CITY TOUR pages 14-15

BUILDING BRIDGES / Tâche finale
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Why is New York called the Big Apple? In show business there’s a saying: There are many apples on the tree but only one Big Apple. New York is the most important artistic city in the USA so jazzmen and entertainers dubbed it the Big Apple.

A) Compréhension écrite

1)  Vocabulary: Find the equivalent in English for

embouchure= mouth (l.1) district= borough (l.3) île= island (l.5) Hollandais= Dutch (l. 6)

quartier= neighbourhood (paragraph 2 title) s’installer= settle (l. 14) juif= Jew (l. 18)

grille= grid (l.32)

2)  What do these dates and numbers correspond to? (Use function box)

5= the number of boroughs that make up New York

1626= the year the Dutch bought Manhattan from the Indians and called it New Amsterdam

24 (dollars/ bucks) = the sum the Dutch paid the Indians to buy Manhattan

1664= the year the British captured the colony and renamed it New York.

120= the number of different languages spoken in Queens.

9/11= the day in Sept. 2001 when the Twin Towers were destroyed in a terrorist attack

200= the number of films shot in New York every year.

NB: December 5th= December the fifth (prononcer “the” mais ne pas l’écrire)

3)  Match the phonetic transcription to one word from the text

a)  borough b) Manhattan c) island d) neighbourhood e) Asian f) Harlem

4)  Pair work: IO: Ask your partner questions about the text

-  What are the 5 boroughs of New York? They are the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Harlem and Staten Island.

-  Who were the first inhabitants of New York? The first inhabitants were the Indians.

-  How did New York become British? It became British when the British captured the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam in 1664 and renamed it New York.

-  What can you remember about the different neighbourhoods? Many Asians have settled in Chinatown and Italians in little Italy. Harlem’s population is African American but there’s also a Spanish Harlem. There are many Jews in Brooklyn and Greeks in Queens.

-  What surprised you most in the text? The number of languages spoken in Queens is amazing