Nature and enviroment-reading

WARM-UP
Look at the pictures. In pairs, ask and answer the following questions:
What has nature given to human beings?
2. What do you know about the pollution in our country today?
3. What would you do when you see a man throw out garbage on the streets?
4. What is “Earth Hour”? Are you ready to join in that program?





Develop your reading skills
Passage 1:
Exercise1: Read a magazine article about “Dirty Britain”. Five sentences have been removed from the article. Choose from the sentence A-F the one which fits each gap (1-5). There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use.
A. The plastics industry protested, of course.
B. The problem is that the rubbish created by our increasingly mobile lives lasts a lot longer than before.
C. It is because of the lack of awareness of human
D. However, it is not as if there is no solution to this.
E. The alternative is to continue sliding downhill until we have a country that looks like a vast municipal rubbish tip.
F. Years ago I remember travelling abroad and being saddened by the plastic bags, discarded bottles and soiled nappies at the edge of every road.


Before the grass has thickened on the roadside verges and leaves have started growing on the trees is a perfect time to look around and see just how dirty Britain has become. The pavements are stained with chewing gum that has been spat out and the gutters are full of discarded fast food cartons. (1)…………………. .Nowadays, Britain seems to look at least as bad. What has gone wrong?
(3) ……………………….If it is not cleared up and properly thrown away, it stays in the undergrowth for years; a semi-permanent reminder of what a tatty little country we have now.
Firstly, it is estimated that 10 billion plastic bags have been given to shoppers. These will take anything from 100 to 1,000 years to rot. (3)…………………………A few years ago, the Irish government introduced a tax on non-recyclable carrier bags and in three months reduced their use by 90%. When he was a minister, Michael Meacher attempted to introduce a similar arrangement in Britain. (4)…………………………….However, they need not have bothered; the idea was killed before it could draw breath, leaving supermarkets free to give away plastic bags.
What is clearly necessary right now is some sort of combined initiative, both individual and collective, before it is too late. (5)………………………………We may well be at the tipping point. Yet we know that people respond to their environment. If things around them are clean and tidy, people behave cleanly and tidily. If they are surrounded by squalor, they behave squalidly. Now, much of Britain looks pretty squalid. What will it look like in five years?
(http://www.usingenglish.com/comprehension/29.html)

Exercise 2: Find words or phrases in the passage which mean the same as:
Gutter A. the state of being covered with unclean things
Discard B. eject something from the mouth
Stain C. a channel at a roadside
Spit D. to decay
Rot E. reject as useless or unwanted things
F. a small area of still wate
Passage 2:
Exercise 1: You are going to read a passage about “ Earthquakes”. For questions (1-5), choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text.



1. Every year earthquakes are responsible for a large number of deaths and a vast amount of destruction in various parts of the world. Most of these damaging earthquakes occur either in a narrow belt which surrounds the Pacific Ocean or in a line which extends from Burma to the Alps in Europe. Some of the destruction is directly caused by the quake itself. An example of this is the collapse of buildings as a result of vibration. Other damage results from landslides, tsunamis (large ocean waves) or major fires which are initiated by the quake.
2. There are about a million quakes a year. Fortunately, however, not all of them are destructive. The intensity of an earthquake is measured on the Richter Scale, which goes from 0 upward. The highest magnitude recorded to date is 8.9. Major damage generally occurs from quakes ranging upwards from 6.0. Exceptions to this is those whose epicenters are located far from inhabited areas.
3 The actual cause of the quake itself is the rupturing or breaking of rocks at or below the earth’s surface. This is produced by pressure which scientists believe may be due to a number of reasons, two of which are the expansion and contraction of the earth’s crust and continental drift.
In order to minimize the damage and to alleviate some of