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Constitui condição sine qua non no mundo atual que todos nós sejamos competentes para ler nossos próprios textos e os que recebemos, compreender tais textos escritos, interpretá-los, 'estabelecendo-lhes relações e expressar de forma clara o que um texto diz ou o que se esteja querendo dizer. Contudo, por negligência, ou por desconhecimento, ou mesmo por falta de comprometimento, o professor de Língua Portuguesa tem se esquivado dessas que seriam suas primeiras, mas não as únicas, atividades de linguagem em sala de aula, escondendo-se por trás de atividades de memorização ou de identificação disto e daquilo, levando os alunos a acreditarem que estão aprendendo português. E estão, mas tão-somente numa variável e sob ditames pouco palpáveis e plausíveis, e bem pouco recambiáveis e adaptáveis, pois vão até a construção de sentenças, deixando de lado a articulação dessas sentenças para se tornarem unidades de fato de sentido, a que damos o nome de textos. Se se considerar que essas competências constituam o macro-papel social a que todos nós estamos ligados por laços sociogenéticos e que, por isso, precisamos tê-los bem definidos e esclarecidos, algo é preciso urgentemente ser feito, afinal, na vida em sociedade, todo cidadão precisa ler, escrever e interpretar com bastante desenvoltura, tanto os textos que trazem informações à tona, como aqueles que as trazem veladamente. Mas como fazer isso, se as aulas de Língua Portuguesa têm mais se preocupado com tópicos gramaticais, que poderiam ser analisados a partir de textos trazidos pelo professor e estudados em sala de aula, do que em privilegiar as cenas magnas de Leitura e de Escritura? Como conseguir fazer isso, se o setor de Orientação e de Supervisão Escolares junto com a Direção foi formado sob um paradigma educacional diferente daquele que está agora e praticamente obriga o professor de Língua Portuguesa a continuar naquela mesmice? Se os próprios pais dos alunos querem ver nos cadernos de seus filhos a matéria dada. Ainda que acreditemos que essas competências comunicativas (leitura e escritura) sejam adquiridas e desenvolvidas no conjunto das atitudes pedagógicas promovidas no interior de uma escola por todos os professores e por todos os setores, e não só pelos de Língua Portuguesa, é mister que este profissional conduza o processo de Letramento ao longo de todas as séries (Soares, 1992), em todos os graus de ensinagem humana, inclusive o Superior. Daí porque é urgente vencer o status quo a que muitas vezes o professor e/ou a direção, a supervisão e a orientação estão arraigados, ora por falta de continuidade dos estudos, ora por falta de leitura da literatura contemporânea de sua área, podendo retardar toda uma comunidade escolar, uma cidade, um estado, uma região e até mesmo um país. Nessa perspectiva, pode-se concluir que se essas competências comunicativas são a própria expressão do desenvolvimento da linguagem, principalmente nas modalidades linguísticas e que elas são também expressão de processos mentais específicos e de habilidades lógicas congregadas aos mecanismos de aprendizagem ao longo da vida. Nesse viés, os estudos sobre cognição se justificam e são muito significativos para o professor de Língua Portuguesa, porque lhe evidencia qual é o verdadeiro papel da mente humana: centro de agenciamento de conhecimento e de informações necessários para processar textos; e não o de centro para memorização de uma metalinguagem, cuja finalidade se perdeu naquilo que o próprio professor de português não teve em sua formação, porque o seu professor também não a tinha, cujo professor deste também não a tivera. Nessa esteira, propõe-se aqui uma verticalização do professor de Língua Portuguesa no arcabouço da própria Linguística e uma ressignificação de suas atitudes escolares, no sentido de rever todas essas questões e promover mudanças significativas no seu fazer pedagógico. É nesse sentido de proposta que a análise a seguir foi elaborada, buscando subsidiar o professor da Língua Materna em suas tarefas diárias, insubstituíveis e intransferíveis quanto à promoção da sinergia da Leitura com a Escritura, mediatizadas pela Sintaxe do Discurso dos textos que recebe e que produz. Nesse pensamento, nossa compreensão de Gramática é a de“... um movimento científico que busca esquadrinhar através de materiais linguísticos o funcionamento da mente humana” (CASTILHO, 1998, p.23). Confrontando esse conceito com as aulas de Língua Portuguesa no interior da escola brasileira, chegamos a triste conclusão de que as aulas de Gramática não passam de aulas de Gramática da palavra, da frase, da sentença; as de Produção de Texto, não passam de aulas de Redação; as de Leitura são de Leitura per si, como se não houvesse qualquer interação desses eventos. Hoje é impossível compartimentalizar esses episódios, uma vez que eles são um o outro, usando desdobramentos e até metodologias diferentes, ainda que por professores diferentes, mas centralizando o texto como fenômeno máximo. E especificamente quanto à Sintaxe, as gramáticas, mesmo as que se dizem atuais, contemporâneas, apenas maquiam o método, mas continuam na mesma abordagem da palavra, da frase e da sentença isoladas de seus contextos sociodiscursivos, negando as condições discursivas de produção do material linguístico. Mas o que se entende por Sintaxe nesse bojo todo? Por Sintaxe compreendemos o estudo da organização e reorganização do discurso na materialidade textual. Se os intuitos maiores de cada aula de Língua Materna é (deveria ser) correlacionar essas cenas magnas da linguagem as cognitivas, principalmente se o professor compreender que, em línguas, toda manifestação de linguagem é produto de uma intenção que regulou e externou em forma de linguagem um pensamento, caberá nuclearmente a Sintaxe, como o estrato linguístico resultante da somatória de outros estratos e como o dado concreto do discurso, abordar o texto tanto na produção, como na recepção; tanto como fenômeno pragmático-discursivo, como um dado revelador máximo de sua cognição e das relações afetivas que o usuário tem. Assim, podemos dizer categoricamente que, tanto em textos orais como nos escritos, salvaguardadas as diferenças de cunho distintivo, a Coordenação e a Subordinação são mais recorrenciais na língua do que se possa pensar, caso se leve em conta mais amostragens da língua, principalmente da linguagem juvenil que para demarcar território usa variantes linguísticas reveladoras de sua cognição. Na verdade, nos textos escritos também, por exemplo, temos períodos e parágrafos coordenados e subordinados, desde as microestruturas — OS sintagmas — à macroestrutura — o texto. Por isso que, sob o enfoque funcionalista da linguagem, afirmamos que as relações sintáticas são prioritariamente textuais, manipulando o todo do texto, desde a seleção vocabular (Estilística) às organizações que serão dadas ao fluxo informacional das sentenças (Sintaxe). O texto a seguir justifica e explica muito bem como acontecimentos de ordem pragmático-discursivas se valem de expedientes sintáticos e revelam a cognição do usuário não só quanto à sua destreza sintáxica como quanto à sua forma de ver o mundo. Nele o escrevente pode fazer escolhas sintático-organizacionais das sentenças, desde que obedecidos os esquemas de completude e de articulação textuais.
PORQUE fizestes anos, Bem-Amada, e a asa do tempo roçou teus cabelos negros, e teus grandes olhos calmos miraram por um momento o inescrutável Norte... Eu quisera dar-te, ademais dos beijos e das rosas, tudo o que nunca foi dado por um homem à sua Amada, eu que tão poucote posso ofertar. Quisera darte, por exemplo, o instante em que nasci, marcado pela fatalidade de tua vinda. Verias, então, em mim, na transparência do meu peito, a sombra de tua forma anterior a ti mesma. Quisera dar-te também o mar onde nadei menino, o tranquilo mar de ilha em que me perdia e em que mergulhava, e de onde trazia a forma elementar de tudo o que existe no espaço acima — estrelas mortas, meteoritos submersos, o plancto das galáxias, a placenta do Infinito. E mais, quisera dar-te as minhas loucas carreiras a-toa, por certo em premonitória busca de teus braços, e a vontade de grimpar tudo de alto, e transpor tudo de proibido, e os elásticos saltos dançarinos para alcançar folhas, aves, estrelas — e a ti mesma, luminosa Lucina, a derramar claridade em mim menino...?º (Moraes, 1979, p.11)
Nesse texto, como aponta Antônio Juarez Abreu (1992, p. 54) “os vários parágrafos seguintes [a conjunção PORQUE] funcionam como “parágrafos principais” desse “parágrafo causal”. Observemos como a própria organização dada à crônica está a serviço da cognição de seu produtor ou do engenho de sua produção, associando a ideia nítida de que para compreender o poema é preciso ser um bom leitor, para que não incorra o erro de acreditar que o produtor violou algum princípio sintáxico, pois a ordem do discurso revelou uma cognição muito elevada do produtor que certamente teve também uma alta regulação para dar completude ao texto e uma exemplaridade quando de suas leituras anteriores. Por esse exemplo, vemos que um grande número de fatores governam a organização, por exemplo, de nossas sentenças (Sintaxe). Entre eles, os fatores de ordem sociointeracionistas e os cognitivos. No entanto, não está óbvio o que eles todos são, como agem entre si e como se deve reconhecê-los em contato com outras áreas de investigação da língua. O que se sabe é que a linguagem define, entre diferentes maneiras, formas de organizar elementos da realidade, unindo objetos e situações, separando a realidade em categorias; do contrário, não se efetivaria a interlocução. E tudo isso se dá independentemente da variável sintática escolhida pelos parceiros da interação verbal. Pode-se apenas especular que, de alguma maneira, a linguagem ao receber as imagens impostas ao cérebro dá-lhes organicidade e significado — um misto de Cognição, de Semântica e de Sintaxe. Mas saber descritivamente como isso se dá, ainda é uma incógnita, que tem sido objeto de uma recente vertente da Linguística, a Linguística Cognitiva. LISBOA, Wandré G de C. Os Fios do Tapete. Vol. 02, Belém/PA: ALVES, 2005
Conforme o autor, é preciso que a aula de Língua Portuguesa seja:
estou procurando, estou procurando. Estou tentando entender. Tentando dar a alguém o que vivi e não sei a quem, mas não quero ficar com o que vivi. Não sei o que fazer do que vivi, tenho medo dessa desorganização profunda. Não confio no que me aconteceu.Aconteceu-me alguma coisa que eu, pelo fato de não a saber como viver,vivi uma outra?A isso quereria chamar desorganização,e teria a segurança de me aventurar, porque saberia depois para onde voltar: para a organização anterior. A isso prefiro chamar desorganização pois não quero me confirmar no que vivi – na confirmação de mim eu perderia o mundo como eu o tinha, e sei que não tenho capacidade para outro. Se eu me confirmar e me considerar verdadeira, estarei perdida porque não saberei onde engastar meu novo modo de ser – se eu for adiante nas minhas visões fragmentárias, o mundo inteiro terá que se transformar para eu caber nele. Perdi alguma coisa que me era essencial, e que já não me é mais. Não me é necessária, assim como se eu tivesse perdido uma terceira perna que até então me impossibilitava de andar mas que fazia de mim um tripé estável. Essa terceira perna eu perdi. E voltei a ser uma pessoa que nunca fui.Voltei a ter o que nunca tive: apenas as duas pernas. Sei que somente com duas pernas é que posso caminhar. Mas a ausência inútil da terceira me faz falta e me assusta, era ela que fazia de mim uma coisa encontrável por mim mesma, e sem sequer precisar me procurar. Estou desorganizada porque perdi o que não precisava? Nesta minha nova covardia - a covardia é o que demais novo já me aconteceu,é a minha maior aventura,essa minha covardia é um campo tão amplo que só a grande coragem me leva a aceitá-la -, na minha nova covardia, que é como acordar de manhã na casa de um estrangeiro, não sei se terei coragem de simplesmente ir.É difícil perder-se.É tão difícil que provavelmente arrumarei depressa um modo de me achar, mesmo que achar-me seja de novo a mentira de que vivo.Até agora achar-me era já ter uma ideia de pessoa e nela me engastar: nessa pessoa organizada eu me encarnava, e nem mesmo sentia o grande esforço de construção que era viver. A ideia que eu fazia de pessoa vinha de minha terceira perna, daquela que me plantava no chão. Mas e agora? estarei mais livre? [...] é uma desilusão. Mas desilusão de quê? se, sem ao menos sentir, eu mal devia estar tolerando minha organização apenas construída? Talvez desilusão seja o medo de não pertencer mais a um sistema. No entanto se deveria dizer assim: ele está muito feliz porque finalmente foi desiludido. O que eu era antes não me era bom. Mas era desse não bom que eu havia organizado o melhor: a esperança. De meu próprio mal eu havia criado um bem futuro. O medo agora é que meu novo modo não faça sentido? Mas por que não me deixo guiar pelo que for acontecendo?Terei que correr o sagrado risco do acaso. E substituirei o destino pela probabilidade. LISPECTOR, Clarice. . Rio de Janeiro: Rocco,1988.p.4-5.(Fragmento)
Combinam-se, na progressão textual, orações sintaticamente dependentes que correspondem a sintagmas nominais resultantes de transposição de uma oração. É exemplo desse tipo de estrutura sintática:
From the point of view of some popular authors Genre is a purposeful, socially constructed oral or written communicative event, such as a narrative, a casual conversation, a poem, a recipe, or a description. Different genres are characterized by a particular structure or stages, and grammatical forms that reflect the communicative purpose of the genre in question.
Considering teaching English for Specific Purpose (ESP) through a Genre-Based Approach, it is true to say that
I. receptive skills, particularly listening, are given enhanced status.
II. the main objective of ESP is to enable students to perform certain linguistic tasks related to their academic and professional settings.
III. the choice of the texts, to be used in the classroom, is based on the genres identified as important for students.
IV. needs analysis as well as content knowledge diagnosis are key steps in the planning and teaching through this Approach.
V. one of the key principles of the approach is that grammar as a receptive skill, involving the perception of similarity and difference, is prioritized.
The only correct alternative(s) is/are:
Some popular ELT authors stress two aspects of English for Specific Purpose (ESP) methodology: “all ESP teaching should reflect the methodology of the disciplines and professions it serves; and in more specific ESP teaching the nature of the interaction between the teacher and learner may be very different from that in general English Class”.
According to these authors’ view, choose the correct ESP features from the absolute and variable characteristics.
I. ESP is designed to meet specific needs of the learner.
II. ESP is not designed for specific disciplines.
III. ESP makes use of the underlying methodology and activities of the disciplines it serves.
IV. ESP is centered on the language (grammar, lexis and register), skills, discourse and games appropriate to these activities.
V. ESP is not designed for adult learners, neither at a tertiary level institution nor in a professional work situation. It is however used for learners at a secondary level.
The only correct alternative(s) is/are:
The Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is best understood as an approach, not a method. Considering some of its interconnected characteristics as a definition of communicative language teaching-approach, analyse the statements below.
I. Classroom goals are focused on all of the components of communicative competence and not restricted to grammatical or linguistic competence.
II. Language techniques are designed to engage learners in the pragmatic, authentic, functional use of language for meaningful purposes. Organizational language forms are not the central focus but rather aspects of language that enable the learner to accomplish those purposes.
III. Fluency and accuracy are seen as complimentary principles underlying communicative techniques. At times accuracy may have to take on more importance than fluency in order to keep learners meaningfully engaged in language use.
IV. In the communicative classroom, students ultimately have to use the language, productively and respectively, in unrehearsed contexts.
V. Classroom goals are focused on form rather than meaning.
The only correct alternative(s) is/are:
Read TEXT 5 and answer question.
TEXT 5
Situation: Teachers of a Tourism Course decide to work with the theme Accessibility which belongs to their Syllabus. They decide to plan a visit to an International Airport.
Here is a list of suggestions for the teachers who are engaged in the activity to plan their lessons:
- A teacher of Tourism and Sustainable Development Theory can ask students to find out about the infra-structure of the place and make a list of possible problems and solutions in order to write a report;
- A teacher of History can ask students to find out when the airport was built, how it was designed, who ruled the city at that time and if there were any interest in improving the accessibility, read the laws about accessibility, write a report about what was going wrong and make suggestions.
- A teacher of English can ask students to find out all the signs if they are translated, if there is accessibility in relation to all the airport, write directions to tell the tourists how to get to the places inside the airport; take notes about problems and solutions.
- The week after the visit all the students will have to share information about their findings.
The situation presented above is mainly related to the principle of
Read TEXT 4 and answer question.
TEXT 4
LESSON PLAN – A SCHOOL TRIP
Pre-task (15-20 min)
Aim: to introduce the topic of a school trip and to give the class exposure to language related to it. To highlight words and phrases
Steps:
- Show pictures of students in a school trip, such as museum, park, airport, botanic garden and ask them where they go to have a good class out.
- Brainstorm words/phrases onto the board related to the topic: people, verbs, feelings, etc.
- Introduce the listening of a teacher and students planning a class out.
- Write up different alternatives on the board to give them a reason for listening eg. (a) museum/public library; (b) meet at the train station/in the square.
- Play it a few times; first time to select from alternatives, second time to note down some language.
- Tell them they are going to plan a class out and give them a few minutes to think it over. Task (10 min):students do the task in pairs and plan the day out. Match them with another pair to discuss their ideas and any similarities/differences.
Planning (10 min)
- Each pair rehearses presenting their class out. Teacher walks around, helps them if they need it and notes down any language points to be highlighted later.
- Report (15 min)
- Class listen to the plans; their task is to choose one of them. They can ask questions after the presentation. - Teacher gives feedback on the content and quickly reviews what was suggested. Students vote and choose one of the school days out.
- Language focus (20 min)
- Write on the board five good phrases used by students during the last task and five incorrect phrases/sentences from the task without the word that caused the problem. Students discuss the meaning and how to complete the sentences.
- Hand out the tape script from the listening and ask the students to underline the useful words and phrases.
- Highlight any language you wish to draw attention to, eg.: language for making suggestion, giving
opinion, collocations, etc.
After reading the steps in the plan, we conclude that the lesson:
I. is designed so that students are actively engaged in ‘learning about something’ rather than in ‘doing something.’
II. has explicit educational goals.
III. is based on constructivism and gives careful consideration to situated learning theory.
IV. focus primarily on the language that is needed to achieve some realistic objectives.
V. is challenging, focusing on higher-order knowledge and skills.
The only correct alternative(s) is/are:
Read TEXT 4 and answer question.
TEXT 4
LESSON PLAN – A SCHOOL TRIP
Pre-task (15-20 min)
Aim: to introduce the topic of a school trip and to give the class exposure to language related to it. To highlight words and phrases
Steps:
- Show pictures of students in a school trip, such as museum, park, airport, botanic garden and ask them where they go to have a good class out.
- Brainstorm words/phrases onto the board related to the topic: people, verbs, feelings, etc.
- Introduce the listening of a teacher and students planning a class out.
- Write up different alternatives on the board to give them a reason for listening eg. (a) museum/public library; (b) meet at the train station/in the square.
- Play it a few times; first time to select from alternatives, second time to note down some language.
- Tell them they are going to plan a class out and give them a few minutes to think it over. Task (10 min):students do the task in pairs and plan the day out. Match them with another pair to discuss their ideas and any similarities/differences.
Planning (10 min)
- Each pair rehearses presenting their class out. Teacher walks around, helps them if they need it and notes down any language points to be highlighted later.
- Report (15 min)
- Class listen to the plans; their task is to choose one of them. They can ask questions after the presentation. - Teacher gives feedback on the content and quickly reviews what was suggested. Students vote and choose one of the school days out.
- Language focus (20 min)
- Write on the board five good phrases used by students during the last task and five incorrect phrases/sentences from the task without the word that caused the problem. Students discuss the meaning and how to complete the sentences.
- Hand out the tape script from the listening and ask the students to underline the useful words and phrases.
- Highlight any language you wish to draw attention to, eg.: language for making suggestion, giving
opinion, collocations, etc.
Read TEXT 3 and answer question.
TEXT 3
THE PAPERLESS CLASSROOM IS COMING
Michael Scherer
Back-to-school night this year in Mr. G’s sixth-grade classroom felt a bit like an inquisition.
Teacher Matthew Gudenius, a boyish, 36-year-old computer whiz who runs his class like a preteen tech startup, had prepared 26 PowerPoint slides filled with facts and footnotes to deflect the concerns of parents. But time was short, the worries were many, and it didn’t take long for the venting to begin.
“I like a paper book. I don’t like an e-book,” one father told him, as about 30 adults squeezed into a room for 22 students. Another dad said he could no longer help his son with homework because all the assignments were online. “I’m now kind of taking out of the routine.”, he complained. Rushing to finish, Gudenius passed a slide about the debate over teaching cursive, mumbling, “We don’t care about handwriting.” In a flash a mother objected: “Yeah, we do.”
At issue was far more than penmanship. The future of K-12 education is arriving fast, and it looks a lot like Mr. G’s classroom in the northern foothills of California’s wine country. Last year, President Obama announced a federal effort to get a laptop, tablet or smartphone into the hands of every student in every school in the U.S. and to pipe in enough bandwidth to get all 49.8 million American kids online simultaneously by 2017. Bulky textbooks will be replaced by flat screens. Worksheets will be stored in the cloud, not clunky Trapper Keepers. The Dewey decimal system will give way to Google. “This one is a big, big deal,” says Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
It’s a deal Gudenius has been working to realize for years. He doesn’t just teach a computer on every student’s desk; he also tries to do it without any paper at all, saving, by his own estimate, 46,800 sheets a year, or about four trees. The paperless learning environment, while not the goals of most fledgling programs, represents the ultimate result of technology transforming classroom.
Gudenius started teaching as a computer-lab instructor, seeing students for just a few hours each month. That much time is still the norm for most kids. American schools have about 3.6 students for every classroom computing device, according to Education Market Research, and only 1 in 5 school buildings has the wiring to get all students online at once. But Gudenius always saw computers as a tool, not a subject. “We don’t have a paper-and-pencil lab, he says. When you are learning to be a mechanic, you don’t go to a wrench lab.”
Ask his students if they prefer the digital to the tree-based technology and everyone will say yes. It is not unusual for kids to groan when the bell rings because they don’t want to leave their work, which is often done in ways that were impossible just a few years ago. Instead of telling his students to show their work when they do an algebra equation, Gudenius asks them to create and narrate a video about the process, which can then be shown in class. History lessons are enlivened by brief videos that run on individual tablets. And spelling, grammar and vocabulary exercises have the feel of a game, with each student working at his own speed, until Gudenius – who tracks the kids’ progress on a smartphone – gives commands like “Spin it” to let the kids know to flip the screens of their devices around so that he can see their work and begin the next lesson.
Source: TIME- How to Eat Now. Education: The Paperless Classroom is Coming, p. 36-37; October 20, 2014
Read TEXT 3 and answer question.
TEXT 3
THE PAPERLESS CLASSROOM IS COMING
Michael Scherer
Back-to-school night this year in Mr. G’s sixth-grade classroom felt a bit like an inquisition.
Teacher Matthew Gudenius, a boyish, 36-year-old computer whiz who runs his class like a preteen tech startup, had prepared 26 PowerPoint slides filled with facts and footnotes to deflect the concerns of parents. But time was short, the worries were many, and it didn’t take long for the venting to begin.
“I like a paper book. I don’t like an e-book,” one father told him, as about 30 adults squeezed into a room for 22 students. Another dad said he could no longer help his son with homework because all the assignments were online. “I’m now kind of taking out of the routine.”, he complained. Rushing to finish, Gudenius passed a slide about the debate over teaching cursive, mumbling, “We don’t care about handwriting.” In a flash a mother objected: “Yeah, we do.”
At issue was far more than penmanship. The future of K-12 education is arriving fast, and it looks a lot like Mr. G’s classroom in the northern foothills of California’s wine country. Last year, President Obama announced a federal effort to get a laptop, tablet or smartphone into the hands of every student in every school in the U.S. and to pipe in enough bandwidth to get all 49.8 million American kids online simultaneously by 2017. Bulky textbooks will be replaced by flat screens. Worksheets will be stored in the cloud, not clunky Trapper Keepers. The Dewey decimal system will give way to Google. “This one is a big, big deal,” says Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
It’s a deal Gudenius has been working to realize for years. He doesn’t just teach a computer on every student’s desk; he also tries to do it without any paper at all, saving, by his own estimate, 46,800 sheets a year, or about four trees. The paperless learning environment, while not the goals of most fledgling programs, represents the ultimate result of technology transforming classroom.
Gudenius started teaching as a computer-lab instructor, seeing students for just a few hours each month. That much time is still the norm for most kids. American schools have about 3.6 students for every classroom computing device, according to Education Market Research, and only 1 in 5 school buildings has the wiring to get all students online at once. But Gudenius always saw computers as a tool, not a subject. “We don’t have a paper-and-pencil lab, he says. When you are learning to be a mechanic, you don’t go to a wrench lab.”
Ask his students if they prefer the digital to the tree-based technology and everyone will say yes. It is not unusual for kids to groan when the bell rings because they don’t want to leave their work, which is often done in ways that were impossible just a few years ago. Instead of telling his students to show their work when they do an algebra equation, Gudenius asks them to create and narrate a video about the process, which can then be shown in class. History lessons are enlivened by brief videos that run on individual tablets. And spelling, grammar and vocabulary exercises have the feel of a game, with each student working at his own speed, until Gudenius – who tracks the kids’ progress on a smartphone – gives commands like “Spin it” to let the kids know to flip the screens of their devices around so that he can see their work and begin the next lesson.
Source: TIME- How to Eat Now. Education: The Paperless Classroom is Coming, p. 36-37; October 20, 2014
Read TEXT 3 and answer question.
TEXT 3
THE PAPERLESS CLASSROOM IS COMING
Michael Scherer
Back-to-school night this year in Mr. G’s sixth-grade classroom felt a bit like an inquisition.
Teacher Matthew Gudenius, a boyish, 36-year-old computer whiz who runs his class like a preteen tech startup, had prepared 26 PowerPoint slides filled with facts and footnotes to deflect the concerns of parents. But time was short, the worries were many, and it didn’t take long for the venting to begin.
“I like a paper book. I don’t like an e-book,” one father told him, as about 30 adults squeezed into a room for 22 students. Another dad said he could no longer help his son with homework because all the assignments were online. “I’m now kind of taking out of the routine.”, he complained. Rushing to finish, Gudenius passed a slide about the debate over teaching cursive, mumbling, “We don’t care about handwriting.” In a flash a mother objected: “Yeah, we do.”
At issue was far more than penmanship. The future of K-12 education is arriving fast, and it looks a lot like Mr. G’s classroom in the northern foothills of California’s wine country. Last year, President Obama announced a federal effort to get a laptop, tablet or smartphone into the hands of every student in every school in the U.S. and to pipe in enough bandwidth to get all 49.8 million American kids online simultaneously by 2017. Bulky textbooks will be replaced by flat screens. Worksheets will be stored in the cloud, not clunky Trapper Keepers. The Dewey decimal system will give way to Google. “This one is a big, big deal,” says Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
It’s a deal Gudenius has been working to realize for years. He doesn’t just teach a computer on every student’s desk; he also tries to do it without any paper at all, saving, by his own estimate, 46,800 sheets a year, or about four trees. The paperless learning environment, while not the goals of most fledgling programs, represents the ultimate result of technology transforming classroom.
Gudenius started teaching as a computer-lab instructor, seeing students for just a few hours each month. That much time is still the norm for most kids. American schools have about 3.6 students for every classroom computing device, according to Education Market Research, and only 1 in 5 school buildings has the wiring to get all students online at once. But Gudenius always saw computers as a tool, not a subject. “We don’t have a paper-and-pencil lab, he says. When you are learning to be a mechanic, you don’t go to a wrench lab.”
Ask his students if they prefer the digital to the tree-based technology and everyone will say yes. It is not unusual for kids to groan when the bell rings because they don’t want to leave their work, which is often done in ways that were impossible just a few years ago. Instead of telling his students to show their work when they do an algebra equation, Gudenius asks them to create and narrate a video about the process, which can then be shown in class. History lessons are enlivened by brief videos that run on individual tablets. And spelling, grammar and vocabulary exercises have the feel of a game, with each student working at his own speed, until Gudenius – who tracks the kids’ progress on a smartphone – gives commands like “Spin it” to let the kids know to flip the screens of their devices around so that he can see their work and begin the next lesson.
Source: TIME- How to Eat Now. Education: The Paperless Classroom is Coming, p. 36-37; October 20, 2014
Read TEXT 3 and answer question.
TEXT 3
THE PAPERLESS CLASSROOM IS COMING
Michael Scherer
Back-to-school night this year in Mr. G’s sixth-grade classroom felt a bit like an inquisition.
Teacher Matthew Gudenius, a boyish, 36-year-old computer whiz who runs his class like a preteen tech startup, had prepared 26 PowerPoint slides filled with facts and footnotes to deflect the concerns of parents. But time was short, the worries were many, and it didn’t take long for the venting to begin.
“I like a paper book. I don’t like an e-book,” one father told him, as about 30 adults squeezed into a room for 22 students. Another dad said he could no longer help his son with homework because all the assignments were online. “I’m now kind of taking out of the routine.”, he complained. Rushing to finish, Gudenius passed a slide about the debate over teaching cursive, mumbling, “We don’t care about handwriting.” In a flash a mother objected: “Yeah, we do.”
At issue was far more than penmanship. The future of K-12 education is arriving fast, and it looks a lot like Mr. G’s classroom in the northern foothills of California’s wine country. Last year, President Obama announced a federal effort to get a laptop, tablet or smartphone into the hands of every student in every school in the U.S. and to pipe in enough bandwidth to get all 49.8 million American kids online simultaneously by 2017. Bulky textbooks will be replaced by flat screens. Worksheets will be stored in the cloud, not clunky Trapper Keepers. The Dewey decimal system will give way to Google. “This one is a big, big deal,” says Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
It’s a deal Gudenius has been working to realize for years. He doesn’t just teach a computer on every student’s desk; he also tries to do it without any paper at all, saving, by his own estimate, 46,800 sheets a year, or about four trees. The paperless learning environment, while not the goals of most fledgling programs, represents the ultimate result of technology transforming classroom.
Gudenius started teaching as a computer-lab instructor, seeing students for just a few hours each month. That much time is still the norm for most kids. American schools have about 3.6 students for every classroom computing device, according to Education Market Research, and only 1 in 5 school buildings has the wiring to get all students online at once. But Gudenius always saw computers as a tool, not a subject. “We don’t have a paper-and-pencil lab, he says. When you are learning to be a mechanic, you don’t go to a wrench lab.”
Ask his students if they prefer the digital to the tree-based technology and everyone will say yes. It is not unusual for kids to groan when the bell rings because they don’t want to leave their work, which is often done in ways that were impossible just a few years ago. Instead of telling his students to show their work when they do an algebra equation, Gudenius asks them to create and narrate a video about the process, which can then be shown in class. History lessons are enlivened by brief videos that run on individual tablets. And spelling, grammar and vocabulary exercises have the feel of a game, with each student working at his own speed, until Gudenius – who tracks the kids’ progress on a smartphone – gives commands like “Spin it” to let the kids know to flip the screens of their devices around so that he can see their work and begin the next lesson.
Source: TIME- How to Eat Now. Education: The Paperless Classroom is Coming, p. 36-37; October 20, 2014
Read TEXT 3 and answer question.
TEXT 3
THE PAPERLESS CLASSROOM IS COMING
Michael Scherer
Back-to-school night this year in Mr. G’s sixth-grade classroom felt a bit like an inquisition.
Teacher Matthew Gudenius, a boyish, 36-year-old computer whiz who runs his class like a preteen tech startup, had prepared 26 PowerPoint slides filled with facts and footnotes to deflect the concerns of parents. But time was short, the worries were many, and it didn’t take long for the venting to begin.
“I like a paper book. I don’t like an e-book,” one father told him, as about 30 adults squeezed into a room for 22 students. Another dad said he could no longer help his son with homework because all the assignments were online. “I’m now kind of taking out of the routine.”, he complained. Rushing to finish, Gudenius passed a slide about the debate over teaching cursive, mumbling, “We don’t care about handwriting.” In a flash a mother objected: “Yeah, we do.”
At issue was far more than penmanship. The future of K-12 education is arriving fast, and it looks a lot like Mr. G’s classroom in the northern foothills of California’s wine country. Last year, President Obama announced a federal effort to get a laptop, tablet or smartphone into the hands of every student in every school in the U.S. and to pipe in enough bandwidth to get all 49.8 million American kids online simultaneously by 2017. Bulky textbooks will be replaced by flat screens. Worksheets will be stored in the cloud, not clunky Trapper Keepers. The Dewey decimal system will give way to Google. “This one is a big, big deal,” says Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
It’s a deal Gudenius has been working to realize for years. He doesn’t just teach a computer on every student’s desk; he also tries to do it without any paper at all, saving, by his own estimate, 46,800 sheets a year, or about four trees. The paperless learning environment, while not the goals of most fledgling programs, represents the ultimate result of technology transforming classroom.
Gudenius started teaching as a computer-lab instructor, seeing students for just a few hours each month. That much time is still the norm for most kids. American schools have about 3.6 students for every classroom computing device, according to Education Market Research, and only 1 in 5 school buildings has the wiring to get all students online at once. But Gudenius always saw computers as a tool, not a subject. “We don’t have a paper-and-pencil lab, he says. When you are learning to be a mechanic, you don’t go to a wrench lab.”
Ask his students if they prefer the digital to the tree-based technology and everyone will say yes. It is not unusual for kids to groan when the bell rings because they don’t want to leave their work, which is often done in ways that were impossible just a few years ago. Instead of telling his students to show their work when they do an algebra equation, Gudenius asks them to create and narrate a video about the process, which can then be shown in class. History lessons are enlivened by brief videos that run on individual tablets. And spelling, grammar and vocabulary exercises have the feel of a game, with each student working at his own speed, until Gudenius – who tracks the kids’ progress on a smartphone – gives commands like “Spin it” to let the kids know to flip the screens of their devices around so that he can see their work and begin the next lesson.
Source: TIME- How to Eat Now. Education: The Paperless Classroom is Coming, p. 36-37; October 20, 2014
Read TEXT 3 and answer question.
TEXT 3
THE PAPERLESS CLASSROOM IS COMING
Michael Scherer
Back-to-school night this year in Mr. G’s sixth-grade classroom felt a bit like an inquisition.
Teacher Matthew Gudenius, a boyish, 36-year-old computer whiz who runs his class like a preteen tech startup, had prepared 26 PowerPoint slides filled with facts and footnotes to deflect the concerns of parents. But time was short, the worries were many, and it didn’t take long for the venting to begin.
“I like a paper book. I don’t like an e-book,” one father told him, as about 30 adults squeezed into a room for 22 students. Another dad said he could no longer help his son with homework because all the assignments were online. “I’m now kind of taking out of the routine.”, he complained. Rushing to finish, Gudenius passed a slide about the debate over teaching cursive, mumbling, “We don’t care about handwriting.” In a flash a mother objected: “Yeah, we do.”
At issue was far more than penmanship. The future of K-12 education is arriving fast, and it looks a lot like Mr. G’s classroom in the northern foothills of California’s wine country. Last year, President Obama announced a federal effort to get a laptop, tablet or smartphone into the hands of every student in every school in the U.S. and to pipe in enough bandwidth to get all 49.8 million American kids online simultaneously by 2017. Bulky textbooks will be replaced by flat screens. Worksheets will be stored in the cloud, not clunky Trapper Keepers. The Dewey decimal system will give way to Google. “This one is a big, big deal,” says Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
It’s a deal Gudenius has been working to realize for years. He doesn’t just teach a computer on every student’s desk; he also tries to do it without any paper at all, saving, by his own estimate, 46,800 sheets a year, or about four trees. The paperless learning environment, while not the goals of most fledgling programs, represents the ultimate result of technology transforming classroom.
Gudenius started teaching as a computer-lab instructor, seeing students for just a few hours each month. That much time is still the norm for most kids. American schools have about 3.6 students for every classroom computing device, according to Education Market Research, and only 1 in 5 school buildings has the wiring to get all students online at once. But Gudenius always saw computers as a tool, not a subject. “We don’t have a paper-and-pencil lab, he says. When you are learning to be a mechanic, you don’t go to a wrench lab.”
Ask his students if they prefer the digital to the tree-based technology and everyone will say yes. It is not unusual for kids to groan when the bell rings because they don’t want to leave their work, which is often done in ways that were impossible just a few years ago. Instead of telling his students to show their work when they do an algebra equation, Gudenius asks them to create and narrate a video about the process, which can then be shown in class. History lessons are enlivened by brief videos that run on individual tablets. And spelling, grammar and vocabulary exercises have the feel of a game, with each student working at his own speed, until Gudenius – who tracks the kids’ progress on a smartphone – gives commands like “Spin it” to let the kids know to flip the screens of their devices around so that he can see their work and begin the next lesson.
Source: TIME- How to Eat Now. Education: The Paperless Classroom is Coming, p. 36-37; October 20, 2014
Read TEXT 3 and answer question.
TEXT 3
THE PAPERLESS CLASSROOM IS COMING
Michael Scherer
Back-to-school night this year in Mr. G’s sixth-grade classroom felt a bit like an inquisition.
Teacher Matthew Gudenius, a boyish, 36-year-old computer whiz who runs his class like a preteen tech startup, had prepared 26 PowerPoint slides filled with facts and footnotes to deflect the concerns of parents. But time was short, the worries were many, and it didn’t take long for the venting to begin.
“I like a paper book. I don’t like an e-book,” one father told him, as about 30 adults squeezed into a room for 22 students. Another dad said he could no longer help his son with homework because all the assignments were online. “I’m now kind of taking out of the routine.”, he complained. Rushing to finish, Gudenius passed a slide about the debate over teaching cursive, mumbling, “We don’t care about handwriting.” In a flash a mother objected: “Yeah, we do.”
At issue was far more than penmanship. The future of K-12 education is arriving fast, and it looks a lot like Mr. G’s classroom in the northern foothills of California’s wine country. Last year, President Obama announced a federal effort to get a laptop, tablet or smartphone into the hands of every student in every school in the U.S. and to pipe in enough bandwidth to get all 49.8 million American kids online simultaneously by 2017. Bulky textbooks will be replaced by flat screens. Worksheets will be stored in the cloud, not clunky Trapper Keepers. The Dewey decimal system will give way to Google. “This one is a big, big deal,” says Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
It’s a deal Gudenius has been working to realize for years. He doesn’t just teach a computer on every student’s desk; he also tries to do it without any paper at all, saving, by his own estimate, 46,800 sheets a year, or about four trees. The paperless learning environment, while not the goals of most fledgling programs, represents the ultimate result of technology transforming classroom.
Gudenius started teaching as a computer-lab instructor, seeing students for just a few hours each month. That much time is still the norm for most kids. American schools have about 3.6 students for every classroom computing device, according to Education Market Research, and only 1 in 5 school buildings has the wiring to get all students online at once. But Gudenius always saw computers as a tool, not a subject. “We don’t have a paper-and-pencil lab, he says. When you are learning to be a mechanic, you don’t go to a wrench lab.”
Ask his students if they prefer the digital to the tree-based technology and everyone will say yes. It is not unusual for kids to groan when the bell rings because they don’t want to leave their work, which is often done in ways that were impossible just a few years ago. Instead of telling his students to show their work when they do an algebra equation, Gudenius asks them to create and narrate a video about the process, which can then be shown in class. History lessons are enlivened by brief videos that run on individual tablets. And spelling, grammar and vocabulary exercises have the feel of a game, with each student working at his own speed, until Gudenius – who tracks the kids’ progress on a smartphone – gives commands like “Spin it” to let the kids know to flip the screens of their devices around so that he can see their work and begin the next lesson.
Source: TIME- How to Eat Now. Education: The Paperless Classroom is Coming, p. 36-37; October 20, 2014
Read TEXT 3 and answer question.
TEXT 3
THE PAPERLESS CLASSROOM IS COMING
Michael Scherer
Back-to-school night this year in Mr. G’s sixth-grade classroom felt a bit like an inquisition.
Teacher Matthew Gudenius, a boyish, 36-year-old computer whiz who runs his class like a preteen tech startup, had prepared 26 PowerPoint slides filled with facts and footnotes to deflect the concerns of parents. But time was short, the worries were many, and it didn’t take long for the venting to begin.
“I like a paper book. I don’t like an e-book,” one father told him, as about 30 adults squeezed into a room for 22 students. Another dad said he could no longer help his son with homework because all the assignments were online. “I’m now kind of taking out of the routine.”, he complained. Rushing to finish, Gudenius passed a slide about the debate over teaching cursive, mumbling, “We don’t care about handwriting.” In a flash a mother objected: “Yeah, we do.”
At issue was far more than penmanship. The future of K-12 education is arriving fast, and it looks a lot like Mr. G’s classroom in the northern foothills of California’s wine country. Last year, President Obama announced a federal effort to get a laptop, tablet or smartphone into the hands of every student in every school in the U.S. and to pipe in enough bandwidth to get all 49.8 million American kids online simultaneously by 2017. Bulky textbooks will be replaced by flat screens. Worksheets will be stored in the cloud, not clunky Trapper Keepers. The Dewey decimal system will give way to Google. “This one is a big, big deal,” says Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
It’s a deal Gudenius has been working to realize for years. He doesn’t just teach a computer on every student’s desk; he also tries to do it without any paper at all, saving, by his own estimate, 46,800 sheets a year, or about four trees. The paperless learning environment, while not the goals of most fledgling programs, represents the ultimate result of technology transforming classroom.
Gudenius started teaching as a computer-lab instructor, seeing students for just a few hours each month. That much time is still the norm for most kids. American schools have about 3.6 students for every classroom computing device, according to Education Market Research, and only 1 in 5 school buildings has the wiring to get all students online at once. But Gudenius always saw computers as a tool, not a subject. “We don’t have a paper-and-pencil lab, he says. When you are learning to be a mechanic, you don’t go to a wrench lab.”
Ask his students if they prefer the digital to the tree-based technology and everyone will say yes. It is not unusual for kids to groan when the bell rings because they don’t want to leave their work, which is often done in ways that were impossible just a few years ago. Instead of telling his students to show their work when they do an algebra equation, Gudenius asks them to create and narrate a video about the process, which can then be shown in class. History lessons are enlivened by brief videos that run on individual tablets. And spelling, grammar and vocabulary exercises have the feel of a game, with each student working at his own speed, until Gudenius – who tracks the kids’ progress on a smartphone – gives commands like “Spin it” to let the kids know to flip the screens of their devices around so that he can see their work and begin the next lesson.
Source: TIME- How to Eat Now. Education: The Paperless Classroom is Coming, p. 36-37; October 20, 2014
Read TEXT 3 and answer question.
TEXT 3
THE PAPERLESS CLASSROOM IS COMING
Michael Scherer
Back-to-school night this year in Mr. G’s sixth-grade classroom felt a bit like an inquisition.
Teacher Matthew Gudenius, a boyish, 36-year-old computer whiz who runs his class like a preteen tech startup, had prepared 26 PowerPoint slides filled with facts and footnotes to deflect the concerns of parents. But time was short, the worries were many, and it didn’t take long for the venting to begin.
“I like a paper book. I don’t like an e-book,” one father told him, as about 30 adults squeezed into a room for 22 students. Another dad said he could no longer help his son with homework because all the assignments were online. “I’m now kind of taking out of the routine.”, he complained. Rushing to finish, Gudenius passed a slide about the debate over teaching cursive, mumbling, “We don’t care about handwriting.” In a flash a mother objected: “Yeah, we do.”
At issue was far more than penmanship. The future of K-12 education is arriving fast, and it looks a lot like Mr. G’s classroom in the northern foothills of California’s wine country. Last year, President Obama announced a federal effort to get a laptop, tablet or smartphone into the hands of every student in every school in the U.S. and to pipe in enough bandwidth to get all 49.8 million American kids online simultaneously by 2017. Bulky textbooks will be replaced by flat screens. Worksheets will be stored in the cloud, not clunky Trapper Keepers. The Dewey decimal system will give way to Google. “This one is a big, big deal,” says Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
It’s a deal Gudenius has been working to realize for years. He doesn’t just teach a computer on every student’s desk; he also tries to do it without any paper at all, saving, by his own estimate, 46,800 sheets a year, or about four trees. The paperless learning environment, while not the goals of most fledgling programs, represents the ultimate result of technology transforming classroom.
Gudenius started teaching as a computer-lab instructor, seeing students for just a few hours each month. That much time is still the norm for most kids. American schools have about 3.6 students for every classroom computing device, according to Education Market Research, and only 1 in 5 school buildings has the wiring to get all students online at once. But Gudenius always saw computers as a tool, not a subject. “We don’t have a paper-and-pencil lab, he says. When you are learning to be a mechanic, you don’t go to a wrench lab.”
Ask his students if they prefer the digital to the tree-based technology and everyone will say yes. It is not unusual for kids to groan when the bell rings because they don’t want to leave their work, which is often done in ways that were impossible just a few years ago. Instead of telling his students to show their work when they do an algebra equation, Gudenius asks them to create and narrate a video about the process, which can then be shown in class. History lessons are enlivened by brief videos that run on individual tablets. And spelling, grammar and vocabulary exercises have the feel of a game, with each student working at his own speed, until Gudenius – who tracks the kids’ progress on a smartphone – gives commands like “Spin it” to let the kids know to flip the screens of their devices around so that he can see their work and begin the next lesson.
Source: TIME- How to Eat Now. Education: The Paperless Classroom is Coming, p. 36-37; October 20, 2014
Read TEXT 2 and answer question
TEXT 2
Zainab Akande
May 13, 2013
‘It seems not a lot of people are impressed with TIME's latest magazine cover, dubbing millennials as the "ME ME ME" generation:
Although there's a subtitle that suggests despite selfies and living in the basement with parents, past
the narcissism, millennials have the power to save the world. I tried reading the article to get a sense
of how, but sadly I was blocked by a paywall to Joel Stein's article. (The journalism industry needs
to do what a journalism industry has to do in order to survive, after all.)
Still, the nature of the cover itself can be easily interpreted to suggest that millennials are the only generation to have suffered from crippling egotism, when that simply isn't the case.The only major difference now is that millennials have Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to highlight their meness.’
Source: Available <https://mic.com/articles/41419/me-me-me-generetion-top-5-time-magazine-cover-paroidies#.sX0pzb9yt>
Read TEXT 2 and answer question
TEXT 2
Zainab Akande
May 13, 2013
‘It seems not a lot of people are impressed with TIME's latest magazine cover, dubbing millennials as the "ME ME ME" generation:
Although there's a subtitle that suggests despite selfies and living in the basement with parents, past
the narcissism, millennials have the power to save the world. I tried reading the article to get a sense
of how, but sadly I was blocked by a paywall to Joel Stein's article. (The journalism industry needs
to do what a journalism industry has to do in order to survive, after all.)
Still, the nature of the cover itself can be easily interpreted to suggest that millennials are the only generation to have suffered from crippling egotism, when that simply isn't the case.The only major difference now is that millennials have Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to highlight their meness.’
Source: Available <https://mic.com/articles/41419/me-me-me-generetion-top-5-time-magazine-cover-paroidies#.sX0pzb9yt>
TEXT 1
WHY MILLENIALS WILL SAVE US ALL
By Joel Stein
I am about to do what old people have done throughout history: call those younger than me lazy, entitled, selfish and shallow. But I have studies! I have statistics! I have quotes from respected academics! Unlike my parents, my grandparents and my great-grandparents, I have proof.
Here’s the code, hard data: the incident of narcissistic personality disorder in nearly three times as high for people in their 20s as for the generation that’s now 65 or older, according to the National Institutes of Health; 58% more college students scored higher on a narcissism scale in 2009 than in 1982. Millennials got so many participation trophies growing up that a recent study showed that 40% believe they should be promoted every two years, regardless of performance. They are fame obsessed: three times as many middle school girls want to grow up to be a personal assistant to a famous person as want to be a senator, according to a 2007 survey; four time as many would pick the assistant job over CEO of a major corporation. They’re so convinced of their own greatness that the National Study of Youth and Religion found the guiding morality of 60% of millennials in any situation as that they’ll just be able to feel what’s right. Their development is stunted: more people ages 18 to 29 live with their parents than with a spouse, according to the 2012 Clarck University Poll of Emerging Adults. And they are lazy. In 1992, the non-profit Families and Work Institute reported that 80% of people under 23 wanted to one day have a job with greater responsibility; 10 years later, only 60% did.
Millennials consist, depending on whom you ask, of people born from 1980 to 2000. To put it more simply for them, since they grew up not having to do a lot of math in their heads, thanks to computers, the group is made up mostly of teens and 20-somethings. At 80 million strong, they are the biggest age grouping in American history. Each country’s millennials are different, but because of globalization, social media, the export of Western culture and the speed of change, millennials worldwide are more similar to one another than to old generations within their nations. Even in China, where family history is more important than any individual, the internet, urbanization and the onechild policy have created a generation as overconfident and self-involved as the Western one. And these aren’t just rich-kid problems: poor millennials have even higher rates of narcissism, materialism and technology addiction in their ghetto-fabulous lives.
They are the most threatening and exciting generation since the baby boomers brought about social revolution, not because they’re trying to take over the Establishment but because they’re growing up without one. The Industrial Revolution made individuals far more powerful - they could move to a city, start a business, read and form organizations. The information revolution has further empowered individuals by handing them the technology to compete against huge organizations: hackers vs. corporations, bloggers vs. newspapers, terrorists vs. Nation-states, YouTube directors vs. studios, app-makers vs. entire industries. Millennials don’t need us. That’s why we’re scared of them.
In the U.S, millennials are the children of baby boomers, who are also known as the Me Generation, who then produced the Me Me Me Generation, whose selfishness technology has only exarcebated. Whereas in the 1950s families displayed a wedding photo, a school photo and maybe a military photo in their homes, the average middle-class American family today walks amid 85 pictures of themselves and their pets. Millennials have come of age in the era of the quantified self, recording their daily steps on FitBit, their whereabouts every hour of every day on PlaceMe and their genetic data on 23 and Me. They have less civic engagement and lower political participation than any previous group. This is a generation that would have made Walt Whitman wonder if maybe they should try singing a song of someone else.
They got this way partly because in the 1970s, people wanted to improve kids’ chances of success by instilling self-esteem. It turns out that self-esteem is great for getting a job or hooking up at a bar but not so great for keeping a job or a relationship. “It was an honest mistake,” says Roy Baumeister, a psychology professor at Florida State University and the editor of Self-Esteem: The puzzle of Low Self-Regard. “The early findings showed that, indeed, kids with high self-esteem did better in school and were less likely to be in various kinds of trouble. It’s just that we’ve learned latter that self-esteem is a result, not a cause.” The problem is that when people try to boost self-esteem, they accidentally boost narcissism instead. “Just tell your kids you love them. It’s a better message,” says Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University, who wrote Generation Me and The Narcissism Epidemic. “When they’re little it seems cute to tell them they’re special or a princess or a rock star or whatever their T-shirt says. When they’re 14 it’s no longer cute.” All that self-esteem leads them to be disappointed when the world refuses to affirm how great they know they are. “This generation has the highest likelihood of having unmet expectations with respect to their careers and the lowest levels of satisfaction with their careers at the stage that they’re at,” says Sean Lyons, co-editor of Managing the New Workforce: International Perspectives on the Millennial Generation. “It is sort of a crisis of unmet expectations.”
What millennials are most famous for, besides narcissism is its effect: entitlement. If you want to sell seminars to middle managers, make them about how to deal with young employees who email the CEO directly and beg off projects they find boring. English teacher David McCullough Jr.’s address last year to Wellesley High School’s graduating class, a 12-minute reality check titled “You Are Not Special,” has nearly 2 million hits on YouTube. “Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you,” McCullough told the graduates. He says nearly all the response to the video has been positive, especially from millennials themselves; the video has 57 likes for every dislike. Though they’re cocky about their place in the world, millennials are also stunted, having prolonged a life stage between teenager and adult that this magazine once called twixters and will now use once again in an attempt to get that term to catch on. The idea of the teenager started in the 1920s; in 1910, only a tiny percentage of kids went to high school, so most people’s social interactions were with adults in their families or in the workplace. Now that cell phones allow kids to socialize at every hour – they send and receive an average of 88 texts a day, according to Pew – they’re living under the constant influence of their friends. “Peer pressure is anti-intellectual. It is anti-historical. It is anti-eloquence,” says Mark Bauerlein, an English professor at Emory, who wrote The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30). “Never before in history have people been able to grow up and reach age 23 so dominated by peers. To develop intellectually you’ve got to relate to older people, older things: 17-year-olds never grow up if they’re just hanging around other 17-year-olds.” Of all the objections to Obamacare, not a lot of people argued against parents’ need to cover their kids’ health insurance until they’re 26.
Millennials are interacting all day but almost entirely through a screen. You’ve seen them at bars, sitting next to one another and texting. They might look calm, but they’re deeply anxious about missing out on something better. Seventy percent of them check their phones every hour, and many experience phantom pocket-vibration syndrome. “They’re doing a behavior to reduce their anxiety,” says Larry Rosen, a psychology professor at California State University at Dominguez Hills and the author of iDisorder. That constant search of a hit of dopamine (“Someone liked my status update!”) reduces creativity. From 1966, when the Torrance Tests of Creativity Thinking were first administered, through the mid-1980s, creativity scores in children increased. Then they dropped, falling sharply in 1998. Scores on tests of empathy similarly fell sharply, starting in 2000, likely because of both a lack to face-to-face time and higher degrees of narcissism. Not do only millennials lack the kind of empathy that allows them to feel concerned for others, but they also have trouble even intellectually understanding others’ points of view.
So, yes, we have all that data about narcissism and laziness and entitlement. But a generation’s greatness isn’t determined by data; it’s determined by how they react to the challenges that befall them. And, just as important, by how we react to them. Whether you think millennials are the new greatest generation of optimistic entrepreneurs or a group of 80 million people about to implode in a dwarf star of tears when their expectations are unmet depends largely on how you view change. Me, I choose to believe in the children. God knows they do.
Source: Time. Available at http://time.com/247/millennials-the-me-me-me-generation/
Accessed on October 24, 2016.
Most of the learners tend to interpret the suffix -ING only as a gerund form. However, many times it appears as a noun, an adjective, a subject or a complement. Read the sentences below taken from TEXT 1 and match the uses of the ING form on the left with the sentences on the right.
1) ING as an adjective
2) ING as a noun
3) ING as present continuous
4) ING after preposition
5) ING as a gerund
A) “(…) Clark University Poll of Emerging adults (…)” (paragraph 2).
B) “Whereas in the 1950s families displayed a wedding photo (…)” (paragraph 5).
C) “(…) Since they grew up not having to do a lot of math in their head (…)” (paragraph 3).
D) “(…) Not because they’re trying to take over the Establishment (…)” (paragraph 9). 5) ING as a gerund
E) “(…) People wanted to improve kids’ chances of success by instilling self-esteem.” (paragraph 6).
Choose the only correct alternative.
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