-Listening Activities 4.1. Find information about the author. 4.2. Learn to pronounce the nonsense word “twanky tweedle” ['twxNkI 'twJdl] While-Listening Activities 4.3. Take down the phrases to describe 1) the boy’s and the girl’s actions to draw each other’s attention; 2) their amusing themselves; 3) the nurse’s behaviour and “tact”; 4) the children’s frustration and protest; 5) their reconciliation. After-Listening Activities 4.4. Get your classmates to describe the above mentioned items. Add your own suggestions. 4.5. Say what the following sentences prove. 1) Tom stared at the girl for a long time as one would study a curiosity, rare and valuable, but extremely surprising. 2) They both gazed at each other for some minutes with sparkling eyes. 3) The little girl climbed on a tricycle and pedalled round the floor. Tom paid no attention. 4) Tom said, “That’s what it is.” The girl made no answer. Slowly and carefully she examined each page. 5) Tom gave Nurse a sidelong glance of anger. 6) At this public disclosure he instantly lost his temper and yelled “I didn’t – I won’t!” 7) Tom flew at her and seized her by the hair. 8) The little girl at once uttered a loud scream, kicked him on the leg and bit his arm. 9) Tom ran at the door and kicked it, rushed at the clockwork engine, picked it up and flung it against the wall. Then he howled at the top of his voice. 10) The little girl had an air of self-satisfaction as if she had just done something clever. 11) His face was still set in the form of anger and bitterness, but he forgot to cry. 12) Suddenly she gave an enormous sigh of relief, of very special happiness. 4.6. Look through the following questions. Listen to the text again and answer them. 1) How were the children dressed? 2) What toys did they have in the nursery to play with? 3) Which did they prefer? 4) Did they speak at all? Why not? 5) What scene did the Nurse watch when she came into the room? 6) Where was Jenny sitting? 7) Did the Nurse tell Tom off? 8) Why was Tom’s reaction so violent? 9) How can you explain Jenny’s solidarity with the Nurse? 10) Were both the children miserable after the fight? 11) How did they make it up? 12) Did the Nurse know anything about the child psychology? Why is she called an old-fashioned nanny? 4.7. Work in groups of three (all at a time). Imagine yourselves in the Nurse’s, Tom’s and Jenny’s place. Describe what happened in the nursery. 4  .8. Describe and act out the conversation between:1) Tom and Jenny; 2) Tom and the Nurse; 3) The Nurse and Tom’s father. 4.9. Draw the character sketches of the personages and speak on their relations. Useful language The Nurse Tom Jenny middle-aged reserved coquettish old-fashioned proud self-possessed narrow-minded easily-wounded capricious thick-skinned independent treacherous straightforward keen on friendship tactless wild in anger 4.10. Comment on: 1) the title of the story; 2) the problems tackled by the author; 3) the controlling idea of the story 4.11. Draw your own conclusions about the characters, express your attitude to them. Use the following clues to begin with. 1) The Nurse oughtn’t - Small children don’t play much to have criticized Tom’s with each other cooperatively; manners. They love to watch each other’s occupation and enjoy playing alongside each other. Playing near and watching come before playing together. 2) She oughtn’t to have - Nobody likes to be pushed. pushed him. It’s humiliating. 3) She shouldn’t have said - His secret wish became he had longed to see known to the girl. Tom was the girl the whole week. wounded to the quick. It was a blunder on her part. 4) She shouldn’t have - The boy might have been threatened to tell on frightened or upset he didn’t Tom to his Daddy. come up to his father’s love. 4.12. Give your critique on the story. Follow-Up Activities 4.13. We have mainly discussed the woman’s role in bringing up children. Let us see what contribution may and should men make to child rearing. Read the texts below, summarize the basic events and give the author’s and your own opinion of the problem. Text 1. Home A  large number of the television programs is devoted to discussions and reports on the problem of education. Some programs are most unexpected. I remember a TV play that impressed me with its willingness to deal openly with rather harsh reality. The program began in a classroom, the teacher addressing her students. “We always think and speak of our mothers but seldom do we talk of our fathers. Today I am going to give you the assignment to write about your father.” The camera panned the faces. One child, with self-assurance, immediately began to write. Another was hesitating. Next, the camera picked out a girl – perhaps 12 years old. She sat, her head dropped up on her left arm, staring. The teacher walked over to her, leaned over and put her arms around the girl’s shoulders. Suddenly the girl turned to the teacher, buried her head in the teacher’s arms and broke into sobs. Next, the camera revealed the empty classroom, panned to the door just as a group of men were coming in. “I asked you here so you could hear some opinions of you expressed by your sons and daughters. Perhaps some will shock you. Some are happy. Some show a well-adjusted home life,” said the teacher, “and some do not.” The fathers sat at their children’s desks. “Here is one,” said the teacher, and she read. “My father and I are friends. We talk a lot. He takes me for walks.” A stout tall man with closely cropped hair smiled to himself. “I don’t know my father. He is away from home most of the time,” began another essay. “I don’t have a father. He is my mother’s new husband. He doesn’t pay much attention to me and to my brother. It’s like being strangers in our own home.” Nevertheless, most of the essays were happy expressions of love. “I love my father. He’s a lot of fun. He’s young and strong. In summer we play ball and swim together. We discuss events, ideas.” Such frankness is characteristic of children. (A. Refregier). Text 2. Who Is Most Important in Your Home? “That sounds like a leading question, but in my opinion Dad and Mum are most important. Mum, because she looks after me and makes a fuss and Dad because he looks after both of us. I really don’t know what we should do without him, what with food and clothing to buy; rates to pay and repairs to be done to the house...” (An advertisement of the Cooperative Insurance Society Ltd., Manchester) * * * 4.14. Express your attitude to the ideas reflected in the texts (a two-minute speech) as if you were: 1) an exemplary father; 2) a careless father; 3) a too-busy-at-his-work father; 4) a child whose father is exemplary; 5) a careless father’s child; 6) a very-busy father’s son or daughter; 7) the wife of a careless father; 8) the exemplary father’s wife; 9) the too-busy father’s wife; 10) a father-hungry child; 11) a psychologist speaking on the role of fathers in the family; 12) a playwright who is writing a film script about a broken one-member family; 13) a doctor who often has to deal with father-hungry children; 4.15. Class discussion: on the role of fathers in the family. Answer the questions below; make up your own questions to discuss the problem. 1) When is the time for him to begin being a real father? 2) What can a father do when the baby is small? 3) Bathing and feeding the baby can be a two-person job, can’t it? 4) Do you agree that many fathers think that the care of babies and children is the mother’s job entirely? 5) The typical father in many households likes to slump down onto the sofa and read a paper or watch the telly, doesn’t he? 6) So should fathers leave it all to their wives? Won’t they find it hard to push their way into the picture later? 7) Do you agree that the father’s closeness and friendliness to his children will have a vital effect on their spirits and characters for the rest of their lives? 4  .16. Argue for or against the following statements. Make up your own statements to prove or contradict to continue the discussion.1) The home atmosphere should be friendly and relaxed. 2) One’s home should be a welcoming place. 3) Common interests and hobbies bring parents and children together. 4) Children must show understanding and adequate response to everything. So must parents. 5) Parents’ main job is to discipline children into being good. 6) All a child needs in the way of care is cleanliness and enough food. 7) The father’s role is to provide for the family. 8) Do you think family rows are inevitable? 9) Which comes first in the family: duty to self or duty to others? 4.17. What qualities should a good mother and father possess? Useful vocabulary: responsive, compassionate, stable, perceptive, intuitive, thoughtful, persistent, morally excellent, trustworthy, consistent, secure, realistic, reliable, pacifying. See Topical Vocabulary for more words. Speak on each quality answering the question: What will any family gain if parents possess this quality? 4.18. What qualities and attitude to family matters are destructive and ruinous to children? 4.19. Make up a list (as long as you can): 1) of two-person jobs in the family; 2) of two-person duties that ensure a child’s happiness; 3) of things, actions, qualities that make up a well-adjusted home life. Choose the winner. Writing Activities 4 .20. Write an essay “What Kind of Parents We Need to Heal Our Families.” |
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