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Step by Step 3000. Book Four.
Part 1. Warming up.
A. Keywords
free time, stress, experts, prodigies, extracurricular activity, enough is enough.
Vocabulary
syndrome, ballet, gymnastics, prodigy, well-rounded, well-grounded.
Here is a report on how American average teenagers spend their free time. Listen carefully and complete the major points by filling in keywords.
Market researchers estimate that the average teenager spends about 82 dollars of their own money a week on clothing, food and entertainment.
But not all kids have time to go shopping. As a matter of fact, the amount of free time that children have has dropped about 16% over the last several years. Many call it the over-scheduled syndrome.
There is been a real cultural shift in this country in the past few years.
It used to be that children could participate in ballet, or gymnastic, or football in a very casual way. Now there is a real emphasis and a real stress on these kids to be experts.
The children are expected to become prodigies in whatever extracurricular activity it is that they choose.
Is it all necessary if the goal is simply to get into a selective college? Administration officers at Harvard University say, "No."
Only one third of the students they select are academic or extracurricular prodigies. The rest are quote "well-rounded and well-grounded."
What we are finding is that many parents now are starting to say "enough is enough" and they're cutting back. We've found parents who are pulling their children out of all of their activities.
It's just too much stress on the children, too much time away from homework, time away from sleeping, time away from eating and enough, and a lot of parents now are just saying "stop!"
