Close-up considerations

1. One might follow in father’s steps, entering the same trade.

2. We easily inherit the family business.

3. No one denies that going to university is a good option.

4. Business administration might be a better career if one doesn’t want to study a profession.

5. One might take over a profitable and well-established business.

6. Try to do what you are good at.

7. Make your choice in accordance with your aptitude.

8. Once you have an intention, it’s no problem what career to choose.

9. Where there is a will, there is the way.

10. Never leave your choice to somebody else.

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Unit Four Open-up ideas

1. Small towns are for people to escape from big cities.

2. Provincial town is sort of a refuge place for people of all ages.

3. All facilities big cities have can be found in small towns or in nearby towns or villages.

4. Most city facilities cater much more for older and richer people than for the young.

5. Big cities are not friendly in comparison with warm atmosphere of small towns.

6. Citizens in big cities feel lonely and isolated.

7. In a small town we know everybody or approximately everybody.

8. Inhabitants of small towns have no sense of adventure.

9. In big cities people have to live in crammed accommodations.

Text for discussion

Why are so many people so anxious to get away from the small town or village where they were brought up, and to make for the big cities? They usually describe their hometown as boring or “dead”, or-the most scathing criticism of all-as ‘’provincial’’. A town is provincial in the literal sense if it is a town in the provinces of a country, as distinct from being the capital. In this sense, London, Paris, Madrid, and Athens are not provincial, but Birmingham, Barcelona, Milan and Salonika are. The literal definition of provincial is of a little use to us, then, because Barcelona or Milan are the sort of big cities that people escape to as much as escape from.

Provincial could mean that the town has few attractions or amenities such as are provided in large cities: concert halls, theatres, cinemas, restaurants, discotheques. But this, too, seems to be an inadequate definition for two reasons. First of all, except for the very smallest villages and market towns, at least some of these facilities exist; in any case it is usually possible to find them by travelling a relatively short distance to the nearest town. Secondly, some of these facilities, such as concert halls, theatres and restaurants, seem to cater much more for older than younger people. In any case many of a big city’s attractions tend to be so expensive that they are beyond the reach of young people’s pockets. `

If we examine the question from a distance, as we were viewing the whole country from a long way off, we start to get a clue about what it is that lures us into the big cities. The main point to notice about big cities is that they are big, there are a lot of people, and there are a lot of things going on. If you look down on a country, literally from a great distance, from an aeroplane at night, you will be struck by the incredible brightness of a city: there are so many lights that you cannot help feeling that all the bright things of life are down there, waiting for you. But a feeling of disappointment will set in sho

-rtly after you land, because you will discover as you drive into the city centre from the airport that the lights are just that: lights, miles and miles of street lights and neon signs. They are not in themselves sources of joy and happiness: city lights are not friendly, they are merely lights. In fact the effect will probably be to make you feel lonely and isolated. And yet the city lures us, because it is not provincial like the dead little town we have left behind us. Provincial is in fact our way of describing not the town but the attitude of the people. In our little town, we know (or think we know) everybody. And what we know about them is that they don’t want to go anywhere, or to do anything outside the normal routine of their everyday lives. Unlike us, they have no sense of adventure, no longing for new experiences or new horizons.

So we look down on them, pity or despise them, pack our bags, and make off for the big world which we know is out there, where the bright lights are. Then a curious thing happens. We find a job, make a small circle of friends and acquaintances, and move into some cramped accommodation or other in a section or suburb of the city. Gradually we get to know our section of the city, its shops and its pubs and its people, and after a while, we begin to feel at home. It is small enough, our part of the city, for us not to feel lost or anonymous. We in effect create another little village for ourselves within the big city.

The ultimate irony comes when we rent a television set so that we can stay in at night and watch exactly the same programmes that our despised country cousins watch. Soon we, too, become ‘’provincial’’, and others who live round us will be glad to get up and leave us behind.