Prime Time 7/8, Language in Use, Arbeitsheft

Home schooling: If a child gets bored at school, blame the system a) Do you associate the words below rather with the traditional education system or with home schooling, an educational model in which parents tutor their children at home? adventure • anti-bullying • attention span • coach • connection to life • creative • curious • curriculum • drama group • eagerness • excellence • excitement • facilities • fascination • frustration • idling • novelty • patience • repetitive • stimulating • timetable • tutor Traditional education system Home schooling b) Fill in the opposites of the words below. Use the words from the blue box in task a. Word Opposite Word Opposite 1. disinterested curious 5. active 2. indifference 6. outdatedness 3. disinterest 7. interesting 4. triumph 8. dull c) You are going to read a text about home schooling. Some words are missing from the text. Fill in the word which best fits each gap (1–10). Use only one word in each gap. Write your answers in the spaces provided at the end of the text. The first one (0) has been done for you. My daughter Matilda loved reading. She always asked … (0) . Her mind was a cauldron of bubbly eagerness, never idling, ever curious. That was ten years ago, when she was nearly seven, brimming with excitement about … (Q1) off into a new academic year at her school in Kent. But over the … (Q2) of that one term she turned into a completely different child. She stopped reading. Getting ready for school became a daily battle. It was as if her innate curiosity had flipped, like a … (Q3) , into angry, bitter complaint. Something had gone terribly wrong. It dawned on me, gradually, that she was quite simply bored, not least because she was being given mind-numbingly repetitive work. Matilda’s teacher insisted there wasn’t a problem as she was doing well in her tests. The head teacher told us not to fuss, it was a phase that would soon pass. But seeing our fizz-ball of a daughter literally fizzle out within just a few weeks of changing class was too appalling for us to see. We felt compelled to do something. We tried … (Q4) for another school – both in the private and state sectors. To our astonishment, none offered us much comfort. They talked about wonderful food, superlative facilities, excellence in health and safety, anti-bullying and, of course, their great results, but none ever volunteered a zero- tolerance policy on boredom. 2 100 Lifelong learning 20 Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv