One Thing Leads to Another

Pre-reading

These situations describe ways in which a couple might meet. Which ones do you think are most common, and which ones are most unusual?

at work a computer dating agency

on a train, bus an arrangement by parents

an advertisement at a disco

& Reading

Couples …by a computer

Jenny Tailor stood before the altar and turned to look into the loving eyes of her bridegroom Robert Bernett. A perfect couple. Anyone in the congregation last Easter Saturday would have agreed. But few of them realised this match wasn’t made in heaven. It was made by machine, not Cupid. A dating agency computer had brought them together. And Jenny and Robert are far from unique. A staggering one in every five of Britain’s ten million single people have used a dating agency.

Psychologist Dr Alan Drummond, who has made a four-year study on blind dates, estimates that more than 30.000 of them take place each week. “The most important reason for the boom in the romance industry is the high divorce rate for people in their thirties and forties”, he explains. “They find themselves single once again, but have lost most of their single friends”.

Lisa, 44, and Simon, 43, always tell people they met at a party. In fact they met via a dating agency. Both are teachers who moved to the Midlands to work. They have been together for three years. It was Lisa who insisted on the secrecy. “I don’t think people at school would have been intentionally cruel, but there would have been a lot of leg-pulling”, she says. Lisa and Simon plan to merry later this year. Simon wanted to get married within months of their first meeting, but Lisa preferred to wait. “I’d answered advertisements and joined agencies on and off for six years. In that time your confidence goes right up and right down”, she explains. “I suppose I did feel a bit of social reject. But I was determined not just to settle for anybody. Then I found Simon”.

Rosalyn Townsend doesn’t give up so easily either. A glamorous 32-year-old, she has spent three years and a small fortune searching the small ads for a good-looking, wealthy husband. Now, 700 letters later, Rosalyn is still placing and replying to ads. Three-time divorced Rosalyn says finding a father for her three-year-old daughter Lucy is her prime concern. Including the cost of travel and posh frocks to wear to her dates, the bill for her man-hunt adds up to $10.000!

Comprehension check

Answer the following questions:

1. Why do so many people use dating agencies, according to Dr Drummond?

2. Why did Lisa and Simon keep their use of the agency a secret?

3. What exactly has Rosalyn spent $10.000 on?

Word search

A. Decide what these words from the text mean. For each word choose from the possible explanations given.

a) altar: kind of photographer / part of church

b) congregation: people in church / large family party

c) match: joining of two people / marriage in church

d) unique: the only one / unhappy in love

e) staggering: lonely and unhappy / very surprising

B. Find words or phrases in the text that would be replaced by:

sudden increase main interest

not wanted by society making jokes

rich very attractive

on purpose expensive dresses

finally choose

Speaking

Did you find anything in the text which surprised you? Would this way of meeting people be successful in our country?

Pre-reading

Put these statements about romantic relations in the correct order:

_____ you meet one another

_____ you are attracted to one another

_____ your parents meet

_____ you fall in love

_____ you get married

_____ you have children

_____ you finish your studies

_____ you go out with one another

_____ you get engaged

_____ you get to know one another

_____ you start living together

_____ you go on holiday together

& Reading

Now read the stories and put the statements above in the correct order according to the stories. Do you know anyone whose love story was unusual? Retell it to your group-mates.

A

Saya and Haroon both lived in the town of Kanpur in India. Saya first saw Haroon in 1951 and she thought he looked nice but they couldn’t talk to one another. In fact, young Indian men and women couldn’t get to know one another before getting married. Saya told her father about Haroon and he went to visit the boy’s parents. Saya’s father thought Haroon would be a suitable husband for his daughter and so Saya and Haroon met and spoke to one another in front of relatives. Then they got engaged. The first time they were alone together was after the wedding. Today, Saya doesn’t think it matters if you know someone or not before you get married because life after marriage is so different from any relationship you have before. Haroon thinks his wife is more beautiful to him today than she was when they got married forty years ago.

B

During the second world war, Michel was serving as a soldier with the French army abroad. Madeleine lived with her family in Lyon, France and had just started working as a primary school teacher. One day, she read in the local newspaper that French soldiers serving abroad were looking for pen-friends and so she wrote her first letter to Michel. They wrote to one another for four years and today they both say that they fell in love through their letters. In fact they got engaged before meeting one another in person. When the war was over and Michel returned to France, Michel and Madeleine met for the first time. Now they have been married for nearly fifty years and neither of them regrets their unusual engagement.

& ! Reading and Writing

Read these funny “Lonely Hearts” ads, translate them and write your own ones.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 1439