The key answer of exercise 6

Pros

• lots of brothers and sisters makes you competitive, resourceful, sociable
• you have lots of support from siblings through life

Cons

• lack of attention
• having to compete for everything
• perhaps feeling deprived

You might be held back because you don’t speak the language, understand the culture or ways of doing things, have family or connections to help you, or because you might be a victim of racism or some other form of discrimination.

It might benefit you because you have drive and ambition, think differently from people in your new country which makes you stand out, have a skill which most people in your new country don’t have, have connections from your old culture to help you.

A self-made person is someone who has made their fortune through their own hard work and endeavour, and not from inherited wealth or social or family connections.

If someone is ‘quite rough round the edges’, they are not polite or well-mannered in a conventional way. Here, it is used to describe someone who has come from a poor, rural background and has retained aspects of that (eating rudely, perhaps being very direct or crude, for example). George perhaps likes this fact because he admires how his father-in-law has worked hard to get where he is, likes his simple directness, likes the fact that he isn’t falsely trying to be someone new, and is proud of or unconcerned about his background.