What is a Gap Year? gapyear.com
Today, thousands of people are taking gap years all over the world, travelling to destinations such as Australia, New Zealand and Thailand for months on end, travelling with relative comfort and ease. Today, a gap year can be anywhere, for any length of time, doing anything you want. You can build an orphanage in Belize, teach English as a foreign language in Israel, trek through the Himalayas in Nepal or travel around the 'banana pancake trail' in South East Asia. A gap year really is whatever you want it to be.
A gap year comes under many guises - backpacking, a career gap, a short gap year, travelling, time out, a sabbatical - but they all mean the same thing. A gap year is constructive time out to travel in-between life stages. It usually means travelling, volunteering or working abroad. Often it means all three!
Backpacking and travelling is particularly popular among students in the
UK,
Australia,
New Zealand,
Canada and
the Netherlands, and a number of countries (including the ones stated) offer working holiday visas to improve cultural ties and foreign exchange.
Another country that is starting to get in on the gap year action is the
United States of America with more and more people travelling each year.
Gap years are now seen as a way to improve your CV and to gain relevant work experience in a particular field, with employers actively employing people who have taken a gap year.
Whether you see a gap year as backpacking or taking time out, it's about living life to the full and realising that there is a world of opportunity out there just waiting to be explored...
1° AUDIO : pedagogie2.ac-reunion.fr/cyberprofLV/index_fichiers/Podcaz_audio_anglais_2.htm "Gap year 1/2 : 187 et 186
2°VIDEO :Why take a gap year ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJTwlOHk9Ro (Only watch the first minute)
