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Reading
1
Read the Study Strategy and do the exercise.
Study Strategy
Predicting content
•
The title and the photos help you get a general idea
of what a text is about.
•
Look at the title and the photos before you read.
What do they tell you about the text?
•
The first paragraph usually summarises the main
idea.
•
Read the first paragraph to check your ideas about
the text before you read it all.
Before you read
l
Look at the photos of two
British high streets. What can you see?
Are they very different? Read the title of
the article. What do you think it is about?
Culture
Crisis
The UK is changing! We are experiencing
a real cultural invasion by other countries.
Is this a good or bad thing? Steve Chang
looks at the changing face of Britain.
If you walk down a British high street today, it
is very easy to forget where you are! Shopping
streets in British towns are almost identical. In
every town you generally find the chain stores
– Currys, The Body Shop, Boots, WH Smith,
McDonalds, HMV, Blockbuster Video, Next, Gap,
Benetton – and the major banks. Small shops
which are not part of a
chain
are becoming very
rare
. What’s more, many of these chain stores
and the products they sell are not actually British.
America has an enormous influence on the UK
these days. The British eat large quantities of
American-style fast food. But the USA isn’t the
only country to influence what we eat. Here in
Richmond, for example, we have Indian, Chinese,
French, Greek, Thai, Japanese, Italian, Spanish
and Ukrainian restaurants.
The USA also
influences
other parts of our lives.
Most computer products are American, such as
Microsoft software and Macintosh computers, and
who hasn’t got a pair of Levi’s jeans?
A very big American influence on UK culture is,
without a doubt, American television. A large
number of the films, soap operas, reality shows
and quiz programmes that we watch here come
from the USA. The
consequences
of this are
enormous. American TV is changing the way we
speak and
act
. Young people use more and more
American words and expressions.
However, it isn’t just an American invasion. We
find Italian and French designer clothes in our
clothes shops now. A lot of mobile phones,
TVs, cameras, video cameras, DVD players and
MP3 players that we buy are made by Japanese
companies.
So is this cultural invasion a good thing? Well,
you decide. But can you imagine life without your
mobile phone, MP3 player,
designer
jeans and a
nice chicken curry?
B
Chiswick High Road
80
7
Skills and culture
George St, Richmond
A