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Weisure Time
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/ 7- Details
- Parent Category: Lower-Intermediate News Lessons
- Category: Business Lessons
- Written by Chris Cotter
Businesses and employees have looked at the nine-to-five workday and concluded that work must now invade leisure time and leisure time must invade work. The idea has been called "weisure time" by sociologist Dalton Conley. The new word explains the next step in the balance between the personal and professional lives of adults.
Increased responsibilities at work are one reason for weisure time. Because people work more than before, they must keep in touch with colleagues and business associates while they hang out with their families on the weekends. In addition, creativity and teamwork is an important part of people's jobs these days, so people enjoy keeping in touch to some extent. They don't mind as much if both sides of their lives mix.
Computer and social networks are important in weisure time. Facebook, Twitter, and other social media services encourage people to stay connected during business hours. Talking with friends is pleasurable, and it makes the day move faster. Social media also lets people easily maintain connections with coworkers during off time.
Conley explains that weisure time is an effective solution at the moment, but employees may not always be willing to mix their personal and professional lives.
Preview some of the lesson material:
Warm Up: Do you agree or disagree? Why?
- I work too much.
- People work more now than ever before.
- I often exchange business emails and phone calls on the weekend.
- I often send private emails and use social media sites like Facebook at work.
- I love my job.
True or False?: Guess (before the article) or answer (after the article) whether the sentence is true or false. If false, correct the sentence.
- Personal and professional time has become less clear recently.
- People keep in touch with colleagues because there's too much work.
- According to the article, people consider business colleagues as friends.
- People use Facebook and Twitter to talk with business colleagues after work.
- People will always want to mix personal and professional time in the future.
post-Comprehension: Talk about the following questions in pairs/groups. Remember to support your answers!
- What do you think of weisure time? Please explain.
- What is your average work week like? Please explain.
- How regularly do you mix professional time during evenings and weekends? Why?
- Do you think weisure time is a fad or something more permanent?
- What is the future of work? Why do you think so?
Google Search: Type "weisure time" into Google. Look at the websites, and/or read additional articles on this topic. Discuss or write an essay about your findings.
