Reading & Writing Assignment (3) – Cups & Ice

We wouldn’t spend time reminding you how practicing a lot of reading and writing is the best way to improve your English (but we just did! :)) and let’s straight away jump into the 3rd assignment.

What will you do in this assignment? – You would read about an interesting situation or a story, maybe watch a clip on it, and then answer a question based on what you read and saw. Sounds interesting, doesn’t it?

Today’s situation

‘F.R.I.E.N.D.S’ is one of the most popular TV series of all times. Set in New York, it is the story of 6 friends and their intertwined lives. Joey is an (aspiring) actor, Phoebe is a masseuse (a woman, who provides massage professionally) and a hobby singer, Ross is a paleontologist (someone who studies fossils), his sister Monica is a chef, Rachel works at a Fashion brand, and Chandler is err… no one really knows what he does :). Each episode (and almost every scene) is filled with humor and often leaves you with an important lesson about friendship and life.

In this particular episode, Monica & Phoebe decide to throw a surprise birthday party for Rachel. They are supposed to be working on this ‘project’ together with shared responsibilities but Monica, being the control freak she is, takes charge of almost everything and leaves Phoebe with the ‘menial’ responsibility of looking after cups and ice. Monica is not a bad person, it is just that she wants everything to be perfect and has difficulty in delegating (passing down) ownership of anything to others for the fear that they would either mess it up or would not do as good a job as she could.

Phoebe, rightfully angry, takes this in her stride and the tables are turned when the actual party takes place. How? Watch the clip and see for yourself :)

Question for you– You may have worked on group assignments and projects in school and college yourself. What are the different kinds of ‘characters’ among your team members that you remember dealing with and how you dealt with them? Describe in detail (min. 200 words). Remember, this can also be an HR question in one of your interviews. :)

In case you can not think of an interesting group project story from your life, imagine yourself to be in Phoebe’s position (before the party happened) where you are really upset with Monica’s way of handling the situation. Write a letter to Monica telling her how you feel, why you feel that way, and what do you expect Monica to do. Your answer should be minimum 200 words long.

You can also read fellow students’ answers in comments (but do so only after you have submitted your own answer so that you don’t get influenced by what others wrote). We also encourage you to share your feedback, appreciation and thoughts against others’ answers. Remember, it is a community effort and we are all in it together :). Only when you participate, you can expect others to participate and share feedback on what you wrote. Deal?

To read the next article of the series in which we talk about using active and passive voice effectively, click on the next button below. To go back to the earlier article, click on the previous button.