UNIT 4

NET ADDICTION

Lead-in

1 Discuss with your partner the following questions.

1 Do you like playing computer games? Why?

2 What games do you like best of all? Why?

3 How much time do you usually spend playing computer games? Why?

4 Do you have any other interests except computer games? What are they?

5 How do your parents behave if you play too many computer games for a long time?

6 Do all the members of your family use computer? How many brothers or sisters do you have? Do they like using computer? How many computers do you have at home?

7 Have you ever argued with your relatives and parents about playing too many computer games? What did it result in?

2 Divide into two teams. One team is for playing entertaining computer games. The other is for playing developing computer games.

Make a list of the names of the games and try to persuade your opponents that your favourite games have more advantages than disadvantages.

Names of the games	Advantages	Disadvantages
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9
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Names of the games	Advantages	Disadvantages
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2
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10

READING

3 Look at the names of the games given below. Match the words in bold with their meanings and try to guess what kinds of games are they. Then, discuss the question next to the table with your partner.

Sim City	doomsday
Carmageddon	marauder
Ca(r)pocalypse Now	imitated
Tomb Raider	decisive battle

Do you like playing similar games? Why?

How can you interpret your favourite games?

4 You are going to read the article about children using computer games. Six sentences have been removed from it. Choose from the sentences A-F , the one which fits each gap (1-5). There is an example at the beginning.

FIGHTING THE COMPUTER BRAIN INVASION

W hen children get to age for games consoles, try to know what they are playing. C omputer games range from highly educational, creative, delightful ones such as Sim City, which is training a whole new generation of enlightened city planners, via games of skill such as ski, flight, skateboard and sailing simulations, to pretty disgustingly violent ones such as the Carmageddon series and Carpocalypse Now and Tomb Raider, artfully designed to lure teenagers and alarm parents. 0) And when you ask which games he likes they do not know. Would these people, if asked who was babysitting, say ‘Oh, some guy from the park’?

1 ) Walk past, discuss what the game is about while you get on with the supper. Encourage sharing with other children. 2)

Enforce screen breaks for the sake of the eyes and nerves. Give warning, let a level be finished, but enforce it.

3 ) If you have a teenager who spends a lot of time online, you probably need the software that records every site visited, any time spent; you may want one of the ‘filter’ programmes that cuts out dodgy sites. Unfortunately, these appear to do most caveman-simple things such as cutting out anything with the word ‘sex’ in it, which can seriously rot your A level biology student’s research material and cause undue resentment.

4 ) This, during teenage years, can be a problem but it is always worth persevering with. If a parent or relative is around for enough time, slow to leap to judgement or hysteria, and willing to listen (leaning on the kitchen work-top while one of you has a late-night pizza, in the car, wherever) then important issues will eventually come up. If not, they won’t.

5 ) . So is an alternative, sociable, physical pastime. We all know that a

healthy small child gets more fun out of a sociable kitchen than out of Furby, and relishes a rough-and-tumble game wills Dad more than a television programme. We need to extend that common sense into older ages too.

A Probably the best guarantee against damage or confusion is the normal communication you have with your child.

B Any game using two controllers is better than a lonely one.

C Indeed, personal happiness and reasonable self-esteem are the best weapons against any kind of computer brain invasion.

D As with television sets, keep the computer gaming area in one of the shared parts of the house.

E It is self-evident that parental responsibility has to be applied to Web-surfing just as it must to every other kind of encounter.

F It always amazes me to hear the parents of a nine or ten-year-old saying ‘He’s up playing computer games’.