План работ ы IV курса (первый язык) по аспект у
общего языка в март е-апреле 2008-2009 учебного года
1. Базовый учебник: «Английский для будущих дипломатов» Зелтынь Е.М., Легкодух Г.П
The Future is Now / Challenges of the 21st Century
Basic Course Book
Unit 18 Fears of Tomorrow
Unit 19 A New Century Beckons
Unit 24 Our built-in Moral Senses the Basic we Should go back to
Unit 45 The end of heroism
Home Reading Class: “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury
Additional File
Read the text. Say what in the author’s opinion is particularly dystopian about the global
prospects for the coming years. Do you personally share any of the author’s predictions?
November 2012: a dystopian dream
By Gideon Rachman
February 16 2009 19:27
On both sides of the Atlantic, senior officials are issuing dire warnings about global political
turmoil. In the US, Admiral Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, says instability
produced by the economic crisis is now the biggest short-term threat to US national security. In
Britain, Ed Balls, a cabinet minister, argues that the financial crisis is “more serious” than that of the
1930s, adding cheerfully: “And we all remember how the politics of that era were shaped by the
economy.”
All this is alarming – but also rather vague. So how might world politics look in four years’
time? Something like this, perhaps . . .
It is November,7 2012. At three in the morning, an exhausted-looking President Barack Obama
appears before weeping supporters in the ballroom of the Chicago Hilton and concedes defeat. The
euphoria of his victory-night speech in Grant Park four years earlier is a distant memory. The Obama
administration has been overwhelmed by America’s economic problems. Sarah Palin is the new
president of the US.
Elected on a ticket of populism at home and nationalism overseas, President-elect Palin starts to
take congratulatory phone calls from foreign leaders. First on the line is Avigdor Lieberman, the
prime minister of Israel; then comes President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Five different leaders
claiming to speak in the name of the European Union try to place calls – but they are all put on hold.
As for the Chinese leadership, the new president is not speaking to them. How could she, after she
has campaigned against the “communist currency manipulators of Beijing”?
The Chinese have resisted the temptation to call Mrs Palin a “capitalist running dog”. But
Maoist language is creeping back into Chinese official discourse, as the country struggles to adjust to
the collapse and closure of its export markets. Alarmed by the large number of unemployed in the
cities, the Communist party has abandoned plans to privatise rural land and invested heavily in
public works in the countryside and new collective farms. This policy is swiftly dubbed “the Great
Leap backwards”.
The world event that had most damaged Mr Obama was Iran’s successful test of a nuclear
weapon in 2011. The Republicans had hammered home their message that Mr Obama was “a second
Jimmy Carter”, who had been duped by hopes of striking a grand bargain with Iran.
The Iranian nuclear test had also driven Israeli politics even further to the right and set the stage
for the rise of Mr Lieberman. His campaign slogan in the 2011 election – “bomb them while they are
on the toilet” – was borrowed from Mr Putin and chanted gleefully by Mr Lieberman’s Russianspeaking supporters.
Mr Obama had successfully delivered on his campaign promise to get America out of Iraq. But
by 2012, the voters were taking that for granted. Nato’s messy withdrawal from Afghanistan had,
however, damaged him. The US and its allies had left behind a country run by a patchwork of more
or less co-operative warlords. The new anti-terror strategy was officially called “watch and strike”,
and unofficially dubbed “whack a mole”. It involved monitoring potential terrorist camps from a
distance and bombing them.
Mr Putin had said that he had no intention of gloating about Afghanistan, before adding: “But
the age of American arrogance is over.”
By 2010, Mr Putin was safely installed back in the Kremlin. The gravity of Russia’s economic
crisis had led the official media to clamour for a return to strong leadership. President Dmitry
Medvedev had taken the hint in early 2010 and stepped aside.
In 2011, the unstable democratic governments in Ukraine and Georgia had fallen, after weeks
of popular unrest. The Russians were suspected of orchestrating events but nobody could prove
anything. The Americans and Europeans had protested – but only feebly.
After the fall of the Merkel government in 2009, Germany was governed by a succession of
unstable coalitions and forgettable chancellors. The hope that had accompanied the election of David
Cameron as Britain’s prime minister, under the slogan “let the sunshine in”, had swiftly disappeared.
The hapless Mr Cameron was now the most unpopular prime minister in British history.
This left President Nicolas Sarkozy of France as the dominant figure in the EU. His divorce
from Carla Bruni and marriage to Madonna had only briefly distracted him.
Mr Sarkozy had weathered the denunciations that followed his decision in 2010 formally to
withdraw France from the EU’s regimes on competition and state aid. All main French banks and
industrial conglomerates were instructed to make 90 per cent of their investments at home. Mr
Sarkozy’s move was widely denounced across the EU – but then equally widely imitated.
At home, the French president was under pressure to go even further in a nationalist direction
from his main political opponents – “the postman and the housewife”, otherwise known as Olivier
Besancenot, a Trotskyite, and Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front. Ms Le Pen cited the rise
of Sarah Palin as an inspiration.
As the morning of November 7 wore on, President Palin herself took to the stage in Anchorage,
Alaska. Her supporters cheered and waved ice hockey sticks. “I’ve got a message for the mullahs and
the commies,” she roared: “America is back.”
Ex. 1 Сhoose words / word combinations that collocate with each of the following verbs:
concede, resist, strike, set, deliver. Translate these collocations into Russian
independence
a baby
the watch forward
defeat
the table
land to the enemy
a good / bad example
the pace
a goal
the temptation
a speech
a chord
one's hopes on smb. / smth
the flag
the stage
a blow
at the rights of every citizen
terror into his enemies
a match
the eye
on promise
fire
a bargain
from slavery
Ex.2 Read the article and then look at the statements below. Agree or disagree with
the opinions in the text. Underline the part of the text that gave you your answer.
Changing Attitudes and Trends
The past 40 years have seen astounding developments: globalisation, the end of the Cold
War, the Internet. The next 40 years may bring even more profound changes. In order to predict
the future we must first examine the past. Historians see history as being driven by a
combination of cumulative long-term trends and short to mid-term cycles, each of which
contains the seeds of a subsequent but familiar situation. There have been many projections
about the future which, with the benefit of hindsight, seem rather ridiculous. Who can forget the
predictions about the Y2K bug when commentators believed that societies would collapse and
satellites would fall from the sky? Unfortunately, as a result, many people today are more
sceptical about current predictions concerning global warming.
One of the few areas in which long-term trends can be clearly seen is demographic
statistics. These indicate that the population of the world will increase to about eight billion in
2026 and continue to rise to nine billion by 2050, after which it will flatten out. Some societies
have birth rates that are already locking their populations into absolute decline. Not only will the
populations of each of these societies dwindle, but an increasing proportion will be moving into
old age, when they are less productive and use more health resources. However, the weakness of
all such predictions is that humans meddle with their own history. Predictions about the future
affect how humans act or plan today and ultimately how events unfold. The challenge is to pick
the trends that are likely to be prolonged, but to also factor in human influence.




A cycle is usually repeated at some time
in the future.
We can look back and understand past
predictions.
Past predictions have caused people to
firmly believe in current predictions
Population figures can be predicted
quite accurately.
 Some countries are predicted to
experience a total decline in population
 The percentage of elderly people will
dwindle in some countries
 ... Elderly people work less
 To make accurate predictions we need to
take into account the effect people
have on their environment.
Look at the words in bold in the eight statements and find the words or phrases in
the text that are similar in meaning, or the opposite. The first one has been done for you
in the future - subsequent
Read the text and comment on the author’s statement “To understand that things happen
you have to understand that things vanish”.
Bruce Sterling - Prophet and loss
By Darren Waters
Technology editor, BBC News 13/03/2009
The difficulty with interviewing Bruce Sterling is knowing where to start. His interests range
from literature and design culture, to futurism, political activism, micro and macro economics,
technology and 11th Century writers.
Perhaps the simplest starting point would be: The future? Explain. But Sterling does not speak
in handy, journalist-friendly soundbites and rejects the notion of being a prophet. Instead he speaks
as he writes, launching verbal hand grenades packed densely with ideas, answers and counter
questions.
"I am a cult author; I don't write for the vast hamburger-eating, seething masses. I try to plant
mind bombs - do the most damage," he tells me. He is the author of 10 novels, many short stories
and is one of the most interesting, magpie bloggers of the modern-day techno-infused culture.
Forward facing
Along with writers such as William Gibson and Pat Cadigan, he drove the take-up of the
cyberpunk literary genre which both fomented and predicted contemporary society's heady mix of
technology and culture. But he is worried that his novel-writing days may soon be at an end.
"I am not sure I am going to be allowed to do it. American publishing is in distress. The book
stores are going, the big centralised publishers are very heavily indebted and they are small sections
of the centralised American media apparatus that have lost social credibility."
He adds: "People don't pay attention to novels. The socially important parts of American
communication are not taking part in novels. You can write them but they are not changing public
discourse. "You can also say that everybody in society has moved up a notch and everybody just
wants the executive summary."
Despite cyberpunk's prescience Sterling does not want to cast himself as a prophet. In his 1988
novel Islands in the Net he wrote of off-shore global terrorist groups, of de-localised, networked
corporations, and of computers becoming fashion items. "If you read a piece of science fiction that is
very accurate about future developments it makes you unhappy. When you read these books you
wonder why nothing was done about these problems if you were able to predict them. "It gives you a
sense of helplessness." But he adds: "There's a clear social need for someone willing to predict the
future. People really need prophets in the same way they need faith healers and witch doctors." But
he warns that looking to these prophets "doesn't galvanise people; it doesn't change their behaviour".
Sterling is not looking to produce manifestos of the future to try and corral people into making
change, despite his strong activist feelings around issues such as the global economy and climate
change. He says: "I like ideas as abstract constructs. I don't fancy myself as political organiser. "I am
too literary and poetic to be an organiser or rabble rouser. I am an attention philanthropist, always
pointing to stuff other people are doing."
Science fiction, he says, has as much relevance in today's world of seemingly relentless
scientific endeavour across many different fields as it did in the past when the perception of the pace
of change was arguably slower.
One of the recurring themes of Sterling's blog is obsolete media. It is a thread in his novels too:
In one scene of Islands in the Net the female protagonist trips on a half-buried video recorder, a relic
of the past. "I am not an industrialist. But it's up to me to talk about the loss. The future is
obsolescence in reverse. And obsolescence is a big part of maturity.
"To understand that things happen you have to understand that things vanish. A lot of it
deserves to be gone forever, but not all of it. I am especially worried that things disappear in
thoughtless fashion."
Brainstorm to answer the following questions: What are the advantages and the
disadvantages of living in a big city? What amenities should a city offer its residents and
commuters? Are you happy to be living in a big city? Give your personal reasons
Urbanization and Globalization
At the beginning of the twentieth century, 150 million people lived in urban settlements,
representing less than ten per cent of the world's population. As the century drew to a close, the
world's urban population has increased twentyfold to nearly 3,000 million, i.e. almost half the world's
population.
Two major urban trends have been observed at the close of the 20th century. First, contrary to
most predictions, population growth rates have slowed down for many cities in developing countries.
The largest cities in these countries grew far more slowly in the 1980s than during the previous two
decades. Second, the world is less dominated by very large cities than had been forecast. Less than
five per cent of the world's population lived in megacities in 1990. The prediction that cities such as
Calcutta and Mexico City would grow to gigantic conurbations of 30 to 40 million inhabitants did not
come true.
Two different tendencies in shaping the urban future of the third millennium can be discerned.
First, the progressive urbanization of the globe is certain. It has been estimated that in the first decade
of the twenty-first century more than half the world's population will be living in well-managed urban
settlements. Second, there will be growing interaction between urbanization and globalization.
Globalization is a multifaceted process of drawing countries, cities and people ever closer together
through increasing flows of goods, services, capital, technology and ideas. It has not been a boon to
all cities. While it has brought new opportunities and wealth to some cities, it has marginalized
others. The marginalized city is outside the cyber-ways, lacks the requisite information infrastructure
and is generally not able to plug into the global economy. Poor infrastructure has led to problems in
water supply, urban sanitation and transport. Environmental problems, especially air, water and noise
pollution have grown in many cities of the developing world. Growing social conflicts, such as
homelessness, crime and drug-dependence plague many cities. Some political scientists maintain that
rampant urban growth is increasing urban poverty and inequality, which in turn could spark a
weakening of the state, civil unrest, urban-based revolutions, and radical religious fundamentalism.
Nevertheless, in this century, the relevant unit of economic production, social organization and
knowledge generation will be the city. World cities will be especially influential in shaping the
development of the global economy. Urban areas of less developed countries will incur almost all of
the world's population growth and will envelop much of the world's population, while those of more
developed countries will experience population aging and an influx of immigrants.
Urban populations grow as a result of natural increase (when birth rates exceed death rates), net
in-migration (when more people move in than out), and sometimes because of the reclassification of
urban boundaries to encompass formerly rural population settlements. Because most people move to
take advantage of economic opportunities and because younger adults find it easier to move than
older adults, younger working-age people usually make up a large share of migrants.
The manner in which the population of a given country or region apportions itself over its
territory is dictated primarily by the way in which economic investment and activities distribute
themselves over that space. Other factors such as natural beauty, topography, climate and access to
services and amenities also influence individual residential choice, especially among affluential
people not in the labor force; however, at the aggregate level, people basically occupy space
according to the flow of economic opportunities. They go where they feel they have the best chance
of obtaining a better job and better income. Hence, people ultimately redistribute themselves
according to the spatial re-allocation of investments and jobs.
Yet urbanization in most less developed countries today differs from the early 20th-century
trends in Europe and the United States in at least five key respects: It is taking place at lower levels
of economic development; it is more dependent on changes in the international economy; it is based
on lower mortality and higher fertility; it involves many more people; and governments have
intervened to modify it.
The first great demographic benchmark of the 21st century occurred in 2005, as most of the
world's people became urban dwellers.
Cities have long acted as the engines of human cultural, technological and economic
development. Today they are highly dependent systems with tentacles stretching across the planet.
Modern communications have dramatically improved the nervous system of cities: they are the
production centres, the nerve centres and the brains of the global human effort.
Cities dominate global resource consumption. Occupying only 2 per cent of the world's land
surface, they use over 75 per cent of its resources. As centres of human social activity they are
characterised by their highly developed division of labour.
Cities depend on a multitude of supplies from elsewhere, including land-based resources, such
as foodstuffs and timber, and subterranean resources such as metals and fossil fuels. The way these
resources are used, via processing, combustion, and disposal, has profound effects on the living earth.
Cities are centre-stage in the global environmental drama of pollution, land degradation and
loss of species diversity. The concentration of intense economic processes and the high levels of
consumption in cities both increase their resource demands.
The critical question, as humanity moves to full urbanisation, is whether living standards in our
cities can be maintained but their environmental impacts curbed.
Cities – in addition to being the centers of cultural advancement and technological change - are
undeniably the axis of both demographic and economic growth in the beginning-of-century scenario.
The absolute scale and the sheer number of people involved in the current process of urbanization is
unprecedented and makes it one of the most significant transformations of the human habitat ever
witnessed.
The number, size, form, density and organization of cities, as well as the efficacy of urban
environmental management, will have a determining effect on resource use, waste generation and
disposal, as well as on the prospects for conservation of natural ecosystems. At the same time, cities
will continue to be influential in the fertility transition; they will also concentrate an increasing
proportion of economic activity and thus be pivotal in the improvement of social well-being.
Answer the following questions:
What common features characterize cities in all parts of the world?
What were the major urban tendencies late in the 20th century?
What tendencies in shaping the urban future of the third millennium can be discerned?
Expand on the following:
Cities have long acted as the engines of human cultural, technological and economic development
Cities, as they are today, are highly dependent systems with tentacles stretching across the planet.
Ex.3
Several compound adjectives are used in the text, such as well-managed, twentyfold, land-based,
centre-stage, foodstuffs. Compound adjectives are often formed from a present or past participle
with a preposition, another adjective or an adverb. Make compound words (with hyphens if
necessary) according to the definitions, using the word given as the first part of the compound.
1. fool
a) taking unnecessary risks
b) made in such a way that even a fool can understand or use safely
2. heart
a) central part of a country
b) burning sensation in the chest caused by indigestion
c) a man whose good looks excite romantic feelings in women
3. head
a) forward motion, progress
b) self-willed, obstinate
c) to identify a suitable person to fill a business position
4. foot
a) a safe place for the foot, especially when climbing
b) a row of lights along the front of a stage
c) additional piece of information printed at the bottom of a page
5. over
a) covered with clouds
b) sum of money drawn or borrowed from a bank in excess of one's deposit
c) failure to notice something
7. by
a) a road that enables the traveller to avoid going through the centre of a town
b) regulation made by a local authority
c) substance made or obtained during the manufacture of some other substance
8. hand
a) involving or offering active participation rather than theory
b) printed notice circulated by hand
c) a condition that markedly restricts a person's ability to function physically or mentally
9. light
a) cheerful, free from care
b) clever at stealing
c) giddy; thoughtless or forgetful
10. stand
a) unfriendly, distant in manner
b) stoppage
c) thing or person to be used or called on if necessary
11. up
a) tumult, violent disturbance
b) outcome, result
c) padding and covering of chairs and sofas
12. lay
a) person who is not an expert with regard to a profession, science or art
b) manner in which something is arranged or disposed
c) piece of surfaced land at the side of a road where cars may park
13. show
a) place where goods are displayed
b) a full declaration of facts, intentions, or strength
c) something produced mainly for show or to attract attention
14. quick
a) mentally alert
b) easily made angry
c) expanse of soil that sucks down anyone who tries to walk on it
15. back
a) accumulation of work or business not yet attended to
b) strength of character, courage
c) speaking evil of a person
16. eye
a) circumstance that brings enlightenment and surprise
b) an ugly or unpleasant thing to look at
c) one who has himself seen something happen
Ex. 4 Use a hyphen to combine one of the words in box A with one of the words in box B.
Then complete the sentences.
A double long short
one
B edged
sighted sided term
1 We need a................................plan for our transport systems that will take into account future
growth.
2 A warning sign was put at the site of the accident as a................................measure until a new
wall was built.
3 This argument appears to be a little.................................I'd like to hear the other side as well.
4 The management agreed to employ five more members of staff, which in hindsight was a
very............................decision because within a few weeks we were still understaffed.
5 Globalisation is a................................sword. It promotes multiculturalism while it erodes the
local culture.
Ex.5 Cross out the one word in each list that is NOT a synonym for the word in capitals.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
PROBLEM
SOLUTION
WORSEN
IMPROVE
CHANGE
difficulty, dilemma, benefit, challenge, obstacle
answer, key, remedy, resolution, setback
compound, deteriorate, enhance, exacerbate
advance, aggravate, flourish, progress, reform
acclimatise, adapt, adjust, amend, linger, modify, transform
Ex. 6 Complete the text with suitable adjectives given below. More than one adjective
may be possible.
adequate, basic, booming, catastrophic, decent, enormous, pressing, staggering
Megacities
The world's population is (1)................................, no more so than in its cities. Today,
there are 21 megacities, each containing more than 10 million inhabitants, three-quarters of
them in developing nations. By 2020, there are expected to be at least 27 megacities. Such a
(2)................................ rate of urbanisation brings its own problems, especially in developing
nations, where the majority of the megacities will be found.
Employment and educational opportunities are the main attraction of urban centres. But
hopes for a better life are often dashed as overpopulation puts an (3)................................strain
on the infrastructure of the cities and their ability to provide (4)................................ necessities
such as clean water and a place to live.
Many rural migrants fail to find (5)................................ work, and therefore cannot afford
(6)................................housing. In some megacities up to 50 per cent of the residents live in
slums. This problem is (7)................................. with the United Nations predicting that half the
world's population will be living in cities by next year. If the infrastructure within those cities
does not grow at the same rate the result will be (8)................................
Ex.7 Complete the text with suitable words given below
Ageing,
challenges,
compounded,
declining,
elderly,
migrating, population, present, rates, trends
factors,
implications,
Statistics show that in many countries the population will decline in the next 50 years.
The population of these countries will also age rapidly. What effect will this have on those
countries?
If current (1) …………… continue, then in some countries the (2) …………… is
expected to dwindle within the next 50 years. This problem is (3) …………… by the fact that
not only is the number of inhabitants diminishing, but they are also growing older. This (4)
…………… population will bring its own (5) …………… At (6) …………… there are
sufficient younger people to earn money and pay taxes to support the (7) ……………
However, within 50 years this will not be the case. There are several possible (8) ……………
contributing to this problem. First, birth (9) …………… in these countries are clearly falling.
Second, there could be an increase in the number of people (10) …………… away from these
areas.
The ageing and (11) …………… population is expected to have important (12)
…………… for the labour force and the quality of everyday life.
Ex. 8 Complete the text with words from the box
Acid, biodiversity, contaminated, deforestation, ecosystems, emissions, environmental,
erosion, exhaust, drought, fertilizers, greenhouse, waste
The advances made by humans have made us the dominant species on our planet.
However, several eminent scientists are concerned that we have become too successful, that our
way of life is putting an unprecedented strain on the Earth's (1) …………… and threatening
our future as a species. We are confronting (2) …………… p problems that are more taxing than
ever before, some of them seemingly insoluble. Many of the Earth's crises are chronic and
inexorably linked. Pollution is an obvious example of this affecting our air, water and soil.
The air is polluted by (3) …………… produced by cars and industry. Through (4)
…………… rain and (5) ................... gases these same (6) …………… fumes can have a
devastating impact on our climate. Climate change is arguably the greatest environmental
challenge facing our planet with increased storms, floods, (7) …………… and species losses
predicted. This will inevitably have a negative impact on (8) …………… and thus our
ecosystem.
The soil is (9) …………… by factories and power stations which can leave heavy
metals in the soil. Other human activities such as the overdevelopment of land and the clearing
of trees also take their toll on the quality of our soil; (10) …………… has been shown to cause
soil (11) …………… Certain farming practices can also pollute the land though the use of
chemical pesticides and (12) …………… This contamination in turn affects our rivers and
waterways and damages life there. The chemicals enter our food chain, moving from fish to
mammals to us. Our crops are also grown on land that is far from pristine. Affected species
include the polar bear, so not even the Arctic is immune.
Reducing (13) …………… and clearing up pollution costs money. Yet it is our quest
for wealth that generates so much of the refuse. There is an urgent need to find a way of life
that is less damaging to the Earth. This is not easy, but it is vital, because pollution is
pervasive and often life-threatening.
Consider how you would answer these questions.
1 What do you think is the greatest environmental threat we face today?
2 What can the government do to help protect the environment?
3 What can we as individuals do?
Match the words in bold with these synonyms.
Unspoiled pristine
crucial
unparalleled
extremely harmful
insurmountable
unaffected
omnipresent
unavoidably (x2)
persistent
challenging
Ex.9 Use a dictionary to check the different forms of the words in the box as well as the
prepositions used with them. Then complete the answers to the questions using the correct
form of the word in brackets. You will need to add prepositions to the words that are
underlined.
contaminate danger dispose erode pollute recycle risk sustain threat
I think our environment is (1) under threat from (threat) many different things. We
have allowed too much (2) ……………. (pollute) to enter our ecosystem and we are (3)
…………… (danger) poisoning ourselves as a result. I think soil (4) …………… (erode) and
water (5) …………… (contaminate) are two of the most urgent problems that we need to deal
with.
Clearly our current lifestyle is not (6) …………… (sustain). The government should
educate people about these problems and encourage us to change our habits. They need to show
everyone that we are putting the very future of our planet (7) ……………
We can make sure we don't throw (8) …………… (recycle) items into our normal
waste (9) …………… (dispose) bins. We can also help protect our planet by not using
phosphate-based detergents; this will help to keep (10) …………… (pollute) out of our food
chain.
Proficiency file
Open Cloze
New York shows way for urban renaissance
It's not (1) ………. pleasant to live in New York in the hot days of August. The grime on the
sidewalk has really begun to reek. The tourist hordes remind you (2) ………. little room you have
By next year, according to the United Nations, more than half the world's population will for
the first time live in towns and cities. New York's population growth is not spectacular. It's (4)
………. line with the growth of London, which is adding around 90,000 each year, 40,000 from
natural expansion and a (5) ………. 50,000 from inward migration.
But other cities have been growing (6) ………. faster even than New York or London - Madrid,
where the foreign population has multiplied four times in about six years, and Istanbul, where the
population has increased tenfold since 1950.
Cities may also be growing because individuals (7) ………. consumers want to live there.
People now want to live in dense areas because dense areas offer (8) ………. people want to
consume - opera, sports teams, art museums, varied cuisine.
The number of these "consumer immigrants" is (9) ……….small compared with the hundreds
of thousands of poorer economic migrants who traditionally head to the inner (10) ………..
Multiple choice lexical cloze
The Future
The environmental (1)……….for the future is mixed. In spite of economic and political
changes, interest in and (2)……….about the environment remains high. Problems of acid deposition,
chlorofluorocarbons and ozone depletion still seek solutions and concerted action. Until acid
depositions (3)………., loss of aquatic life in northern lakes and streams will continue and forest
growth may be affected. Water pollution will remain a growing problem as increasing human
population puts additional stress on the environment. To reduce environmental degradation and for
humanity to save its habitat, societies must recognise that resources are (4).......... Environmentalists
believe that, as populations and their demands increase, the idea of continuous growth must
(5)……….way to a more rational use of the environment, but that this can only be brought
(6)……….by a dramatic change in the attitude of the human species.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
A.
A.
A.
A.
A.
A.
line
concern
wane
finite
make
on
В.
В.
В.
В.
В.
В.
outset
attention
diminish
restricted
force
about
С.
С.
С.
С.
С.
С.
outcome
responsibility
depreciate
confined
give
off
D.
D.
D.
D.
D.
D.
outlook
consideration
curtail
bounded
clear
in
Word formation
5.4. Modern Culture
When people talk about contemporary culture they are just as
(0)…..likely…..to be talking about fast cars, trainers or high heels as they are to
be talking about Shostakovich or Shakespeare. Goods have become as
(1)............... a measure and marker of culture as the Great and the Good. The
word 'culture' can now cover just about anything. Culture is no longer merely
the beautiful and (2).............. It wasn't until the late twentieth century that a
(3).............. interest in objects began to (4).............. the traditional interest in isms, with historians, (5)............... critics and philosophers all suddenly
becoming fascinated by the meaning of objects, large and small. Is this a sign,
perhaps, of a society cracking under the strain of too many things? Our current
(6)............... with material culture, one might argue, is simply a (7).............. to
the Western crisis of abundance. There are obvious problems with this
materialist (8)............... of culture. If our experience of everyday life is so
(9).............., then how much more so is the (10)..............of our everyday things
under scrutiny.
like
mean
single
school, place
literate
obsessive
respond
concept
satisfy
spectator
Gapped Sentences
1.
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On Feb. 8, General Fonseka was seized by military police for allegedly conspiring to
…………… a coup
Endeavour and six astronauts rocketed into orbit Monday on what's likely the last nighttime
…………… for the shuttle program
Pyongyang's missile …………… presents a headache for the new Administration, which must
now find a path between punishing North Korea and getting back to the negotiating table
2.
Sales of new homes …………… to a record low in January, underscoring the formidable
challenges facing the housing industry as it tries to recover
This month's national elections won decisively by the ruling Congress-led government, has
…………… India's left-wing into crisis
Thousands of Russian Orthodox Church followers …………… into icy rivers to mark
Epiphany, cleansing themselves with water deemed holy for the day.
3.
Read an interesting piece on new geography that talks about Detroit's struggles and its
…………… as a lab for cutting-edge urban planning ideas.
San Francisco has just put up an online map of the solar power …………… of every block in
the city.
It's hard enough to find a job in this economy, and now some people are facing another hurdle:
…………… employers are holding their credit histories against them
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4.
There may be a handful of unreconstructed moral absolutists who still ……………
homosexuality as a sin or who favour a return to the Dark Ages for women, but they are vastly
outnumbered.
The Pew Institute’s survey found “a broad and deepening dislike of American” – although US
technology and popular culture is still held in high ……………...
Iran continues to play games with the rest of the world with …………… to its nuclear
program.
5.
Effects of peanut allergy …………… from mild itching and rashes to breathing difficulties
Public health officials grappling with the obesity epidemic have debated a wide …………… of
approaches to helping slim the American waistline.
And he wrote about John F. Kennedy from close range, as a White House "special assistant"
who advised on policy.
Patient Earth
Thomas E. Lovejoy January 19, 2007
Even though we should know better, it is natural to regard what we grew up with as the normal
state of affairs. Indeed, every generation has a different view of "the good old days." This is
particularly troublesome with respect to the environment and nature. Without some perspective of
what might be "normal," it is hard to understand the impact we have had on our planet and what to do
about it.
At the time I turned my hand to environment and conservation, the number of endangered
species worldwide was modest. To be sure there were the first signs of more pervasive problems
heralded in Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring," but they seemed amenable to straightforward and simple
fixes. Hole in the ozone layer? Find a substitute for chlorofluorocarbons. Acid rain and acid lakes?
Reduce sulfur emissions and do it economically by creating a market for sulfur trading. An
endangered rainforest? Create a protected area.
To be truly effective in most endeavors, including environmental work, it is important to lift
one's gaze from the particular to assess periodically the overall state of the exercise. That can
determine whether and how to alter strategy as new environmental problems emerge and
understanding deepens.
Current indicators can only tell us about the moment, whereas we need to be cognizant of
shifting environmental horizons — what could well become future baselines unless action is taken.
Doing so, one can only conclude that the environmental profession has changed from one in which
simple and often local interventions would work, to one in which we have become planet doctors. In
the oceans and on land it is impossible to find a place unaffected by human activities. We live in a
chemical soup of our own making. Even in the Arctic and Antarctica, animals accumulate toxic
compounds in their tissues. Rainforests and virtually all other natural habitats are in retreat. The
number of endangered birds, mammals and plants is soaring from multiple causes.
Perhaps as many as one quarter of all amphibian species are endangered through a strange
combination of factors, including a fatal fungal disease. With no tadpoles, some streams have turned
bright green from unconstrained algal growth. The great global cycles of carbon and nitrogen are
badly distorted, producing, among other things, climate change and acidifying oceans from
greenhouse gases plus multiple dead zones in estuaries and coastal waters. The rising temperatures
are already stressing coral reefs. In some parts of Siberia, the thawed permafrost bubbles with
methane like a Yellowstone hot spring.
While there is enough on the planet's environmental horizon to make us all want to throw up
our hands, as planet doctors we know diagnosis is just prelude to treatment.
There is a tremendous amount that can be done to right the imbalance without wrecking the
global economy. Indeed the recent Stern report on climate change, whatever its flaws, clearly
demonstrates that the implications of a deteriorating environment are more serious for the economy
than the cost of addressing it. Action is required in all segments of society: Government needs to put
the right incentives in place to encourage, for example, the right kinds of biofuels and other alternate
energy sources. Individual human aspiration needs to be provided choices that are environmentfriendly.
Clearly, there is an enormous role for the private sector. Happily, there are many signs that
some companies view this as an opportunity. The aluminum company Alcoa, in one of the most
energy-intensive industries, is seeking to make its Brazilian operations carbon-neutral and
sustainable in other ways as well. Generators made by Caterpillar run on methane from landfills.
Time magazine has analyzed the carbon in its product life cycle from tree harvest to disposal.
This is not the first time in our history that humanity has faced a huge and unprecedented
challenge. Environmental degradation is largely avoidable. It only requires us to take the planetary
diagnosis as seriously as our own individual annual checkups, and rise to the challenge with all of
our innate creativity.
Think about your daily routine. Make a list of five ways in which you could help the
environment by making changes to that routine
In your group draft a plan to make your region more environmentally friendly and attractive
for residents and tourists.
Think about:
rubbish removal / improved recycling
pedestrianisation / cycle path
better and cheaper public transport
tree planting and more green areas
Earth Hour '08: Did It Matter?
Mar. 27, 2008 By Bryan Walsh
The average American produces about 20 tons of the major greenhouse gas carbon dioxide
(CO2) every year. That might sound like a lot — and Americans do have among the biggest carbon
footprints in the world — but the entire world emits around 27 billion tons of CO2 each year,
through transportation, electricity use, deforestation. Look at those numbers for a moment, and you'll
realize there's very little that any of us can do on an individual level to stop climate change. Live like
a monk, take away your 20 tons — stop breathing if you'd like — and you'll barely scratch the
surface.
It's numbers like those that can make Earth Hour so easy to criticize. Starting at 8 p.m. on
Saturday, March 29 in Christchurch, New Zealand, citizens from around the world turned off their
lights for an hour, to draw attention to the connection between energy use and climate change. From
New Zealand, the event moved westward with the sun to Australia, Manila, Dubai, Dublin, New
York, Chicago and finally San Francisco, where both the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge
went dark for an hour. Carter Roberts, head of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which sponsored
Earth Hour, said the global event was designed to "make a statement about our commitment to solve
the climate change problem and symbolize the commitment that people will make throughout the rest
of the year." (Hear Roberts talk about Earth Hour on this week's Greencast.)
Earth Hour didn't suffer for a lack of gimmicks. Servers wearing glow-in-the-dark necklaces
sold eco-tins at bars and restaurants in Phoenix. A local yoga house in Michigan offered sessions by
lamplight, and the Sheraton Hotel in Chicago arranged check-in by candlelight. Watching the lights
wink off in major metropolitan areas now doubt looked impressive, but it's worth asking: What was
the point? As Roberts himself noted, the energy saved by turning off the lights for an hour "won't
make an enormous difference." So, if it won't cut carbon emissions, why bother then with Earth
Hour, or Earth Day or Earth Live, last year's daylong concert for the environment?
Because climate change is essentially a political problem, and the language of politics is
symbolism. Just because an act is symbolic doesn't mean it empty. The only way to truly reduce
greenhouse gas emissions, to take the pressure off global warming, is an international regime that
puts a cap and a price on climate pollution. And the only way that will happen is if politicians around
the world become convinced that climate change is an issue that matters to people, one that will
make them change the way they live, buy — and vote. "Unlike most of the issues that we grapple
with, climate change is global," said Roberts. "The pressure is on us to do the right thing." If shutting
off the lights for an hour on a Saturday night and doing yoga in the dark makes that political support,
well, visible, then Earth Hour will have been worth it.
The environmental movement is reaching a delicate moment. We're well past the point where
going green is novel, where just doing your bit to save the Earth deserves endless praise. We've
become inured to the existence of global warming, to its inconvenient truth, yet we sense that the
solutions we've been given — change a light bulb, change your life — fall far short of the scale of
the problem. We risk green fatigue because, after all, what can we do about it? But this is the
moment when we need to keep pushing in every way we can. The technologies that will help us
decarbonize energy are developing, but they need a push — and that will only happen if we keep
climate change near the top of our political agenda. Earth Hour, Earth Day, Earth Year — we'll need
it all.
The Future Is Now
By Joel Achenbach
April 13, 2008; The Washington Post
The most important things happening in the world today won't make tomorrow's front page.
They won't get mentioned by presidential candidates or Chris Matthews or Bill O'Reilly or any of the
other folks yammering and snorting on cable television.
They'll be happening in laboratories -- out of sight, inscrutable and unhyped until the very
moment when they change life as we know it.
Science and technology form a two-headed, unstoppable change agent. Problem is, most of us
are mystified and intimidated by such things as biotechnology, or nanotechnology, or the various
other-ologies that seem to be threatening to merge into a single unspeakable and incomprehensible
thing called biotechnonanogenomicology. We vaguely understand that this stuff is changing our
lives, but we feel as though it's all out of our control.
What's unnerving is the velocity at which the future sometimes arrives. Consider the Internet.
This powerful but highly disruptive technology crept out of the lab (a Pentagon think tank, actually)
and all but devoured modern civilization -- with almost no advance warning. The first use of the
word "internet" to refer to a computer network seems to have appeared in this newspaper on Sept. 26,
1988, in the Financial section, on page F30 -- about as deep into the paper as you can go without
hitting the bedrock of the classified ads. The scientists knew that computer networks could be
powerful. But how many knew that this Internet thing would change the way we communicate,
publish, sell, shop, conduct research, find old friends, do homework, plan trips and on and on?
It's not just us mortals, even scientists don't always grasp the significance of innovations.
Tomorrow's revolutionary technology may be in plain sight, but everyone's eyes, clouded by
conventional thinking, just can't detect it. So where does that leave the rest of us? In technological
Palookaville.
Science is becoming ever more specialized; technology is increasingly a series of black boxes,
impenetrable to but a few. Americans' poor science literacy means that science and technology exist
in a walled garden, a geek ghetto. We are a technocracy in which most of us don't really understand
what's happening around us. We stagger through a world of technological and medical miracles.
We're zombified by progress.
Our ability to monkey around with life itself is a reminder that ethics, religion and oldfashioned common sense will be needed in abundance in decades to come. How smart and flexible
and rambunctious do we want our computers to be? Let's not mess around with that Matrix business.
Every forward-thinking person almost ritually brings up the mortality issue. What'll happen to
society if one day people can stop the aging process? Or if only rich people can stop getting old?
It's interesting that politicians rarely address such matters. The future in general is something of
a suspect topic . . . a little goofy. Right now we're all focused on the next primary, the summer
conventions, the Olympics and their political implications, the fall election. The political cycle
enforces an emphasis on the immediate rather than the important.
And in fact, any prediction of what the world will be like more than, say, a year from now is a
matter of hubris. The professional visionaries don't even talk about predictions or forecasts but prefer
the word "scenarios." When Sen. John McCain, for example, declares that radical Islam is the
transcendent challenge of the 21st century, he's being sincere, but he's also being a bit of a
soothsayer. Environmental problems and resource scarcity could easily be the dominant global
dilemma. Or a virus with which we've yet to make our acquaintance. Or some other "wild card."
Some predictions are bang-on, such as sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke's declaration in 1945 that
there would someday be communications satellites orbiting the Earth. But Clarke's satellites had to
be occupied by repairmen who would maintain the huge computers required for space
communications. Even in the late 1960s, when Clarke collaborated with Stanley Kubrick on the
screenplay to "2001: A Space Odyssey," he assumed that computers would, over time, get bigger.
Says science-fiction writer Ben Bova, "We have built into us an idea that tomorrow is going to
be pretty much like today, which is very wrong."
The future is often viewed as an endless resource of innovation that will make problems go
away -- even though, if the past is any judge, innovations create their own set of new problems.
Climate change is at least in part a consequence of the invention of the steam engine in the early
1700s and all the industrial advances that followed.
Look again at the Internet. It's a fantastic tool, but it also threatens to disperse information we'd
rather keep under wraps, such as our personal medical data, or even the instructions for making a
fission bomb.
We need to keep our eyes open. The future is going to be here sooner than we think. It'll
surprise us. We'll try to figure out why we missed so many clues. And we'll go back and search the
archives, and see that thing we should have noticed on page F30.
Chris Matthews - s an American news anchor and liberal political commentator, known for his
nightly hour-long talk show, Hardball with Chris Matthews, which is televised on the American
cable television channel MSNBC. On weekends he hosts the syndicated NBC News-produced panel
discussion program, The Chris Matthews Show.
Bill O'Reilly - is an American television/radio host, author, syndicated columnist and selfdescribed "traditionalist" political commentator He is the host of the cable news program The
O'Reilly Factor on Fox News Channel. Prior to hosting The O'Reilly Factor,
Palookaville is a 1995 motion picture about a pair of trio burglars and their dysfunctional
family of origin. It is a comedy about bumbling buddies who decide to live a life of crime. But
there's a problem: the only thing they know about being criminals is what they've seen on TV so you
can imagine the problems they encounter when planning their big score