Speaking 1 Supporting your opinion

If you are able to support your opinion, your audience will respect you because you are showing them that you have thought about the topic in depth and can develop your argument. Support for your ideas consists of explanations and examples. You should have at least two or three pieces of supporting information. You can introduce and link your supporting information with transitional phrases, such as these:

first / first of all / first and foremost / to begin with
in addition / additionally / secondly / furthermore / moreover / also / then / as well as
finally / last but not least

Here are some of the sentences possible in an English court.

SENTENCE	What does it mean?
Community service	You have to do a period (eg. 100 hours) of unpaid work in hospitals / old people’s homes
Fines	You pay money to the court
Probation	You have to stay out of trouble. Once a week you visit a “probation officer”, who asks about your behaviour
Suspended prison sentence	You don’t go to prison immediately, eg. “a six-month sentence suspended for one year” means if you behave well for one year, you are free. If you do something wrong, you go to prison for six months
Prison	You go for a fixed period (ranging from a very short period to “life”)

Now look at these cases. If you were a judge, what sentence would you give to these people? Choose from the chart, give full details (eg. a £1000 fine/3 years in prison/one year on probation) and discuss your decision(s).

a. 18-year-old Miranda worked in a shoe-shop. She lost her job when she stole £92 from the shop.

b. Nigel is 38. He drank a bottle of wine and then drove home. He had a car accident and killed a 13-year-old boy.

c. Kevin, 15, was caught travelling on the train without a ticket. The correct ticket would have cost £1.75.

d. Stacey, aged 22, was caught selling marijuana at a disco. At her flat about 50 grammes of the drug were found (value: around £250).

e. Dean, 17, broke the window of a new Mercedes and stole a mobile phone and four CDs.

f. Samira is 32. She killed her husband with a knife while he was asleep. He had been very cruel and violent with her for more than 10 years, and he often had girlfriends.

2. Work in small groups and discuss these questions:

a) Do you think punishment is an effective deterrent to crime? If yes, which kind of punishment do you think is most effective? If not, how would you prevent crime?

b) Do you think crime is ever justifiable?

/from Inside Out. Advanced. Student’s Book. Ceri Jones, Tania Bastow, Sue Kay and Vaughan Jones/

Reading 1

Pre-reading

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 1795

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Read the newspaper article.	\|	Read the base text, ignoring the gaps, and try to follow the development of the argument. Think about these questions.

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