with practice of the language of trends
Discuss Japanese trends in the topics below in pairs. One person should choose one topic below and discuss the past, present and future changes, then the other person give their views on what was said.
Salaries/ Bonuses
Chances of promotion for women/ Equal opportunities
Telecommuting
Freelancers
Holidays
Job security
Company pension schemes
Working hours
Unpaid overtime
The consumer price index (= Inflation)
Casual jobs – Permanent jobs
The age of retirement
Outsourcing
The stock market
Unemployment (e.g. for one particular age group)
The long-term unemployed
Residential property prices
Commercial property prices
Income tax
VAT (= Value Added Tax)
Corporate tax
Government debt
Consumer debt
Rate of bankruptcies
Imports – Exports/ The balance of trade
Consumer confidence
The number of people investing in the stock market
The number of IPOs
Poverty
Inequality
Social mobility
Discuss the last three as a class. What are the possible solutions to those problems?
What solutions of these kinds can you think of?
Financial
Educational
Parenting
Which of those solutions are best?
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What do you think about these solutions?
Financial solutions
Taxing the rich
Income transfers (= The government giving money to poor families)
Educational solutions
A pupil premium (= Giving more money to schools which have more students from poor families)
Giving schools a mission to increase social mobility
More streaming (= dividing students by ability) in state schools
Restricting private education
Starting school earlier
Starting school later
Focusing on pre-school children
Parenting solutions
Parenting lessons
Discouraging poor families from having more children
(Optional – Rank the ideas above)
Find things above that are mentioned in the text below and summarise what is said about each one. Not all of the things above are mentioned.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/sep/24/focus-under-fives-children-equal-chance
Which one does the author think is a priority?
What do you think about the author’s conclusions?
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PDF for easy saving and printing: solutions to poverty discussion reading
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