Reading practice – Level 1
1 Read texts A–F. Text A says that selfies are a bad thing. Text B says that selfies are a good
thing. What point of view is expressed in texts C–F? Choose the correct answer.
1 Text C generally thinks that selfies are a good / bad thing.
2 Text D generally thinks that selfies are a good / bad thing.
3 Text E generally thinks that selfies are a good / bad thing.
4 Text F generally thinks that selfies are a good / bad thing.
2 Match texts A–F with the summary of the author’s point of view 1–6.
1 We miss out on real-life experiences if we spend too much time taking selfies.
2 Some people think selfies are of no interest for sexist reasons, but they are actually
artistic.
3 Artists in the past would have loved taking selfies.
4 Taking pictures of other people is a creative act, but taking a selfie is not.
5 People who take selfies are interested only in themselves.
6 Selfies can be good, and they do not stop people from doing other forms of photography.
Reflect
3 Choose answers that are true for you. You can add your own ideas.
1 I often take selfies when
a I am with my friends.
b I am at school.
c I am on vacation.
d I am with my family.
e I am
.
f I am
.
2 I sometimes upload selfies to social media because
a I want to tell friends what I am doing.
b I like seeing myself on social media.
c I want to make people laugh or smile.
d I want friends to write back and send me their pictures.
e I .
3 I think selfies are not / can be artistic because
a they are creative.
b they document our lives.
c they .
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Reading practice – Level 1
Is There a Problem
With Selfies?
A When we take a selfie, we put ourselves in the middle of the picture. And that’s the
problem. The outside world is only background. When we take a selfie, we are saying
that a landscape isn’t interesting unless our big, happy faces are smiling in the middle
of it.
B Selfies aren’t the only way of taking pictures, are they? Nobody has stopped
photojournalism or artistic photography, have they? The selfie is an addition to the art
form, and although many selfies are mind-numbingly boring, there are a lot more that
are fun, creative, heartwarming, and even eye-popping.
C Taking a picture of someone or something that you are looking at is different from taking
a picture of yourself. When we point our camera at a beautiful beach or at our friend
running on the beach, we are using our imagination to take a thought-provoking picture.
When we point our phones at our own faces, we aren’t thinking or being creative.
D Recently, I went to a basketball game and stood next to a young guy who just took
selfies. The game went on in the background, but he didn’t watch a minute of it. We’ve
all seen people do this at concerts or games, haven’t we? People should stop taking
pictures and do things or watch things instead.
E Leonardo da Vinci didn’t have a smartphone, did he? But I think that if he did have one,
he would have loved it. Great artists would have taken lots of selfies. The great Dutch
artist Vincent van Gogh drew or painted over forty self-portraits. Imagine how he would
have loved taking selfies!
F It’s interesting that women and girls take selfies a lot more than men and boys. I think
that’s because women enjoy telling the story of their lives on social media. They share
pictures of their friends, their possessions, and their hobbies. I also think that some self-
important men say that selfies are unimaginative, dull, and uninteresting because they
are something that women like to take. Selfies show us what our lives are like. For this
reason, I think they are a fascinating art form.
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