Discuss the questions.

1 What have you read online today? How typical is

this of your online reading?
2 Which of these headlines might you click on?
Why?
• Celebrity plastic surgery revealed!
• Super cute cat and canary
• Scientists uncover birth of the galaxy
• Art that makes your eyes sore
• Tornado demolishes seaside towns
• Spy on your kids online
Read the blurb from a book by Ethan Match the sentence halves. Then listen
Zuckerman. Does he believe the Internet and check.
makes us more or less connected?
1 What's interesting is
REWIRE 2 The point he's making is
BY ETHAN ZUCKERMAN 3 The reason why it matters is
4 The thing we really need to
understand is
5 All we need to do is

a) we're living in an age of economic and

physical connection.
b) 'disconnect' from our current way of
thinking and 'rewire'.
c) that we only think we're more
connected.
d) how other countries and cultures work.
e) were wrong.
We live in an age of connection, one that is accelerated by
the Internet. This increasingly ubiquitous, immensely What information is being emphasised in
powerful technology often leads us to assume that as the
each sentence?
number of people online grows, it inevitably leads to a
smaller, more cosmopolitan world. We'll understand more,
we think. We'll know more. We'll We more and share more Pronunciation:
with people from other cultures. In reality, it is easier to Listen to the examples again.
ship bottles of water from Fiji to Atlanta than it is to get
news from Tokyo to New York. In Rewire, media scholar Does the tone of the phrases in bold ?
and activist Ethan Zuckerman explains why the  fall
technological ability to communicate with someone does
 rise
not inevitably lead to increased human connection.
 fall and then rise
The blurb suggests that shipping bottles
of water is easier than sharing information Change these sentences to cleft
between diverse cultures. Do you agree? sentences that begin with the phrases in
Why / Why not? italics. Then listen and check.
1 We don't need wi-fi all over town. What
Listen to a media expert, Zelda Freeman, we ...
discussing Rewire. Summarise the main 2 I only use the Internet at work. It's only
point the book makes, according to Zelda. ...
3 We only have to unsubscribe from
Listen again and note down examples social media to help us reconnect. All
Zelda gives of ... we ...
1 our current online behaviour 4 It's incredible just how liberating it is to
2 ways the world is more connected go digital. What's ...
these days 5 It worries me because people end up
3 false cosmopolitanism living in virtual worlds and losing touch
4 'bridge figures' and what they do. with reality. The reason .„

How similar is your online behaviour to Use these phrases to tell your partner
your offline behaviour? Describe someone about your own internet use.
you know whose online and offline All I seem to do
behaviour is different. What's your opinion is…
of this?
It's … that I find
irritating. The reason why
I … is…
What differences are there between psychological findings of recent years: that
friendships that are mostly face-to-face coldness makes people feel lonely. The
and those that are mostly online? opposite's also true: loneliness makes people
feel cold. In one experiment, students played a
Do you think these ideas are true or false? computer game in which they threw a ball back
Why? and forth with other on-screen characters, each
1 Feeling colder improves our ability to of whom they (wrongly) believed was controlled
understand other people. by another student, playing elsewhere. After a
2 Increasing the temperature of a room while, others sometimes began to keep the ball
could help resolve an argument. to themselves.
3 Some national and regional personality
Subsequently, players who'd been thus
characteristics can be explained by
ostracised showed a a marked preference for
climate. hot foods over cold ones; the non-ostracised
4 Feeling warmer makes us feel more players didn't. In a recent rerun of the
connected to other people. experiment, ostracism led to a drop in skin
5 Loneliness can affect your physical temperature. Other studies have found that hot
health. baths relieve loneliness, and that merely being
Read the article and check your answers reminded of an experience of exclusion
prompts people to judge a room's temperature
as colder.

LONELINESS AND TEMPERATURE This kind of research - about how seemingly

Does coldness really make people feel innocuous aspects of our surroundings can
lonely? exert powerful effects - has been in the
Oliver Burkeman doghouse lately; several classic findings have
proved difficult to replicate. It's no longer clear,
for example, whether being exposed to words
associated with old age ('grey', 'bingo') really
does make people start walking more slowly.
But there's reason to believe the link between
loneliness and temperature will hold up. It's no
mere matter of word association: temperature
may be a crucial way our bodies keep track of
whether we're getting the social contact we
need. It's easy to see why natural selection
might have given us a yearning to be near
According to new research, people exposed to friendly fellow tribe members: they were crucial
warmer temperatures find it harder to grasp for food, security and relationships. People
viewpoints other than their own, while those worry that social media are making us lonely
exposed to colder ones find it easier. It seems and isolated, but what if that is exactly half-
that in order to take the heat out of a true? What if they are not making us isolated -
disagreement, you should literally take the heat online connections are real, after all - but are
out of the room. Since I've always preferred the making us feel lonely, partly because those
cold this was music to my ears. It's tempting to connections don't involve heat?
extrapolate: might this explain the affable
tolerance of Canadians, say, or the history of It sounds silly that hot baths and soup might be
prejudice in the US south? Sadly, on closer the answer to loneliness. Surely the only real
reading, the study is only a partial victory for answer to loneliness is real connection? But a
cold. We're better at seeing other perspectives feeling of isolation makes people try less hard
when we're chilly, the researchers argue, to connect. So a nudge in the right direction -
because cold triggers a sense of social even a bath - can't hurt. (And severe loneliness
distance. It reminds us of our separateness, really can hurt, physically: it's been found to
and thus the fact that others aren't like us. We exacerbate numerous serious diseases.) But
gain perspective at the cost of intimacy. I'm a cold-lover. Does that mean I hate people?
I hope not. When I really think about it, the thing
So what looks, at first, like a surprising result I love most about cold weather is coming back
turns out to reinforce one of the most intriguing into the warmth.
Read the article again and answer the Complete the rules with the correct suffix
questions. from above
1 How can cold make people more  ___________ nouns are states of
understanding? emotion or being.
2 What did the computer ball game tell  ___________ nouns are often beliefs
researchers about loneliness? What or ways of thinking or political systems.
two outcomes told researchers this?  ___________ nouns are often single
3 What kind of research has been in the actions or general concepts.
doghouse lately'? Why? What's the difference in meaning between
4 Why does the author think the findings separation, separatism and separateness?
will 'hold up'?
5 What's the writer's suggestion about Complete the sentences with abstract
the relationship between social media nouns Add two more sentences with other
and the absence of heat? -ism / -ness nouns.
6 Why does the writer suggest that
having hot baths is a good idea? 1 For me ______________ is the most
important quality in a friend/friendship.
Discuss the questions. 2 The worst quality for a person to have
1 In your experience, is the research is _____________ because ... .
about warmth and understanding the 3 _______________ in a person
points of view of other people sometimes irritates me.
believable? 4 _______________ and
2 What other ways can you think of to _____________ really help in
help people who feel lonely? teamwork.
5 _____________________ is worse
Nouns with suffixes: Society and than ________________
relationships 6 In social situations, ______________
Can you remember which noun in the box is a terrible of experience.
completes these phrases in the article? 7 _______________________________
8 _______________________________
intimacy security viewpoint
perspective (x2) social contact Explain your ideas to a partner. Together
decide on five key qualities and kinds of
1 grasp a ______________ behaviour that are important to social
2 see another ______________ relationships.
3 gain _______________ at the cost of
_____________ Choose one of the social situations below.
4 get the ___________ you need What further problems might you have?
5 food and ___________ How could you deal with them? Make a list
of problems and suggestions.
What are the noun forms of these words?  You have to live in an unfamiliar country for
cold lonely ostracise exclude isolate six months. You don't speak the language
and very few people speak English / your
Add one noun suffix: -tion, -ism or -ness, native language.
to each word in each group.  You join a class and find that everybody
there already knows each other.
1 material, optimistic, social, separate,  You are doing an online course. During
capital your e-tutorials you sense that your tutor is
2 nervous, rude, selfish, fair, close not paying attention.
3 collaborate, distribute, liberate, innovate,  You meet someone you think is very
separate interesting online, and you'd like to get to
know them better.

Have you / Has anyone you know ever

been in any of the situations? How did
you/they deal with it?