Intro
1. Learn Vocabulary - Learn some new vocabulary before you start the lesson.
2. Read and Prepare - Read the introduction and prepare to hear the audio.
Friends. We love them, but we also get mad at them. We don’t see enough of them, and then sometimes we see too much of them. Our friends are there for us in both the good times and the bad times. Friendship takes work, but life would be pretty boring without it.
We started using the word friend as a verb about ten years ago. It’s common to describe the connection between two people on a social networking site like Facebook as “friending.” But if you can friend someone, you can also unfriend them, and it’s difficult not to take it personally if you’ve been removed from someone’s list of friends. Sometimes you know why, but often it’s just confusing.
Lily is sad because she was unfriended by someone, and Rafael is trying to help her understand. Read more in today’s English lesson about internet relationships.
Dialog
1. Listen and Read - Listen to the audio and read the dialog at the same time.
2. Study - Read the dialog again to see how the vocab words are used.
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Lily: Rafa.
Rafael: Hey, Lily. What’s going on?
Lily: I just got unfriended by someone on Facebook.
Rafael: Don’t take it personally. I do that to people all the time.
Lily: What? You do that to people?
Rafael: I’m the kind of person who likes to just be efficient. If I don’t talk to somebody who’s my Facebook friend for a while, I’m just going to unfriend them. No offense!
Lily: But what you’ve got to understand is, even though social networking... it can seem really removed from actual life, people are actually investing a lot in their profiles. And it breaks my heart when people don’t want to hear about me anymore.
Rafael: This is actually reminding me of a story of a friend I had on Facebook who kept sending me all of these messages that were just bugging me. One day I… I’m unfriending them.
Lily: Well, but don’t you feel like you owe it to someone to talk to them in person before?
Rafael: But Lily, what if you haven’t talked to them in ages? Think about it.
Lily: I’m still hurt. I know it’s a fact of life that people grow apart. But I feel like if you’re going to be someone’s friend on Facebook in the first place, don’t you owe it to them to actually be friends with them? Or make that effort to get to know them better if they’re your friends? Why would you friend somebody who wasn’t your friend in the first place?
Rafael: Do you miss those people that unfriended you?
Lily: No.
Rafael: Just move on.
Grammar Point
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Discussion
Lily’s feelings are hurt. Someone unfriended her on Facebook, and it’s difficult for her not to take it personally. In Lily’s opinion, people shouldn’t “friend” each other on a social networking site if they’re not interested in each other’s lives. It doesn’t make sense to her that she can be friends with someone one day but not the next.
Rafael is very practical when he thinks about unfriending. He understands why someone would take him off their list of friends if they haven’t spoken or seen each other in ages. Likewise, he has no problem with taking people off of his own list of friends. Rafael believes that he’s being efficient by removing people who he doesn’t know very well.
Have you ever been unfriended? How did it make you feel? Are you OK with unfriending people yourself?
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