Part 2. British youth.
Keywords
young people, youth culture, future, dark side, positive side, accepted, new business ventures, volunteers, skills, opportunity.
Vocabulary
heyday, advent, flower power, teenybopper, hooliganism, portray, extraction, option, executive, VAT (value-added tax), embark, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Punk.
A. What are young people most worried about? What do adult people think of the young? What kind of young people will succeed in the future? Think about these questions before listening to the first part of the passage about British youth.
Find the differences between your answer and what you've heard.
What scares me most about my future is not knowing what I want to do or where I am going.
Not having any money. Not being able to do things I want to do.
Young people are witty, young people are creative.
I think the old ways are possibly changing and the kids who can cope with change are going to be kids that succeed.
I think they need a hand. I think somebody needs to understand them a bit better.
They seem a lot more open-minded, they don't seem to able to be led as much today as maybe kids of my age group, the sixties and seventies.
Young people need more than anything an opportunity these days.
They need a chance to take on personal challenge.
B. Now listen to the second part of the passage, while listening, complete the following diagram with key words to get a clear idea of the history of youth culture.
The world teenager came into use in Britain in the 1950s when the young began to invent and adopt their own fashions, magazines, music and style.
This was the birth of what we now know as youth culture.
It reached its heyday in the 60s with the advent of swinging London bands like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and of course the mini-skirt.
Through the 70s there was flower power, hippies, teenyboppers and Punk.
The 1980s brought the new romantics, dance music and we also started to think about the future, ecology and all that...
What about the future? Where do they see themselves going? How do they feel about living in the Britain of the today?