SESSION 17: EXERCISES FOR DISCUSSION AND FINAL TASK
EXERCISES FOR DISCUSSION:
2.1 VOCABULARY: Think about these words, their meaning, their pronunciation, what they suggest you and their consequences:
- Tornados, twisters, a mile-wide whirlwind
- wildfires, a mega-heatwave, extreme dryness
- droughts, drought zones
- widespread floods, mudslides
- temperature and rainfall records, heavier rains
- deeper snowfalls
2.2 DISCUSSION: HERE ARE SOME QUESTIONS AND STATEMENTS WHICH YOU CAN THINK ABOUT AND TRY ASKING YOURSELF BEFORE YOU COME TO OUR DISCUSSION ON WEDNESDAY:
- Do you think the expression 'Global Weirding' is appropriate to the weather conditions the World is suffering?
- Think of the latest environmental disasters that have struck the World and have been shown worldwide in the News.
- The text says that in England and Wales drought zones have been declared and the weather and landscape is clearly changing. Has the landscape recently changed in your part of the World?
- What is the 'Climate Roller Coaster'?
- What effects can the Climate Roller Coaster have in Spain and Europe?
- How are these changes in climate going to affect poorer continents like Africa and South America?
- How does a natural disaster affect the economy of a country? What measures can a government take against these type of disasters?
- Why does the text say that impacts of extreme weather are greater in poorer countries?
- Why are rich countries more or less immune to these disasters?
- Do you agree with the statement that 'climate is becoming more extreme'?
- What is the weather like these days? Is it typical for this time of year?
- Have the weather patterns changed since you were a child?
2.3 THE NEWS: Read this article about the weather conditions in Britain now:
BIG CHILL SET TO LAST SEVERAL DAYS AS BRITAIN IS REDUCED TO A GO-SLOW
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/feb/04/snow-met-weather-warning-heathrow-flights?fb_action_ids=2309268989444&fb_action_types=news.reads&fb_source=other_multiline
PREPARING A DISCUSSION IS FUNDAMENTAL:
THIS MUST BE DONE IN TWO DIRECTIONS:
FIRST, YOU NEED TO LEARN NEW VOCABULARY AND EXPRESSIONS THAT YOU WILL HAVE TO USE FOR THE DISCUSSION.
SECONDLY, YOU HAVE TO PREPARE THE TOPIC BY LOOKING UP INFORMATION IN THE INTERNET, BOOKS, ENCYCLOPAEDIAS.
THIS WAY YOU WILL FEEL MUCH MORE CONFIDENT AND AT THE SAME TIME YOU WILL HAVE MUCH MORE TO TALK ABOUT IN THE ORAL SESSION.
FINAL TASK:
HERE IS ONE FINAL TASK THAT YOU MAY DO IN ORDER TO COVER THE FOUR SKILLS YOU SHOULD FOCUS ON WHEN LEARNING A LANGUAGE: LISTENING, READING, SPEAKING AND WRITING.
Write a composition and leave it in the blog as a comment to Session 17, I will edit it in the blog so that everybody can learn from other people´s opinions:
- Have the weather patterns changed since you were a child?
- Do you agree with the statement: 'Climate is becoming more extreme'. Express your opinion.
Recently, climate has been very strange, due to the differences among different seasons. That is the reason why we can strongly believe that climate is changing indeed. Nowadays, thanks to means of communication we are well informed, so we can realise how a lot of natural disasters occur each day around the world.
ReplyDeleteThere are different sorts of natural disasters, for example, draughts, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, mudslides, tsunamis, and so on. Some of them, can be caused due to mankind, because many of these disasters come from global warming, since humanity is being very aggressive with the Earth, thanks to greenhouse effect which is generated with carbon dioxide which avoid reflecting solar heat to the outer again.
Some scientists believe that some extreme conditions such as, draughts, floods, tornados, heat waves, etc, are caused because of the lack of responsibility we have with the Earth. Hence, in Africa, many countries are suffering draughts which have caused that many people have been forced to flee their countries to save their lives, knowing that many children have died in their mother’s arms without being able to finish the trip. On the contrary, we can find the opposite weather condition too, for instance, in Australia, they have suffered the most huge floods many people can remember there. These floods have caused that a lot of people have lost their houses, farms, businesses, animals, etc.
In Europe, the weather has not been better recently, since Siberian strong freezing winds have provoked the death of hundreds of people who lived outside in the street. There have been temperatures under minus 30º C and these strong conditions have passed from the north of Europe to the south. On the other side, in summer, lots of regions are suffering frequent heat waves, which kill people as well, especially elder ones who cannot survive to these temperatures which in many cases reach more than 45ºC.
I short, I believe that climate is changing quickly and for that reason we have to get used to living in so bad condition in the future. In addition, despite the fact that humanity has been suffering natural disasters since ever, we have to add the disasters we are provoking because we all do not know how protect our more precious treasure, which is our wonderful blue planet.
Miguel Ruano.
I completely agree with this statement, a proof of this climatic alteration is the change in temperature and in climatological events in recent years. Without going too far this year, Winter is being pretty cold and last Summer was scorching.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing to take into a count are seasons, usually, there should be four seasons, but nowadays we pass from Winter to Summer and vice versa in a short period of time without a middle season, such as Spring or Autumn.
As I mentioned above, not only temperature is changing, climatological events, such as flood, drought, hurricanes or earthquakes, are changing too. These events are more and more frequent, for instance ,in Spain, this year many places have suffered earthquakes of a great magnitudes and in the part of Catalonya, hurricanes are more commons every year.
According to scientists, these changes are due to global warming. Although, this fact is part of the life cycle of the earth, human race is the only responsible for the acceleration of this proccess. The main cause of rising temperature in the earth is greenhouse effect,which is a consequence of pumping out vast quantities of the carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
To put it in a nutshell, it is likely temperature keeps changing, we will have long and cold winters against hot and short summers.