ABOUT THE TEXT.

Send the exercises to the e-mail:todoenidiomas@gmail.com.

You are going to read an article about curfews in the USA. Before reading the article, answer these questions.

1) Which of these activities are you allowed to do at your age?: Jump a cascade, ride a motorcycle, go to the beach, go to a concert.

2) At what age would your parents allow you to marry, drink alcohol, or have a tattoo?.

3) Do your parents let you go out in the evening?

a) During the weekends.

b) At weekends?.

4) What time do you have to be home in the evening?.

5) Do your parents ever stop you from going out because

a) You’ve arrived home late?.

b) You aren’t studying enough?.

c) You’ve failed an exam?.

IN BED BY ELEVEN

Many of the largest cities in the US are using curfews for teenagers to stop vandalism and crime. Under the curfew laws, young people mustn’t leave their homes between 11 p.m and 6 a.m.

In some places it has worked, in others it hasn’t…

Its 10.40 p.m. in Tenleytown in north-west Washington D.C. in just twenty minutes ´time, everybody under eighteen must be off the streets.

The Mc. Donald in Tenleytown is the place where all the young people meet. They come here to have a hamburger and French fries.

Its all very quiet till eleven o’clock. Then, suddenly teenagers appear everywhere.

We are talking to seventeen-year-old Kathy Rinaldi, who is having difficulty parking a large black sedan outside Mc. Donald’s.

“I usually drive my mother little Honda, “ she tell us, but tonight I’m driving Dad’s car.”

“But don’t you know there’s a curfew Kathy?.

“A curfew? What do you mean? She answers. “Most of the time we don’t notice it.”

Jason Berdnaska´s also seventeen. He doesn’t worry about the curfew either. “The police checked us for a couple of months, but now they don’t bother us. You can stay out as long as you like you’re with an adult. And who’s an adult?. Anyone over eighteen! So what do we do? We make sure that one of us is eighteen. And the police don’t do anything if you say you’re running errands for you’re parents. So I always have an unopened pack of cigarettes in my pocket. If the police stop me I say I’m shopping for my mom, and I show them the cigarettes to prove it!”.

To most teenagers, the curfew laws are wrong. Normally young people have a hard time because of just a few juvenile delinquents. Even most parents agree and they complain that often poor, single others have to pay the fines, which may be $ 100 or more.

Kathy says, “This curfew is just an excuse for the cops to stop kids they don’t like.”