Unit 2
Unit 2
Lessons 1-2
Ex. 4
People are concerned about litter or noise where they live, or lack of trees or grass and pollution in its many forms (water pollution, air pollution, nuclear pollution), about changing climate around the world, the destruction of wildlife and countryside beauty, shortage of natural resources and the growth of population.
Ex. 6
1. simply what is around us
2. the area around our home or our school
3. the whole world-all the cities, countryside, forests, seas and the air we breathe
4. all living and non-living things that occur on Earth or some region thereof
5. the built environment, which comprises the areas and components that are strongly influenced by man
6. litter or noise where we live or lack of trees or grass
Ex. 7
1. the natural environment
2. to refer to
3. comprise
4. concern
5. destruction
6. wildlife
7. shortage
8. natural
Ex. 8
1. destruction
2. wildlife
3. shortage
4. comprises
5. refer to
6. natural resources
7. concerns
8. the natural environment
Ex. 10
Environmental problems are of a great concern nowadays. More and more scientists warn about the threat of a global ecological catastrophe as a result of man’s economic activity. Medics note with alarm the growing number of diseases caused by air and water pollution.
Urban environmental problems are threats to present or future human well being, resulting from human-induced damage to the physical environment, originating in or borne in urban areas. They are:
– Inadequate household water and sanitation and indoor air pollution.
– Ambient air pollution, inadequate waste management and pollution of rivers, lakes and coastal areas.
– Ecological disruption and resource depletion in a city’s hinterland, and emissions of acid precursors and greenhouse gases.
– Activities outside a city’s boundaries, but which will affect people
The ecological situation is particularly unfavorable in large cities. Big cities face the environmental catastrophe. In London, for example, the dust concentration (daily average) in air exceeds the permissible level by 60 %, in Paris – 80 %. The situation in Moscow is even worse in some aspects. The carried out research showed that up to 12 million tons of harmful substances are discharged into air annually. Hundreds of industrial enterprises pollute atmosphere.
Ecological problems are also very acute in our city. For example, air pollution is caused by increasing number of cars, heavy traffic causes a lot of air pollution, too. Every car exhausts tons of CO2, into the air. Having more buses would improve public transport in cities and there would be fewer cars in the streets. I think people should go on foot more often or use bicycles.
The ecological situation in the region is influenced by a powerful industrial and military complex, which includes the defense, metallurgic, machine-building enterprises and so on. The necessity to employ all the inhabitants of the city leads to building new factories that produce not only consumer goods, but wastes and smog as well. Chemicals from factories contaminate atmosphere. Governments can solve this problem by passing laws to stop factories from polluting air and water. It also should force factories to put
Filters on chimneys. If they did these, our cities would be he>
Furthermore, we can see much litter in the cities. As a result of it industrial centers today look more like garbage dumps. We mustn’t drop litter because it looks and smells horrible. If the authorities put bin on every street corner, people wouldn’t drop litter so much. We also should try not to buy pre-packaged food. The packaging creates a lot of rubbish.
Lessons 3-4
Ex. 2
Scythian tulips
Foxes
Hares
Deer
Squirrels
Snakes
Birds: ostriches, emus, swans, cranes
Ex. 3
1. D
2. C
3. B
4. E
5. A
Ex. 5
1. rare
2. area
3. species
4. shelter
5. research
6. to occupy
Ex. 6
1. b
2. c
3. c
4. a
5. c
6. b
Ex. 7 (b)
After
Essential can’t
Extra can
Ex. 8
Sentence 1 contains defining clause.
Sentence 2 contains non-defining clause.
Ex. 9
Can defining can’t non-defining
Ex. 10
1. which
2. what
3. where
4. which
5. which
6. that
7. that
8. that
9. which
Lessons 5-6
Ex. 4
1. B
2. D
3. C
4. A
Ex. 5
1. F
2. T
3. F
4. T
5. F
6. N
Ex. 6
People can go walking and admire the beautiful nature around.
While cycling you can feel the warmth of the blowing wind.
When people are having a rest in the National Parks they can go horse riding and ballooning.
People can go fishing and discover a picturesque view around.
People can go climbing to woody hillsides and to and enjoy breathtaking landscapes.
People can wander through woods and enjoy wildlife watching.
Ex. 7
Activities | Mary | Theodore | Patrick |
Walking | X | ||
Cycling | X | ||
Horse riding | X | ||
Watersports | X | ||
Climbing | X | ||
Air trip | X | ||
Wildlife watching |
Ex. 8
1. where
2. where
3. which
4. which
5. which
6. that
7. that
8. what
9. what
10. what
Ex. 10
The London Eye isn’t just one of London’s top tourist attractions, it’s an extraordinary piece of engineering design and architecture.
Since opening in March 2000 The London Eye has become an iconic landmark and a symbol of modern Britain. The London Eye is the UK’s most popular paid for visitor attraction, visited by over 3. 5 million people a year.
A breathtaking feat of design and engineering, passengers in the London Eye’s capsules can see up to 40 kilometres in all directions.
The London Eye is the vision of David Marks and Julia Barfield, a husband and wife architect team. The wheel design was used as a metaphor for the end of the 20th century, and time turning into the new millennium.
Back in 2000, the London Eye was known as the Millennium Wheel. At that time, British Airways was the main sponsor, and up until November 2005 they were joint shareholders with Marks Barfield Architects and The Tussauds Group. British Airways also privately funded the London Eye project from the early stages of conception.
Today, the London Eye is operated by the London Eye Company Limited, a Merlin Entertainments Group Company.
The London Eye has won over 75 awards for national and international tourism, outstanding architectural quality and engineering achievement since opening in March 2000.
Constructing the London Eye was a massive challenge. It’s the tallest cantilevered observation wheel in the world, rising high above the London skyline at 135 metres. It was a piece of daring innovation and revolutionary design which combined the best of British design, architecture and engineering with an exceptional team of experts.
The London Eye passenger capsules incorporate an entirely new design form for an observation wheel. Instead of being suspended under the wheel they turn within circular mounting rings fixed to the outside of the main rim. The result is a stunning 360 degree panoramic view from the top of the wheel.
The London eye has 32 capsules, representing the 32 boroughs of London. Capsules have 360 degree views, a heating and cooling system and bench seating.
Any visitor to the London Eye can’t help but be amazed by the incredible six backstay cables holding the wheel in place. And then, when you look up you see the wheel cables stretching across the rim and the wheel. The wheel cables include 16 rim rotation cables, and 64 spoke cables, which are similar to bicycle spokes, holding the rim tight to the central spindle.
Ex. 2
The Carpathians are shared by seven Central and Eastern European Countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia and Ukraine), four of which have recently joined the European Union.
The Carpathians are one of the largest mountain chains in Europe, with a unique ecosystem and an exceptionally high biological diversity. The region pro-
Vides a livelihood and natural resources for up to 18 million people. These mountains also serve as a haven for a considerable number of endangered species such as the brown bear, wolf, lynx, and raptors. With close to 4,000 partly endangered plant species, the Carpathians account for 30 per cent of the European flora.
The Mountains form so called buffer zones and corridors that favour transboundary dispersal of plants, migration of birds and animals and also genetic diversity conservation throughout Europe. Forest ecosystems of the Carpathians play especial role for biodiversity conservation, contribute into the nature protection and water resources regulation and provide resources for timber industry in the region.
In the last centuries more exhaustive use of natural resources vastly weakened abilities of the biodiversity to self-renovation everywhere. Destructive processes of biodiversity loss affected the Carpathian region too. Heavy and expanded agrarian industry, forestry and hunting practices distorted ecological balance in the region and threaten biological diversity, firstly unique and endangered species. In the same time Ukrainian Carpathians are only area in Europe where virgin forests and unique flora and fauna species exist.
Endangered Species in the Carpathian Mountains
Wolf
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They are distributed almost continuously over the Carpathian Mountains and their population densities are very high compared to other parts in Europe.
After World War II, wolves were present in all forested parts of Romania and numbered over 4,000 animals. However, excessive livestock depredation occurred and as a result in 1955, the government launched a campaign to control wolf numbers.
Intensive hunting, trapping, searching for wolf dens to kill the pups, and particularly the use of poison, reduced wolves to a low level up until the late sixties.
By 1967, the wolf population had declined to about 1,500 and only the remoteness of the mountains and the increasing number of deer and wild boar saved the wolf from even further decline.
Due to the fact that other species, such as brown bears, wild boar, and birds of prey, also suffered from poisoning, the use of poison was forbidden in 1991.
Until then, the wolf population had continued to increase slowly and, according to official numbers, reached about 3,100 individuals in 1996. This represents about 30 % of all European wolves west of Russia.
Brown Bear
Few animals have captured the imagination like brown bears. They can stand on two legs, have eyes in the front of their heads, walk on the soles of their feet, pick things up with their ‘fingers’, eat what we eat and nurse their young as we do. Brown bears can grow to a huge size, males up to 350kg, females to 200kg. The biggest brown bear was caught in Romania – 480kg.
Their diet varies with the season, from grass and shoots in the spring to berries and apples in the summer, nuts and plums in the fall and all year round they eat roots, insects, mammals and reptiles, and, of course, honey.
Bears leave scratch marks on trees. The marks can be easily recognised by three to five parallel scratches in the bark from the nails of the paw.
They have good hearing, an excellent sense of smell and can live for up to 30 years. The males are solitary animals, socialising only during the mating season. The Carpathians are home to about 8,000 brown bears in Slovakia, Poland, the Ukraine and Romania, the second largest population in Europe.
Bears are considered of high priority in conservation. Given their dependence on large natural areas, they are important management indicators for a number of other wildlife species.
Lynx
Lynx are like most cats: they have terrific eyesight, especially at night, and better hearing than humans.
That’s why it’s so difficult to spot them; they are most active in the early morning and late at night – when they can see, but we can’t.
The Eurasian lynx in the Carpathians normally live above 1000 m, resting on cliffs and rocks, out of human reach, but watching and curious all the time. In wintertime, they may follow their prey down to lower >
But they never attack people or other large carnivores such as bears or wolves. Bears and wolves sometimes steal their kill, so the lynx has adapted by hiding leftovers beneath rocks, leaves or branches.
Lynx feed off hares, birds, wildcats, chamois, deer, boar and sometimes stray dogs, but not livestock like the other carnivores. So they’re not a nuisance to people.
The lynx population in the Carpathians is officially estimated to be about 2,500 – the densest in Europe.
Ex. 4
1. attraction
2. people
3. longest
4. speed limit
5. sailing boats
6. lake
7. motor boats
8. businesses
9. scenery
10. walking
11. outdoor activity
12. problem
13. plant life
14. area
15. a strong beach
16. a natural area
17. ecology
18. plant
19. fish life
Ex. 6
The Lake District National Park has many special qualities unique to the area. There are over fourteen lakes and tarns >
The rocks forming the Lake District provide a dramatic record of nearly 500 million years. Colliding continents, deep oceans, tropical seas, and kilometre-thick ice sheets helped shape the landscape we see today.
There have been people in the Lake District since the end of the last ice age. There are traces of prehistoric and medieval field systems, archaeological monuments such as 8tone circles, Roman roads and forts and the remains of the mining, gunpowder and wood-processing industries.
The red squirrel is still found here, and there are woodlands rich in Atlantic mosses, ferns and lichen. Lakes, tarns and rivers are nationally important for their range of habitats and species such as char, crayfish and shelly. On the fells ravens and birds of prey are a relatively common sight.
The lakes and tarns give the Lake District a quality of scenery and recreational resource found nowhere else in England. The semi-natural woodlands add texture, colour and variety to the landscape and also provide a home for native animals and plants. The high rainfall in the core of the National Park favours woodlands rich in Atlantic mosses and liverworts, ferns and lichen.
The presence of wood pasture, pollards and old coppice woodland form part of the rich cultural heritage of the National Park.
The Lake District is unique in England for its abundant and varied freshwater habitats. Key habitats include mires, limestone pavement, upland heath, screes and artic-alpine communities, lakeshore wetlands, estuary, coastal heath and dunes.
The Lake District’s rocks provide a dramatic record of nearly 500 million years, with evidence of colliding continents, deep oceans, tropical seas, and kilometre thick ice sheets. The area has the largest and deepest lakes and highest peaks in England. Its rock sequence contributes to our understanding of past climates.
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