General English Level 5 V 3
UNIT 01 What's going on in my life? TOPIC 02 Changing lives
LANGUAGE FOCUS 03 Describing trends
Learn the language for describing trends.
The article says:
We are marrying later, having fewer children, and divorcing more often.
Since 1950, the number of people getting married has been steadily decreasing.
" It is much more socially acceptable for people to live together before they get married."
Society's attitudes towards family size are changing in many countries.
The average age when women have their first child has increased from 24.6 in 1950 to the present average of 29.5 years.
There has been a fall in the number of babies born to teenage mothers but an increase in the number of babies born to women who are older than 40.

The article "Family life - past and present" talks about trends in marriage and family life. A trend is a current style. We describe trends in the following ways.

The average age at first marriage is increasing.
is rising.
is going up.
has increased since 1950.
has risen
has gone up
There has been an increase in the age at which people are getting married (since 1950).
a rise


The number of children per household is decreasing.
is falling.
is going down.
has decreased since 1950.
has fallen
has gone down
There has been a fall in the number of children per household (since 1950).
a decrease

Sometimes a trend doesn't change over a period of time. It stays the same.


The percentage of households who own a radio isn't changing much.
is staying the same.
is about the same as in 1950.
has stayed the same since 1950.
hasn't changed much

We can also compare different people or different times.

People are having fewer children than 50 years ago.
50 years ago people had more children than now.
50 years ago, people married at a younger age.


We can use gradually, slowly, steadily, sharply, rapidly to say how much or how fast trends change.

1. The number of cars on the road which use leaded petrol is slowly decreasing.
gradually
steadily
2. The number of car accidents has sharply fallen.
rapidly

Examples

The number of car accidents has decreased because more people are wearing seatbelts than before.

The number of refugees in the world is rapidly rising.

There has been an increase in the number of people aged over 25 going to university.

There has been a fall in the number of people who smoke since 1990. This is because of a government advertising campaign.

Now go to 04 READING Changing lifestyles - task.