Answer the following questions about the text.

1. What percentage of the nation’s children views TV every day?

2. After what time are more violent and intimate scenes shown on TV?

3. What percentage of young children may sometimes view TV after 9 o’clock?

4. How many mothers in the survey said they allowed their children under 10 to watch anything they liked?

5. What percentage of parents agreed that there was too much violence on TV?

6. How many thought sex on TV was more harmful than violence?

7. What main conclusion does the writer draw from the figures in the survey?

8. What suggestions does he make?

9. How far do you think the recommendations he makes would really make a difference in families where mothers, in particular, find the TV a very welcome presence in the home?

Text C

TV “Damages Children’s English”

Television restricts the ability of children to speak and understand English, speech therapists said yesterday, writes Nicole Martin.

One in five children under the age of five suffers with language difficulties as a result of parents using television as an “automatic babysitter”, said Gila Falkus, a London-based speech and language therapist.

“Many children with language delay seem to spend hours in front of televisions, videos or computer screens – the flickering blue parent,” she said.

“I do not believe this helps either their listening or their language skills. The dominant stimulus is visual, not auditory.”

She said that language development could be improved by encouraging children to listen to the radio: “Radio helps children to concentrate on sounds without the distraction of images and background noise.”

Susan Stranks, director of Children 2000, which is lobbying for separate radio stations for children, criticized the BBC for axing children’s radio programmes such as Children’s Hour and Listen with Mother.