Students Book

4
In and out of fashion
Read and listen
would and used to
Adverbs and adverbial phrases
a What can you see in the photos? Have you
ever tried any of these things?
b Read the texts quickly. Which sentence best
describes the main topic?
1 The three objects were a lot more expensive
than they should have been.
2 The objects were bought not only by
children, but also by adults in many countries.
3 Each of the objects was, at some time, the
latest fashion.
c
CD1 T21 Read the texts again and listen.
Write ME (Magic Eye), P-M (Pac-Man) or
y-y (yo-yo) next to the sentences below.
1 It was invented by a Japanese man.
2 It’s used by the medical profession.
3 It’s more than 2,500 years old.
d Read the texts again. Underline the words
and expressions that mean:
1 extremely popular (text 1)
2 an activity, object or idea that is extremely
popular, usually for a short time (text 1)
3 the most recent or modern (text 2)
4 fashionable or popular (text 2)
5 excitedly (text 2)
6 describes something that you can’t stop
doing once you have started (text 2)
7 become popular (text 3)
8 the time when something was at its most
popular (text 3)
Discussion box
1 What toy crazes have you seen in your
lifetime? What’s ‘in’ at the moment?
2 What do you think made each of the
toys so popular?
3 What does it take for something to
become a craze?
1
Vocabulary: common
adverbial phrases
Magic Eye ®
Back in the mid
1990s men,
women and
children would
spend hours
staring into
books which
contained
nothing but
© 2011 Magic Eye Inc. *
pages and pages of brightly-coloured psychedelic
patterns.
They had been promised that, if they looked in the
right way, these pictures would jump into life, as 3D
images came shooting out towards them. For most
people it happened if they stared for long enough,
but there were also many who used to end up tearing
their hair out in frustration as the images never
appeared.
For a while, Magic Eye books were all the rage. The
images also appeared in magazines, on postcards,
mouse mats and even on men’s ties. And they also
featured in episodes of top TV series, such as Friends
and The Simpsons.
The secret behind the images is a horizontallyrepeating
pattern which is slightly different each time
it is repeated. This creates an illusion of depth when
the eye focuses beyond the image.
Like all crazes, the Magic Eye craze ended after
several years, although it’s still a successful business
and the images are now used by eye doctors to help
in the treatment of problems such as binocular vision.
* Turn to page 126 for the solution to this image.
2 Speak
a Work in small groups. Choose one of the
crazes from the reading texts in Exercise 1.
Imagine your job is to re-market this item
to today’s teenagers. Discuss the following:
1 What changes are you going to make to it so
that it will appeal to consumers today?
2 How are you going to advertise it?
b Present your ideas to the rest of the class.
Which group has the best ideas?
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UNIT 4