اللغة الإنجليزية11 فصل ثاني

صفات / خصائص	attributes
يختار ويجهز بعناية	Curate
مخادع / مضلل	deceptive
يُحسن / يعزز	Enhance
ميزات / سمات	Features
مُجامِل / يجعل الشيء يبدو أفضل من الواقع	flattering
عيوب / أخطاء	Flaws
سطحي / ظاهري / غير عميق	superficial

 

1. Attributes

• One of her best attributes is her ability to stay calm under pressure.

2. Curate

• The artist helped curate the exhibition to reflect modern social issues.

3. Deceptive

• Appearances can be deceptive, so don't judge someone too quickly.

4. Enhance

• The new lighting will enhance the beauty of the room.

5. Features

• The phone features a powerful camera and long battery life.

6. Flattering

• That dress is very flattering on you—it suits your figure perfectly.

7. Flaws

• Despite its flaws, the movie was entertaining and thought-provoking.

8. Superficial

• His knowledge of the topic was quite superficial and lacked depth.

 

 

Audioscript  8.6
P = Presenter    F = Faten

P: Selfies are everywhere. It’s estimated that people take more than a million selfies every day. And if you’re young, you’re likely to be taking even more. One recent poll found that every third photo taken by those aged eighteen to twenty four is a selfie. Faten Allaham is a journalist who has written a lot about the social phenomenon of the selfie. Faten, why do you think selfies have become such a thing?
F: Well, it’s partly practical, obviously. As modern smartphones developed, it became just so easy to take a self-portrait, in a way that simply wasn’t possible when you needed to use a camera, and ask someone else to take it. But more to the point, social media started to grow about the same time, giving everyone a ready made audience for their photos, and thus causing a huge social change. From about 2007, 2008, people started taking selfies not just to present a flattering picture of themselves, but also to manage and curate what they wanted to tell the world about their physical attributes, their personality, their friends, their hobbies. It isn’t a good day if you don’t break off from having fun to take a group selfie to upload online. Some people say it’s a way of remembering an event, but it seems more likely to me that it’s about making other people, who aren’t there, feel jealous of your social life and all your friends. Taking selfies can also be a way of showing off about all the places you’ve been to and that’s why people started buying selfie-sticks to make it easier to take photos of themselves in well-known tourist destinations.

P: But haven’t people always done that? In the past, they’d just ask someone else to take the photo, wouldn’t they?

F: Yes, but that would mean they didn’t have the opportunity to get the photo just right. For every photo that gets posted on social media, there are probably fifteen more that were rejected. Though, in fact, I was reading about a new trend to hire a local photographer in advance when you go on holiday, so that you can get some really great pictures of yourself, that reflect well on you, without it looking so much like a selfie.

P: Really? Isn’t it expensive to hire a photographer?
F: Yes, it is, but I guess people think it’s worth it if they really care about their image. On a superficial level, their holiday photos look relaxed and natural, but in reality, they’ve been very carefully planned – and paid for. Appearances can be deceptive. A lot of people also use apps to edit their selfies and make themselves look better just in case someone might judge them. You can add filters to enhance how you look, remove any flaws or even change the shape or size of your facial features.

P: Wow. That doesn’t sound entirely healthy to me. And of course, taking selfies can also be physically dangerous, can’t it? There are quite a number of cases every year where people get themselves into trouble, or even die as a result of trying to take ‘extreme’ selfies, on the top of high buildings, or in hazardous situations.

F: Yes, again, this is really about wanting to signal to the world how exciting your life is, or to get others to perceive you differently. I can understand why some people do this, but it doesn’t help when people ‘like’ the photos or admire them for doing it because the more photos that appear on social media like this, the more some people are encouraged to do something similarly dangerous themselves.