UPAV

CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH
UNIT 3

Dealing With
Adversity
By Isabel Gpe. Olivera Andrade
Do you agree that adversity can be a
positive expererience?

Cafetería de Teddy | Verano de 2020

VOCABULARY
E X P R E S S , F R U S TAT I O N , E M PAT H Y A N D
ENCOURAGEMENT

• ENCOURAGE SOMEONE (TO DO

SOMETHING)

• D I S C O U R A G E S O M E O N E / TA L K S O M E O N E
OUT OF

• CHEER SOMEONE UP / LIFT SOMEONE´S

SPIRITS

• LET SOMETHING GET TO YOU/ LET

SOMETHING GET YOU DOWN

• K E E P AT I T

• FEEL LIKE GIVING UP / FEEL DESCOURAGE

Listen and Practice
1.- My mother always __________ to become a dancer. When I was a
child, she took me to dance classes and predicted that i would be a star
one day.
2.- I wanted to quit school, but my mother _________. She thought it was
important for me to complete my studies.
3.-I really ________ when my friends visited me in the hospital. I smiled
for the first time in weeks.
4.-My boss has been very critical of my work recently. I try not to
__________.but I am still upset by his comments.
5.- At first, I could speak only a few words of French._______
however, and after some hard work, I was finally able to speak with some
fluency.
6.-I´ve been a car salesman for six months, but I haven´t sold a single
car. It just makes me ___________
 That´s All I Want
I must have been about nine years old, and I was too serious and worthy to sit on Santa's lap at Mason's department store in Anniston, Alabama, but boy enough still to askhim -
please, please, please! - a G.I. Joe soldier at Christmas.
Las who used to brag that, the day he was born, he shook the dust in the delivery room and walked home.
"You're too big to play with dolls," said Sam, my older brother,

"G.I. Joe is not a doll," I replied, angry -Yes it is. -iOf course not!
In 1968, in Calhoun County, Alabama, that discussion was considered an intellectual dialogue. I was about to pinch Sam when my tired mother grabbed me by the arm to
ecstatic me with the artificial snow falling on a deer that had hair cleaners instead of horns. Sam resolutely approached Santa, as a small adult, to ask him , it seems to me - an
electric saw and some shotgun cartridges.
-do you think he'll bring it to me? -I asked my mother.
Back then she would wash other people's clothes and clean houses when she could. The closeness of Christmas caused him great fear: fear that for his three children it was a
time of enormous disappointment.
"I don't know, son," he replied, as he held my younger brother, Mark, with his other hand, who was frightened to see that strange man in a red suit and tried to flee into the
mountains.
"That's all I want," I said, hopefully.
I didn't know wishing for something was like kicking Mom in the belly. When I write about my childhood and Christmas I find it hard not to sound a bit like Dickens. I'm not
talking about him writing so well, but that, as a child, Christmas was for me like a go up and down with sadness and jubilation, perhaps the clearest proof of the gap between
the poor and the rich. A G.I. Joe was an expensive toy, costing more than my mother sometimes earned in a day; However, now that I am over 50 years old and evo evoke those
times, disappointments dissipate in my mind and memories of things that look a lot like miracles arise. The next day I walked into the kitchen of my Aunt Juanita, who was thin
and tall but as strong as a man. He'd give me cookies with peanut butter and fried chicken, though not in that order.
-What's Santa going to bring you, honey? He asked me.
"I wanted a G.I. Joe," I repuse, "but Sam told me that only girls play with dolls, and since I'm not a girl, I don't think I want it anymore.
A few days later, I saw a box with my name next to his Christmas tree. I had wrapped it in thin paper, so much so that you could see through it: it was a G.I. Joe!, the dress in
sailor's uniform, but I wouldn't have minded if she wore insurance salesman's clothes. I spent the days left for Christmas with a strange sense of peace. When I opened the box,
my mom faked surprise. Santa said he had probably allied with my Aunt Juanita. I love my Aunt Juanita for doing that. I love my mother for doing everything I can, day after day.
I know that Christmas means much more than all those material things, that even maybe it's wrong to classify those things as miracles, however small. The miracle, I think, is at
the heart of those two women.
BY RICK BRAGG
 Read the article and answers each question below

Where does the history take place?

What is the context of the history?

What did you feel when reading the history?

Wr i t e a n y s i t u a t i o n o f a d v e r s i t y t h a t y o u h a v e

experienced in your childhood

Read the text and underline a sentence in simple past, past perfect,

past continuos and past perfect continuos.

I must have been about nine years old, and I was too serious and worthy to sit on Santa's lap at Mason's
department store in Anniston, Alabama, but boy enough still to askhim-please, please, please! - a G.I.
Joe soldier at Christmas.
"You're too big to play with dolls," said Sam, my older brother, who used to brag that, the day he was
born, he shook the dust in the delivery room and walked home.
"G.I. Joe is not a doll," I replied, angry -Yes it is. -iOf course not!
In 1968, in Calhoun County, Alabama, that discussion was considered an intellectual dialogue. I was
about to pinch Sam when my tired mother grabbed me by the arm to ecstatic me with the artificial snow
falling on a deer that had hair cleaners instead of horns. Sam resolutely approached Santa, as a small
adult, to ask him , it seems to me - an electric saw and some shotgun cartridges.
-do you think he'll bring it to me? -I asked my mother.
Back then she would wash other people's clothes and clean houses when she could. The closeness of
Christmas caused him great fear: fear that for his three children it was a time of enormous
disappointment.
"I don't know, son," he replied, as he held my younger brother, Mark, with his other hand, who was
frightened to see that strange man in a red suit and tried to flee into the mountains. "That's all I want,"
I said, hopefully.
THANK
YOU
H A P P Y M E R RY C H R I S T M A S