If you need some listening practice over the summer then this website is great!

Below are some links on the BBC to alarming, but perhaps unsurprising, reports suggesting that girls see themselves as innately less talented than boys by the age of 6. There are some ideas on girls rebelling, old-fashioned textbooks, and the impact of powerful female figures in children's books... click on the photos to see what they have to say!

UN Day is 24th October, and in the run up to this year’s event we are going to spend time considering the theme that is being used for the celebratory concert in the UN General Assembly Hall in New York: Potential in Diversity.
 
Starter
In small groups, discuss your own personal opinion on this point of view. Try to justify your perspective with supporting examples.
 
Main Task
You are going to research and then hold a debate on this motion in the following format:

• 30 minutes - Research in two teams
• 20 minutes - Each proposition and opposition speaker will deliver their argument, alternating between the two (maximum time per speaker = 2 minutes)
• 10 minutes - Open floor, where the judge may ask questions and the speakers may challenge each other
• 2 minutes - One proposition and one opposition speaker will summarise the arguments (1 minute each)
• 2 minutes - Judge to announce the winner and highlight particularly outstanding speakers and arguments made

Research
Below are some links to tests/podcasts/articles that may be useful or interesting in your research or on a wider level. Be strategic about how you read and then use these, as well as other articles/research you can find online, in order to support your arguments.

• Diversity is for white people: The big lie behind a well-intended word
• TV Diversity: why we can learn lessons from the film sector
• Diversity is required to make a company strong, but unity is required to make a company successful
• Why diversity programs fail
• Analysis: Gentrification (2:44 – 6:22)
• Project Implicit – Implicit Bias Tests
• Is diversity good or bad for community cohesion?
• A Disease Called Uniformity
• Arguments for and against Catalonia independence + Catalonia independence declaration signed and suspended
• Does globalisation mean we will become one culture?
• How do you solve the trickiest problems in the workplace? Employ more autistic people

Interesting to find out from a European perspective, but is there an equivalent for other groups of languages?

An amazing record label reaches 50 years old... and Afropop does an edited history of some of the best bits. A must-listen for anyone interested in Latin music.

And something more up-to-date:

The octopus below is pretty smart, but to what extent is it actually using a 'tool'? Are humans the only beings that genuinely make use of tools or are there other animals that get close? Check out these articles from NatGeo and the BBC:

• NatGeo Article
• BBC Article

Do you think music helps you concentrate? How do you now that it does? How can you be so sure? What type of music works best? Which is the most likely to end up being a distraction?

Some interesting articles here:

• Does music really help you concentrate?
• How music affects the brain for the better