Intro
1. Learn Vocabulary - Learn some new vocabulary before you start the lesson.
2. Read and Prepare - Read the introduction and prepare to hear the audio.
“I’ll do it if you do it.” How many times has someone said this to you? From a very early age, we learn that it’s not OK to do something unless our friends are doing it, too. It’s normal to want to conform to the cliques at school. But it’s not always a good thing to be at the whim of your friends.
When peer pressure has an influence over you, it’s easy to let group dynamics change how you really think and feel about life. Unfortunately, letting others make choices for you can lower your feelings of self-confidence and self-worth. Thinking for yourself may be hard sometimes, but the self-respect you experience will be awesome!
Jessica and Lily have both experienced peer pressure, and sometimes still do. Find out more in today’s English lesson about behavior.
Dialog
1. Listen and Read - Listen to the audio and read the dialog at the same time.
2. Study - Read the dialog again to see how the vocab words are used.
Jessica: Lily, it can be so hard sometimes to ignore all of the pressure around us and just make our own decisions. I just get so tired of peer pressure sometimes and the influence it has on me.
Lily: Tell me about it. When I was in high school, it felt like I was completely at the whim of all these different cliques. I was constantly being influenced by my friends or people that I thought were my friends to do what I thought was cool. I felt like I had no self-respect at all.
Jessica: It can be so hard sometimes to feel like we need to conform to what other people are expecting of us, or the group dynamics of those around us.
Lily: It’s true. I wish that in school we were taught more about how to be self-sufficient. And not necessarily self-confidence, but more just self-worth, so that we could all be our own people and feel like that’s enough.
Jessica: Exactly. Like that’s a part of the norm.
Lily: Yeah.
Grammar Point
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Discussion
Lily and Jessica are talking about feeling the need to do what the people around them are doing. They agree that it can be hard to have the self-confidence to make choices when friends and family are expecting them to act a certain way.
Lily remembers this being especially difficult in high school, where she made decisions that she thought would make her cool. She wishes that her teachers had taught her to take care of herself and not worry about what other people think. It doesn’t sound like Jessica and Lily think there’s less peer pressure now that they’re out of school.
Does peer pressure affect you? If not, why not?