8.2 Say if you know any road signs and what way they help you to survive in a big city

9 Text VIII. The future

What’s going to happen?

Read the text below, and work in a group to reduce the member of sentences to ten. Choose the ones you think fit in best with your ideals about the future. You should all agree on the final choice.

The Future

In the future there will be no time.

In the future there will be too much time.

In the future we will only work one day a week.

In the future we will become free of all thoughts processes; thinking will be computer aided.

In the future heroes and heroines will be greens: men and women who battle against all odds with the mess we will continue to make on planet earth.

The future is clear.

The future is bright.

The future is wrapped up in polythene and stored on discs in the filing cabinets of politicians.

In the future the nuclear family will be nuked along with the muesli and Habitat furniture.

Sex, class, religious and race differences will disappear with the future and all of us in it.

The President of the United States of the World will be a woman in sheep’s clothing.

In the future we will all wear leisure clothes all day and all night.

In the future there will be global media warfare.

In the future the population of the Third World will rise proportionately to its word debt and growing inability to feed itself.

In the future the developed world will continue to feed itself fatly on the back of the Third World poverty.

In the future we will have video-phones, nation-to-nation interface, honeymoons on Venus, and instant ice, guaranteed free of all preservatives.

The future is an ecological nightmare; fossil fuel shortage, holey ozone layer, depleted rainforest, toxic waste, poisoned seas, and extinct species.

The future will make us sit up and listen.

The future is our master and we its servants.

The future is our goal, our gaol and our purgatory.

To the future.

9.2 Now you are going to further reduce “The Future” to five lines, but this time in a different group again, you should all agree on the final choice that best represent your own views.

3. Extension. Say what the world will be like

9. Text IX. New life, new earth, new town

10.1What do you think? Try and answer the questions

Where do we get all the food we eat from?

What sort of farms do we have?

What sort of town do we have?

Do we use the land sensibly?

Do we need to find out more about how plants and animals live together?

How could we find out more?

Look up the word “ecosystem” in your dictionaries.

Imagine you went to colonize another planet.

What would you live in?

What would you eat?

What houses would you build?

What native or known cities and town would you like to have?

10.2 Read the following text. Put the paragraphs in the correct order

1. Not only this, but also there was a problem of plant fertilization, and how to distribute the oxygen evenly. Normally bees pollinate plants, but because glass cuts out ultra violet rays, which bees use to navigate, another solution had to be found. Hummingbirds were used. Generating waves mechanically in the ‘ocean’ was one of the ways to overcome the oxygen distribution problem.

2. Eight scientists got the go ahead to incarcerate themselves for two years in a giant greenhouse. The project aims to provide a working model of Earth, and is intended to function just like the real thing.

3. The project was set up jointly. The ideals came from a London – based ecology think tank, and the finance from a Texan billionaire. The huge steel and glass structure was built in the Arizona desert, and was not without its teething problems.

4. This project is expensive, though the organizers hope to make some of the money back by providing a series of viewing galleries, from which tourists could see a world at work.

5. Although their living in terms of food will be far from luxurious the scientists will be housed in a luxury block attached to the biosphere. You could easily imagine similar conditions for a colony living in space.

6. Every habitat has been recreated and contains most of the flora and fauna found in the original – dangerous and large animals have been left out. By installing a carefully calculated balance of prey and predator, a complete food chain has been established.

7. For example, the savanna grasses have to be broken down for recycling. This is done by termites, which, unfortunately, preferred the sealant around the panes of grass. The sealant had to be changed. Then there was the problem of how to seal the biosphere underground, and how to stop the air pressure blowing out the glass when it expanded in the sun’s heat. The former was solved by using plastic coated steel, the latter by, building a special pair of mechanical ‘lungs’ which expanded to accommodate the extra air volume.

8. But it was the decisions of what to grow and what to eat which most greatly affect the eight scientists. They will grow wheat, sorghum, potatoes, peas and beans, and raise some miniature pigs. The ocean will also have a small stock of fish.

3. Give the tittles to each paragraph

3. Say what the different problems they had in designing the biosphere and how they were overcome

3. Something to think about

The American and Russian space programs were not only useful in terms of space exploration, but there were also many spin offs – inventions which came to be used in our everyday lives. Non-stick frying pans is an example. Can you think of any findings from this experiment that might be useful to us in the same way?

10.6 Describe the future town using pictures B.1 and Г.1 (см. Приложение В и Г )