Hình mẫu & Ảnh hưởng xã hội — IELTS Speaking Part 3

Q: Why do young people often admire celebrities rather than people they know? A: I think it's partly about distance — celebrities are curated, you only ever see the edited, impressive version of them, whereas the people you actually know come with all their contradictions and bad days on full display. It's much easier to admire someone whose flaws you've never had to witness. There's also the scale of it — a celebrity's achievements look enormous compared to what's achievable in an ordinary life, which makes them feel aspirational in a way a hardworking neighbour rarely does. I don't think that's entirely healthy, but it's understandable. Q: Do you think parents or teachers have a stronger influence on children? Why? A: Parents, ultimately, though teachers can leave a surprisingly deep mark for a limited window of time. Parents shape the baseline — how a child sees conflict, effort, failure — because that influence is constant and mostly unconscious, absorbed rather than taught. A teacher's influence tends to be more specific and occasionally more intense, one good or bad teacher can redirect a person's whole sense of what they're capable of, but it's happening on top of a foundation the parents already built. So I'd say parents set the terrain, and teachers decide how well a person moves across a particular part of it. Q: Should schools teach students about leadership? Why or why not? A: I think they should, but not as a standalone subject with a textbook — that tends to produce a fairly hollow, theoretical version of it. It works much better folded into group projects, debates, situations where someone actually has to organise other people and deal with disagreement in real time. The risk with teaching leadership directly is that it becomes about performing confidence rather than developing the underlying judgement, which is really what leadership is. So the format matters as much as whether it's taught at all. Q: Can someone be a good role model without realising it? A: I'd say that's actually the most common way it happens. The people who've influenced me most weren't trying to model anything — a relative who just quietly kept showing up and doing the difficult thing, without ever framing it as a lesson. Deliberate role-modelling, someone consciously trying to inspire you, can come across as a bit performative, whereas the unintentional kind feels more trustworthy precisely because there's no audience being played to. So I think the least self-conscious examples often end up being the most convincing ones. Q: Is it healthy to look up to people you've never met? A: In moderation, I don't see much harm in it — admiring a writer or an athlete you've never met can genuinely push you to work harder or think differently. It becomes unhealthy, though, when the admiration is based entirely on a curated image and starts replacing real relationships, because you end up comparing your actual, messy life to someone else's highlight reel. The healthiest version, I think, is treating them as a source of ideas rather than a template for how your own life should look. Otherwise you're measuring yourself against something that was never real to begin with.