Tell your partner about the city. Give as much detail as possible.

Have you visited the city your partner described? If yes, were your impressions the same? If not, would you like to visit it after hearing your partner's description? Why/Why not?

Vocabulary

Match a word from column A with its opposite from column B. Then use the words from column A to complete the sentences.

A

a) haphazard

b) tacky

c) clogged

d) soaring

e) in-your-face

f) awe-inspiring

В

1 modest

2 unimpressive

3 organised

4 free-flowing

5 stylish

6 low-rise

 

a) I think buying plastic souvenirs on holiday is really_________________.

b) With its 24-hour culture centred on gambling and entertainment, its neon signs and its brash nature, Las Vegas is one of the world's most_________________cities.

c) Arriving in Hong Kong harbour, you're immediately struck by the_________________ skyscrapers that stretch as far as the eye can see.

d) The streets were_________________with

people waiting for the procession to start.

e) The first sight of Mount Kilimanjaro on a clear day is_________________.

f) The council planned the new one-way system

in a vt /y_________________way. I kept

getting lost and having to ask for directions.

Which is the odd one out in the following groups of words?

a) overwhelming stunning awe-inspiring stylish

b) vibrant derelict colourful lively

c) tacky grubby dirty grimy

d) busy bustling energetic dusty

e) deserted neglected polluted derelict

Complete the texts below with these adjectives from 2.

bustling derelict overwhelming stylish neglected polluted stunning lively

Find the synonyms of these definitions by solving the anagrams on the right.

a) conveniently

b) places where you can have a meal

c) musicians who play or sing on the street

d) to go and see what something's like

e) to watch, look at or stare at someone

f) to eat an enormous amount of food

g) to complain loudly

1 kesbusr

2 hekcc tou

3 rgoeg

4 ntar

5 pawg ta

6 yihdnal

7 etasreie

Use words and phrases from 4 to fill the gaps in the following text.

1) Covent Garden is a great place to chill out, sit back and watch the world go by. There's a whole range of different (a)___________ lining the square, serving all kinds of food from all over the world. You can choose whether you want to just pick at the bar snacks served at the street cafes, or (b)___________yourself on the buffet at the Taj Indian restaurant. There are always plenty of celebrities around for you to (c)___________, and usually one or two self-proclaimed politicians (d)___________on about the state of the nation. If you prefer a spot of street theatre or a bit of music (e)___________the street artists and the (f)___________. They're always guaranteed to pull a crowd.

 

2) Bangkok amazing sight, the sheer of the city is totally

(a)_________________, with its (b)_________________street markets, crammed full of people from dawn to sunset, and its (c)_________________nightlife. In Khao San road the bars, discos and nightclubs stay open 'til the early hours of the morning. It's also a city of contrasts; hi-tech advertising standing cheek to jowl with ancient Buddhist temples, and traffic-clogged, heavily (d)_________________ motorways run through the middle of beautifully landscaped gardens.

 

3) Lisbon works its magic on you as soon as you arrive. Built on the hills

north of the river Tagus, it looks out over (d) There is a general feeling that people believe governments are not doing enough about global warming. (would seem)___________________________(e) Scientists haven't yet produced any substantial evidence that there is life on Mars. (there is little)___________________________(f)_________________views of the estuary out towards the Atlantic Ocean. To the east of the centre lies the area of the Alfama, a fairy tale jungle of narrow streets and beautiful old houses, once (f)_________________and in danger of falling into total disrepair, it is now the focus of development. The old docks, which had been (g)_________________until very recently, have been renovated and are now the focus of Lisbon night life with (h)_________________cafes, restaurants and clubs lining the water front, full and buzzing into the early hours.

 

Mind! Answer key is on page

Writing

Tasks

You are going to write a short description of a famous town or city in your country.

1. Choose the town or city you are going to write about.

2. Decide what kind of tourist or visitor you are writing for. (Young backpackers? Families? Culture vultures?)

3. Decide on three or four main points to include in your description.

4. Write a short description (about 200 words) in the style of a guide book.

5. Include as many sentences with inverted negative and limiting adverbials as you can. (Study the language reference)

6. Do NOT include the name of the town or city for your fellow students to guess what town or city you are describing.

7. Find out what information helped them guess.

 

 

UNIT III

MEGACITIES. LIFE AND PROBLEMS

Pre-reading.

Look at the article headline. MOVING IN OR MOVING OUT.

What do you think the article is about? Explain your answer.

You are going to read an article by M. Hager and J.Bartolet from the Newsweek on the problems of the world's megacities. Choose the best suitable heading from the list (A-H) to each part (0-6) of the article. There is one extra heading which you don't need to use. There is an example at the beginning (0).

A	From worse to bad
В	The change of the strategy
С	Megacity contrasts
D	The devil is not so black
E	Megacities of the world, unite!
F	The terrorists' paradise
G	The forecaster's failure
H	The official international stand

 

0. Everyone knows what a "megacity" looks like. Row upon row of cardboard and corrugated metal shacks in the shadow of gleaming skyscrapers. Bony children playing half-naked in the mud beneath a haze of smog. Laun­dry hanging overhead. In the city center, a quarter mile away, business people close deals over four-course lunches and make tennis dates on their cellular phones. Well-heeled shoppers browsing in pricey boutiques walk past beg­gars with outstretched hands. Limos with tinted windows compete with rickshaws for position on teeming streets. This is the scene that urban planners and environmentalists, have warned for decades would overtake us all.

Headline: С

1. Well, that future has come. And it may not be so bad after all. So say urban experts and officials. By ex­pert opinions, a majority of the earth's inhabitants lives in urban areas. More important, the quality of life in such megalopolises is better than was predicted. Life expectancy is longer in the big cities than in smaller ones or in the countryside. Urban dwellers are more likely to have good sewage disposal and running water than are their rural compatriots. And cities tend to offer superior medical care, greater educational opportunities and more jobs.

1 | Headline:

2. That has led to a reversal in the way policy planners are addressing rapid urbanization. They used to be trying to limit mass migration by urging people to stay on the farm. (Cuba and China evicted millions from the cities, Indonesia outlawed new arrivals from the countryside.) But now experts have taken a new approach. Rather than focus on preven­ting the migration of rural poor to the cities, they suggest concentrating on making those cities better places to live.

2 | Headline:

3. Still, the idea of big city bad, little village good dies hard because of a popular romantic attachment to the idea of agrarian life. But it is also a practical matter. Traditionally, international aid money has gone largely to fun­ding rural projects. Only recently have institutions like the World Bank begun to shift their focus. Many cities have trade and foreign relations across national borders, as shown by the commercial independence of some large cities in authoritarian nations like China. They may have more in common with one another than with rural regions of their own country. Solutions to high crime rates and massive traffic jams won't be found in any country's hinterland, but in other cities having the same problems. New York, for instance, borrowed an air-pollution program from Sao Paulo.

3 | Headline:

4. For all that, there's little agreement on what needs to be done to improve urban life. Some officials want to emphasize housing and rural issues. Others object to the new focus of improving city life and want to continue discouraging rural out-migration. However the UN report came down clearly on the side of urbanization: "Cities may provide better services to people, reduce poverty, improve life expectancy and more wisely manage our pla­net's massive population growth."

4 | Headline:

5. Most people flee to the cities because life there is generally better than the rural one. Their new homes may be dirty shanties without plumbing or heat. A regional-planning professor spent three years living in the slums of Brazil's largest cities and studying their residents' lives. "I went back with many of them to their hometowns, and the conditions there were nearly always worse," she says. The people who migrated to the cities are there to give their children a better life than they had.

5 | Headline:

 

6. At the same time, few of the bad predictions have come true. Though the number of megacities is rising, the growth of those cities themselves has slowed in the past years, even as the world's population doubled. Mexico City and Calcutta were each predicted to have 30 million to 40 million residents by the millennium. In fact, Calcutta had only 13 million, Mexico City - 18 million. That's still a lot, but it makes absurd the prediction made a decade ago that Mexico City would be so overcrowded it would have to be abandoned. In Sao Paulo, more people are mo­ving out than are moving in; the city's growth has slowed down from 5 percent in the 1980s to 1 percent today.

6 | Headline:

4. Analysis of ideas and relationships. Circle the letter next to the best answer.

 

1. In paragraph 0 the author:

a) describes advantages of a megacity

b) describes disadvantages of a megacity

c) describes contrasts of a megacity

d) describes possibilities of a megacity

2. Paragraph 2 enumerates:

a) advantages of a megacity

b) disadvantages of a megacity

c) contrasts of a megacity

a) possibilities of a megacity

 

3. The city planners' new policy consists in:

a) urging people to stay on the farm

b) evicting people from the cities

c) improving life conditions in cities

d) outlawing new arrivals from the countryside

 

4. The main idea of paragraph 3 is:

a) megacities need air-pollution programs

b) megacities can use international experience

c) megacities suffer from high crime rate

d) megacities' traffic is quite a problem

 

5. The UN new policy supports:

a) urbanization

b) traditional approaches

c) control of rural out-migration

d) housing and rural issues

 

6. Rural inhabitants migrate to big cities because:

a) they think about houses that lack plumbing and heat

b) they think about shanties

c) they think about their children

d) they think about their hometowns

7. In paragraph 6 the author states that:

a) forecasts have mostly failed

b) growth of megacities has increased lately

c) number of big cities hasn't changed lately

d) Calcutta predictions have in fact come true