2. EXERCISES FOR DISCUSSION
2.1 EXPRESS YOUR OPINION:
- I strongly believe politicians should be able to claim $200,000 a year in expenses.
- I strongly believe politicians´ expenses are unnecessary.
2.2 FURIOUS: Who makes you angry? Rate these people from 10 (makes you superboiling mad) to 1 (never, ever makes you angry)
- Your English teacher ____
- Your country leader ____
- Your mother/father ____
- Your favourite sports team ____
- Your neighbour ____
- Your boyfriend/girlfriend/wife/husband ____
- Your boss ____
- Your colleagues ____
- Your classmates ____
- Yourself ____
2.3 POLITICIANS DISCUSSION: Here are some questions you can try asking yourself before you come to our discussion on Wednesday:
a. What did you think when you read the headline?
b. Did you like reading the article?
c. What springs to mind when ou hear the word 'politician'?
d. What do you think of the politician´s husband making the British taxpayer pay for his adult videos?
e. Do you like the politicians you know?
f. Do you think Jacqui Smith should resign?
g. A well-known expression says you know when a politician is lying because his/her lips move. What does this mean? Do you agree?
h.What stupid things do politicians in your country do?
i. Do you think politicians are overpaid?
j. Do you think politicians should face heavy penalties if they betray the public´s trust?
k.Would this kind of story cause political damage in your country?
l. Would you like to be a politician?
m. Are politicians useful and necessary in our society? Why?
n. Do politicians work hard enough in your country?
o. What kind of person makes a good politician?
p. Should a politician go to prison for falsely claiming expenses?
q. Would you like a say in how your government spends your taxes?
r. Do you know of any similar case to this one in your country?
PREPARING A DISCUSSION IS FUNDAMENTAL:
THIS MUST BE DONE IN TWO DIRECTIONS:
FIRST, YOU NEED TO LEARN NEW VOCABULARY AND EXPRESSIONS THAT YOU WILL HAVE TO USE FOR THE DISCUSSION.
SECONDLY, YOU HAVE TO PREPARE THE TOPIC BY LOOKING UP INFORMATION IN THE INTERNET, BOOKS, ENCYCLOPAEDIAS.
THIS WAY YOU WILL FEEL MUCH MORE CONFIDENT AND AT THE SAME TIME YOU WILL HAVE MUCH MORE TO TALK ABOUT.
FINAL TASK:
HERE IS ONE FINAL TASK THAT YOU MAY DO AND THIS WAY YOU WILL COVER THE FOUR SKILLS YOU MUST IMPROVE WHEN LEARNING A LANGUAGE: LISTENING, READING, SPEAKING AND WRITING.
WRITING:Write a composition of not more than 180 words and leave it in the blog as a comment to Session 14, I will edit it in the blog so that everybody can learn from other people´s opinions.
Express your opinion on one of the following quotes:
- "I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to politicians." Charles de Gaulle.
- "Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation." Henry Kissinger.
- "The word 'politics' is derived from 'poli' meaning 'many' and the word 'ticks', meaning 'blood sucking parasites' ". Larry Hardiman.
- "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy." Ernest Benn.
"Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation." Henry Kissinger.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree the words that Henry Kissinger said, because nobody should generalize like that. I know it is a hard work, especially if you bear in mind that politicians are selfish, lazy and they are always thinking that they are the centre of the world.
However, we must believe there are people working hard in order to make our lifestyle and our society better for all of us. Actually, our life is better thanks to ten percent who is getting involved in politics and we could recognize.
Everywhere you see you can find a professional who is playing dirty and, surely, you would not say that it happens throughout the world. Actually, I would like to recommend that we should do a big effort to try to find the other side of the coin.
To conclude, we will have to promote real politicians, turning that ten percent into near one hundred per cent.
In an ideal world, politicians are supposed to be the most responsible people in our society, therefore, they should be very well-paid, but really, their salary is far from the salary that many other professionals earn (businessmen, well-known doctors, etc.).
ReplyDeleteIf we add that situation with the omnipresent corruption, result is that politicians are always in the centre of scandals about how they abuse their power to get extra money.
Maybe one option to solve this problem could be to increase politicians’ salary and, at the same time, to ban all the privileges they have and to eliminate all their extra incomes.
I am afraid I am not very optimistic about this issue because since the beginning of time power and corruption go hand in hand and if we talk about Spain the situation is much worse.
Every word we write on this subject nowadays would be read as something full of common sense: politicians are bad for your wallet, they pick your money from your pockets and expense a lot, happily; at the same time you are fired from your job, the bank executes the mortgage and your family becomes a homeless herd. Does society need those bloodsuckers?
ReplyDeleteWell thought, obviously the answer is not, but the important point is “what” we don’t need at all: politicians or that kind of privileged class, who costs a lot and does nothing?
When economy goes ahead, nobody asks about the bill. Things are totally different in hard times: political parties, unions are claimed to be responsible of the situation. Is this the whole question? What I mean is: where are the business men, the stock options holders, the brokers, the financial engineers, the true accountable people for the crisis. We don’t know their names nor their wealth figures but they are going home without almost a question about their duty as part of society. And they won a lot of money, doing nothing.