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Live session preparation
Live session preparation
The text we read last week looked at international trends in working hours, and at the link between the amount of time people work and their productivity. In preparation for this week's session we're going to read two related texts, and think about how we could use them together to discuss the question of how hard and how much people should work, and at what point does someone work too much. Before we start reading, think about the following questions:
How long is a normal working day in your country?
Why do you think countries with lower averages of working hours are more productive?
What's considered more important in your country, a drive for professional ambition, or a sense of work-life balance?
Live session discussion - task review
Live session discussion - task review
There was quite a lot to get through in the preparation materials for this session. If you managed to do everything then well done!
Which types of comprehension question did you find most challenging? (E.g. paraphrasing, identifying stance etc.)
Did you find the journal article more difficult to process than the Economist? If so, why?
Share your examples of unpacked phrases from page 9 of the preparation tasks. How easy or difficult did you find this to do?
Live session - critical discussion and vocabulary review
Live session - critical discussion and vocabulary review
Do you agree with the claim that if people only had to work four hours a day that they would devote their free time to the pursuit of science, painting and writing?
In 2020, to what extent has technological advancement freed people from toil?
If you had a job that paid £1 million an hour, would you ever take time off?
To what extent does money buy happiness?
The study by Camerer et al. as described in the Economist text indicated that once taxi drivers had hit their income targets for the day they would stop working. Would you work in a similar way?
Have the working-from-home habits that many people have adopted in 2020 helped or harmed work-life balance?
After reading these texts and discussing their ideas, have you changed you mind about the questions in the preparation section?
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