Sleep: Are you a lark or an owl?

People are divided into those who can (5) bounce out of bed each morning and those who need several
hours to wake up. But as Claudia Hammond discovers this doesn’t tell the full story.
I have hated getting up early all my life. My dad used to have to pull me out of bed by my feet to make sure I
got to school on time. The moment the (1) alarm goes off in the morning, I feel sick and it’s hard to (10)
stomach any food until mid-morning.

Nights, though, are a different story; I’ll happily stay in the studio until the small hours interviewing people
in time zones on the other side of the world. I’ll do anything to (2) escape an early start This makes me an
owl, but I know plenty of larks who insist that dawn is the best part of the day.
While I work (6) stumble into bleary-eyed they have been up for hours and even seem cheerful about it. By
the evening the roles are reversed and while the larks are (7) flagging and even nodding off at the dinner
table, the owls like me are happy to stay up chatting. This is where we come into our own.
But it is a myth to say that society is (4) neatly divided into lark and owls.

Questionnaires that explore what time of day people prefer to do activities such as jogging or have business
meetings, reveal that only 20% of adults are true larks or owls. That leaves 80% of us – half of which lean
towards one direction or the other, the other half are neither. That’s little (3) consolation for those owls
around the world who have to exist in a society organized around the larks. Schools and work often start
very early, and there’s a sense of virtuosity in getting up early, while the owls are simply lazy. One (8) early
riser admitted to me that if he is staying in a house full of people, he loves to be the first one up so he can
(9) relish the feeling that everyone is lazy.

Vocabulary
1.To bounce out of bed-ლოგინიდან წამოხტომა
2.He got bounced out of the night club- გააგდეს კლუბიდან
3.To stomach- წახემსება,მიღება
4.Lark- ტოროლა
5.To stumble-ბორძიკით სიარული
6. Bleary-eyed [ˌblɪərɪ'aɪd]- short-sighted, dullish დაბინდული თვალები
7. Flagging I ['flægɪŋ]-მიყუჩებული, დასუსტებული
8.To flag- დასუსტება, სულიერად დაცემა
9.Consolation [ˌkɔnsə'leɪʃ(ə)n]- comfort received by a person after a loss or disappointment; ნუგეში
10. Virtuosity - [ˌvɜːʧu'ɔsətɪ -ვირტუოზობა, ხელოვნების სიყვარული
11. To relish ['relɪʃ]- enjoy, approve. მოწონება, რაღაცით ტკბობა
12. To burn the midnight oil- read, study, or work late into the night, ღამით მუშაობა, რაიმე საქმის
ღამით კეთება
13. Slovenly ['slʌv(ə)nlɪ]- 1 (of a person or their appearance) messy and dirty;
2 careless; excessively casual

Continue reading the text

Complete the text

(1) massive spike (2) to a large extent (4) obvious

(5) chemical boost (6) slovenly (7) genes (9) impact on

But are owls really …………………………….. ? Some work into the night burning (8) the midnight oil, but no one
suggests that the larks are lazy for having an early night while owls are working. Fortunately science is on
my side. I’m not sleeping my life away or missing the best part of the day. I’m behaving according to my
……………………………. Researchers at Surrey University in the UK have found that your chronotype
is…………………………….. genetic. They have found that people who are extreme larks or owls have certain
variations, or polymorphisms, in their circadian clock genes. These variations, or “chronotypes” as they are
known, have an ………………………………… various aspects of our physiology.
Larks have the highest body temperature in the middle of the afternoon while for owls the peak comes
several hours later. First thing in the morning the lucky larks experience a …………………………………….in the
stress hormone cortisol, like having a huge dose of drug which helps the body deal with the shock of
moving from sleep to (3) wakefulness. The unfortunate evening types have to wait until later for the same
……………………………………………. So it seems that when I try to get up early I am fighting my genetics. Which
leads to the …………………………question of whether I could train myself out of it.

Vocabulary
1 Polymorphism [ˌpäli'môrˌfizəm] - the occurrence of something in several different forms, in particular.
2 Circadian [sər'kādēən] - recurring naturally on a twenty-four-hour cycle.
3 A massive spike-ძლიერი იმპულსი, დაძაბულობა
4 Cortisol ['kôrtəˌsôl; -ˌsōl] кортизол, гидрокортизон
5 Wakefulness-insomnia, უძილობა

Sadly, this is a myth too. With the help of an alarm clock you can of course force yourself to get up early,
just as shift workers can force themselves to stay awake all night. But as soon as you fail to set the alarm
your genes will return you to your old ways.
Evening-types with small children have no option but to fight their body clock and get up early, but their
bodies will still revert the moment they have the chance to. The pull of your genes is powerful – owls won’t
be skipping around the park at dawn.
In theory, drugs could be developed to intervene at a molecular level. The problem is that they would need
to be taken permanently to avoid reversion to chronotype.
There is just one hope for the owls and that is to age – a solution that is, after all, inevitable. As people get
older their patterns tend to shift slightly towards mornings. For me that’s to come, but until then, at least I
can enjoy the nightlife.

Vocabulary
1 To revert [rɪ'vɜːt]-v- return
2 To skip around- ხტუნაობა, jump , bound , hop , leap
3 To intervene-ჩარევა
4 Reversion [rıˈvɜːʃən]- a return to or towards an earlier condition, practice; act of reverting

Answer the questions

1 What is the difference between owls and larks?
2 What kind of challenges do larks have when they have to get up early in the morning ?
3 Can larks work at night as well as in the morning?
4 Is the most part of the society divided into owls and larks?
Prepared by Tata Vepkhvadze