Prime Time 7, Coursebook plus Semester Self-checks

3 Reading: Immigrants in London Read the text about London. Some parts are missing. Choose the correct part (A–H) for each gap (1–6). There is one extra part that you should not use. Write your answers in the boxes provided. The first one (0) has been done for you. Every race, colour, nation and religion on earth 1  London in 2005 can lay claim to being the most diverse city ever. The journalist Leo Benedictus has spent months travelling across the capital, locating and visiting the immigrant communities that give the city its vibrancy. “People here don’t know their own neighbours, and they’re like that their whole life. When I meet English people, which is not very often round here, my experience is that they are lost, really miserable people, sometimes with emotional problems. They don’t know how to speak to you. They are surprised you are open and nice to them.” – Gosia, 25, from Poland. London in 2005 is uncharted territory. Never have so many different kinds of people …  0   . What some people see as the great experiment of multiculturalism will triumph or fail here. […] Altogether, more than 300 languages are spoken by the people of London, and the city …  1   with populations of 10,000 or more. Virtually every race, nation, culture and religion in the world can claim at least a handful of Londoners. Yet life in the capital is hardly one great coffee-coloured carnival. Few lofty social ideals can be observed in Victoria station at 8 a.m. Indeed, as Gosia remarked, Londoners are notable for their lack of warmth. Their city is a place of business; they …  2   and work by far the longest hours. But London’s decade of prosperity has pulled in hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world and started a great convection current within the UK, sucking youth and energy in from the provinces and leaking spent fortysomethings back out into the countryside. On the whole, people come to London for the money. But money is not why they stay. Language is one reason; fluency in English is a gift for one’s children. Then there are the many refugees, who …  3   , but find, over time, that home has come with them. “People don’t treat you as a foreigner, but you feel it yourself,” said one Somali man of his first trip back after 15 years in London. “You see things like spiders and snakes that used to be normal, but when you go back you are scared. You become westernised, although you don’t realise it.” But there is another, more surprising reason why people make their homes in London: Londoners themselves. Bilsen, a 40-year-old Turkish woman, couldn’t understand the frosty atmosphere when she first arrived. “When you’re on the underground, people don’t talk,” she explained with horror. “They don’t even make eye contact.” Quickly, however, the benefits of being left alone …  4   . “Like the English say, ‘Mind your own business’,” Bilsen remarked with approval. […] Some, like the Queen in her Christmas message, call this tolerance. I’m not so sure. Having asked everyone I met in the course of this investigation how they got along with their “English” neighbours, I have few problems to report. The picture that emerges is of a broadly tolerant city, but toleration is about as far as it goes. Indifference might be a better description. The days when a man in a turban could stop traffic are behind us, but the days when the average Londoner knows why he wears it …  5   . And we will not get there if we forget that thousands of Londoners persecuted immigrants enthusiastically throughout the 20 th century. Jews and Germans were early targets, followed by Afro-Caribbeans, whose homes were besieged and petrol-bombed by white mobs throughout the 40s, 50s and 60s. And then we come to the skinheads and paki-bashers, many of whom now call themselves the BNP – a party that is still represented on Barking and Dagenham council today. So when hostility is the usual alternative, perhaps indifference …  6   . […] (Leo Benedictus, The Sunday Times , 17 December 2006; adapted and abridged) 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 50 Regional identities Check-out Now you can • Talk about your own regional identity. • Discuss differences between life in buzzing cities and remote areas. • Analyse poetry. • Write a review. • Discuss language policies in the Celtic fringe. • Use confusable words and false friends correctly. Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv