TEXT 1

Anxiety has kept 28% of UK children away from school 

    Many children in the UK are missing school because they feel too anxious, according to a new survey. Research by stem4, a mental health charity for young people, found that 28% of children aged between 12 and 18 had missed school in the last year because of anxiety. The charity is asking the government, the health service and schools to do more to help pupils with their mental health. 

    More than 1,000 young people were surveyed, and almost half said that they were suffering from a mental health difficulty. Experts say that the problems have gotten worse since the coronavirus pandemic. At the moment, 38% of schools in England have a mental health support team. But the government has said that it wants to increase that to at least 50% by the end of March 2025, as well as training teachers and giving more money to the health service.

    However, the survey also found that it is not only mental health that is keeping children away from school. Almost a quarter of children aged between 12 and 18 have missed school because of family problems, while 18% have stayed away because of problems with friends or other pupils. The stress of exams was also given as a reason for missing school.

    Nihara Krause, the founder of stem4, said that spending a lot of time away from school can have long-lasting negative effects on children.

Adapted from: https://engoo.com.br/app/daily-news/article/anxiety-has-kept-28- of-uk-children-away-from-school/LY6CWsQ1Ee6_G7_OKvNYDg 

Text 1 – How children learn languages

Questions 31 to 39

How long does it take to learn a language?

Fog harversting could provide water for arid cities

By Victoria Gill

Three Dogs Are Rebuilding Chilean Forests Once Devastated By Fire By

Desirée Kaplan

(Available at: www.greenmatters.com/news/2018/02/19/2m3wBf/border-collies-forest – text especially adapted for this test).

Now, for answeri question, consider Text 02. Remember, there is only one answer

Text 02 

“This glocalization in English teaching and learning, which is to do with post-methods, can influence or be practiced in many aspects, especially in interlanguage and culture, individual differences, and learning strategies. This paper reviews and highlights that post-method condition is related to glocalization in English language teaching and learning practices in terms of interlanguage and culture, individual differences, and learning strategies. It also puts forward some research questions for further studies, which may lead the researchers to obtain more information for promoting glocalization to enhance English language teaching."

(Source: Jessica Dwi Lusianov. Post-method Era and Glocalization in Language Teaching and Learning). Available at https://www.atlantis-press.com/proceedings/icollite-20/125949311, accessed on Otober 01st. 2022).

Read the text below and answer the questions that follow.

Text

Should schools just say no to pupils using phones?

14th July 2024

Natalie Grice – BBC News

“I wouldn’t say it’s a good thing for a child never to have a smartphone. I think it’s part of a balanced life. You’ve got to live in your own time.”

These are not the words you might expect to hear from a teacher at a school that has never in its history allowed pupils under sixth form age to use a mobile phone on the premises.

But Sarah Owen, deputy head at Stanwell School in Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan, was simply expressing a personal opinion, rather than the school’s view about a young person’s wider life.

It is clear that she and the school have very firm opinions on what is best for children while they are on school grounds.

For Stanwell pupils in years 7 to 11, that has always meant no phones. Not in lessons, not in the corridor, not at breaktimes.

It is such a long-established rule that it presumably comes as no surprise to pupils and parents when they join the school, which is starting to seem as if it may have been ahead of a growing curve.

In the past few years, a number of schools across Wales and further afield have introduced total bans on mobiles. While Stanwell only asks pupils to keep phones switched off in their bags, others require the devices to be handed in at the start of the day.

Llanidloes High School in Powys is one which has implemented this policy in the past few years and Ysgol Penrhyn Dewi in St Davids, Pembrokeshire, followed suit at the start of this year.

Sarah Owen has been at Stanwell School since 2000 and says that there has always been a no phone policy in the school. For Sarah, it is a question not of trying to impinge on their students’ freedom, but of giving them vital time away from mobile life, for welfare as well as educational reasons.

“We genuinely believe this is in their best interests,” she said. “Phone addiction and screen addiction and scrolling, the loss of concentration, the loss of soft skills around listening and interacting with others, that’s something we need to be concerned about as a society generally.”

“We want children to be interacting with each other, having conversations, playing football, having those connections and interactions with other people.”

Sarah also believes it gives pupils relief from the possibility of being “photographed, filmed, mocked in some way – that’s not a nice way for children to live”. She said she wanted her pupils to have “some sanctuary from the anxiety of feeling so scrutinised and looked at”. 

Adapted from: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles