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    Upper Intermediate: Keynote

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    Lexie
    The document contains advice that various famous people would give to their 16-year-old selves. Jane Goodall would have told herself not to give up on her dreams of studying primates despite facing challenges as a female without a degree. Roger Bannister would have told himself to learn more from his parents and fully take advantage of opportunities they did not have. Shami Chakrabarti would have told herself to be confident without arrogance and to work to protect civil liberties.

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    Upper Intermediate: Keynote

    Uploaded by

    Lexie
    78 views3 pages
    The document contains advice that various famous people would give to their 16-year-old selves. Jane Goodall would have told herself not to give up on her dreams of studying primates despite facing challenges as a female without a degree. Roger Bannister would have told himself to learn more from his parents and fully take advantage of opportunities they did not have. Shami Chakrabarti would have told herself to be confident without arrogance and to work to protect civil liberties.

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    unit 12

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    The document contains advice that various famous people would give to their 16-year-old selves. Jane Goodall would have told herself not to give up on her dreams of studying primates despite facing challenges as a female without a degree. Roger Bannister would have told himself to learn more from his parents and fully take advantage of opportunities they did not have. Shami Chakrabarti would have told herself to be confident without arrogance and to work to protect civil liberties.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    78 views3 pages

    Upper Intermediate: Keynote

    Uploaded by

    Lexie
    The document contains advice that various famous people would give to their 16-year-old selves. Jane Goodall would have told herself not to give up on her dreams of studying primates despite facing challenges as a female without a degree. Roger Bannister would have told himself to learn more from his parents and fully take advantage of opportunities they did not have. Shami Chakrabarti would have told herself to be confident without arrogance and to work to protect civil liberties.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 3

    Upper Intermediate

    Keynote
    Reading text Unit 12: A letter to my younger self

    There are people who say you should never look back, while others point out that it can be a

    positive thing to assess how much you may have changed over the years. We asked some

    well-known people what they would like to have known when they were 16. This is what they

    said.

    Jane Goodall

    primatologist, the world’s leading expert on chimpanzees

    If I had been told back then I would be living the kind of life I’m living now, I would have

    given up. The idea of speaking to audiences would have utterly terrified me. That wasn’t the

    life I wanted to live. When I began my work studying primates, I knew I was different from

    everyone else in the field. I was female and I didn’t have a degree and I had my own ideas

    about animals. […] But my mother was amazing. She just said, if you really want something

    worthwhile, never give up.

    Roger Bannister

    first athlete to run a mile in under four minutes, neurologist

    At 16, I was focused on getting to Oxford. No member of my family had studied there. I was

    impatient to leave school for reasons I’m not sure of now, but I was keen to get on with my

    medical career. I’d tell my younger self he could and should learn more from his parents. I

    was rather independent then, though my parents did encourage me. I was always very active

    and involved in things. I threw myself into everything when I was at school, then when I was
    at university – president of the sporting club and the students’ union. I always felt I must

    exploit the opportunities my parents hadn’t enjoyed to the full.

    Shami Chakrabarti

    director of the human rights organization Liberty

    If I met my younger self now, I think I’d find her quite precocious, quite argumentative. My

    motto these days is: everyone’s equal, no one’s superior. […] And I’d tell that to my younger

    self – come on, you can be confident without being arrogant. If I didn’t work for Liberty now,

    I’d be sitting in the pub every night complaining about threats to our rights.

    Peter Capaldi

    Scottish actor

    At his best, I would like the 16-year-old Peter. […] He could be a bit braver. He could be a

    little bit wilder and not do any harm. He could try seeing more of the world. I’d tell my

    younger self: worrying that you can’t do it is a waste of time. […] Just get on with it. I’d tell

    him to celebrate being different. […] When I was 16, geeks hadn’t been invented, so being

    tall and skinny, into horror movies and sci-fi, and unable to play football simply made me the

    go-to guy for the sociopaths.

    Meera Syal

    British author and actor

    I’d tell my younger self that social networking is more important than she thinks. I should

    have been savvier when I was younger. I made friends with the make-up girl and not the

    director. But the world really does work along tribal lines. People tend to employ their own

    tribe. […] That occasionally disappoints me, after the body of work I’ve done.
    geek (n) someone who is especially knowledgeable about a subject or doesn’t fit in socially

    go-to guy (n) someone who people always look for in a certain situation

    precocious (adj) very able or clever for one’s age

    primatologist (n) a scientist who studies primates (apes, monkeys, etc.)

    savvier (adj) wiser, smarter

    sociopath (n) someone who is completely unwilling or unable to behave in a way that is

    acceptable to society

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