Activity One

What I need to know to complete this activity successfully:

 Indirect questions

Vocabulary required:

 Can/Would, please, wonder, if.

 Animal abuse related vocabulary: Could, Would, Animal Rights, Pet, Liberation,
Mistreatment, Abuse, Suffer, supporter, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment
of Animals)

What is this activity useful for? By properly completing this activity, you will be able to
structure interview using indirect questions in formal environments where general topics are
considered.

Part 1

Warm-up: Answer the following question before reading the article below (5 points).

1. Do you know what animal cruelty is?

Animal cruelty encompasses behaviors that cause unnecessary pain or stress to non-
human animals. They range from negligence in basic care to torture, mutilation, or
intentional death.
2. Do you think animals should have rights?
Of course, animals are living beings and like us they deserve respect, rights and a
prosperous life full of love and affection.

3. Can you mention some ways animals can be abused?

BULLFIGHTING
ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION
SKINS AND DECORATIONS
ANIMALS IN ZOOLOGICALS

Part 2

Read the following text carefully

Why Animal Rights?

Taken from: https://www.peta.org/about-peta/why-peta/why-animal-rights/

Almost all of us grew up eating meat, wearing leather, and going to circuses and zoos.
Many of us bought our beloved “pets” at pet shops, had guinea pigs, and kept
beautiful birds in cages. We wore wool and silk, ate McDonald’s burgers, and fished.
We never considered the impact of these actions on the animals involved. For
whatever reason, you are now asking the question: Why should animals have rights?

In his book Animal Liberation, Peter Singer states that the basic principle of equality
does not require equal or identical treatment; it requires equal consideration. This is
an important distinction when talking about animal rights. People often ask if animals
should have rights, and quite simply, the answer is “Yes!” Animals surely deserve to
live their lives free from suffering and exploitation. Jeremy Bentham, the founder of
the reforming utilitarian school of moral philosophy, stated that when deciding on a
being’s rights, “The question is not ‘Can they reason?’ nor ‘Can they talk?’ but ‘Can
they suffer?’” In that passage, Bentham points to the capacity for suffering as the vital
characteristic that gives a being the right to equal consideration. The capacity for
suffering is not just another characteristic like the capacity for language or higher
mathematics. All animals have the ability to suffer in the same way and to the same
degree that humans do. They feel pain, pleasure, fear, frustration, loneliness, and
motherly love. Whenever we consider doing something that would interfere with their
needs, we are morally obligated to take them into account.

Supporters of animal rights believe that animals have an inherent worth—a value
completely separate from their usefulness to humans. We believe that every creature
with a will to live has a right to live free from pain and suffering. Animal rights is not
just a philosophy—it is a social movement that challenges society’s traditional view
that all nonhuman animals exist solely for human use. As PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk
has said, “When it comes to pain, love, joy, loneliness, and fear, a rat is a pig, is a dog,
is a boy. Each one values his or her life and fights the knife.”  

Only prejudice allows us to deny others the rights that we expect to have for ourselves.
Whether it’s based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or species, prejudice is morally
unacceptable. If you wouldn’t eat a dog, why eat a pig? Dogs and pigs have the same
capacity to feel pain, but it is prejudice based on species that allows us to think of one
animal as a companion and the other as dinner.

Activity:
a) You are a TV presenter and you have the responsibility to interview Peter Singer,
the author of Animal Liberation. You must prepare a set of five (5) questions to
ask Peter during the interview. These questions must be “indirect” since the
interview is very formal.

1. I would like to know if you plan to continue writing?

2. What was your true inspiration for the creation of animal liberation?
3. Please explain what is the meaning you want to generate about animal
liberation and what change of consciousness would you like to create?
4 Tell me have you had the opportunity to avoid animal abuse?
5. I want to know how long did you last in creating animal liberation?
b)