AC_LAINCONV_UNID 1 e 2 by Abraço Cultural

Inglês Conversação (B1/B2)

Autora Débora Sales Almeida de Oliveira Licenciada e bacharela em Letras – Português e Inglês pela Universidade Estadual Paulista – UNESP. Especialista em Produção de Livros Didáticos pela Casa Educação. Professora de língua inglesa. Coordenadora Pedagógica no Abraço Cultural São Paulo. Leitura crítica Jose André Teodoro Torres Bacharel em Letras – Português e Espanhol pela Universidade de São Paulo – USP. Mestrando em Língua Espanhola pela Universidade de São Paulo – USP. Assistente Pedagógico no Abraço Cultural São Paulo. Nour Massoud Bacharela em Tradução – Inglês e Árabe pela Universidade de Damasco, Síria. Membro do Conselho Municipal de Imigrantes de São Paulo. Professora de Inglês no Abraço Cultural São Paulo.

Unit 1 | Should you trust your first impression?

Image credit: Freepik

1) Before getting to know each other, think about the first impression you have just had of your classmates. Fill in the tables below with your impression and then talk to some of your colleagues to find out the real information about them. Colleague 1 Impression

Fact

Name:

Profession:

Age:

Personality:

Colleague 2 Impression

Fact

Name:

Profession:

Age:

Personality:

2) Share and compare your answers from the previous activity with your class. Can you see any similarity in their opinions? Or was it too different from the reality?

LISTENING 3) You are going to watch a video about how our first impressions are formed. Your teacher will show you once and then you should do the vocabulary activity before watching it again.

Available at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK0NzsGRceg>. Accessed on December 21, 2016.

a) Match the vocabulary extracted from the listening with its corresponding definition. pattern make fun

show up judge

jerk trait

bias obnoxious



to arrive.



to make unkind insulting remarks about someone or something.



very offensive, unpleasant or rude.



the regular way in which something happens, develops, or is done.



an opinion about whether a person, group, or idea is good or bad that influences how you deal with it.



someone, especially a man, who is stupid or who does things that annoy or hurt other people.



to form an opinion about someone, especially in an unfair or criticizing way.



a particularly quality in someone’s character. Definitions extracted from The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. Available at < https://www.ldoceonline.com/>. Accessed on August 1, 2018.

b) Listen once again and choose if the sentences are True (T) or False (F).    

Research on social psychology suggests that we are not quick to form lasting impressions of others based on their behaviours. ( ) A bad behaviour might outweight a good behaviour because immoral behaviours are more revealing of a person’s true character. ( ) Bad is not necessarily always stronger than good when it comes to updating. ( ) We are not more used to people being basically good. ( ) 4

4) Do you have any interesting story about an impression you had of a person and it changed after time? In pairs, talk about your experiences.

READING 5) Read the interview with social psychologist Amy Cuddy on a research what is behind our first impressions.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: THE SCIENCE OF MEETING PEOPLE Wired: What have you learned about how we form first impressions? Amy Cuddy: When we form a first impression of another person it's not really a single impression. We're really forming two. We're judging how warm and trustworthy the person is, and that’s trying to answer the question, “What are this person's intentions toward me?” And we're also asking ourselves, “How strong and competent is this person?” That's really about whether or not they're capable of enacting their intentions. Research shows that these two trait dimensions account for 80 to 90 percent of an overall first impression, and that holds true across cultures. Why did you get into this line of research? Since just after World War II, social psychologists have been studying prejudice, really trying to understand what drives it. And the classic social-psychological model was that it's all about love for the “in-group” and hatred for the “out-group.” The problem with this is that it assumed there's a single evaluative dimension: You either have negative or positive feelings toward a person or group. And because that's not really what's happening, social psychologists were not able to use the in-group/out-group evaluation to predict discrimination. Ultimately, what we really want to know isn't just what you think and feel about somebody but also how do you treat them. We didn't know who was going to be a target of genocide, who was going to be neglected, who was going to be mocked. Discrimination comes in very nuanced forms these days. And we wanted to be able to predict discrimination. Our research group was interested in how people categorize each

other. When we meet somebody, what determines whether we see them as a member of a group or see them as an individual? And how do we determine if we like the other person or not? Through research we found that it really comes down to two traits: trustworthiness and competence. (…) How do you convey trust in a first interaction? There are a lot of things that you can do. One is to let the other person speak first or have the floor first. You can do this by simply asking them a question. I think people make the mistake, especially in business settings, of thinking that everything is negotiation. They think, “I better get the floor first so that I can be in charge of what happens.” The problem with this is that you don't make the other person feel warmth toward you. Warmth is really about making the other person feel understood. They want to know that you understand them. And doing that is incredibly disarming. You can also establish trust by collecting information about the other person’s interests—get them to share things about themselves. Just making small talk helps enormously. Research proves that five minutes of chit-chat before a negotiation increases the amount of value that's created in the negotiation. What's funny about all this is that the things that you do to increase trust actually often are things that are seen as wastes of time. People say, "Oh, I don't have time for small talk." Well, you should make the time for small talk because it will really help. Available at < https://www.wired.com/2012/11/amycuddy-first-impressions/>. Accessed on August 1, 2018.

6) Answer the questions according to the article “First Impressions: The Science of Meeting People”. a) What are the two main trait dimensions people often use to form an impression on others? _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________

b) How the classic social-psychological model can be defined? _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________

c) What should be our actions according to the social psychologist in order to build trust in a first interaction? _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________________

7) Find synonyms for the words and expressions that are underlined in the text. You can use an online monolingual English dictionary to help you. It is important to pay attention to their context in the article when choosing the most appropriate definition.             

warm: trustworthy: toward: overall: prejudice: hatred: predict: mocked: convey: have the floor: to be in charge: establish: small talk:

8) Now write sentences using some words from activity 8 about how you deal with impressions.

GRAMMAR Present simple, Present continuous, Past simple, Past continuous and State verbs 9) Analyse the words in bold in the following sentences:      

When we form a first impression of another person (…) And we're also asking ourselves (…) (…) social psychologists were not able to use the in-group/out-group evaluation (…) And we wanted to be able to predict discrimination. (…) who was going to be neglected, who was going to be mocked. I think people make the mistake (…)

a) Put them in the correct division according to their verb tense:

Present simple

Present continuous

Past simple

Past continuous

State verbs

b) Go back to the text, find one or two more examples of each verb tense and add to the table.

10) Which verb forms are being described in the definitions below? Write the appropriate verb tense.     

Actions that happened in the past and are finished. ______________________________ Things that are habits, happen in a regularly basis or are permanent. _________________________ Events taking place at the moment of speaking or over a period of time. _________________________ Actions that were in progress in a certain period of the past. ___________________________________ Describe states rather than actions, as emotions, thought processes, opinions and the five senses. _______________________

11) Describe the actions in the following pictures using the prompts in brackets. Follow the example. When you finish, check your answers with a partner.

She is listening to music and dancing. (listen to / dance)

______________________________________

___________________________________

__________________________________

(play / twice a week)

(sleep / while / study )

___________________________________

__________________________________

___________________________________

__________________________________

(like / watch TV series)

(start / last semester) Image credits: Freepik

12) Complete the gaps with the corresponding form of the verbs in brackets.

"Two months ago I _________________ [go] to a crush at Lady Brandon's. You know we poor artists have to show ourselves in society from time to time, just to remind the public that we ________________ [be] not savages. With an evening coat and a white tie, as you _________________ [tell] me once, anybody, even a stock-broker, can gain a reputation for being civilized. Well, after I had been in the room about ten minutes, talking to huge overdressed dowagers and tedious academicians, I suddenly ___________________ [become] conscious that someone ____________________ [look] at me. I turned half-way round and _______________ [see] Dorian Gray for the first time. When our eyes met, I ______________ [feel] that I ___________________ [grow] pale. A curious sensation of terror came over me. I knew that I had come face to face with someone whose mere personality ___________________ [be] so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself. I did not want any external influence in my life. You know yourself, Harry, how independent I ________________ [be] by nature. I have always been my own master; had at least always been so, till I met Dorian Gray. Then—but I don't know how to explain it to you. Something ________________ [seem] to tell me that I was on the verge of a terrible crisis in my life.(…)” Extracted from The Gutenberg Project. The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde. Available at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/174/174-h/174-h.htm Accessed on August 8, 2018.

WRITING 13) “Don’t judge a book by its cover” is a popular saying in English. Its meaning suggests we should be careful when analyzing things superficially as being open to what is inside things or people, can lead us to a new perspective. Do you agree with this statement? Share your ideas writing some paragraphs about it.

Credit: Picture Quotes

SPEAKING SESSION Your teacher will show you some pictures of different people. As you have never met them, you need to make some inferences about their personality and create a profile for these individuals. In pairs, you will write about their characteristics and then describe them to the whole class. Be careful with prejudices and bias that may come up! 9

Unit 2 | The world as we know 1) Look at the picture and describe it to a partner, giving as many details as you can.

Credit: The meta picture

2) What do you think this map is representing? 3) Can you think of other stereotypes based on cultures or countries? Fill in the boxes with the name of a culture or country and its common stereotypes. Then share your answers with the class.

4) How would you define stereotype? Discuss it with a partner and write a definition. ___________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________

READING Walter Lippmann is a journalist who became famous for defining the concept of stereotype in a modern psychological meaning. Read the extracts of his book Public Opinion, published in 1922, approaching this topic. Chapter VI | Stereotypes 1. Each of us lives and works on a small part of the earth's surface, moves in a small circle, and of these acquaintances knows only a few intimately. Of any public event that has wide effects we see at best only a phase and an aspect. This is as true of the eminent insiders who draft treaties, make laws, and issue orders, as it is of those who have treaties framed for them, laws promulgated to them, orders given at them. Inevitably our opinions cover a bigger space, a longer reach of time, a greater number of things, than we can directly observe. They have, therefore, to be pieced together out of what others have reported and what we can imagine. (…) 3. (…) The subtlest and most pervasive of all influences ere those which create and maintain the repertory of stereotypes. We are told about the world before we see it. We imagine most things before we experience them. And those preconceptions, unless education has made us acutely aware, govern deeply the whole process of perception. They mark out certain objects as familiar or strange, emphasizing the difference, so that the slightly familiar is seen as very familiar, and the somewhat strange as sharply alien. They are aroused by small signs, which may vary from a true index to a vague analogy. Aroused, they flood fresh vision with older images, and project into the world what has been resurrected in memory. Were there no practical uniformities in the environment, there would be no economy and only error in the human habit of accepting foresight for sight. But there are uniformities sufficiently accurate, and the need of economizing attention is so inevitable, that the abandonment of all stereotypes for a wholly innocent approach to experience would impoverish human life. (…)

Chapter VII | Stereotypes as Defense 1. There is another reason, besides economy of effort, why we so often hold to our stereotypes when we might pursue a more disinterested vision. The systems of stereotypes may be the core of our personal tradition, the defenses of our position in society. They are an ordered, more or less consistent picture of the world, to which our habits, our tastes, our capacities, our comforts and our hopes have adjusted themselves. They may not be a complete picture of the world, but they are a picture of a possible world to which we are adapted. In that world people and things have their well-known places, and do certain expected things. We feel at home there. We fit in. We are members. We know the way around. There we find the charm of the familiar, the normal, the dependable; its grooves and shapes are where we are accustomed to find them. And though we have abandoned much that might have tempted us before we creased ourselves into that mould, once we are firmly in, it fits as snugly as an old shoe. No wonder, then, that any disturbance of the stereotypes seems like an attack upon the foundations of the universe. It is an attack upon the foundations of our universe, and, where big things are at stake, we do not readily admit that there is any distinction between our universe and the universe. (…)

Excerpts extracted from The Gutenberg Project. Public Opinion, by Walter Lippmann. Chapter VI and VII. Available at < http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6456/pg6456.html>. Accessed on August 21, 2018.

5) Now answer the questions according to the text: a) What is the subtlest and most pervasive of all influences? ___________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________ b) According to Lippmann, why do we hold to our stereotypes? ___________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________ c) How does the disturbance of stereotypes look like? ___________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________

LISTENING 6) Listen to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian writer who has an inspiring talk on the influence of stories, and do the following activities.

Credit: TED Website

a) Listen to the first three minutes of the talk and fill in the blanks with words from the box. characters

convinced

danger

desperate

early

four

ginger

mangoes

outside

perception

ponytails

quite

snow

stirred

storyteller

weather

I'm a ____________________ and I would like to tell you a few personal stories about what I like to call "the ____________________ of the single story." I grew up on a university campus in eastern Nigeria. My mother says that I started reading at the age of two, although I think ____________________ is probably close to the truth. So I was an __________________ reader, and what I read were British and American children's books. I was also an early writer, and when I began to write, at about the age of seven, stories in pencil with crayon illustrations that my poor mother was obligated to read, I wrote exactly the kinds of stories I was reading: All my ____________________ were white and blue-eyed, they played in the _____________________, they ate apples. And they talked a lot about the ____________________, how lovely it was that the sun had come out. Now, this despite the fact that I lived in Nigeria, I had never been ___________________ Nigeria. We didn't have snow, we ate _____________________, and we never talked about the weather, because there was no need to. My characters also drank a lot of ____________________ beer, because the characters in the British books I read drank ginger beer. Never mind that I had no idea what ginger beer was. And for many years afterwards, I would have a ____________________ desire to taste ginger beer. But that is another story. What this demonstrates, I think, is how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story, particularly as children. Because all I had read were books in which characters were foreign, I had become _____________________ that books by their very nature had to have foreigners in them and had to be about things with which I could not personally identify. Now, things changed when I discovered African books. There weren't many of them available, and they weren't ___________________as easy to find as the foreign books. But because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye, I went through a mental shift in my ____________________ of literature. I realized that people like me, girls with skin the color of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ___________________, could also exist in literature. I started to write about things I recognized. Now, I loved those American and British books I read. They ____________________ my imagination. They opened up new worlds for me. But the unintended consequence was that I did not know that people like me could exist in literature. So what the discovery of African writers did for me was this: It saved me from having a single story of what books are. Transcript extracted from TED website. Available on < https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story/transcript>. Accessed on September 13, 2018.

b) From what you have heard so far, what was ChimamandaÂ´s view of literature stories and what has changed? Discuss with the class. c) Continue listening to the talk and pay attention to the answers she will give to these questions. Then match the questions with their appropriate paragraph.

What are the assumptions that the speaker's roommate had toward her as an African? ( How is a single story created? (

)

Where does this single story of Africa come from? (

1. So that is how to create a single story, show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.

3. Years later, I thought about this when I left Nigeria to go to university in the United States. I was 19. My American roommate was shocked by me. She asked where I had learned to speak English so well, and was confused when I said that Nigeria happened to have English as its official language. She asked if she could listen to what she called my "tribal music," and was consequently very disappointed when I produced my tape of Mariah Carey. She assumed that I did not know how to use a stove.

)

2. This single story of Africa ultimately comes, I think, from Western literature. Now, here is a quote from the writing of a London merchant called John Locke, who sailed to west Africa in 1561 and kept a fascinating account of his voyage. After referring to the black Africans as "beasts who have no houses," he writes, "They are also people without heads, having their mouth and eyes in their breasts." Now, I've laughed every time I've read this. And one must admire the imagination of John Locke. But what is important about his writing is that it represents the beginning of a tradition of telling African stories in the West: A tradition of SubSaharan Africa as a place of negatives, of difference, of darkness, of people who, in the words of the wonderful poet Rudyard Kipling, are "half devil, half child."

d) The writer makes a comparison between single stories and power. What does she say about it? ___________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________

7) The following pictures were extracted from a social media campaign. Which continent is it representing? By reading the hashtag, what do you think is it about?

Images extracted from Twitter accounts. Available on: < https://twitter.com/bosiburrito/status/750102879587995649; https://twitter.com/Ellisbht/status/613675623790309376/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E6 13675623790309376%7Ctwgr%5E373939313b636f6e74726f6c&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2F2015%2F07%2F 02%2Fthe-africa-media-never-shows_n_7714992.html>. Accessed on September 13, 2018.

8) Read the text about this campaign and fill in the gaps with words from the box. Use a dictionary (monolingual!) to help you with the meanings. ashamed

pushing back

starving

solely

struggles

disrupt

Africa Twitter Campaign Shatters Stereotypes, Lets People Tell Their Own Stories When Africa is featured in the news, the coverage all too often consists of _________negative images. Content focused on _____________children, humanitarian crises, poverty and illness leaves little room for a broader picture of the continent’s more than 50 different countries. In an effort to change that, Africa’s diverse nations have taken to Twitter en masse to share images — ranging from food to fashion to architecture and landscapes. Their photos, posted under the hashtag #TheAfricaTheMediaNeverShowsYou, aim to _____________the standard stereotypes the public has come to know. One of the hashtag’s early supporters, Diana Salah explained to Fusion that she got involved with the Twitter campaign “because growing up I was made to feel __________________ of my homeland, with negative images that paint Africa as a desolate continent.” The Seattle-based Somali-American student called the response “amazing”. As TakePart pointed out, the campaign is a powerful tool in ___________________against countries and cultures in the region being defined solely by their_____________, rather than their traditions, innovations and day-to-day life. Excerpt from: Joseph Erbentraut - The Huffington Post. Available on: <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/02/theafrica-media-never-shows_n_7714992.html>. Accessed on December 21, 2016.

Extracted from Twitter account. Available on: <https://twitter.com/Nadiaalie/status/613541947395805184/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm% 5E613541947395805184%7Ctwgr%5E373939313b636f6e74726f6c&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2F2015%2F07 %2F02%2Fthe-africa-media-never-shows_n_7714992.html>. Accessed on September 13, 2018

GRAMMAR Present perfect tense 8) Look at the following sentences, paying attention to the words in bold: ➢ (…) Africa’s diverse nations have taken to Twitter en masse to share images (…). ➢ (…) the standard stereotypes the public has come to know. What is the pattern on both sentences? Complete the gaps: __________ or __________ + verb in the _____________ participle form.

In English, when we want to connect past actions and its effect on the present, we use the present perfect tense. Here, it’s not important when the action took place, but the result of it now.

PRESENT PERFECT

Tip: This verb tense may sound different in your language. Maybe you only use past tenses to express this idea, so it’s good not to make comparisons between both languages.

PAST ACTIONS

PRESENT MOMENT

10) Complete the sentences using the structure of the present perfect tense and the verbs in brackets: a) _____________ (have) you ever _____________ (be) to Jordan? b) I ____________ (have not) _____________ (visit) my parents recently. c) Malika ____________ (have) ______________ (travel) to Asia twice. d) Wassim ___________ (have) never ____________ (watch) a Bollywood movie. e) _____________ (have) you ____________ (see) Yvonne lately? 11) The present perfect tense is also known as the verb of the “third column”. Do you remember the form of all these verbs? forget

make

fly

meet

hear

run

hide

send

leave

understand

SPEAKING SESSION It’s time to forget the stereotypes and learn more information about your classmates! Stand up, go around the class and ask them the questions in the bubbles. You have to write three questions for them in the last bubbles.

Have you ever eaten anything usually considered strange?

Have you ever cheated in an exam?

Have you ever borrowed anybody’s clothes without asking?

Have you ever gone swimming naked?

Have you ever travelled abroad?

Have you ever had a crush on a teacher?

Have you ever made a major change in your life?

Have you ever won anything in a contest or raffle?

Have you ever fallen asleep at a party?

Have you ever forged somebody’s signature?

Have you ever sung in a karaoke?

Have you ever danced like nobody is watching?