[00:04.41]Lesson 33
[00:07.76]1.Dialogue
[00:11.60]Jackie is talking to Yang Pei about a conference which Jackie has just been to.
[00:18.96]What was the conference like?
[00:22.41]Very interesting.It was called "Saving the earth"
[00:27.27]and it was all about the damage that is being caused to the world.
[00:32.44]What did you do at the meeting?
[00:35.68]Well, we listened to lectures about pollution,
[00:40.65]agrculture,nuclear waste,radia-tion and so on.
[00:46.81]It's good idea to hold such conferences.
[00:51.17]Yes.If we go on polluting the world,it won't b fit for us to live in.
[00:57.94]I agree with you.We've got to so something about pollution.It's getting worse.
[01:04.50]Yes,it certainly is.
[01:07.97]If people don't sop pollutting the seas and rivers,there will be no fish left.
[01:14.14]That's quite true.We've got to think of ways of changing people's habits.
[01:20.38]Well,what else did you hear about at the meeting?
[01:24.74]There was a good talk about the increase in the world's population.
[01:30.10]If the population keeps growing so quickly,
[01:34.46]there will only be standing room left for us next century!
[01:39.45]That's a problem we Chinese must pay special attention to.
[01:44.41]Lesson 34
[01:52.46]2.Reading comprehension
[01:56.82]Read the three passages.
[02:00.29]Find the places on the map of the world where the damage has happened.
[02:05.57]EARTH
[02:07.92]The area of desert in the world is growing every year.
[02:12.88]Many parts of the world,
[02:16.05]which once had large populations and produced plenty of crops,
[02:21.51]have become deserts.
[02:24.67]Dunhuang in China,deep in the heart of the Gebi Desert,was once a great city.
[02:31.51]Cattle are one cause of the problem.
[02:35.35]In good years,farmers increase the numbers of their cattle.
[02:40.60]Then one year,the rains fail to come.
[02:44.96]The farmers do not want to kill any of their cattle,
[02:49.33]so the cattle eat all the grass and anything that grows on poorer land.
[02:55.07]If this continues for several years,
[02:58.91]the grass never grows again and the land becomes a desert.
[03:04.06]One suggested answer is for farmers to limit the numbers of their cattle.
[03:09.73]Another problem is that good soil is gradually lost.
[03:14.59]When trees are cut down,
[03:17.93]there is nothing to hold the soil in place on the hillside.
[03:22.68]So when it rains,the soil is washed down the hills and into the rivers.
[03:28.64]Strong winds can also blow away the valuable soil
[03:33.68]that lies on the top of the fields.
[03:37.76]AIR
[03:40.21]Air pollution comes from factories,power stations and cars.
[03:46.27]Chemicals in the smoke from power stations cause a lot of damage.
[03:52.02]They can travel hundreds of miles in the wind,
[03:56.38]before falling to the ground in the rain.
[04:00.33]But this "chemical rain"
[04:03.98]gradually destroys trees in the forests and kills fish in the lakes.
[04:10.25]In Germany,over 50% of the country's trees had been damaged by the year 1986.
[04:19.00]Time and time again there ate serious accidents that pollute the air.
[04:25.25]In 1986 there was a bad accident at a nuclear power station in Russia.
[04:32.69]A cloud of radiation crossed the whole of Europe.
[04:37.84]It is said that 125,000 people died in Russia
[04:43.77]as a result of illnesses caused by this accident.
[04:48.52]In 1984 there was a serious accident at a factory in India
[04:54.69]and a cloud of dangeous gas covered the town of Bhopal.
[05:00.15]Over 2500 people were killed that night,
[05:05.74]and hundreds of thousands of people were injured.
[05:13.00]WATER
[05:15.45]Water pollution is caused by waste from factories and cities.
[05:21.62]Oceans are able to clean themselves,
[05:25.77]but certain seas,once they become dirty,are not able to do so.
[05:32.23]One example is the mediterranean which lies between Europe and Africa.
[05:38.78]It has only one narrow entrance to the ocean in the west.
[05:44.24]One quarter of the shores of the Mediterranean are polluted
[05:49.81]and are no longer safe for swimming,
[05:53.75]as a lot of diseases are present in the water.
[05:58.19]In most places it is not safe to eat the fish.
[06:03.26]Lakes also have the same problems.
[06:07.31]Lake Baikal in Asia was once the cleanest in the world,
[06:12.66]with over 700 different kinds of plant and animal life.
[06:18.54]Now,however,the waters of this great lake,
[06:23.58]which is also the world's deepest (over 1,740 metres),
[06:31.05]have been dirtied by waste from a chemical factory.
[06:36.02]In 1989 an oil tanker hit a rock off the northwest coast of Alaska.
[06:43.77]35,000 tons of oil poured into the sea.
[06:49.34]The accident was one of the worst in history.
[06:53.88]More than 34,000 birds and 10,000 animals were killed.
[07:00.65]4,800 square kilometres of ocean were polluted.
[07:06.81]Lesson 35
[07:14.96]1.Reading comprehension
[07:19.54]ANIMALS IN DANGER
[07:23.01]Three billion years after life began,
[07:27.56]the earth is now the home to many different kinds of living things
[07:33.12]- perhaps five to ten million kinds.
[07:37.27]However,many of these are dying out.
[07:41.64]It is thought that between the years 1550 and 1950
[07:47.83]an average of one kind of living thing died out each year.
[07:53.39]By 1985 this had risen to one per day.
[07:58.85]Between 1980 and 2010
[08:03.60]we may lose another half a million different kinds of living things.
[08:09.46]There are many reasons for animals dying out,
[08:13.92]but the most important one is the part that humans have played.
[08:19.49]First,many animals have been killed for food.
[08:24.35]Second,many of the places where these animals used to live have been destroyed.
[08:31.11]Dry lands have been watered.
[08:34.59]Wet lands have been turned into fields.
[08:38.84]Forests have been cleared.
[08:42.19]Much land has either been changed to farmland or used for building.
[08:48.14]Polluted rivers and lakes have also been a cause of death.
[08:53.50]One exaple of an animal in danger is the tiger.
[08:58.46]There are three types of tiger living in China:
[09:02.72]the South China,the Northeastern,and the Bengal.
[09:07.89]In all there are probably no more than a total of 400 tigers left in China.
[09:14.95]Many of the forests where they lived were destroyed.
[09:19.49]Also,tigers were hunted and killed
[09:23.75]until in many areas the entire population had disappeared.
[09:29.39]In 1900 there were about 100,000 tigers in Asia.
[09:35.66]In 1970 when the shooting of tigers was stopped there were just 5,000 left.
[09:43.11]In India,however,the population of tigers has increased,
[09:48.67]from 2,000 in 1972 to about 5,000 in 1989.
[09:56.04]Perhaps the same progress can be made in China.
[10:01.00]3.Reading comprehension
[10:05.26]Read the text and mark all the past participles which you can find in it.
[10:11.32]A DAY IN THE FOREST
[10:14.48]Last Monday our class went on an organized trip to a forest to study the wildlife.
[10:21.92]We travelled by bus.It took us two and a half hours to get to the forest.
[10:28.69]When we arrived,we were given printed question papers.
[10:34.02]We had to fill in the answers in our notebooks.
[10:38.48]The purpose of the trip
[10:41.54]was to record all the wildlife and plants that we could find in the forest.
[10:47.78]Whenever we found an unknown plant,we wrote "unknown" in our notebooks.
[10:53.95]If none of us knew the name of the plant,we wrote "unknown" in our notebooks.
[11:00.92]The gate into the forest was open,so we entered it.
[11:05.68]We all started looking for new types of plant.
[11:09.83]Sun Yao,our monitor and I remembered a programme that a well-known
[11:15.89]film direcor had made about the forest.
[11:20.15]She had shown pictures of a plant that had recently been discovered.
[11:25.61]She had not said,however,where it could be found.
[11:30.47]She said it was a well-kept secret.
[11:34.31]We decided to try and find this plant.
[11:38.57]We had our picnic lunch in the forest next to a fallen tree.
[11:43.92]After lunch we put some water into a bottle
[11:48.28]and did tests to see if it was polluted.
[11:52.65]We were all very interested to see the results.
[11:57.11]In fact,the water was not at all polluted.
[12:01.66]In the afternoon,we all went off separately to look for new plants.
[12:07.72]At five o'clock we started walking bacd to the entrance to the forest.
[12:13.49]Suddenly someone said,"Has anyone seen Sun Yao?He must be lost."
[12:20.26]Three of us walked back about one kilometre and found Sun Yao.
[12:25.72]He was busy measuring a plant and taking photographs of it.
[12:31.07]Pointing to the young plant,
[12:34.31]he asded me if that was the type of plant we had ween in the film.
[12:39.48]To my great joy,the plant did look exactly like what we were looking for.
[12:45.83]All of us felt very happy |