Answer the questions.

Which part of Britain would you choose to live in? Why?

Is this the same part that you would like to visit for a holiday? Why?

2. Work in pairs and make up a dialogue between a travel agent and a customer, who wants to visit the country and wants to know some­thing about it. Use the facts from the text.

3. Read the text and make a similar report about Ukraine.

The land and climate in Britain have a notable lack of extremes. Britain has mountains, but none of them is very high; it also has flat land, but you cannot travel far without encountering hills; it has no really big rivers; it doesn’t usually get very cold in the winter or very hot in the summer; it has no active volcanoes, and an earth tremor which does no more than rattle teacups in a few houses is reported in the national news media.

Discussion

1. Here are some facts about the weather in Britain. Which do you

think are the most important for a visitor to know? Why do you

think so?

• The climate is temperate, neither very hot in summer (average temperature 15 Centigrade) nor very cold in winter (average 5 Centigrade).

• The weather often changes rapidly throughout the day.

• There is no dry season.

• The west of Britain has much more rain than the east: typically about 400 cm per year, compared to 60 cm.

• Britain lies in the zone of contact between tropical and polar air. This makes its weather very complex to predict.

• In summer the sunniest and warmest places in Britain are on the south coast. They get around 1700 hours of sunshine a year, compared with totals of 1100 to 1200 hours further north.

• In winter, the east of Britain tends to be colder than the west.

• The weather is a favourite topic of conversation in Britain.

• There are at least 150 weather forecasts every week on the five main British television channels.

2. Organize a discussion on the following questions.

What practical advice would you give to a visitor about the weather

in Britain?

What clothes should they bring in summer? In winter?

What advice would you give to a British visitor to your country?

1. Listen to the text and then fill in the blanks with the proper words.

The climate of Britain is more or less the same as that of the north­western part of the European^ (1). The popular belief

that it (2) all the time in Britain is simply not true.

The amount of rain that (3) on a town in Britain

(4) on where it is. Generally speaking, the further

west you go, the more rain you get. The mild (5)

mean that snow is a regular feature of the higher areas only. Occa­sionally, a whole winter goes by without any (6) at

all. The winters are in general a bit (7) in the east

of the country than they are in the west, while in summer, the south

is slightly (8) and sunnier than the north.

Why has Britain’s climate got such a bad (9)? Perhaps

it is for the same reason that British people always seem to be talking

about the (10). This is its changeability. There is a

saying that (11) doesn’t have a climate, it only has

weather. It may not rain very much altogether, but you can never be

(12) of a dry day; there can be cool days in July and

some quite warm days in January.

The lack of extremes is the reason why the country seems to be to­tally unprepared for hot or cold days. A bit of snow and a few days of

(13) and the trains stop working and the roads are

blocked; if the thermometer goes (14) 27°C, people

behave as if they were in the Sahara and the temperature makes front­page headlines. These things happen so - (15) that

it is not worth organizing life to be ready for them.