Recommendations

1. Title: Articles usually have a title. The title should be informative (give the reader an idea of the subject) and attractive (make the reader want to read the article).

2. Opening: The start of the article should be linked to the title, introduce the topic and engage the reader. Often, an article starts with a question which introduces the topic which will be discussed in the article.

3. Paragraphs: Should be clearly defined, not too long and clearly linked.

4. Ending: Should conclude the article.

5. Register or Style: Could be light or serious (but should be consistent), depending on who the target reader is. May use some rhetorical questions e.g. Can you imagine our Earth from the bird's-eye perspective?

6. Range of language: Probably, some use of descriptive language and language of opinion. Always give some examples.

Exercise 12. Read the text below and do the tasks that follow it.

The united kingdom

The British Isles form a group lying off the north-west coast of Europe. The largest islands are Great Britain proper (comprising the mainlands of England, Wales and Scotland) and Ireland (comprising Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic). Great Britain together with Northern Ireland constitutes the United Kingdom. Thus, the United Kingdom is composed of four countries. The largest of these is England which is divided into 45 administrative counties. The capital city is London which is situated in south-east England.

The United Kingdom has a total area of about 244, 100 square kilometres. About 70 % is devoted to agriculture, about 7 % is wasteland, moorland and mountains, about 13 % is devoted to urban development, and 10 % is forest and woodland. The seas surrounding the British Isles are very shallow because the islands lie on the continental shelf.

Despite their small area, the British Isles contain rocks of all the main geological periods. In Great Britain the newer rocks, which are less resistant to weather, and have thus been worn down to form low land, lie to the south and east, and the island can therefore be divided roughly into two main regions, Lowland Britain and Highland Britain.

In Lowland Britain the newer and softer rocks of southern and eastern England have been eroded into a rich plain, more often rolling than flat and rising to chalk and limestone hills, but hardly ever reaching a thousand feet above sea level. The boundaries of this region run roughly from the mouth of the Tyne in the north-east of England to the mouth of the Exe in the south-west.

Highland Britain comprises the whole of Scotland as well as the mountains of the Scottish Highlands, the Lake District in north-west England, the broad central upland known as the Pennines, almost the whole of Wales, and the south-western peninsula of England coinciding approximately with the counties of Devon and Cornwall. Highland Britain contains all the mountainous parts of Great Britain and extensive uplands lying above one thousand feet. This high ground, however, is not continuous but is interspersed with valleys and plains.

Britain’s complex geology is one of the main reasons for its rich variety of scenery found within short distances, particularly on the coast. The ancient rocks of Highland Britain often reach the coast in towering cliffs; elsewhere the sea may penetrate in deep lochs, as along much of the west coast of Scotland. Even around Lowland Britain there are striking contrasts. In some parts the soft, white limestone – the chalk – forms the world-famous white cliffs of Dover or the Needles off the Isle of Wight; while other parts of the south and south-east coastline have beaches of sand and shingle. The eastern coast of England, between the Humber and the Thames estuary, is for the most part low-lying, and for hundreds of years, some stretches of it have been protected against the sea by embankments. These have occasionally been breached, as in the flood disaster of January 1953, which was caused by violent gales and exceptionally high tides.

The marked tidal movement around the British Isles sweeps away much of the sand and mud brought down by the rivers and makes the estuaries of the short British rivers valuable as natural harbours.

Task 1. Complete the following passage by using appropriate verb forms in the spaces. Sometimes a preposition is needed as well.

1. Great Britain is an island that ______________ the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea.

2. It ______________ the mainlands of England, Wales and Scotland.

3. Ireland ______________ the west coast of Great Britain.

4. It ______________ Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.

5. The United Kingdom ______________ of Britain together with Northern Ireland.

6. The capital city is London which ______________ south-east England.

7. In 1999, the population of the United Kingdom ______________ 59 million.

8. The density of population ______________ 233 people per square km.

9. In the United Kingdom, English is the language which _____ predominantly ______________.

Task 2. Complete the sentences.

1. The British Isles lie off the ______________ coast of Europe.

2. The largest of the British Isles are ______________ and ________________.

3. The United Kingdom is constituted by ______________ and ______________.

4. England is divided into 45 administrative ______________.

5. Great Britain can be divided into two main regions: ______________ and ______________.

6. Britain’s ______________ ______________ is one of the main reasons for its rich variety of scenery.

7. In some parts of Lowland Britain, the soft white limestone forms the world-famous white ______________.

Task 3. Look at the map of Scotland. Fill in the spaces in the text below with proper nouns according to the map.

1. Scotland occupies the northern part of Great Britain.

2. It is separated from Northern Ireland by _________________ while _________________ form the border with England.

3. It lies between two large bodies of water: _________________ to the west and _________________ to the east.

4. Many islands lie off its coast: to the north are _________________ and to the west are _________________ _________________ and _________________ are large islands in this group.

5. The highest mountains are _________________ and _________________ in _________________ .

6. Other notable ranges of mountains or hills are _________________ in the south of the country and _________________ in the north.

7. The principal rivers are _________________ , _________________ and _________________

8. There are numerous lakes, or ‘lochs’ as they are called, for example _________________ and _________________.

9. The largest cities are _________________, which lies on _________________, and _________________________, which is close to _________________.

Task 4. Read the text below taken from “The Beauty of Britain” by J.B. Priestley. Explain its main idea. What does the author criticise? How many words referring to geography can you find in the text?

We live in one of the most beautiful islands in the world. This is a fact we are always forgetting. When beautiful islands are mentioned, we think of Trinidad and Tahiti. These are fine, romantic places, but they are not really as exquisitely beautiful as our own Britain. Before the mines and factories came, and long before we went from bad to worse with our arterial roads and petrol stations and horrible brick bungalows, this country must have been an enchantment. Even now, after we have been busy for so long flinging mud at this fair pale face, the enchantment still remains. Sometimes I doubt if we deserve to possess it. There can be few parts of the world in which commercial greed and public indifference have combined to do more damage than they have here. The process continues. It is still too often assumed that any enterprising fellow after quick profits has a perfect right to destroy a loveliness that is the heritage of the whole community.

The beauty of our country is as hard to define as it is easy to enjoy. Remembering other and larger countries, we see at once that one of its charms is that it is immensely varied within a small compass. We have here no vast mountain ranges, no illimitable plains. But we have superb variety. A great deal of everything is packed into little space. I suspect that we are always, faintly conscious of the fact that this is a smallish island, with the sea always round the corner. We know that everything has to be neatly packed into a small space. Nature, we feel, has carefully adjusted things – mountains, plains, rivers, lakes – to the scale of the island itself. A mountain 12, 000 feet high would be a horrible monster here, as wrong as a plain 400 miles long, a river as broad as the Mississippi. Though the geographical features of this island are comparatively small, and there is astonishing variety almost everywhere, that does not mean that our mountains are not mountains, our plains are not plains.

My own favourite country is that of the Yorkshire Dales. A day’s walk among them will give you almost everything fit to be seen on this earth. Within a few hours, you have enjoyed the green valleys, with their rivers, fine old bridges, pleasant villages, hanging woods, smooth fields, and then the moorland slopes, with their rushing streams, stone walls, salty winds and crying curlews, white farmhouses, and then the lonely heights which seem to be miles above the ordinary world, and moorland tracks as remote, it seems, as trails in Mongolia.

We have greater resources at our command than our ancestors had, and we are more impatient than they were. Thanks to our new resources, we are better able to ruin the countryside and even the towns, than our fathers were, but on the other hand, we are far more alive to the consequences of such ruin than they were.

Our children and their children after them must live in a beautiful country. It must be a country happily compromising between Nature and Man, blending what was best worth retaining from the past with what best represents the spirit of our own age, a country as rich in noble towns as it is in trees, birds, and wild flowers.

Task5. Make a list of counties of Great Britain. Designate them all on the map.

Task 6. Make a 3-minute presentation of one of the counties of Great Britain in terms of physical geography.

Task 7. Speak on the natural resources which can be found in the United Kingdom. / Write 3-paragraph summary about the natural resources which can be found in the United Kingdom.

Exercise 13. Read the text below and do the tasks that follow it.