Skills Development Lesson 3: The Earth’s Resources
Read the sentences, then draw lines to match the words and their meanings.
We need fresh water; it isessential. We use water every day and we take it for granted. We think it will always be available and we don’t consider how lucky we are. Unfortunately there is a shortage of fresh water. Fortunately we can overcome this by using salt water from the sea! We can convert salt water into fresh water by removing the salt.
A / Luckily; with good luck.B / To change into a different form.
C / Absolutely necessary.
D / Not enough of something.
E / To expect something to be there all the time
F / To succeed when there is a problem
1 / Essential
2 / A shortage
3 / Take for granted
4 / Fortunately
5 / Overcome
6 / Convert
Ahmed and Khalid are talking about the problem of providing enough fresh water to meet the world’s needs.
Work in pairs. Predict the answers. Write two numbers and countries.
*plant: a production centre; a kind of factory
Read the text and check your answers:
Water is essential to life and we depend on it, yet many people take water for granted. As the population of the world increases, and with it the demand for water, there is a real danger that there will not be enough for mankind in years to come. In areas near the coast an obvious solution is to find ways of utilizing the plentiful supply of water from the sea.
Although we may think there is plenty of water to use every day, this is actually not so. Water covers 70% of the surface of the Earth, but 98% of this is undrinkable salt water. For this reason man has experimented through the ages with different methods of converting salt water into fresh water in a process called desalination, in which salt is removed from the water. The challenge nowadays is to do this on a much larger scale, and fortunately this is now happening.
A particularly successful producer of desalinated water is the United Arab Emirates, which installed its first desalination plants in 1972 and is home to the world’s largest desalination plant at Jebel Ali. The UAE now uses this process to supply drinking water to most of the country. In neighboring Saudi Arabia desalination is used on a large scale, with many desalination plants producing 25% of the world’s desalinated water; more than any other country.
China, with its rapid industrial growth, has also experienced an increased demand for water as well as energy. To overcome both of these shortages, China built a combined power and desalination plant in Zhejiang Province in the 1970s. Salt water is taken from the East China Sea and converted into fresh water. Some of this fresh water is then sold to industry, some is used to produce energy and the rest is sold as drinking water.
Unfortunately desalination is a costly process using lots of energy, so many countries do not use it. However, new technology is making this process much more efficient, effective and economical, which is very positive for the future. Indeed, with 25% of the world’s population living within 25 kms of the sea, desalination may be the answer to one of the major problems facing the world today.
Which of these is the best title for the text?
1) __ Why We Can’t Live Without Water. 2) __ Water: A Problem and a Solution. 3) __ Desalination in the Arab Gulf. 4) __ The History of Water.
Read the text again. Are these sentences TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN (i.e. there is no information on that subject)?
1) Most of the World is covered by water. ___
2) Desalination is a totally new idea. ___
3) The UAE was the first Arab country to have a desalination plant. ____
4) Saudi Arabia has the world’s biggest desalination plant. ____
5) There is a plant in China that produces both water and power. ____
6) Technology is making desalination cheaper. _____
7) Almost half the world’s population lives less than 25 km from the sea. ____
Use the information from the text to label the diagram.
Read the summary of the text on desalination and do the tasks:
1) Underlineor highlightthe main idea. (The thesis; the topic sentence).
2) In the second sentence underlineor highlightTWO pieces of evidence and an additional point.
3)The words below (a, b, c) are in the summary. Find words or expressions that mean the same in the main text. Example: Ocean(s) – Paragraph 1 (1 word) -Sea
a) Future generations – Paragraph 1 (5 words) - ______
b) Expensive – Paragraph 5 (1 word) - ______
c) Solution – Paragraph 5 (1 word) - ______
Read the text about air pollution in Cairo and give synonyms (words orphrases with the same meaning) for the highlighted words.
Air pollution in Cairo is now a serious problem and the cost to the nation is huge, in terms of both the health of the population and money.The World Health Organization reports that the air pollution in downtown Cairo is 10 to 100 times worse than the minimum safe limit, making it one of the most polluted cities in the world, along with such places as Bangkok, Delhi, Shanghai and Beijing. The result, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency, istoxic air that can cause serious lung diseases, including cancer.
The main causes of this air pollution in the Egyptian capital are open-air waste-burning, traffic, industry and the dust blown in from the desert.A study by the Cairo Air Improvement Project found that the burning of waste in the open air was the major cause, amounting to 36% of all pollutants in the air. Scientists and environmentalists are trying to solve this problem, but with the rapidly increasing population, the situation is actually getting worse.
One of the major problems is that the toxic air is not dispersed – blown away by the wind - but instead remains over the city. Experts say that the lack of rain, tall buildings and narrow streets hold the air in place, causing a thick haze to develop that looks like fog. This is similar to the conditions in Los Angeles, although the American city has the benefit of cleaner air coming in from the sea, while in Cairo the desert wind adds to the problem.
Considering all of these factors, the future is not bright for the residents of the historic metropolis. Experts predict that the quantity of harmful particles in the air over the city will increase, causing a corresponding rise in the number of people affected by respiratory illnesses such as asthma, lung cancer and
emphysema. “We need to act now”, said Ahmed Zaki, a specialist in lung disease at the Ain Shams University Hospital,“The air quality in this city is terrible and the people are paying the price with their health.”
1. nation: ______2. minimum: ______3. result: ______4. increasing: ______5. major: ______6. similar to: ______7. quantity: ______8. people: ______
Write a summary of the text about air pollution in Cairo. Remember to give the main ideas and present evidence. Use your own words wherever possible (paraphrase). You should write approximately 100 words.
______
1