How can WE make OUR city a better place to live?

Heavy traffic, air pollution and litter are among the most serious problems modern cities face nowadays. Ours is no exception. What can we do, then, to help make our city more pleasing to its residents?

First of all, it would be a good idea to encourage people to use public transport instead of their cars especially when commuting to work. The result would be fewer cars on the roads, and therefore fewer traffic jams.

Secondly, steps should be taken in order to solve the problem of air pollution. The situation could be improved if factories were moved out of the city. If this

happened, the air would not be so polluted.

Finally, efforts should be made to make our city a cleaner and healthier place to live. A useful suggestion would be to put more litter bins in the streets. If this was

done, people would stop dropping their rubbish on the ground, and our city would be cleaner.

There are many ways to make our city a better place to live. Adopting some of these measures would definitely result in better conditions for everyone.

 

WRITING ASSIGNMENT:

I. Activate words and collocations from your student’s book:

ask for some expert advice	be over someone / sth
carefree life	It would be a big success
collision	Just think!
consider it carefully	keep busy
cope with	keep in touch
determined to continue	make a tough decision
dilemmas	make decisions by throwing dice
fall in / fall out	make up his mind
feel a little concerned	phone a helpline
give up	Problems came up.
have a huge argument	respect and admire
have their own ideas	slight problem
solicitor	He is desperately keen to do this.
His life was trouble-free.	sort the problem out
ignore the problem	swept away
It would have been much more sensible and more supportive of him.
It would have been wrong to force her to give up.

 

II. Memorize extra vocabulary: idioms / proverbs

Honesty is the best policy.	Tomorrow is another day
Time and tide wait for no man.	Grasp all, lose all.
Second thoughts are better.	He that never climbed never fell
A change is good as a rest.	Good counsel does no harm.
If you run after two hares, you will catch neither.
Lean compromise is better than a fat lawsuit.
A trouble shared is a trouble halved
It’s no use crying over spilt milk.
If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem
If you cannot have the best, make the best of what you have.
If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.
As you make your bed, so you must lie upon it.
He who makes no mistakes makes nothing.

 

III. Make up as many sentences as you can using words and phrases suggested above.

IV. Perform the following pre-writing tasks:

Pre-writing task 1

Look at the problems (1-5) and match them to the solutions (a-e). Which of these problems do you think is the most / least serious? Can you think of anymore problems and solutions?

 

PROBLEMS	SOLUTIONS
1. air pollution	a) provide more litterbins
2. heavy traffic	b) move factories out of the city
3. nowhere for people to walk	c) encourage people to use public transport
4. nowhere for children to play	d) build more parks and playgrounds
5. litter	e) build wider pavements

 

1.2 Match the solutions above to each of the results below. Then talk about the problems, solutions and their results, as in the example:

e.g. If people were encouraged to use public transport, there would be fewer cars on the roads. So, the traffic would not be so heavy.

RESULTS

there would be fewer cars on the roads

the streets would be cleaner

the air would no longer be dangerous to breathe

children would have somewhere safe to play

people would be able to move around more easily

 

Pre-writing task 2

Read this excerpt from a psychology magazine. Sort out the problems and solutions mentioned there. Express your opinion. Pay your special attention to a correct use of reflexive and reciprocal pronouns.

SELF - TALK

Self-talk is the way we explain a problem to ourselves. It can affect how we feel and how we act. Take the case of Tom and Sara. They both laid off their jobs, but their reactions were very different.

Sara frequently called her friends, continued her free-time activities, and kept herself fit. Tom, on the other hand, spent all his time by himself, didn’t allow himself to have a good time, and gained ten pounds.

Why were their reactions so different from one another? They both lost their jobs, so the situation itself can’t explain Tom’s problems. The main difference was the way Tom and Sara explained the problem to themselves. Sara told herself that the problem was temporary and that she herself could change it. Tom saw himself as helpless and likely to be unemployed forever.

Positive self-talk can make the difference between winning and loosing, Many athletes use self-talk to help themselves succeed. For example, golf pro Jack Nicklaus used to imagine himself making a winning shot just before he played. Olympic swimmer Summer Sunders prepares herself for a race by smiling. One sports psychologist believes that Olympic athletes are not very different from one another. – they are all the best in their sports. When the top athletes compete against each other, the winner is the one with the most powerful positive “mental movies”.

Psychologists say that ordinary people themselves can use these techniques as well. We can create “mental movies” to help themselves succeed tin difficult situations.

Pre-writing task 3