Unit 2: Supersition & beliefs

Discussion. Do you agree or disagree with the following statements?
Thảo luận. Bạn có đồng ý hay phản bác những ý kiến sau?

What do you think?	Yes	No
1. Black cats are unlucky.
2. It is unlucky to break a mirror.
3. It is bad luck when a shoelace breaks.
4. If my eye twitches, I will receive money.
5. When I want good luck, I sometimes cross my fingers or knock on wood.
6. If I point at a shooting star, something wrong will happen.
7. I have a lucky number.
8. I have something that I consider lucky (a lucky pen or a lucky hat).
9. Opening an umbrella indoors will bring me bad luck.
10. If I walk under a ladder. I will get bad luck.

Questions.
What's your lucky colour?
What are your lucky clothes?
Have you got a lucky charm (a favourite pen, a teddy bear, a ring) which you like to take with you to an exam or job interview?
Is there anything you think is unlucky for you?
Discussion.
Think of some more things which bring good or back luck in your country.
Do you know any things from other countries which are supposed to bring good or bad luck?

Look at the article’s headline and guess whether these sentences are true (T) or false (F).
Hãy đọc tiêu đề của bài báo và đoán thử những nhận định sau là đúng hay sai.

	T	F
a. An airline changed its logo because it had a big, red “13” in it.
b. The airline received a flood of emails from complaining passengers.
c. Airline officials were not surprised at how many emails they got.
d. “Thirteen” is the number of African destinations the airline flies to.
e. Airline officials have decided to paint 14 dots on their airplanes.
f. The number 14 is lucky everywhere in the world.
g. A frequent business flyer said superstitions are very logical.
h. Brussels Airlines is the result of a merger with Virgin Express.

Superstition has forced a European airline to change its logo. New Belgian carrier Brussels Airlines had to change its 13-red-dot logo on the tail of all its planes because of a flood of complaints from passengers about the combination of thirteen red balls representing bad luck. This number is unlucky in Western culture and many would-be passengers thought it just wouldn’t do on an airplane. Airline officials were taken aback by the volume of disapproving mail they received. Particularly upset was the original logo’s designer Ronane Holt. She said the thirteen dots “looked just right” and had extra significance because the number of dots matched the destinations it flew to in Africa. The design, in the shape of a “b”, also resembled the pattern of lights on an airport runway as planes taxied before take off.
All of the airline’s planes now have to go back to their hangars for a paint job. A fourteenth red dot will be added to the top of the “b”. However, this may not go down well in China, where the number fourteen is unlucky. One-four in Mandarin sounds like the phrase "to want to die". Passengers at Brussels airport were in two minds as to whether or not they thought the fourteen-dot logo would bring better luck. Frequent business flyer Rene Charles said: “In this day and age, superstitions are a little silly. There is no logic behind them.” However, she did admit that she shared the concerns of other passengers and was happier that the newer logo has an extra dot. Brussels Airlines is the result of a merger between SN Brussels Airlines and Virgin Express. It begins flying, with the fourteen dots, on March 25.

Read the article and discuss the following questions.
Hãy đọc bài báo và trả lời những câu hỏi sau.

 1. What did you think when you read the headline?
 2. Would the 13 dots on the logo have bothered you?
 3. Do you worry about flying and airplane safety?
 4. Do you have any small rituals/habits you do when you fly?
 5. Do you believe in fate?
 6. Would you feel safer flying with Brussels Airlines if the logo had 13 or 14 red dots?

Complete these sentences with words from the list below.
Điền vào những câu sau, sử dụng những từ trong hộp.

alien             ESP ( extrasensory perception )        psychic   UFO (unidentified flying object)                            astrology   ghost                                                              telepathy

1. A is someone who has the power to predict the future or to see things that are not present. They sometimes help solve crimes .
2. is the ability to “read a person’s mind” simly by using mental powers.
3. An is a creature from outer space – an inhabitant of another planet or galaxy.
4. A is a spirit of someone who has died.
5. A “flying saucer” is an example of a , a strange mental powers instead of the five senses.
6. is the ability to gain information using special mental powers instead of the five senses.
7. studies the influence of stars and planets on human nature. Astrological signs affect people’s character and personality.

Try this telepathy experiment. Look at the words in the list. Number the words in any order from one to five.
Hãy làm thử nghiệm về thần giao cách cảm sau. Hãy nhìn vào những từ trong danh sách sau và đánh số chúng theo bất kỳ thứ tự nào từ 1 đến 5.

bicycle       spider       banana       cold       jazz

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Who was more successful? Do you believe in telepathy now?
Ai là người thành công hơn? Bây giờ bạn đã tin vào thần giao cách cảm chưa?

Read and talk together.
Hãy đọc và thảo luận với nhau.
In May 1957 seven people were sitting in a dinning room just after lunch. Suddenly a man in brown walked past the open door into the kitchen. Four of the people saw him, and one got up to ask him what he wanted. The man had vanished, yet he could not have left the house unseen. Only then did the people realise that they must have seen a ghost.
This happened near Sydney, Australia, one evening in 1873. Six weeks after Captain Towns died, his married daughter entered a bedroom where there was a burning gas lamp. Reflected in the shiny surface of the wardrobe was a portrait of her father. His thin, pale face, and grey flannel jacket were unmistakable. A young lady who was with the daughter saw the image too. They called other members of the household. Altogether eight people came and marvelled at the apparitions. But when the Captain’s widow tried to touch it, the image faded away.
An old man was seen trudging home through a stormy night dressed only in pyjamas. The driver who passed him on the road discovered that the old man had died three weeks before.
One night in 1976 a woman awoke to see a tall, thin, female figure in her bedroom. The phantom pressed skinny fingers around the woman’s throat as if to strangle her. Then the grip relaxed, and the figure faded. Later, the victim described the ghost to her fiancé. The description fitted his long-dead Malaysian grandmother.
In 1964 a huge press was accidentally set moving inside a Detroit car factory. A nearby worker claimed his life was saved only by a tall scarred black man who pushed him clear of the machinery. No one with him saw that person but some recognised the description. It fitted a black worker accidentally killed there 20 years before.
In the middle 1800s, a young girl was walking down an English country lane. Suddenly she seemed to see her mother lying on a bedroom floor. The girl fetched a doctor and they found her mother exactly, as the girl described her. The woman had fallen with a heart attack. Luckily the doctor arrived in time to save her life.
In 1926 two women on a country walk near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, England, saw a big house in a garden surrounded by a high wall. Soon afterwards they passed that way again. They found only overgrown waste land that had not been disturbed for years.

(From The Piccolo Explorer Book of Mysteries)

Discussion. Find out whether each story is true or false. If you disagree, what differences were there between you?
Thảo luận. Xem thử câu chuyện nào là có thật. Nếu các bạn bất đồng ý kiến, vậy sự khác nhau giữa các bạn là gì?

Discuss these questions. Then read the article, and compare your ideas with the author’s.
Thảo luận những câu hỏi sau. Sau đó đọc bài báo, và so sánh ý kiến của các bạn với những ý kiến của tác giả.
1. Did you ever have the feeling that something terrible was going to happen?
2. Did you ever cancel any plans because something “inside you” made you feel uneasy?
3. Do you think that some people can predict the future?

The Sinking of the TITANIC

People sometimes have the feeling that they know something is going to happen. This is called a premonition. Some premonitions take the form of dreams or visions. Others are just strong feelings, ideas, or guesses that come into people’s minds for no apparent reason.
Some people claim that they have premonitions at one time or another, but they known as psychics or clairvoyants appear to be more sensitive to whatever causes accurate premonitions. The following story is about the Titanic and the many apparently mysterious forewarnings that were reported.
In the early morning of April 15, 1912, the Titanic, the world’s largest ocean liner at the time, struck an iceberg and sank on her maiden voyage across the Atlantic. A total of 1,502 lives were lost. Later investigation turned up at least 20 cases of people having premonitions of the disaster.
One of the strangest examples of an apparent premonition involved a novel called Futility, written in 1898 by Morgan Robertson. In the book, a huge liner, the Titan, sank after hitting an iceberg. Like the Titanic, the Titan was said to be unsinkable. Also like he Titanic, the Titan carried too few lifeboats for the large number of passengers on board.
In addition, there were two other stories that appeared to foretell the disaster, both written by a passenger on the doomed ship – one of them over 20 years earlier.
At least nine people had dreams in which a ship like the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank. Two clairvoyants gave warnings about the disaster, and several other people had extremely strong intuitions that something would go wrong. Some would-be passengers were so uneasy about the voyage that they canceled their tickets at the last minute. All these uncanny coincidences appear to be premonitions. There seems to be no way of explaining them.

Source: Supernatural Guides: Mysterious Powers and Strange Forces

Discuss these questions.
Thảo luận những câu hỏi sau.
1. Why do you think so many people had premonitions about Titanic?
2. Have you ever heard someone making predictions for the New Year or about an important event? What was your opinion about those predictions?

Discuss with the others about the following.
Thảo luận với các bạn về những ý kiến sau.
1. Do you really believe in strange and mysterious phenomena, i.e. levitation, telepathy, dowsing, faith healing, reincarnation, astrology...? Why or why not?
2. Are you superstitious? Do you know anyone who is superstitious?
3. Why are some people superstitious?
4. Do you think that younger people are as superstitious as older people? Why or why not?
5. Are women more superstitious than men? Explain your answer.