1. Former cultural, behaviour and family models are becoming extinct, and the new ones bring new ideals and goals, which people long to fulfill
2. Career-consciousness is thrust upon people by their environment.
3. People spend their leisure time on studying foreign languages or getting new degrees to be more competent.
4. People show an inclination to give preference to their work rather than to the family.
5. Children are brought up by baby-sitters, teachersand coevals.
6. Nowadays people pay more attention to income and successful career.
7. Admittedly, those who have made a good career can support their family and themselves, give their children a good education and look after their parents.
8. People think much more about promotion than about all the other things in life which are no longer very important.
9. This fast-paced lifestyle caused by the aspiration for promotion often destroys families.
Practice 8
Making a career has become the meaning of life for modern Western people.”
Decide which of the following sentences are relevant to the topic and which of those chosen by you are arguments or supporting sentences.
1. Being obsessed only about their career, people seem to stop in their development and have no time for self-improvement.
2. Today most people regard a high position on the career ladder and secure income as the most important goal in life.
3. Prospects of more responsibility and more power are the driving force of people’s life.
4. People do not raise their standard of culture or broaden their mind.
5. Though people dream of having free time, they never use the opportunity to have it.
6. At the present time people completely dedicate themselves to making a career and spend more and more time at work.
7. Making a career prevents people from achieving other goals as workaholics have only one connected with promotion.
8. Most people try to concealtheir real ambitions by putting forward such aims as self-realization or financial independence.
9. Nowadays people tend to postpone or neglect marriage in favour of career.
10. People are afraid to work less as this may lead to being less successful, which for some of them would be a real tragedy.
11. People bring their children up in the atmosphere of tense competition turning them into selfish individualists.
12. Great demographic problems exist in postmodern countries.
Practice 9
Write an opinion essay on one of the following topics:
1) Making a career has become the meaning of life for modern western people.
2) Workaholism is a highly negative phenomenon which affects both people’s health and society.
Practice 10
Fill each of the gaps in the following passage with one suitable word. Some, but not all, of the missing words are parts of relative clauses or participle clauses.
Highs and lows of city life
In many countries of Europe there has been a steady drift of people away from villages to large cities. These people, many of (1)……… have grown up in great poverty and deprivation, hope to improve their (2)………….. of living, and see the metropolis as the answer to all their (3)………….. In many ways they find what they are looking for. Large cities do offer a huge number of facilities, (4)…… which better education, better health (5)……. and improved housing are perhaps the most important. Large companies and factories, the vast (6)…………of which pride themselves (7)…… looking after the interests of their (8)………, open huge number of career (9)…………………… for those (10)………… to work hard, and the money (11)…………. from hours of hard toil can be happily spent in huge supermarkets and chain-stores, (12)………………. people of modest means to steadily improve the material quality of their lives. (13)…………………, there comes a time (14)………….. people begin to yearn for the simplicity and natural (15)…………… of the village or small town. They become aware of the problems of big city life.
Traffic problems and pollution, (16)……… of which affect large cities today, cause the most unhappiness. For people (17)…………. whom fresh air, beautiful countryside and (18)……….water are distant (19)……. nonetheless clear, memories of a previous, peaceful life in a village, the city must at (20)………... feel unbearable. The (21)……….. of overpopulation has meant that, in the last thirty or forty years, thousands (22)……….. thousands of new (23)…………of flats have been (24)……….., often with (25)…….. regard for architectural beauty, and the surrounding countryside has (26)…….. but disappeared in many cases. It is not (27)……………. such an easy matter to escape the noise and turmoil of the streets and find a field or a forest (28)………… adults can relax and children can play in safety.
Practice 11
1. “Cars are the greatest danger to human life today.”
2. “Cars enslave people rather than liberate them.”