HABITS
Read the following passage carefully:
1 A recent study of dining habits reveals how far standards have slipped. The majority of Britons no longer eat together as a family, but of those who do four out of 10 can’t see anything wrong with bringing their laptops, iPads and smartphones to the table.
2 Indeed, the new social savagery is everywhere and not just at the dining table. lust step into the street and the communal atmosphere has gone. Most pedestrians are in their private bubbles, either speaking on their mobiles or wearing headsets – perhaps so they don’t have to listen to others speaking on theirs.
3 At parties – originally designed to promote friendship and romance – the direct experience is being intercepted by smartphone as partygoers are too busy announcing their presences at the event and checking on the progress and whereabouts of their peers. In restaurants, theatres, libraries, school speech days, at home en famille, people are distracted by a brightly-lit device that seems to hold the promise of something better.
4 It is a generational thing, of course. The worst offenders are teenagers – in terms of the group who are the most distracted because this is the generation who never knew life when it was ‘real’. The five in the continuous future. They have no experience of subtlety, nuance or considered responses – only of instant, illiterate and ill-considered ones. The gratification teen crave is not the warm smile of affection or the approving comment from another human, but the sense of achievement they gain from electronic validation, Emails, texts and updates pinging in reassure them they are alive and popular and abreast of the rolling social news. Malachy Guinness. 28, who co-runs Bright Young Things Tuition, comes from a family famed for their exquisite manners. Says Malachy: ‘My mother gets very cross when I keep taking calls and texting but I say, the great thing about my smartphone is it allows me to work on the move. So I can either see more of you and continue working while I do so, or stay in the office and see less of you’
5 Malachy is actually a victim, rather than a beneficiary, of new technology. If it was not available, people would not be enslaved to it. We, the pitying onlookers, are victims, too. The rudeness is rarely intentional. It is not that the worst offenders do not care about the effect their intrusive shouting into mobiles, for example on trains, has on others. They often are simply unaware of it.
6 A good way to tackle such impolite gestures would be; like in a train/bus: If someone is shouting indiscretions into their phone for more than a few minutes, record it with your own phone then play it back to them. When they hear their own voice booming out at them from the seat behind, they are more than startled. They get the message and bring their call to a halt.
7 The worst place to take a call is in church, second worst the theatre, the third during a speech and the fourth in a restaurant. If you know you are likely to have an urgent call, genuinely urgent, while in a restaurant, warn your companions before, put your phone on vibration and then go out to take the call in the street or lobby.
8 The real status symbol is to not answer your mobile but to have an underling do it for you, stack up to the messages and let you respond to them at your leisure. If there is a real emergency, they can deal with it in the time-honoured way that real emergencies can always use to be dealt with. Daily Telegraph.
Read the given questions and write the answer in about 30-40 words.
(a) Why do most families in Britain not eat together?
(b) How has technology impacted the life of youngsters?
(c) Why does the writer use the term ‘social savagery’?
(d) How do the present generation and working people justify electronic advancement?
Choose the word which is closest in meaning to the words given below
(a) promote
(i) to run (ii) to canvass for
(iii) to break (iv) to make ahead
(b) intercepted
(i) to come in between (ii) to break
(iii) to speak in between (iv) to throw
(c) offender
(i) one who does good deeds (ii) a sports person
(iii) one who commits mistakes (iv) a brave person
(d) gratification
(i) happiness (ii) Sadness
(iii) awkwardness (iv) sense of fulfilment
ANSWERS:
(a) Families in Britain do not eat together because when they come to the dining table they are busy with their laptops, i-pads and smartphones.
(b) The youngsters are the most distracted generation. They don’t live in the real world. They live in a continuous future. They never look for physical warmth or smile but only for electronic approval.
(c) He uses this term to bring out the fact that everywhere from home to outside people remain to themselves, either they are using their mobiles or listening to music with their headsets. None of them pays attention to anything that is happening around them.
(d) The youngsters and the working people feel that it is the technology that helps them to be connected with the family and friends even when they are busy with work.
5.2 (a) (ii) (b) (i) (c) (iii) (d) (iv)
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