Englisch BHS, Maturatraining mit Audio-CD

75 Tapescript Tiger moms (CD 08) Announcer: You are going to listen to a recording about Chinese parenting styles. First you will have 45 seconds to study the task below, then you will hear the recording twice. While listening, match the beginnings of the sentences (1–7) with the sentence endings (A–J). „ere are two sentence endings that you should not use. Write your answers in the spaces provided. „e…rst one (0) has been done for you. A‡er the second listening, you will have 45 seconds to check your answers. (45 sec pause, acoustic signal) Presenter: Perhaps you’re familiar with the super-strict mom who pushes her kids to be the best at everything at school, including sports and music, no matter what the cost. It’s a parenting style made famous by Chinese-American author Amy Chua in her best- selling book, „e Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Ms Chua believes that Asian parents are superior to their western counterparts because of their intense focus on their children’s achievements at school and strictly enforced rules at home. Admittedly, Ms Chua has since said that because she was bringing her children up in America, which is a very liberal society, she was trying to counterbalance that with a bit of Chinese strictness and tradition. But let’s see what the children of tiger moms think. Connie and Mae-Mae are second-generation Chinese sisters who were also brought up in the US. Connie, tell us about your schooldays. Did you have a tiger-mother upbringing? Connie: Kind of. Mom expected us to get straight A’s on our report cards. We had to learn piano and violin and we had to practise for two hours every day. We weren’t allowed to learn any other instruments. If we didn’t achieve her targets, we wouldn’t be allowed to watch television or go to sleepovers. But no way was our mom as strict as Amy Chua. Presenter: How did your sister Mae-Mae react to your mom’s discipline? Connie: Well, there were arguments, but I guess they always worked things out. I remember when Mae- Mae was about 7 she did poorly on a math test and told Mom she hated math. So Mom wrote all these math exercises for her and made her do them for a week. In the next test she did very well and a‡er that math was her favourite subject. But I guess Mae-Mae was more rebellious than me. She just refused to practise her violin and in the end Mom let her do tennis instead. But she was still expected to beat all the others in the class. Mom always had very high expectations of us, but she was never unreasonable. Presenter: „anks Connie. Now, here’s our China correspondent Kerry Brown to tell us about another feline in the Chinese parenting world, Cat Dad. Kerry: „ere’s been a massively popular comedy drama on Chinese television called Tiger Mom Cat Dad. It focuses on the con¥ict between two parenting styles. „e lead characters are a…erce tiger mom and a chilled-out cat dad. „ey regularly clash over the upbringing of their only daughter. Mom believes the girl has been spoiled and is falling behind her classmates academically. Dad is more relaxed about rules and discipline. He believes his child’s happiness should come before her schooling. A‡er the…nal episode of the series there were tens of thousands of comments on Weibo, the Chinese social media site. Some writers defended Cat Dad and found the Tiger Mom character bullying and disrespectful. One father, a real-life Cat Dad called Chang Zhitao, argued that the father’s role was to relieve the pressure that is o‡en heaped on children by their mothers. Others saw the Cat Dad as too weak and the couple as basically incompatible. Presenter: Confused? Well, don’t be. Even if you’re not sure which type of animal represents your own parenting philosophy, perhaps the most important aspect of cat and tiger parenting is that, whichever route you go down, your kids will bene…t. Both Amy Chua and Chang Zhitao had daughters who got places at prestigious American universities. Research has shown that when both parents play an active role in the development of their children, the kids grow up smarter, earn more money, can deal better with emotional di¯culties and have healthier relationships in adulthood. (15 sec pause, acoustic signal, track replays, 45 sec pause) Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv