The Pace of Life (a Place)

+ Information:
- The pace of life in different places around the world

+ Build background knowledge:
Answer the questions in the survey to find out about your personal pace of life.
What is you relationship with time?
- Do you frequently look at your watch or a clock/
- Do you always know the time and what day of the week it is?
- Are you often the first person finished eating at the table?
- Do you sometimes skip meals or eat them very quickly?
- Do you walk faster than most people?
- When driving in traffic, do you get annoyed when drivers move slowly?
- Do you get more annoyed than most people if you have to wait in line for more than a couple of minutes at the bank or a store?

if you answered "yes" to most of the questions above, you tend to live life at a hurried pace.
if you answered "no" to most of the questions above, you tend to live life at a more relaxed pace.

- Compare your answers, are you similar or different? How would you describe your pace of life? Give examples to explain your answer.
- Which is better, a hurried or relaxed pace of life? Why?

The article from health magazine about each person's unique pace of life:
Are you a slow person or a fast person? Do you like to stay busy, or do you enjoy doing nothing sometimes? Do you prefer the highway or country roads?

We all know that the pace of life is different in different places and cultures. The pace of life help to form this general impression.

There are also big differences in pace between individuals, even individuals within the same culture living in same town. Next-door neighbors can experience life at completely different paces.

Researchers want to get an accurate idea about why individuals have different ideas about time and pace of life. To study this, they look at people's ideas of "time urgency".
Time urgency is the effort a person makes to achieve as much as possible in a given amount of time.

Everyone has his or her own sense of time urgency.
Some people feel the need to try to achieve a lot, while other people have the tendency (n) to set their goals lower and achieve less.

The speed that they feel at their workplace.
The level of activity they prefer in their own lives.
The level of activity they prefer in the environment around them.

To assess (v-quyet dinh, an dinh)/make decision the pace of your own life, ask yourself.

- What does "time urgency" mean?
- What are three locations that people consider when thinking about the pace of their lives?
- According to the researchers, which is better, a fast or slow pace of life?

The definition of the word:
Culture is the art, beliefs (lòng tin, đức tin), behavior, and ideas a society or group of people.
Pace is speed at which something happens.
The atmosphere of a place is the amount of air the place gives you.
If information is accurate, it is almost correct.
To achieve something means that you succeed in doing it as a result of your actions.
To have your own sense of a situation means that you have your own specific information about it.
To have a tendency toward doing something means that you always do it.
To access something means that you make a judgment after thinking carefully about it.

analyze: to examine or think about something carefully in order to understand it.
characteristic: a special quality or feature that someone or something has
compare: to examine two or more thinks in order to show how they are similar and different.
factor: a fact or situation that influences or causes a situation.
significant: noticeable or important
tend to: to be likely to do a particular thing.

to guarantee: people were guaranteed a job. This guarantee of a job resulted in some people working and living at a more leisurely pace.
to resulted in: resulted in some people working and living at a more leisurely pace.
how vacation time: (time away from work) ... varies in (v-thay đổi, biến đổi) different parts of the world.

(In France, workers get five to six weeks of paid vacation. Sweden has the most vacation time of a European country at eight weeks. In the United States, vacation time for most workers is limited to two weeks. In Japan, three weeks is offered, but reports show that only half of this time is actually used. For example, in 1990 in Japan, 15.5 days of vacation were given, but only 8.2 days on average were taken,)


Lecture: The Pace of a Place (to differ in differences)
We've been looking at behavior of people, and especially looking at how their behavior is affected by the place they live in.

He'd like to talk about a study that was done to measure the pace of life. The study compares different cities around the world and asks the question, "How and why do different places in the world have different paces of life".

As you probably know, paces tends (v) to be part of how describe the atmosphere of the place. If you've traveled or read about life in different places, you'll know that pace of life differs in (v-khác về) different cultures and place. But why are some places "faster" than others? what exactly are the factors that made up the differences in pace of life?

Before we discuss this question. He make sure that we all have the same idea about the meaning of "pace of life". By pace of life, it mean the speed at which life is lived or business is carried out. (vph-được thực hiện)

What specify characteristics of places and cultures make them slow or fast?
A professor: Rober Levine (one social psychologist), created study to allow research to analyze some data, some numbers, that could accurately define the pace of life of places. He want to know the answer to this question "What make a place have a low or fast pace?"

Here's how he and his researches went about it (vph-bắt đầu làm it) ? they analyzed and compared 31 different cities around the world.
They look at 03 different factors:
- What is the average walking speed of the place?: To measure that, he randomly selected people both men and women, and watch speed at which they walked in crowded, downtown areas. (distance is 60 feet, or about 20 meters)
- Second, he look at speed in the work place: he went to post office all around the world. He measure how long it took a postal clerk to sell someone a stamp? He measure the time that passed between the clerk received the money and the customer received the stamp.* (how much time that took)
- The third thing, he looked at was how interested a place was keeping accurate time on clocks. the researchers went to 15 randomly chosen banks, and looked at their clocks. Then they compared the time on these clocks to the time reported by the phone (telecom) company. (time of day). That time is considered to be very accurate.

The researchers looked at these factors during the workday in 31 different cities around the world to get a specific idea of pace.

By looking at these factors the researchers came up with a rating of overall pace of life - the overall sense of time urgency.

Let's look at a few highlights from this survey: The survey was conducted in the late 1990s, so there may be some changes from what we would find in the same countries today.

In the "fastest" category. the first place with high ranking in all three areas: (their clock accuracy ranked (v-xếp hạng) first)
1st Switzerland
2nd Ireland
3th Germany
4th Japan
These top four countries were all very similar.

Places where life is slow. The slowest countries were all non-industrialized countries, meaning there is not much industry:
Middle East: Syria
Asia: Indonesia
Latin America: El Salvador, Brazil and Mexico.

What are the common factors in the countries at the top, and those at the bottom, of the list? For these experiments and other studies, the researchers found five main factors that affect the pace of life in cultures around the world.
- Vital [vail-sống còn adj] economies-lots of money changing hands: People tend to move faster in places with vital economies.
- A high degree of industrialization-lots of companies
- Larger populations-many, many people
- Cooler climates, not the hot ones
- Cultures that value individualism, versus valuing group. (prep chống, đấu với)

Interesting, don't you think? Unfortunately, we can't get into this discussion now. We'll talk about these details in the next class, All right?.

- Decide on three things to observe that will give you information about the pace of life. For example, you might consider the pace of the service in ... how fast people walk to  ... and the accuracy of clocks in ...
- Make a chart that show your study criteria and the results.
- Discuss the results in your group. Make three to five general conclusions.
- Share your conclusions with the other groups. Did you reach the same conclusions? if not, why not?