William: Hello and welcome to People and Places. My name’s William Kremer. Coming

up in the programme today, we’re going to practise listening and [strange

noise]… and we’ll be finding out what that strange noise is.

Now, imagine that you were trapped on a desert island and you had to survive

– that is, you had to carry on living through this dangerous situation. How

would you manage? Now imagine that you could choose one item to take to the

island to help you survive. What would you choose? A fishing rod? Or maybe

a gun? Well, we’re going to hear now from Pen Hadow. Pen is a polar explorer

– he travels to the Arctic Circle to raise money and to do scientific research.

Pen once said that if he could take one thing to help him survive on a desert

island, he would take… a six-inch nail. That’s right, a nail- something that you

would normally bang into wood. Six-inches is about 15 cm. A six-inch nail.

Now listen to this clip from an interview with Pen and try to work out why he

would take a six-inch nail to a desert island!

Pen Hadow: And the reason I chose the nail was that I’m aware of a group of walrus hunters

who were trapped on an island in Spitzberg[en] and off, on the edge of the

Arctic Ocean. And they left their ship for the day with a little rucksack on their

backs and the ship got crushed with all the occupants, so there were four of

them left, on this island and they had to survive and they survived for six years

and the key to their survival was a six-inch nail, that they found in a log that

had drifted across the Arctic Ocean from Siberia. And they used that to create

sparks and to create a hammer, from which they then made arrowheads… they 

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then killed a polar bear… and… and in those days people knew how to survive

in the real sense of the word.

William: Well don’t worry if you missed the answer, because I’m going to play that clip

again. But you might have heard that Pen chose a nail in this hypothetical

emergency because of the experience of a group of hunters. Their ship was

crushed, so it was destroyed by being pressed very hard by ice. All the hunters

had to help them survive was a six-inch nail. But how did they use the nail?

Listen again:

Pen Hadow: And the reason I chose the nail was that I’m aware of a group of walrus hunters

who were trapped on an island in Spitzberg[en] and off, on the edge of the

Arctic Ocean. And they left their ship for the day with a little rucksack on their

backs and the ship got crushed with all the occupants, so there were four of

them left, on this island and they had to survive and they survived for six years

and the key to their survival was a six-inch nail, that they found in a log that

had drifted across the Arctic Ocean from Siberia. And they used that to create

sparks and to create a hammer, from which they then made arrowheads… they

then killed a polar bear… and… and in those days people knew how to survive

in the real sense of the word.

William: Pen said that the nail was ‘the key to their survival’ – which means that it was

the only way the hunters managed to survive. They used it to create sparks and

a hammer, and then they made arrowheads – sharp metal objects that they used

to kill a polar bear.

What does the arctic sound like? Is it quiet or noisy? Before we listen to the

next clip from Pen, let me give you a bit of vocabulary. Earlier on, we heard

the word ‘crush’. A crash, or a crashing, is something different – it’s a sudden

loud noise, for example if something breaks or falls to the ground – CRASH! 

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You’re also about to hear this word – grinding. Two objects grind together by

rubbing against each other – to grind. Lastly, you’ll hear the word ‘rending’. If

you rend something, you tear it in two. So, that’s crashing, grinding and

rending.

Pen Hadow: Sometimes you do hear crashings of ice and grindings of ice. Mostly you hear

it at night, because you’re lying down, your ears against the ice… they are the

most extraordinary noises. There are terrific sort of rendings… metallic

rendings as if someone had got two giant pliers and was just pulling a car roof

apart. You’re lying in bed, at the end of a long day and then suddenly you hear:

[imitates ice rending]

William: Don’t forget that you can download the script for this programme, and find out

more about today’s vocabulary by going to the People and Places website on

BBC Learning English dot com. Goodbye!