Listening for ielts 7 Unit 1

Listening for IELTS
117 
The leaving continued until the 1970's because Independence in 1921 was followed by a civil war and 
an economic depression. Almost every family in Ireland has relatives abroad, and up to the 60's in some 
places, of a class of 30 graduating from high school all left. Along the west cost, closed-up houses from 
that time falling into ruins are still common. 
Unit 6
: Listening Activity No. 10 
Last time I said that a lot of Irish people left the country and went to England, America and many other 
foreign countries. Today, I'd like to talk about the emigration.
The effects of the emigration were not all bad. The emigrants experienced a lot of hardship in their 
new countries. There is a famous story about a park in Shanghai where "Chinese and dogs were not 
allowed". Well, in England, until into the 1950's, signs for jobs sometime read, "Irish need not apply". 
The emigrants often experienced discrimination but they formed many organizations to look after their 
fellow emigrants. Many of these organizations later became very important. In America, the Irish chose 
politics as the way forward and significant cities were controlled by Irish politicians. This movement 
reached its peak with the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960. His grandparents came from Ireland and 
his election had a significant impact in Ireland, helping the process of recovery of self-confidence which 
we have today. Today there are 70 million people of Irish descent living outside Ireland. In America 
alone there are 40 million people and 10 million of these people have 100% Irish background. They 
carried the culture of their home country with them and adapted it to their new home. They made 
changes which would be unthinkable in the home country and we often laughed at the Yankees' 
lrishness. In fact any emigrant who came back to live in Ireland, often after many years found it very 
difficult to fit into Irish society again. They had been changed by the experience. 
These emigrants have always had an interest in the "old country". "The American letter" was a letter 
containing dollars sent back to one's family. More recently, President Clinton has been very influential in 
bringing peace to the North of Ireland. Riverdance itself was the idea of a dancer who was American 
who applied American methods to traditional dancing, and the fusion was immediately popular. 
Modern Ireland has been able to use the disaster of the last century to learn modern marketing 
techniques and apply them, without at the same time loosing what is distinctive about itself. Riverdance 
is a demonstration of that distinctiveness.