Listening Comprehension: Natural Disasters

Natural Disasters: Hurricanes

Listening: https://soundcloud.com/violeta-marin-roldan/natural-disasters-intro-hurricanes

1.- Listen the recording and decide if the following statements are true or not.
1 All natural disasters occur with the same frequency.
2 Hurricanes start at sea.
3 "Tropical cyclone" is how hurricanes are called in the Indian ocean.
4 Tornados are common in Germany.
5 Scientists can stop hurricanes.

2.- Answer the following questions:
1 What is a hurricane?
2 How are hurricanes called in the Pacific Ocean?
3 What is the difference between a tornado and a hurricane?
4 Where do hurricanes happen?
5 How do they affect people?

3.- Add the missing word from the listening:
1 "But some of them are __________".
2 "________ in the Atlantic Ocean".
3 "The water evaporates from _________".
4 "More and more hot, _____________"
5 "Scientists can usually ______"

Pronunciation: Word Stress

Word Stress

What is Word Stress? 

In some languages, syllables in each word is pronounced with the exact same stress. However, English is not one of those languages, due to the fact that English has its own rhythm, complete with its own vocal music. This fact means that one part of a certain word is said louder and longer than other parts of the same word, all syllables are not pronounced with the same force or strength. This means that only one syllable is accentuated: English speakers say one syllable very loudly (big, strong), and the other syllables very quietly. So, the syllables that are not stressed are weak, small or quiet. As a consequence fluent speakers of English listen for the stressed syllables, not the weak ones. That's why if you use stress in your speech, you will instantly and automatically improve your pronunciation and your comprehension.

Why is Word Stress important?

Word Stress is a key factor to understand spoken English. Word Stress is something natural in native speakers, they don't even know they use it. However, it is not an optional extra that you can add to the English language, because it is part of the language! It is essential if you want to be understood by a native speaker of English.

Some helpful tips to master Word Stress: 

-A word can only have one stress. Although in a very long word you can have a secondary stress, it is always much smaller than the first one.

-Only vowels are stressed, never consonants.

-There are many exceptions to the rules, so use a dictionary to check the word stress of new words. Soon, and as a consequence of that, you will know English well enough to add word stress naturally.

Writing: Formal Letter 2 (Recommendation)

How to Write a Recommendation Letter 

Need to write or request a recommendation letter? Here are examples of different types of letter of recommendations, including letters for employment, academic letters of recommendation, and character / personal reference letters, with writing tips and advice.

• How to write a letter of recommendation

If you’re asked to provide a reference for a specific job, the most effective letter of recommendation will be one that is written with the requirements of that particular job in mind. When you’re asked to write a general recommendation letter, you can still focus on the types or category of jobs for which the person is applying.

First thing you have to do is to collect information. Ask the person for whom you are writing to supply you with a copy of the job posting and their resume (what is a resume?) or curriculum vitae (how to write a CV?) before you begin composing your letter. It can also be helpful to review their cover letter to see how they pitch their qualifications for the job.

When you are writing a more general recommendation, you should still ask the subject of your letter to outline their targets for employment. Ask them for an example or two of jobs they are applying for. Also ask them to share their most marketable assets for that type of work, especially ones you may have observed in your relationship with the person you are recommending.

Culture

Three Headaches for the Recycling Industry

The most advanced recycling operations in the world divert 75 percent or more of community waste away from landfills. In their efforts to achieve 100 percent recycling, or so-called Zero Waste, three products have proved particularly stubborn:

Diapers

The trouble is twofold: Diapers tend to be made of composite materials, including more than one type of plastic, and there is, of course, the organic waste.

Gary Liss, a recycling consultant in Northern California who sits on the board of several nonprofit recycling groups, including Zero Waste USA, said he knew of one model for recycling diapers, still in the trial stage in Santa Clarita, Calif., that involves separate curbside pickup for used diapers and then the pulling apart and cleaning of the constituent parts. But it’s expensive, Mr. Liss said, and economics are a big part of any recycling equation.

One way to pay for an approach like this would be for diaper manufacturers to include in the diaper’s sales price the cost of picking up used diapers and peeling them apart. But that is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

Mr. Liss said the diaper problem might get worse before it gets better. The reason: baby boomers. “It’s going to be an increasing amount of material as we use adult diapers,” he said. “We’re all headed that way.”

Plastic Bags

They are inexpensive and great for lugging light loads. But they are a nightmare for recycling plants, because they are so diaphanous that they float and cling and wrap and gum up multimillion-dollar machinery.They’re such a problem at Recology, an advanced recycling operation in San Francisco, that it used to shut down twice a day so that workers with box knives could cut the plastic bags out of the spinning discs that help separate paper from cans and bottles.

In 2012, San Francisco banned plastic bags at retail stores, but they still show up at the recycling plant and force workers to do regular cleanings — “like clearing your lungs,” said Robert Reed, Recology’s spokesman.

A growing number of cities require retailers to charge for bags at checkout, discouraging their use. And Patty Moore, president of Moore Recycling Associates, in Sonoma, Calif., which does recycling consulting and research, says there are roughly 18,000 plastic-bag drop-off sites in the United States, many of them at grocery stores.

From there, the bags — and other plastic “film,” like the plastic used to wrap toilet paper or paper towel rolls — are shipped to recyclers. The material is made into new bags or used for composite decking or other plastic products. (Bags are not alone among the plastic products that present recycling challenges; packing foam peanuts, for example, are also problematic.)

Juice Boxes

They are a perfect example of composites, a vexing category for recyclers that includes a wide range of items, like furniture or consumer packaging that binds different materials together, such as plastics and metal and paper fibers. See, too: diapers. (The juice-box industry says a typical non refrigerated carton, as it’s called, includes 74 percent paper, 22 percent polyethylene and 4 percent aluminum.) Those layers help preserve drinks, but also make the boxes extremely difficult to pull apart.

And to recycle, you must first sort. “It’s like separating an egg yolk from an egg,” Mr. Liss said of the composites problem. “It’s much easier to do before you stir it up.”

One possible solution is to create packaging that allows the materials to be more easily separated. Mr. Liss said an industry recycling group, The Carton Council, had been created to address the problem by developing additional sorting equipment. “The good news is that the industry is trying to figure it out,” Mr. Liss said. “They saw the problem, and they’re stepping up to address it.”

Source: The New York Times

Vocabulary about Nature + Idioms related to Nature

• Natural Disasters: 

-Acid Rain:
Rain which contains large amounts of harmful chemicals as a result of burning substances such as coal and oil.
-Drought:
A long period when there is little or no rain.
-Flood:
A large amount of water covering an area that is usually dry.
-Earthquake:
A sudden violent movement of the Earth's surface, sometimes causing great damage.
-Global Warming:
A gradual increase in world temperatures caused by polluting gases such as carbon dioxide which are collecting in the air around the Earth and preventing heat escaping into space.
-Greenhouse Effect:
An increase in the amount of carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere which is believed to be the cause of a gradual warming of the surface of the Earth.
-Oil Slick:
A layer of oil that is floating over a large area of the surface of the sea, usually because an accident has caused it to escape from a ship or container.
-Ozone Layer:
A layer of air high above the Earth, which contains a lot of ozone, and which prevents harmful ultraviolet light from the sun from reaching the Earth.
Scientists believe that there is a hole in the ozone layer.
-Pollution:
Damage caused to water, air.... by harmful substances or waste.
-Tsunami:
An extremely large wave caused by movement of the earth under the sea, often caused by an earthquake.

Grammar: Reported Speech

1.Reported Speech

The first thing we need to know about Reported Speech is that we use a 'reporting verb' like 'say' or 'tell'. If this verb is in the present tense, it's easy. We just put 'she says' and then the sentence:  

• Direct speech: “I like ice cream”.
• Reported speech: She says (that) she likes ice cream.

But, if the reporting verb is in the past tense, then usually we change the tenses in the reported speech:

• Direct speech: “I like ice cream”.
• Reported speech: She said (that) she liked ice cream.

Here you can check the different changes that take place in the sentence depending on the original tense: 

Sometimes when we change direct speech into reported speech we have to change time expressions too. We don't always have to do this, however. It depends on when we heard the direct speech and when we say the reported speech. For example:
It's Monday. Julie says "I'm leaving today".
If I tell someone on Monday, I say "Julie said she was leaving today".
If I tell someone on Tuesday, I say "Julie said she was leaving yesterday".
If I tell someone on Wednesday, I say "Julie said she was leaving on Monday".
If I tell someone a month later, I say "Julie said she was leaving that day".

2.Reported Questions

How can we make the reported speech here?  "Where do you live"?
In fact, it's not so different from reported statements. The tense changes are the same, and we keep the question word. The very important thing though is that, once we tell the question to someone else, it isn't a question any more. So we need to change the grammar to a normal positive sentence. A bit confusing? Maybe this example will help:

• Direct speech: "Who are you?"
• Reported speech: She asked me who I was.

  The direct question is in the present simple tense. We make a present simple question with 'do' or 'does' so I need to take that away. Then I need to change the verb to the past simple. 

 But, what if you need to report a 'yes / no' question? We don't have any question words to help us. Instead, we use 'if':

• Direct speech: "Do you like chocolate?"
• Reported speech: She asked me if I liked chocolate.

3.Reported Requests

What if someone asks you to do something (in a polite way)? For example:

• Direct speech: "Close the window, please"
• Or: "Could you close the window please?"
• Or: "Would you mind closing the window please?"

All of these requests mean the same thing, so we don't need to report every word when we tell another person about it. We simply use 'ask me + to + infinitive':

• Reported speech: She asked me to close the window.

4.Reported Orders

When someone tells you very directly to do something, We can say this is an 'order' in English. In fact, we make this into reported speech in the same way as a request. We just use 'tell' instead of 'ask':

• Direct speech: "Sit down!"
•  Reported speech: She told me to sit dow.

Reported Speech 1
Reported Speech 2

5.Excercises about Reported Speech:

Reading Comprehension: Crocodiles and Palm Trees in the Artic?

Crocodiles and Palm Trees in the Artic?

In even the bleakest climate change scenarios for the end of this century, science has offered hope that global warming would eventually slow down. But a new study published Monday eliminates such hope, projecting temperatures that rise lockstep with carbon emissions until the last drops of oil and lumps of coal are used up. Global temperatures will increase on average by 8 degrees Celsius (14.4 degrees F) over preindustrial levels by 2300 if all of Earth’s fossil fuel resources are burned, In the Arctic, average temperatures would rise by 17 degrees C (30.6 degrees F). If these temperatures do become reality, greenhouse gases would transform Earth into a place where food is scarce, parts of the world are uninhabitable for humans, and many species of animals and plants are wiped out, experts say.

"It would be as unrecognizable to us as a fully glaciated world," says Mylles Allen, head of a climate dynamics group at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Allen was not involved in the new study, but his research has focused on carbon’s cumulative impacts on climate. It also would heat the world to a level approaching that of the early Eocene period, 52 million to 56 million years ago, when palm trees grewas far North as Alaska and crocodiles swam in the Arctic.

Mammals survived Eocene temperatures; this is when early primates appeared. Some horses, however, shrank to the size of house cats, adjusting through evolution to a diet altered either by heat or carbon. Today's organisms and ecosystems may not be able to adapt to warming over the next 200 to 300 years—an instant on the geological time scale, says Scott Wing, the Smithsonian Institution’s curator of fossil plants.
Allen says not only could tropical rain forest systems collapse, but drought in southern Europe and the United States would be "completely catastrophic for agriculture." Wealthy nations might maintain food supply, but not places like southern Africa. "A lot of people would have to leave, or a lot of people would die," Allen says.