Ejercicio Text 2 - Part II A. Lexicon · Inglés PAU Castilla-La Mancha Extraordinaria 2024

TEXT 2: Mobile phones to be banned in schools

Nowadays, smartphones are something most people can't live without, young or old. We use them to text friends, watch videos, surf websites, play games, take pictures, etc. Yet, the question remains as to what role they play in education. Should schools ban smartphones, or should they be allowed?

In a recent radio interview, the Catalan Minister of Education, Anna Simó, announced that primary education in Catalonia will be "free of smartphones" from the next school year. The ban on mobile phones in primary education, which covers students between the ages of six and 12, is expected to take effect at the beginning of the 2024- 2025 school year to give schools time to adapt. Meanwhile, Simó announced that mobile phones will not be banned in high schools, which include students between the ages of 12 and 16. The minister said that each school will decide on its own policy.

The secretary of the Secondary School Teachers' Union, Xavier Massó, criticized the decision not to ban mobile phones in high schools and demanded that they be prohibited at least in classrooms. He argues that leaving the decision up to the schools "will create more problems than there already are," since one school might ban it while the one next door might not.

Some parents have also united against early cell phone use. In November, a group of families from Barcelona's Poblenou neighbourhood met together to ensure that their children would not have smartphones until the age of 16. Soon, the organization spread to other neighbourhoods in Barcelona and different cities in Catalonia through WhatsApp and Telegram groups, under the initiative 'Mobile phone-free youth'.

In a few days, thousands of other families joined the groups, and the main Telegram group now has more than 10,000 members. Parents say they are not against the use of new technologies, but they are concerned about its use at an early age. They point out that there is a lot of peer pressure to buy a phone for their children, because if they don't, their children will be the only ones in the class without one, which in turn complicates the parent-child relationship.

Adapted from catalannews.com

PART II. LEXICON / PHONETICS (2 POINTS)

A. LEXICON. (1 POINT) (0.25 points for each correct answer)

Find words or phrases in the text that mean the same as these given.

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