UNIT 3

Is Youth the Best Time of a Person's Life?

Lesson 1 Communication: Youth as a Stage of Human Development Grammar Focus: Language Use:

Part a reading and speaking

Think ahead

We grow as we go through different stages of human development.

The number of these stages may be different as sociologists, psychologists, or poets view them. For example, William Shakespeare in his play As You Like It critically and humorously examines the human lifespan as seven stages of emotional and physical development, and thus the man plays seven parts in his life: an infant, a school-boy, a lover, a soldier, a person delivering justice, and there are also two stages of old age, the last one being “the second childishness and mere oblivion; Sans (without) teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything". (You may read more about it in Act 2, Scene 7 of As You Like It in Jaques’ speech which begins with Shakespeare’s most famous words: “All the world’s a stage / And all the men and women merely players.” on the Internet.)

1. What do you know about different stages of human development?

2. Which stage seems to be the most difficult for you? Why?

3. What stage of human development are you in? Are you comfortable enough being there? Is there anything you would like to change? Why?

4. What would you like to know on the problem of youth?

Read the text and say if the statements that follow are true or false. Be ready to answer the questions on the text and to speak on the stages of human development:

Youth as a Stage of Human Development

We all distinguish such stages of human development as childhood, youth, and adulthood, each having its own subdivisions. And no other stage in the life cycle provokes as many questions and debates as youth – the period between childhood and adulthood, the age somewhere between 12 and 30.

Youth may further be subdivided into adolescence (roughly the years between the ages of 13 and 18), and young adulthood (it begins with the age of 18 and goes on to somewhere around 30).

Adolescence

During adolescence, roughly the years between the ages of 13 and 18, young people move beyond their rather limited world of childhood and begin experimenting with the behaviour, beliefs, and attitudes of adults. At this age they mix some qualities of childhood with some of adulthood, and the word "turbulent" is perhaps the best to describe the average experience of teenagers.

At this age they face with changes in their bodies, emotions, and personalities which may be very stressful. This is also the age when a teenager may get ready to go to a university. The pressure on him or her is very high as the competition is very tough and, unfortunately, not always fair.

Very often teens run into many problems: bullying and drugs, running from home and dropping out from school, jails and prisons, sexual abuse and teen pregnancy – these are just a few problems to mention here.

Parents usually worry about their child more than their teenager about himself or herself,

and to protect the child they often exercise their power and limit their child’s rights: they do not allow to go where he or she would love to go, they give orders and prohibitions, they may be against their child’s fashion, friends and a girl/boy friend, hobbies, music, lifestyle and other things their child appreciates so much. As the result the good relationship between them and their child is often broken. Thus, the tense parents-children relationship contributes to the most typical problem of teenagers which is usually called ‘the generation gap’.

But most teenagers overcome the challenges of adolescence quite successfully and settle into being young adults.