The following 3 texts deal with abnormal weather conditions. Read them and then do the exercises below
Ex. 1. Consider the 3 texts.
| Text 1 | Text 2 | Text 3 | |
| 1. What sort of weather conditions are being described? | |||
| 2. What time of year is it? | |||
| 3. Is the scene described in the city or in the country? | |||
| 4. Are the weather conditions unusual for the season and place? |
Now look at each passage in turn and answer these questions.
| Text 1 | Text 2 | Text 3 |
| 1. How far is the bad weather natural and how far is it man-made? 2. Why was the rain black? 3. How do we know that the streets of the city are not paved? | 1. What sort of weather had they had before the monsoon arrived? 2. Why is Ghote no longer able to take long walks? 3. Why is it unpleasant to stay indoors? 4. How long does it take some workers to get to work, and why? | 1. Why didn’t the carol singers notice the cold? 2. Why was the road to the last house the most difficult? 3. Why was the house itself more attractive? |
Vocabulary
The following are words from the three texts. The definitions of these words are grouped together in the box below. Match the definition to the correct word and write in the space provided. One has been done for you.
| Text 1 | Text 2 | Text 3 | ||||
| 1. drizzle 2. soot 3. mire 4. jostling 5. losing their foothold 6. aits 7. meadows 8. defiled 9. dense | ______________________________ _____islands__________ | 10. stifling 11. swirling 12. mould 13. damp 14. commuters | ___________________________________ | 15. blizzard 16. puttees 17. soaked 18. dripped 19. huddled 20. tramped | __________________________________________ | |
Days of Abnormal Weather
Text 1
Implacable November weather. Smoke lowering down from chimney-port, making a soft black drizzle with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes. Dogs, indistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas, and losing their footholds at street corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke.
Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollution of a great (and dirty) city.
The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest, near Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his Court of Chancery.
Text 2
With the arrival of the monsoon Ghote was no longer able to get out of the house by taking long walks about the city. The roads he had slowly moved along in the days if stifling heat were often deep under flood water now, and where they were not blocked by a foot or more of muddy brown water, pavements and roadways were frequently swirling with the fast-flowing excess of the walls and walls of warm rain.
Indoors, everything smelt day and night of damp cotton and every surface that could hold mould was covered in greeny fungus. Out of doors, cars by the hundred were either brought to a halt in the floods or made immobile by damp in the engines. The trains were frequently unable to run where water covered the rails, and the city’s hundreds of thousands of commuters had to struggle in to their offices on foot, a moving mass of black umbrellas. Gallantly, they would manage to reach their destinations often as late as two in the afternoon, by which time it was only sensible to turn round and start off home again.
Text 3
The week before Christmas, when snow seemed to lie thickest, was the moment for carol singing.
Eight of us set out that night. A blizzard was blowing, but we were well wrapped up, with army puttees on our legs, woolen hats on our heads, and several scarves around our ears.
Steadily we worked through the length of the valley, going from house to house. It was freezing hard, yet not for a moment did we feel the cold. The snow blew into our faces, into our eyes and mouths, soaked through our puttees, got into our boots, and dripped from our woolen caps. But we did not care. The collecting box grew heavier.
We approached our last house high up on the hill, the place of Joseph the farmer. The last stretch of country to reach his farm was perhaps the most difficult of all. In these rough bare lanes, open to all winds, sheep were buried and wagons lost. Huddled together, we tramped in one another’s footsteps, powdered snow blew into our screwed-up eyes, candles burnt low, some blew out altogether, and we talked loudly above the gale.
Crossing, at last, the frozen mill-stream, we climbed up to Joseph’s farm. Sheltered by trees, warm on its bed of snow, it seemed always to be like this. Everything was quiet; everywhere there was the silence of the winter night. We started singing, and we were moved by the words and the trueness of our voices. We were given roast apples, and hot mince-pies, and in our wooden box, as we headed back for the village, there were gifts for all.
Interpretation
1. In Text 1, the writer connects the weather with the law courts and the highest legal authority in the country. What connection is he implying when he says that the Lord High Chancellor sits ‘at the very heart of the fog’. What opinion is he likely to have of the law and lawyers?
2. In Text 2, the writer connects the weather with the fact that not much work gets done. What is the contrast he is trying to create in the last sentence by using the words ‘gallantly’ and ‘sensible’?
3. In Text 3, the writer connects the weather with the season of the year and the festival of Christmas. What is the connection between the harshness of the weather and the determination of the singers?
4. Three of the sentences below represent the writer’s purpose when connecting weather to people. Decide which three represent the three texts and then tick the appropriate text they refer to.
| Text (1, 2, 3) | |
| a) Contrasting the harshness of the weather with the cheerfulness of the people. b) Complaining that the weather makes efficiency impossible. c) Suggesting that the gloomy, filthy weather reflects life in a big city with its pollution and depression. d) Accepting with ironic amusement that extreme weather conditions are inevitable. e) Emphasizing the hardships of poor people forced to live and work in unpleasant conditions. | □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ |
Weather Forecast
Ex. 1. Read weather forecasts and answer the question:
What is the most suitable forecast for:
| a) going to the seaside b) skiing c) staying indoors d) visiting friends e) fishing | f) walking in the rain g) hazardous tourism h) watching a thriller i) going to a party |
1. WEATHER: Sunny intervals and rather cold everywhere. Developing showers may be heavy and prolonged, perhaps with hail and thunder. Outlook: Sunny intervals and showers, heavy and wintry in places.
2. WEATHER: It will be wet and windy in most areas, followed by clearer showery weather. Gales are expected in many northern and western areas.
3. WEATHER: Dry with sunny intervals.
Tomorrow: Very warm. Some thundery showers.
4. WEATHER: Northern areas will have snow showers, while southern areas will be dry with occasional snow flurries.
Tomorrow and Thursday will remain rather cold with snow showers.
5. WEATHER: Today: A depression will move north-east across Central Britain. In most regions will be rain at first and some heavy rain is likely especially in the north and west. Over Scottish mountains there will be snow for a time.
Brighter showery weather will reach Wales and south-west England during the morning and this showery weather will spread north-eastwards to reach most regions later.
Tomorrow: Unsettled with showers or longer spells of rain, cold enough for snow on high ground.
6. WEATHER: All areas will have sunshine and showers after rain or sleet in the extreme South-east. Central and southern parts of England will have the most sunshine although there may be showers in the afternoon. In northern Britain and on high ground the showers will be more frequent.
7. WEATHER: In the first half of the day the weather will be cloudy with some rain and snow. Strong winds will prevail. Western winds will bring rainy weather, with temperature about one degree above zero.
8. WEATHER: After a rather long spell of warm weather, a considerable lowering of temperature is expected. There will be a strong wind and snow in places. Night temperature will fall to zero. After that the weather will become clearer, but the temperature will continue to fall, sometimes the temperature will reach 5 degrees below zero.
9. WEATHER: The weather this week is determined by air currents coming from the west, from the Atlantic Ocean. It will be mostly warm with slight drizzle. There will be rain and snow in places. Temperature during the daytime will be 2 degrees above zero and will vary from 5 degrees above zero to 2 degrees below zero at night.
10. WEATHER: Due to the depression lying off the north of England and the high in the south of England, tomorrow’s weather will be variable across the country. Starting, then, in the south-west, it’ll start cool and become warm with long periods of sunshine. Around London and the south-east, the day will be dry but cloudy at times. In the Midlands, it’ll be cloudy all day with showers at times. Moving over, then, to North Wales, there may be fog patches over the mountains for probably much of the day, while in South Wales it’ll be generally windy. In the north-east, it’ll be cloudy all day, some rain every where and it’ll be heavy at times. Further north in Scotland, we can expect sleet in those areas south of Edinburgh, while in the very north of Scotland and the Hebrides, there’ll be snow on high ground. Now in Northern Ireland, there’s a possibility of rain, and it’ll certainly be very cold. That’s the end of the weather forecast.
Ex. 2. Read the weather forecast form Dan Francis at the London Weather Center and guess what time of year it might be.
Francis: Hello. It’s been another warm and fine day for most of us. Temperatures in south-east England reached twenty-six degrees Celsius by mid-afternoon, and Brighton had fifteen hours of lovely sunshine. Further north it was a little cooler with maximum temperatures of around twenty-one degrees in southern Scotland, and in the far north-west of Scotland there were some light showers around midday. But the rest of the country, as I said, has been warm and dry with temperatures in the Midlands reaching twenty-three degrees Celsius by early afternoon although it was a little cooler along the west coast and in Northern Ireland.
But already the weather’s beginning to change, I’m afraid, and during the night showers will slowly move in from the Atlantic to reach south-west England and southern coasts of Wales by early morning.
The rest of the country will have a very mild, dry night with minimum temperatures no lower than fifteen degrees in the south, a little cooler – eleven degrees or so – in the north. Any remaining showers in northwest Scotland will pass quickly to leave a mild, dry night there too.
And now the outlook for Friday and the weekend. Well, southern Europe will, once …
Ex. 3. According to the weather forecast from Ex. 2. three of these maps are incorrect. Which is the correct one?
Ex. 4. Match each word in the list on the left with a suitable definition from the list on the right:
| a) occasional b) fine c) settled d) light e) reached f) mild g) maximum h) minimum i) pass j) outlook | 1) quite warm 2) highest 3) dry 4) lowest 5) go away 6) became as high as 7) not heavy 8) forecast for the next few days 9) not changing much 10) sporadic |
Ex. 5. Here is a weather forecast. Discuss with a partner the best way to replace weather symbols with appropriate words.
Well, it’s been a rather disappointing day, with very little (1)_____, in many parts of England today. The exception was down in the south-west, where they’ve had quite a bright, dry day, but there were a few (2)_____ further north in Wales, and in the south-east and Midlands, it’s been rather colder than expected. There was heavy (3)_____ the morning, with (4)_____ all day, and it was some time before the (5)_____ cleared. There’s been a lot of heavy (6)_____ in some districts in the afternoon, particularly in south-eastern areas, and that’s likely to be the pattern throughoutthe night. It’s been rather cloudy and very cold in the North of England, with snow on high ground and occasional (7)_____ elsewhere, but in the south and east of Scotland, the sun has managed to peep through, and they’ve had quite a pleasant day, though we can expect rain to spread from Northern Ireland during the night. It’s raining quite heavily in Northern Ireland at the moment, and there have also been some isolated (8)_____. In the highlands and in western districts of Scotland, the day began quite sunny and that melted the early morning frost, but later in the day, rain started to spread in from the Atlantic, and on high ground this has turned to (9)_____. The roads in highland districts are freezing over quickly, so drivers are warned to be very careful tonight.
Turning to the outlook for tonight and tomorrow, …
Ex. 6. Choose someone to act as a weather-man and give an outlook for Europe using prompts.
There may be …
We can expect
There’s a possibility (chance) of
… is (are) expected
… will have …
… will be (reach, drop, rise, pass …) …
***
Spain: + 340C
Greece: uninterrupted sunshine, up to + 320C
Italy: a long spell of sunshine, up to + 320C
France: weather’s not settled
Belgium: cloudy with occasional rain around + 320C
Netherlands: persistent cloud all day, some rain every where, around + 220C
Scotland and Northern Ireland: heavy rain, temperatures drop to + 170C
England: cloudy but dry with sunny periods up to + 230C
Ex. 7. Read the weather forecast in the morning paper and make up similar one for your country.
Most of England and Wales will have a dry day with plenty of winter sunshine, but there will be fog patches early on in the south-east and Midlands, and early morning mist in coastal districts. Scattered showers are expected in the south-west, and there may be some heavier rain in Wales. The North of England will have cloudy weather, with some rain spreading from the west during the day, which will turn to sleet on higher ground. In Northern Ireland and Scotland, there will be widespread frost early on, severe in places. Snow is expected on high ground in the north Scotland, and there will be icy roads in the highland districts. In southern and eastern Scotland, there will be occasional outbreaks of rain, and there is a chance of isolated hail storms. Temperatures will range from 5-70C (41-470F) in the south of England to zero or below freezing point in northern Scotland.
Outlook.
Mainly dry, but it will become cloudier with more chance of rain in northern and western districts of the British Isles.
Ex. 8. Answer the following questions.
1. Do you think that weather forecast is always misleading?
2. Do you rely on weather forecast when planning your holidays?
3. Do you ever read the weather forecast in your newspaper? Why? Why not?
4. How would our lives be different if we had no weather forecast?
Ex. 9. Explain and expand on the following.
1. Weather forecasting has become much more sophisticated in recent years.
2. Satellites provide accurate and up-to-the-minute information about changes in the weather.
3. Weather forecasts are much more reliable than they used to be.
Ex. 10. A friend from abroad is coming to visit you. Write a letter telling him about the weather at the moment.
Listening Comprehension
Text “The Climate”
Part A. Pre-listening activities
Task 1. Make sure that you know the following words.
calm – штиль, затишье
sultry – душный, знойный
descend – опускаться
saturate – насыщать, пропитывать
interior – внутренние районы
Task 2. Before listening the lecture discuss these points with a partner.
1. What are the principal categories of climate?
2. Why are there different climates?
3. What category does your country (Belarus) come in?
4. What category does the UK belong to?
5. In what climate do trees not grow?
6. What part of the world has no winter?
7. What climate would you prefer to live in?
Part B. Listening activities
Task 1. Listen to the lecture on different kinds of climate. Note down the main characteristics of the climates described by the lecturer. The lecture is divided into sections. Listen to each section twice.
Section 1 ________________
· Climate ______________
Wet / dry _____________
Rain / precipitation _____
Winds _______________
Temperature __________
Other notes ___________
Section 2 and 3
· Climate _____________
Wet / dry _____________
Rain / precipitation _____
Winds _______________
Temperature __________
Other notes ___________
Section 4 ________________
· Climate ______________
Wet / dry _____________
Rain / precipitation _____
Winds _______________
Temperature __________
Other notes ___________
Section 5 ________________
· Climate ______________
Wet / dry _____________
Rain / precipitation _____
Winds _______________
Temperature __________
Other notes ___________
Task 2. Fill in the gaps.
1. The equatorial belt of calms provides … because of …
2. The climate in the horse latitudes is dry throughout the year, and the reason is …
3. Trade-wind belts run …
4. B-type climates are mainly dry with very little rain. The reason is that the air has no reason to lose …
5. We can say that in general continental interiors, for example in the USA and Europe, show …
6. The low temperatures prevent the accumulation of …
Part C . After listening Activities
Task 1. Discuss in pairs.
1. Tropical rainy climates.
2. Dry climates.
3. Warm temperate rainy climates.
4. Cool snow-frost climates.
5. Polar climates.
Task 2. In groups write a description of
a) your ideal climate
b) the climate of Belarus
c) the climate of any country you’ve visited
Consider the following:
· climate
· humidity
· precipitation
· temperature
· seasonal variations