The report of the “A typical Englishman”

      After Monday’s reading, one of the four articles surprised me very much. Because the life style of Englishman described in the passage is much different from what in my mind.

       The Englishman which I watched or heard from my daily life compared with the Englishman in the article is much lazy and prefers to stay at home. They can totally live on the government’s subsidy and don’t have to work. Even live in that way, they can still have a big house and many cars. I don’t believe that when I first read about it in the ‘Reader's Digest’ as a junior middle school student. But after a few years during which I watched many movies about Englishman and learned about the difference between developing and developed countries, I slowly accepted that “fact” and it became the first feeling when talking about Englishman.

    As I grew up, even though I have known that the Englishman or say, any other foreigner in any developed country, totally living on the subsidy without working is ridiculous, the situation of Englishman in the article still surprises me a little. In my opinion, as a developed country, its people will at least work less. Even in many developing countries, most people work less than 8 hours now. So what about Englishman? According to the article, a typical Englishman gets up at 7 a.m. and usually works from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., about 7 hours each day, there is not much difference. So does that mean they can earn much more than us? After searching the Internet, I learned that the mid level of the Englishman can earn about 20,000 pounds each year. We may think that is a big number, but considering their goods’ higher price, 20,000 pounds is not that much as I thought before.

    I learned about the Englishman’s lazy and preference of staying at home through the English class when I am in high school. As my teacher said, Englishman likes doing things in a very slow way and reservation is a good example: seeing a doctor, having dinner in the restaurant, meeting friends… all of these need a reservation, and they are often late for something. All the above things give me a feeling that: Englishman is a little lazy. Again, according to the article, they Englishmen get up at 7 a.m. and at the weekends, they usually do some shopping and hang out with friends or family, which sounds that their life is enthusiastic and colorful and is much different from what I thought before.

    Though this article is written by a foreigner, which means that this article may be a little exaggerated to give the reader a good impression of the Englishman, we can’t deny the fact that there is still a gap between us and the English. But at the same time, we still have to believe that the ‘gap’ is not that big, not only because we respect our country but also because of the fact that our country is developing really fast.

2010/3/26

Jeogia