L esson 3:

Natural disasters

Lead in

1. All the students are asked to find a sheet of paper and a pencil. The teacher is going to read the description of a scene below and the students would try to draw it.

In the middle of the picture draw a man dressed in denims, green t-shirt and a baseball cap. We cannot see his shoes as he is surrounded by water which reaches his ankles. In front of him there are six mat-bags filled with sand. He goes to the mat-bags to add them to a water barrier which is a few meters away from the man (on his left). Several steps away from him (on the left) draw another person who helps to form the mat-bag barrier to prevent water flow. He is half-bend as he has just put a mat-bag to the protective mat line. He has a green t-shirt and denims as well.

In the left corner of the picture draw a third man holding a mat-bag of sand in his right hand. He is half turned to the viewer so we cannot see his face. He is dressed in denim shorts. He wears rubber gloves as well. His feet are covered with water. Behind the man draw 17 other mat-bags put in a pile.

On the background of the picture draw a two-storied white house with a little garden around it. The water almost reached it leavening just a few meters of dry spot. There is a fir tree in front of the house.

2. Look at the picture you’ve drawn. What has happened in the scene? Think of the other natural disasters you know. Give a definition for “natural disaster”.

3. Check your ideas. Make sentences to read the definition of natural disaster using the words below.

A opposed natural is event a natural, as to, with cause that in large-scale results loss of or damage an life disaster to property human.

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It even to weather related, geology, be or could outside the biology Earth factors.

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Examples and hurricanes are earthquakes, flooding droughts.

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epidemics be into sometimes Disease category are natural, but may considered disasters put a different.

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In factors cases, natural some and may disaster human to produce a combine.

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4. Look at the photos below. Find the photo which was described and drawn by you in the first exercise. Find 5 details which were not mentioned in the description above. Name the natural disasters depicted on the photos

Reading

1. You are going to read an article describing different types of natural disasters. Some sentences have been removed from the article. Fill in the gaps with the suitable sentence.

Tragedy Has a Language All Its Own 

by William Lozito 

1. ________________________________________ . Why is it that any event causing great loss and misfortune is described as "tragic"? Etymology is of little help in answering this question. The most likely derivation of the Greek word trago(i)dia (a verse play with specific dramatic structure, metrical expression, and performance conventions) is tragos ("goat") combined with o(i)de ("song" or "poem"). Classicists are still trying to figure out what goats have to do with anything.

2. So why do English-speakers persist in calling catastrophic but natural events "tragedies"? _____________________________________________________________________”Calamity," "cataclysm," "catastrophe"—all these are more accurate words to describe a natural disaster. Yet none has the universal resonance of "tragedy."

3. It is difficult to find the right English words to express sympathy and concern for those affected by Katrina. When it comes to describing the climatological events leading up to the storm, however,

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4.__________________________________________________________________. The word "typhoon" is roughly contemporaneous with "hurricane," but the Venetian merchant Caesar Frederick was talking about storms in the East Indies when he made mention of "typhoons." It's anybody's guess whether he was trying to say tai fung, the Cantonese term for cyclonic storms in the China Sea, or tufan, the Persian, Arabic, and Hindi term for the same thing.

5."Cyclone" is a relative latecomer to the scene, coined by Henry Piddington of the British East India Company in 1848 on the basis of the Greek word kyklos, which can mean either "circle" or "cycle."

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6. The Natural Disaster Reference Database classifies wildfires, eruptions, avalanches, tsunamis, earthquakes, landslides, flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes, cyclones, storm surges, lahars, and drought as natural disasters.

7. In its article on natural disasters, online encyclopedia Wikipedia adds blizzards and snowstorms, epidemics, famine, hail and ice storms, and sinkholes to the list. _____________________________________________________________________.

8. The word "disaster" itself comes from the Italian disastro, "ill-starred," and means a state of ruin and misfortune

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ "Catastrophe" didn't become a synonym of "disaster" until 1748; prior to that it meant only a reversal, particularly in a dramatic plot. Strophe is Greek for "turn," and kata is "down" or "downward." One could therefore say that an economic downturn is equivalent to an economic catastrophe.

A the English language is ripe and ready to aptly and precisely depict nature’s unfolding fury

B In modern usage a Coriolis storm is a hurricane in the Atlantic, a cyclone in the Indian Ocean, and a typhoon in the eastern Pacific

C It also provides as part of its definition of the phrase the shocking statement that a natural disaster isn't a natural disaster unless it destroys human lives and/or property

D Perhaps because no other word seems to have as much poignancy or power.

E It takes a sociologist to decide that the word refers exclusively to situations of extreme social disruption.

F What makes something a tragedy?

G The difference between a hurricane, a cyclone, and a typhoon seems to be largely a matter of where it takes place

Analyzing the text

1. Read the text one more time and fill in the table with the corresponding group of words

Words denoting natural disasters	Words describing natural disasters	Word combinations to describe the consequences of natural disasters
W___________, e__________, a____________, t__________, e____________, l___________, f____________, h___________, t____________, c___________, s____________ s___________, l____________, d___________, s____________, t____________, h____________, b___________, s_____________, e____________, f___________, h________, i______ s__________, s______________	Catastrophic, t_______________, c_______________, c_______________, c______________	cause great loss and misfortune, (to be) a___________ b_, d___________ h_________ l______, c______ e_______ s______________ d______________