You’re going to read an article about why people are accident-prone. The words below occur in the text. Write definitions of these words. Use a dictionary if you need help. 1 clumsy: 2 upbringing: 3 cautious: 4 accident-prone: 5 adolescence: 6 left-handed: How do you think these things can make people have more accidents? Read the article to check. Can you remember what the article says about these things? Complete the sentences. 1 Parents are usually stricter with . 2 Adolescents are often clumsy because . 3 Watching too much TV affects children’s . 4 Watching cartoons doesn’t help children to understand . 5 The world is designed for . Do you agree with ideas 1–5? Why? / Why not? 11 Writing 12 Reading a upbringing adolescence watching TV / videos being left-handed b Why so clumsy? What makes one person have more accidents than another? Most people would say that it’s to do with taking risks. Take fewer risks and you’ll have fewer accidents. But is taking risks really a matter of choice? Some experts believe that whether or not you take risks in life has a lot to do with your upbringing and, some believe, with your birth order. Parents are often stricter and more careful with their first child, and so first-born children tend to grow up taking fewer risks and being more cautious. Parents are often more relaxed with a second or third child, so these children tend to take more risks. But why do children tend to be more accident- prone than adults? During childhood and adolescence, the body grows very quickly. There seem to be periods in these years when our brain and body are at different stages of development. Our arms are longer than the brain thinks they are, so we knock things over; our legs are longer than the brain believes, so we trip over more easily. Another explanation has been offered by scientists in Spain who have found a possible link between the number of hours a child watches TV and how accident-prone they are. The research suggests that the more time a child spends watching TV, the less they are developing their physical co-ordination skills. If a child doesn’t run around a lot, they don’t begin to understand that the world is full of physical risk. Watching cartoons and action adventure films doesn’t help either. It gives the child a false sense of how the world works and of how much danger it contains. So, what about adults? Some studies have shown that left-handed people are more accident-prone than right-handed people. Why the difference? No one knows for sure. One theory is that we live in a righthanded world. Everything – from cars to door handles, from children’s toys to engineering tools and equipment – is made by right-handed people for right-handed people. So left-handed children and adults are more likely to have accidents because the modern world is not designed for them. c d Language skills Extras Explore 7 Safe and healthy 87 Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Ve lags öbv
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy ODE3MDE=