ACTIVITY 1: READING COMPREHENSION
Read the
text and answer the questions:
THE IF GENERATION
https://readingstrategiesmsu.weebly.com/questioning.html
Nowadays, many people have issues with appreciating
what they have; it is always the matter of ‘If I were richer…’, ‘If I were
younger…’, ‘If I were him…’ etc. I don’t have a problem with the fact that we
want more from our lives; what annoys me is the fact that we keep saying what
we would do ‘IF’ …
When I was younger, I thought that if my parents had
been richer, I could have been more fortunate with my life. I was losing my
time on thinking that if I had been born in the family of my cousin, I would
have enjoyed private tennis lessons, skiing holidays in Austria or expensive,
fashionable clothes. What I didn’t take into consideration back then was the
fact that I didn’t really like sport, I absolutely hated skiing and expensive
clothes often covered the lack of personality. In other words, I was jealous of
the things that I didn’t want in reality.
Nowadays I keep finding myself the new ‘ifs’ that can
successfully keep me away from being happy. I think that if I had more time, I
would start going to the gym; if I had more money, I would eat healthy etc.
Result? An overweight 30-year-old woman, always complaining about how difficult
life is.
But the problem of ‘ifs’ doesn’t finish here. We tend
to overuse the 1st conditional in quite straightforward situations. ‘I’ll visit
you if I have time’ usually means ‘I won’t visit you, I’m busy’ or ‘I will lend
you the money if I can’ equals: ‘ I will not lend you the money, don’t put me
in an uncomfortable situation’. Why do we choose to send confusing messages
when we can simply say what we think? We have to be not only politically
correct anymore, we must be socially correct too.
https://busyteacher.org/17048-conditionals-reading-comprehension-and-speaking.html