Kedves Diákok!
A következőkben fontos információkat találtok az angol Madách-kupa szóbeli fordulójáról. Kérünk Benneteket, a verseny előtt olvassátok el ezeket, hogy a vetélkedő minél zökkenőmentesebben és gördülékenyebben folyhasson.
A forduló első feladatát (újságcikkre épülő kiselőadás) egy társatokkal együtt kell megoldanotok, a másodikat (képleírás) önállóan. Az, hogy az első feladat alatt ki lesz a partneretek, a helyszínen derül ki. A pontozás természetesen, ahogy eddig is, egyénenként történik, így a partnered teljesítménye nem befolyásolja a te teljesítményed értékelését.
A szóbeli verseny ismertetése:
A szóbeli fordulóban két feladatot kell megoldani, a verseny két bizottság előtt zajlik.
- feladat: Kiselőadás (10 perc/pár)
A tájékoztató végén található 4 újságcikk közül kell egyet kihúzni, és az abban foglaltakat kell elmondani, részletesen összefoglalni, majd ezt követően az olvasottak alapján kell elmondani a véleményeteket az adott témáról. Erre 2-2 perc áll rendelkezésre, tehát összesen egy embernek nagyjából 4 percig kell folyamatosan beszélni. A versenyen a szövegek nem használhatók, azokból előzetesen kell felkészülni. Miután befejezted a kiselőadást, a partnered feladata az lesz, hogy az alábbi rövid kérdések egyikének segítségével reagáljon az általad elmondottakra. A következő kérdésekre lehet számítani:
- What could you add to what your partner has said?
- Do you agree with what your partner has said?
- Do you think most people would agree with what your partner has said?
- Would you have liked to talk about your partner’s article? Why (not)?
- Which was the most interesting part for you in your partner’s talk?
Miután ez megtörtént, a partnered beszél az általa húzott újságcikkről 2-2 percben, a te feladatod pedig az lesz, hogy a partnered kiselőadása közben figyelj, hisz most neked kell a fenti rövid kérdések egyike alapján reagálnod az elhangzottakra. A kiselőadásokra való reagálásra 1-1 perc áll rendelkezésre.
- feladat: Képleírás (3-4 perc)
Ebben a feladatban kettő vagy három, valamilyen szempontból egy adott témához kapcsolódó képet kell összehasonlítanod a képek mellett található két segítő kérdésre támaszkodva. Erre 3-4 perc áll rendelkezésre. Fontos, hogy nem a képen szereplő dolgokról kell beszélni, hanem a képek által megjelenített témákról.
Mindkét feladat esetén törekedjetek arra, hogy minél változatosabb nyelvtani szerkezeteket és szókincset használjatok!
Ha további kérdéseitek lennének, forduljatok bátran a szaktanárokhoz!
A felkészüléshez sok sikert kívánunk!
🙂
Mark Zuckerberg sets toughest new year’s goal yet: fixing Facebook
CEO reveals this year’s ‘personal challenge’ as site faces relentless criticism over spreading of misinformation and damage to users’ mental health.
Amid unceasing criticism of Facebook’s immense power and pernicious impact on society, its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, announced Thursday that his “personal challenge” for 2018 will be “to focus on fixing these important issues”.
Zuckerberg’s new year’s resolution – a tradition for the executive who in previous years has pledged to learn Mandarin, run 365 miles, and read a book each week – is a remarkable acknowledgment of the terrible year Facebook has had.
“Facebook has a lot of work to do – whether it’s protecting our community from abuse and hate, defending against interference by nation states, or making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent,” Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page. “We won’t prevent all mistakes or abuse, but we currently make too many errors enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools.”
At the beginning of 2017, as many liberals were grappling with Donald Trump’s election and the widening divisions in American society, Zuckerberg embarked on a series of trips to meet regular Americans in all 50 states. But while Zuckerberg was donning hard hats and riding tractors, an increasing number of critics both inside and outside of the tech industry were identifying Facebook as a key driver of many of society’s current ills.
The past year has seen the social media company try – and largely fail – to get a handle on the proliferation of misinformation on its platform; acknowledge that it enabled a Russian influence operation to influence the US presidential election; and concede that its products can damage users’ mental health.
By attempting to take on these complex problems as his annual personal challenge, Zuckerberg is, for the first time, setting himself a task that he is unlikely to achieve. With 2 billion users and a presence in almost every country, the company’s challenges are no longer bugs that can be addressed by engineering code.
Facebook, like other tech giants, has long maintained that it is essentially politically neutral – the company has “community standards” but no clearly articulated political orientation. While in past years, that neutrality has enabled Facebook to grow at great speed without assuming responsibility for how individuals or governments used its tools, the political tumult of recent years has made such a stance increasingly untenable.
The difficulty of Facebook’s task is illustrated in the company’s current conundrum over enforcing of US sanctions against some world leaders but not others, leaving observers to wonder what rules, if any, Facebook is actually playing by.
Zuckerberg acknowledged that the problems facing a platform with 2 billion users “touch on questions of history, civics, political philosophy, media, government, and of course technology” and said that he planned to consult with experts in those fields.
But the second half of Zuckerberg’s post, in which he discusses centralization and decentralization of power in technology, reveal Zuckerberg’s general approach: proposing technological solutions to political problems. If Zuckerberg is interested in decentralization of power, he might wish to address his company’s pattern of aggressively acquiring its competitors – or simply copying their features.
Instead, the executive introduced a non sequitur about encryption and cryptocurrency, neither of which will do anything to address Facebook’s role in, for example, stoking anti-Rohingya hatred in Myanmar. If Zuckerberg truly intends to spend a year trying to figure out how the blockchain can solve intractable geopolitical problems, he would be better off just doing Whole30.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/04/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-new-years-resolution
Having adult children at home is a blessing, not a curse
My 21-year-old daughter still lives at home. She may be untidy and we keep different hours, but she brings a vibrancy to the house that we’d miss.
Her bedroom is a bit of a tip, her friends come and go at all times of the day and night, and she’s not amazing at doing the washing up. But I feel blessed to have my 21-year-old daughter still living with us at home – and I’m a bit mystified about why today’s news that the number of young Britons living with their parents is on the increase is being greeted with a seemingly universal reaction that it’s got to be a bad thing.
Sure, the lack of jobs for young people is a scandal (my daughter has one, but it’s not well paid and she certainly couldn’t afford to live independently on her earnings) and that house prices aren’t lower (although that has to be related to the fact that we, the older generation, are sitting on such overpriced properties). But why are we seeing this fairly seismic shift in living arrangements as a curse, rather than being open to the opportunities it brings? What’s actually wrong with inter-generational living, provided you have the space for it?
Historically, families lived together until younger members set up their own households on marriage; and that’s still how life operates in many traditional societies. In general, we tend to applaud communities where the very young, the very old, and all others in between are mixed up higgledy-piggledy; we can see that everyone benefits from the social interaction, we can see the potential for cross-fertilising ideas and experience, and we can acknowledge that empathy is more likely to come about where people are in close contact with others from different generations. We bemoan the fact that caring for the elderly now tends to be outsourced to institutions; we wish we were all closer and more jumbled up (though we admit the practicalities of having granny living with us could be difficult).
But here in mid-life, where I and the parents of the 3.3 million other 20- to 34-year-olds currently living at home are at, it’s not necessarily all that difficult to incorporate our young adult children into our lives, and to offer them a place in our households. In fact, I am discovering, it’s remarkably handy to have a 21-year-old on the premises. She’s not that great at washing up, but she’s an imaginative and inventive cook, so if I’m out for the evening she’ll usually take on doing the cooking for her younger sisters. She doesn’t keep her bedroom pristine, but she’s hoping to work in interior design and she’s got some pretty smart (and low-cost) ideas to help with my redecoration plans. And while her friends are noisy, and live by a very different timetable from my husband’s and mine (last weekend they were still up pre-loading when we went to bed; some Sundays I have made the morning tea before they come crawling in from a nightclub) they’re wonderfully lively, and sparkly, and fun. I like having my house full of their vibrancy; and I feel lucky that I can be in touch with the 20-something generation, their hopes and fears and aspirations, simply by wandering into my kitchen and having a chat with whichever young person happens to be making themselves a cup of coffee in there.
The bottom line to all the middle-aged angst seems to be: will they ever go? But, like so many fears of parenting (“will my one-year-old ever stop breastfeeding?”; “will my five-year-old ever sleep on her own?”) this one is built on sand. Culturally, over recent generations our society has been postponing adulthood, so of course the end result is that our children live with us for longer than they used to. Educationally and socially, we all have lots to gain by it. But of course they’ll move out eventually, because it’s what they’ve been genetically designed to do. And when that day comes, some of us might find ourselves wishing they had hung around for longer.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/21/adult-children-at-home-blessing-not-curse
How economic growth has become anti-life
An obsession with growth has eclipsed our concern for sustainability, justice and human dignity. But people are not disposable – the value of life lies outside economic development.
Limitless growth is the fantasy of economists, businesses and politicians. It is seen as a measure of progress. As a result, gross domestic product (GDP), which is supposed to measure the wealth of nations, has emerged as both the most powerful number and dominant concept in our times. However, economic growth hides the poverty it creates through the destruction of nature, which in turn leads to communities lacking the capacity to provide for themselves.
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The concept of growth was put forward as a measure to mobilise resources during the second world war. GDP is based on creating an artificial and fictitious boundary, assuming that if you produce what you consume, you do not produce. In effect , “growth” measures the conversion of nature into cash, and commons into commodities.
Thus nature’s amazing cycles of renewal of water and nutrients are defined into nonproduction. The peasants of the world,who provide 72% of the food, do not produce; women who farm or do most of the housework do not fit this paradigm of growth either. A living forest does not contribute to growth, but when trees are cut down and sold as timber, we have growth. Healthy societies and communities do not contribute to growth, but disease creates growth through, for example, the sale of patented medicine.
Water available as a commons shared freely and protected by all provides for all. However, it does not create growth. But when Coca-Cola sets up a plant, mines the water and fills plastic bottles with it, the economy grows. But this growth is based on creating poverty – both for nature and local communities. Water extracted beyond nature’s capacity to renew and recharge creates a water famine. Women are forced to walk longer distances looking for drinking water. In the village of Plachimada in Kerala, when the walk for water became 10 kms, local tribal woman Mayilamma said enough is enough. We cannot walk further; the Coca-Cola plant must shut down. The movement that the women started eventually led to the closure of the plant.
In the same vein, evolution has gifted us the seed. Farmers have selected, bred, and diversified it – it is the basis of food production. A seed that renews itself and multiplies produces seeds for the next season, as well as food. However, farmer-bred and farmer-saved seeds are not seen as contributing to growth. It creates and renews life, but it doesn’t lead to profits. Growth begins when seeds are modified, patented and genetically locked, leading to farmers being forced to buy more every season.
Nature is impoverished, biodiversity is eroded and a free, open resource is transformed into a patented commodity. Buying seeds every year is a recipe for debt for India’s poor peasants. And ever since seed monopolies have been established, farmers debt has increased. More than 270,000 farmers caught in a debt trap in India have committed suicide since 1995.
Poverty is also further spread when public systems are privatised. The privatisation of water, electricity, health, and education does generate growth through profits . But it also generates poverty by forcing people to spend large amounts of money on what was available at affordable costs as a common good. When every aspect of life is commercialised and commoditised, living becomes more costly, and people become poorer.
Both ecology and economics have emerged from the same roots – “oikos”, the Greek word for household. As long as economics was focused on the household, it recognised and respected its basis in natural resources and the limits of ecological renewal. It was focused on providing for basic human needs within these limits. Economics as based on the household was also women-centered. Today, economics is separated from and opposed to both ecological processes and basic needs. While the destruction of nature has been justified on grounds of creating growth, poverty and dispossession has increased. While being non-sustainable, it is also economically unjust.
The dominant model of economic development has in fact become anti-life. When economies are measured only in terms of money flow, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And the rich might be rich in monetary terms – but they too are poor in the wider context of what being human means.
Meanwhile, the demands of the current model of the economy are leading to resource wars oil wars, water wars, food wars. There are three levels of violence involved in non-sustainable development. The first is the violence against the earth, which is expressed as the ecological crisis. The second is the violence against people, which is expressed as poverty, destitution and displacement. The third is the violence of war and conflict, as the powerful reach for the resources that lie in other communities and countries for their limitless appetites.
Increase of moneyflow through GDP has become disassociated from real value, but those who accumulate financial resources can then stake claim on the real resources of people – their land and water, their forests and seeds. This thirst leads to them predating on the last drop of water and last inch of land on the planet. This is not an end to poverty. It is an end to human rights and justice.
Nobel-prize winning economists Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen have admitted that GDP does not capture the human condition and urged the creation of different tools to gauge the wellbeing of nations. This is why countries like Bhutan have adopted the gross national happiness in place of gross domestic product to calculate progress. We need to create measures beyond GDP, and economies beyond the global supermarket, to rejuvenate real wealth. We need to remember that the real currency of life is life itself.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/01/how-economic-growth-has-become-anti-life
What’s the problem with millennials in the workplace?
Have you ever laughed at your parents for not being able to change their social media settings – and then had to Google how long it takes to boil an egg?
Or rung your boss on Monday because you felt ill on Sunday, and therefore felt deserving of another day off – in order to enjoy “a proper weekend”?
If so, don’t say another word. You are already pegged as a ‘millennial’ – born roughly in the decade after 1983 – and a member of the generation branded the most entitled and self-absorbed in human history.
Yesterday the CBI, representing the heavyweights of British industry, issued yet another exasperated harrumph on the fecklessness of young people entering the workplace; its latest study of business leaders reporting that a third of companies are dissatisfied with graduates’ attitude to work and ability to “self-manage”.
Text-speak and Twitter reductionism is also letting our young hopefuls down, a similar number complained, with literacy and numeracy skills so poor among university leavers, that they have to be topped up in the workplace.
If there was ever a moment which laid to rest the image of the eager be-suited graduate, plucked fresh from a university milk-round for a job-for-life, and confirmed its replacement with a casually-dressed slacker, strolling into work late on his phone, only to complain there’s no room on the office bean bag, this must surely be it.
Indeed, when British marketing guru Simon Sinek gave his blistering analysis of everything that’s wrong with Generation Y last year, it hit such a nerve that it went viral within a day and has now racked up over a million hits on You Tube.
With devastating clarity, he painted a picture of how a generation given everything for nothing has created a crisis of unmet expectations in the workplace: “They’re thrust in the real world and in an instant they find out they’re not special, their mums can’t get them a promotion, that you get nothing for coming in last – and by the way, you can’t just have it because you want it.”
George recalls one young man he recruited a few years ago straight from university onto an accelerated future talent programme on a good wage. Far from being keen to learn the job from the bottom up, George said the young man let it be known that dealing with customers in the call centre was too far beneath him to contemplate.
“We were almost on the verge of terminating his employment contract. But he had good analytical skills, so we saw the future potential, supported him in learning the basics and today he is in a relatively successful and relevant role.”
George adds: “You would expect that university education would tease some basic business etiquette, and certainly communication skills. He did not communicate, besides showing a sheer lack of interest in the job. He was not willing to make the sacrifice of learning through the ranks.
“I can only attribute this to the stress of £50k debt (from studentloans) hanging over his head and finding out the real world of work is different to how it’s painted in the lecture rooms. Had we not had to waste 12-14 months on unnecessary graduate ego massaging time, I am sure this employee would have tasted his success a little sooner, and opened doors to leadership opportunities by now.”
Professor Cary Cooper of the Manchester Business School agrees with the CBI that some young graduates do seem to be lacking in social skills: “They have been raised on Facebook and texting. The way you develop your social skills is by face to face interaction and this generation has had the least of that.”
But he maintains young graduates are every bit as enthusiastic and eager to learn as previous generations. They just have little interest in kowtowing to traditional management structures and are viewed with suspicion by bosses because they don’t expect to stay at the same company for long.
“The new graduates have seen older employees, who have been at their companies for many years, dismissed and treated like disposable assets. They are trying to protect themselves. So in other words, that tradional contract of employment has been broken for that generation. They don’t have the same company loyalties that were expected in the past.
“Senior managers are hanging on to the old ways and expect these young people to act and behave in the way they did when they were picked up at their university milk rounds in the Eighties. As a result, I don’t think employers know how to use them. But if you push their to the best of their capabilities, they will still come up with the goodies.”
Averil Leimon, leadership psychologist with the White Water Group, agrees that millennials “certainly want different things” – and it could be this which is making us uncomfortable.
“They want a more balanced life. They have often seen one or both of their parents working flat out and not coming home till late, knackered after the commute. They want to find ways to incorporate real relationships, be hands on in bringing up their kids, keep up external interests and be fit and healthy.
“They grew up with technology so they know how to work remotely and cannot see why sitting in a building is required. They don’t ‘go to work’, they just work. Technology is integral to their lives so they do not split home and work as rigorously as previous generations. They seek close and rewarding relationships at work, not just in their personal lives.”
Indeed, some business leaders are already proclaiming we need to be more like millennials, instead of trying to making us more like us.
Retail guru Mary Portas now describes herself as a “fiftysomething millennial, or what you might call a slashy,” and sees nothing wrong with Generation Y demanding the work-life balance their parents never had.
“I’m a businesswoman/TV presenter/ author/charity retailer/mother/wife/ DJ/anything that comes along that inspires me,” she recently told the Telegraph; as a result, she has now reshaped her company in line with that thinking. Her management and board “now have the right to take as much holiday as they like, when they like, set their own hours and take open-ended maternity leave.”
So why are condemning young people for wanting the balanced lifestyle we never achieved?
Psychologist Averil Leimon says: “I was recently working with an investment banker. He told me: ‘Millennials have no values’. “I said: ‘Gosh, really? Don’t you mean they have different values?’
“He then inveighed about his son, who has rejected his father’s absent, workaholic, money-focused way of life for something different and more personally rewarding.
“Indeed, if we were to design a business all over again to suit human nature, allowing people the chance to use their strengths for fair reward and have a satisfying home life, wouldn’t we want this, too?”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/work/problem-millennials-workplace/
