fce reading about trash
موضوع صحبت درباره ی مشکلات زمین در کتاب اف سی ای
Speaking
Part 3
Collaborative task
Before you do the following Speaking Part 3 task, do the exercise in the Useful language box below.
1 Imagine that you belong to an environmental group and you want to inform people of the environmental issues below. Talk with your partner about what ordinary people can do to help solve these issues.
2 Now decide which two issues ordinary people can do most to help solve.
What can ordinary people do to help solve these issues?
Household waste
recycled paper
Traffic pollution
carbon monoxide
Climate change
rising sea levels
River and sea pollution
toxic effluent
Dirty streets
dog_ mess
Useful language
One vocabulary item has been given for each of the five issues above. Add two more of the following items to each issue.
bottle bank biofuel cars dumping waste exhaust fumes cigarette butts dropping litter plastic containers global warming greenhouse effect oil slick
When commenting on your partner's opinions you can use so, neither or nor and the language you saw on page 128 of Unit 10 for agreeing and disagreeing.
Reading and Use of English 2
Part 6
Gapped text
1 How many items do you have with you now which are made of or contain plastic? What other plastic items can you see in the classroom?
In what ways might your daily life be affected if there was no plastic?
2 Read the base text on page 14 7 about the North Pacific gyre. Is there any information in the text which surprises you?
3 Six sentences have been removed from the text. Choose from the sentences A-G the one which fits each gap (1-6). There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use.
The Trash Vortex
The North Pacific gyre is a large area of the Pacific in which the water moves slowly round in a clockwise direction. Winds are light and the currents tend to force any floating material, including plastics and other slow degrading rubbish, into the central area of the gyre, where it remains in huge quantities. This gyre is sometimes called the Trash Vortex or the Pacific Garbage Patch. Some plastics here will not break down in the lifetimes of the grandchildren of the people who threw them away.
Around 100 million tonnes of plastic are produced each year, of which about ten per cent ends up in the sea. Take a walk along any beach anywhere in the world and you will find polythene plastic bags, bottles and containers, plastic drums, polystyrene packing, pieces of polypropylene fishing net, traffic cones, disposable lighters, vehicle tyres and toothbrushes.
These larger items are the visible signs of a much larger problem. They do not degrade like natural materials.
A single one litre bottle could separate into enough tiny pieces to put one on every mile of beach in the entire world.
However, items such as bottle tops, lighters and balloons are consumed by seabirds and other animals which mistake them for food. A turtle found dead in Hawaii had over a thousand pieces of plastic in its stomach and intestines. It has been estimated that plastic kills over a million seabirds and one hundred thousand marine mammals and sea turtles each year.
The North Pacific gyre is only one of five major ocean gyres. The Sargasso Sea is a well known slow circulation area in the Atlantic, and research there has also demonstrated high concentrations of plastic particles present in the water.
In fact, around 70 per cent of discarded plastic sinks to the bottom. In the North Sea, Dutch scientists have counted around 110 pieces of litter for every square kilometre of the seabed, a staggering 600000 tonnes in the North Sea alone. These plastics can cover the sea bottom and kill the marine life which is found there.
The issue of plastic waste is one that needs to be urgently addressed. Obviously though, there is a need to make ship owners and operators, offshore platforms and fishing boat operators more aware of the consequences of irresponsible disposal of plastic items.
With so many threats to the world oceans including pollution, overfishing and climate change we urgently need to rescue marine biodiversity in the most effective way possible.
A At sea and on shore, under the influence of sunlight and the action of waves, they simply break down slowly into increasingly smaller particles.
B We can all contribute by avoiding plastics in the things we buy and by disposing of our waste responsibly.
C It is possible that this Trash Vortex problem is one which is present in other oceans as well.
D Even tiny jellyfish eat the small plastic particles floating in the water.
E They have been casually thrown away on land and at sea and carried ashore by wind and tide.
F Of course, not all plastic floats.
G This perhaps wouldn't be too much of a problem if the plastic had no harmful effects.
4 Give examples of ways in which we could 'avoid plastics in the things we buy'.
