Topic 4 Young People's Problems
It's common knowledge that youth is the best time of your life, that being young means romance, love, new discoveries and so on. But it is also the most difficult time because you have to make some very important decisions, which will influence all your future life.
Things are not easy nowadays even for adults, but for teenagers who have to find their own place in society, they are even more difficult. For your future it is essential to have a good job. And to get a really good job you have to be well educated. So there is a problem of choice, but a great part of young people are far from knowing what exactly they would like to do in their future.
But even if you have already made your choice and are studying somewhere, you need some money of your own. Your parents will probably provide you with home, food and necessary clothes, but it's obvious that you have your own tastes, and your parents won't pay for them. To pay for extra clothes, tapes, books, things necessary for your hobbies, you have to work, and in our country it is very difficult for a teenager to find a job without any qualification.
Emotional problems for young people can be far more serious than financial ones. The typical teenager problem is that "nobody understands me". The parents often continue to treat their teenage children as if they were infants when the latter probably consider them to be almost grown up.
And from this it follows a problem of a generation gap. Old people are always saying that the young are not what they were. The same comment is made from generation to generation and it is always true, but it has never been truer than it is today. The young are better educated and informed because of the media. They have a lot more money to spend and enjoy more freedom. They grow up more quickly and not so dependent on their parents. They think more for themselves and don't blindly accept the ideals of their elders. Traditionally, it was that young people turned to their elders for guidance. Today, the situation might be reversed: the old could learn a thing or two from their children. And if a compromise settlement is made then there won't be any generation gap.
There is one more problem that has become very urgent nowadays. It's a problem of taking drugs. Information received from opinion polls is saying that more than half of Russian teenagers have ever tasted drugs. Nevertheless there are many ways of keeping away from it. One of them is organized sport, which changes young people's world-outlook and prevents them from the fatal temptation.
As you see, it is very difficult to be young nowadays, as, indeed, it always was. But you can be young only once, and some wonderful things can happen only when you're yo ung. So, it is better to enjoy your youth while it lasts
Topic 5 ecology
The problems facing the environment are vast and diverse. Destruction of the world’s rainforests, global warming, and the depletion of the ozone layer are just some of the problems that will reach critical proportions in the coming decades. Their rates will be directly affected by the size of the human population.
The more civilization is developing, the greater the ecological problems are becoming. Factories, power stations and motor vehicles pump large quantities of carbon dioxide and other waste gases into the air. This is a major cause of the greenhouse effect. Smog, usually found in urban areas, can cause brain damage in children and other serious health problems.
Some poisonous gases dissolve in water in the atmosphere and then fall to the earth as acid rain. Acid rain has made numerous lakes so acidic that they no longer support fish populations. Acid rain is also thought to be responsible for the decline of many forest ecosystems worldwide. Rivers and lakes are also polluted by chemical fertilizers and pesticides used by farmers.
The greenhouse effect has lead to global warming. Normally, heat from the sun warms the earth and then escapes back into space. But CO2, SO2 and other gases trap the sun’s heat, slowly making the earth warmer. Scientists say the temperature of the earth could rise by 3oC over the next 50 years. This may cause drought in some parts of the world, and floods in others, as ice at the North and South Poles begins to melt and sea levels rise.
The ozone layer is a thin band in the stratosphere that serves to shield the earth from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays. The depletion of the ozone layer is caused by substances called CFCs used in refrigerators, aerosol cans and in the manufacture of some plastic products. Increased ultraviolet radiation will lead to a growing number of skin cancers and also reduce the ability of people’s immune systems to respond to infection.
Most of the energy we use today comes from coal, oil and gas. But these will not last forever, and burning them is slowly harming the atmosphere. Nuclear energy as an alternative is opposed by many because of the massive devastation an accident can cause. The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 scattered radioactive contamination over a large part of Europe. 70 per cent of the radiation descended in Belarus. Approximately 135 000 people were evacuated, and human health has been dramatically affected. The World Health Organization released a report in late 1995 attributing the “explosive increase” in childhood anemia, thyroid cancer in Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia directly to the accident.