The Population

Assign one group member to write down the questions; all members will help plan and compose the questions. For the lecture on popula­tion, write five short-answer questions that can be answered with a few words or a maximum of two sentences.

1. _________________________________________________________

2.

3.

4.

5.

Follow-up: Write your questions on the board to discuss as a class.

Written follow-up: Prepare for the quiz by writing answers to the ques­tions your class has proposed. You have abbreviations in your notes, but do not use abbreviations other than standard ones like U. S. in your answers.

Chapter 2 Immigration: Past and Present

Assign one group member to write down the questions; all members will help plan and compose the questions. For the lecture on immigra­tion, write five short-answer questions that can be answered with a few words or sentences. In addition, write two essay questions,- word the questions so that they can easily be turned into topic sentences.

Short-Answer Questions

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Essay Questions

1. ___________

2. ________

Follow-up: Write your questions on the board to discuss as a class.

Written follow-up: Prepare for the quiz by writing answers to the questions your class has proposed. You have abbreviations in your notes, but do not use abbreviations other than standard ones like U. S. in your answers.

UNIT QUIZ PREPARATION 31

Chapter 3 Americans at Work

Assign one group member to write down the questions; all members will help plan and compose the questions. For the lecture on work, write five short-answer questions that can be answered with a few words or sentences. In addition, write two essay questions; word the questions so that they can easily be turned into topic sentences.

Short-Answer Questions

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Essay Questions

1. 2.

Follow-up: Write your questions on the board to discuss as a class.

Written follow-up: Prepare for the quiz by writing answers to the questions your class has proposed. You have abbreviations in your notes, but do not use abbreviations other than standard ones like U. S. in your answers.

Now that you have completed the chapters in this unit, your teacher may want you to take a quiz. Your teacher will tell you whether or not you can use your notes to answer the questions on the quiz. If you can use your notes, review them before taking the quiz so that you can anticipate the questions and know where to find the answers. If you cannot use your notes, study them carefully before you take the quiz, concentrating on organizing the information into main ideas and de­tails that support these main ideas.

Work in small groups to help each other anticipate the questions your teacher will ask. Before breaking up into groups, review your notes and highlight important, noteworthy points. After reviewing your notes, break up into groups. Discuss and write specific short-an­swer questions and more general essay questions. Follow these guide­lines in writing the questions:

Writing Short-Answer Questions

Short-answer questions…

• should be specific, easy to answer in a few words or two sentences at most.

• should be clearly stated so that it is obvious what answer is wanted.

• should ask for facts, not opinions or information outside the lecture.

Exercise 1

Judge these questions by the above criteria. Mark each question + if it is good and – if it is bad. Discuss reasons for your choices, citing the criteria above.

___ 1. Talk about the U. S. worker.

___ 2. Do workers in your country work harder than workers in the

United States?

___ 3. What is the basic difference between the service industries and

other industries?

__ 4. In 1999 what percentage of U. S. women were working?

___ 5. Compare the U. S. worker in 1900 with the U. S. worker in 1999.

Writing Essay Questions

Essay questions…

• are usually in the form of a statement.

• are more general and require at least a paragraph—that is, several sentences—to answer fully.

• usually begin with a headword such as discuss, describe, explain, compare and contrast, list, analyze, or summarize. These head­words explain the writer’s purpose in answering the question:

1. to give all sides of the topic (discuss)

2. to give all the important details of something (describe)

3. to make something clear by giving reasons or by explaining how to do it (explain)

4. to write the similarities and differences (compare and contrast)

5. to name the parts of something, one by one (list)

6. to break something into its logical parts in order to explain it (analyze)

7. to write something in a shorter form, giving the main ideas and omitting the details (summarize)

Exercise 2

Judge these questions by the above characteristics. Mark each question + if it is good and – if it is bad. Discuss reasons for your choices, citing the characteristics above.

___ 1. Compare the U. S. worker in 1900 and 1999.

___ 2. List the percentage of U. S. women who were working in 1999.

___ 3. Discuss the child labor laws that were in place by 1999.

___ 4. Discuss the U. S. workers today in terms of productivity and

wages.

Write your group’s questions on the following pages.

UNIT QUIZ DIRECTIONS

A. Accuracy Check

Listen to the following questions, and write short answers. You will hear each question one time only.

1. _

2. __

3. ________________________________________________________________

4. ________________________________________________________________

5. ________________________________________________________

6. ___________________________________________________________________________

7. T____________________________

8.

10.__________________________________________________________________

Follow-up: Check your answers with your teacher. If your score is less than 70 percent, you may need to listen to the lecture again or rewrite your notes so that you can understand and use them later.

B. Oral Activities

1. Review

In pairs, use your notes to reproduce sections of the lecture. Student A will present the introduction and subtopic 1 including details to Stu­dent B. Student В will present subtopic 2 including details. Check what you hear against your notes. If you don’t understand or you disagree with what you hear, wait until your partner finishes. Then bring your notes into agreement by seeking clarification, as follows:

• I don’t think the lecturer said 60 percent of the workforce were women in 1999.

• Could you repeat what you said about the average per capita income in 1999?

• Did you understand the meaning of "a rising trend"?

2. Transfer

If you and your classmates come from different countries, prepare a short oral report about work in your country, covering the points be­low. Work with other students from your country.

If your classmates are all from the same country, discuss work in your country as a class, covering the points below.

• how work changed over the last century

• what kind of work most people in your country do

• what percentage of women arc employed

• how many hours a week most people work

• whether things are getting better for workers or not

C. Collaboration: Discussion

Discuss the following questions in small groups. Appoint one person to report your group’s opinions to the class.

1. Do you think most people are happy to leave farms to go work in industry? Explain your answer.

2. Is there ever a good reason for children to work? Why or why not?

3. Should women have the same opportunities to be employed as men, both before and after they are married? Give reasons.

4. Should the government set the number of weeks of vacation workers get each year? Why or why not?

5. Should workers share in the profits of the companies they work for? Explain your answer.

D. Pursuing the Topic

The following are recommended for a closer look at work in the United States:

Books/Periodicals/Internet

Schor, Juliet B. The Overworked American. New York: Basic Books, 1993.

In her best-selling book, Schor concluded that Americans worked an average of one month more per year in 1990 than in 1970.

Ciulla, Joanne B. The Working Life. New York: Times Books, 2000. Ciulla concludes that Americans let their work define them, which is dangerous as companies generally see workers as replaceable cogs.

Fraser, Jill Andresky. The White-Collar Sweatshop. New York: W. W. Norton St Company, 2002.

From her five years of interviews across the country with white – collar workers, Frazier describes what she believes has gone wrong and suggests possible solutions for workers.

Films/Videos

American Dream, Barbara Kopple, director; 100 minutes, no rating.

The film shows the attempts of workers at a huge meat-packing plant to negotiate salaries with the help of their union.

Interview

Interview an American who has worked at a job for at least five years. Beforehand, prepare interview questions as a class to ask. Here are some suggestions:

• where the person works

• how long he or she has worked there

• how he or she feels about the job

• what the person’s favorite and least favorite parts of the job are

• four to five additional questions the class is interested in •

During the interview, write down the answers to the questions, and later share the information with your classmates.

Variation: Invite an American to visit your class, and have the whole class interview him or her by using the questions you wrote.

A. Discussion

Discuss the following questions with your classmates:

• What is the name of the famous CEO (chief executive officer) in one of the photos?

• In which photo are the workers offering a service?

• Do you think U. S. workers are more, equally, or less productive than workers in other industrialized countries?

• How many weeks a year of vacation do you think the average U. S. worker has?

B. Vocabulary and Key Concepts

Read through the sentences, trying to imagine which words would fit in the blanks. Then listen to a dictation of the full sentences, and write the missing words in the blanks.

1. As we look at the changes over the last century, we’ll use a lot of to describe these changes.

2. While the number of people in these___________________

__________________ industries went down, the number of people

in the___________________ industries went up.

3. Over the years, child labor laws became much_________________

and by 1999, it was___________________ for anyone under sixteen

to work full-time in any of the fifty states.

4. In 1900 the average____________________________________

income was $4,200.

5. One of the important__________________ most workers received

later in the century was___________________

6. Whereas__________________ and salaries rose over the century,

the average__________________ dropped.

7. People often tend to__________________ the past and talk about

"the good old days."

8. According to a 2003__________________ released by the United

Nations International Labor Organization, U. S. workers are the most in the world.

9. Longer working horns in the United States is a________________

trend, whereas the trend in other industrialized countries is the

10. Workers in some European countries actually__________________

American workers per hour of work.

11. This higher rate of productivity might be because European work­ers are less than U. S. workers.

12. Between 1949 and 1974, increases in productivity were by increases in wages.

13. After 1974, productivity increased in manufacturing and services,

but real wages__________________ .

14. According to a recent book, the money goes for salaries to., to the stock market, and to corporate

15. Some people say that labor__________________ have lost power

since the beginning of the 1980s, and that the government has

passed laws that__________________ the rich and weaken the

rights of the workers.

Follow-up: Check the spelling of the dictated words with your teacher. Discuss the meaning of these words and any other unfamiliar words in the sentences.

C. Predictions

Using the photographs and the vocabulary exercise as a starting point, write three questions that you think will be answered in the lecture.

Examples: • How much money did U. S. workers make at the

beginning of the last century?

2.

3.

Follow-up: After you have written your questions, share them with your teacher and your classmates.

D. Notetaking Preparation

1. Abbreviations

To save time and get down more information when you listen to a lecture, it is helpful to abbreviate words. It is important to abbreviate them in a way that will allow you to remember what the full form is, of course. Another person’s abbreviation may not help you remember. Practice abbreviating the following terms you will hear in the lecture in a way that you will know what each abbreviation stands for a few days or a few weeks later. Look at the examples to see how some terms from the lecture have been abbreviated.

Examples: historical look at work: hist lk at wk

statistics: stats

Term Abbreviation

a. agriculture

b. mining, manufacturing, and construction ________

c. service industries

d. wages and salaries

e. average per capita income

f. health insurance

g. working conditions

h. increased productivity

i. stock market

j. labor unions

Follow-up: With a partner, take turns covering up the left column. Looking at the right column, practice saying the terms that your abbre­viations stand for. Your partner will check your accuracy.

Lecturers usually use rhetorical cues to help their listeners follow the lecture. A rhetorical cue is a word or even a sentence that lets us know that some important information is coming or that a new subtopic or point is being introduced. Look at these rhetorical cues, and decide in which order you will probably hear them in today’s lecture. Order them from first (1) to fourth (4).

___ a. Then we’ll look at how U. S. workers are doing today.

___ b. First, we’ll take an historical look at work in America.

___ c. First, let’s consider how the type of work people were

involved in changed over the last century.

___ d. Now let’s turn our attention to the current situation for U. S.

workers.

Follow-up: Discuss your answers as a class.

». LISTENING_______________________________________________

Q A First Listening

Listen for general ideas. In a brief introduction the lecturer makes a few remarks about how Americans look at work, and then goes on to mention his two main subtopics.

NOTES

Introduction:

ST1

Follow-up: Now check your major subtopics with your teacher.

Q B. Further Listening

While listening again, write down necessary relevant details below the main subtopics to which they belong. Remember to use proper number notation and abbreviations to save time.

Follow-up: Check your notes. If you missed important information or have doubts about your notes, (1) verify them by asking a classmate questions to fill the gaps in your notes or (2) listen to the lecture a third time. When verifying your notes with a classmate, do not show each other your notes; ask specific questions to get the information you need.

Examples: • How many children were in the workforce in 1900?

• What is the name of the book the lecturer mentioned?

This is also a good time to check to see if the lecturer answered your Predictions questions about the lecture.