Miscellaneous Reader. Part I. Учебные задания для обучения базовым умениям чтения. Гергесовa О.В - 27 стр.

   seawalls.
5. The pollutants are being                                            After-reading
   released mainly in large                                            V. Discuss the following.
  industrialized countries
                                                                           1. How is the action of industrialized countries making
                     The Threat to Kiribati                                   islands like Kiribati disappear from the face of the
                                                                              earth?
  The people of Kiribati are afraid that one day in the not-too-           2. Scientists are still not sure how serious the effects of
distant future, their country will disappear from the face of the             global warming will be. Some industries don’t want to
earth -literally. Several times this year, the Pacific island nation          make changes until there is definite evidence that the
has been flooded by a sudden high tide. These tides, which                    effects are serious. What is your opinion?
swept across the island and destroyed houses, came when there              3. If you lived on an island like Kiribati, what would you
was neither wind nor rain. "This never happened before," say the              like to see done?
older citizens of Kiribati.
What is causing these mysterious high tides? The answer may
well be global warming. When fuels like oil and coal are being                           THE GLOBAL VILLAGE
burned, pollutants are released; these pollutants trap heat in the
earth's atmosphere. Warmer temperatures cause water to expand          Pre-reading task.
and also create more water by melting glaciers and polar ice           1. What do you think the term global village means?
caps.
If the trend continues, scientists say, many countries will suffer.    a. all the villages of the world.
Bangladesh, for example, might lose one-fifth of its land. The         b. the world organization.
coral island nations of the Pacific, like Kiribati and the Marshall    c. the world and its people.
Islands, however, would face an even worse fate -they would be
swallowed by the sea. The loss of these coral islands would be          Word Power
everyone's loss. Coral formations are home to more species than        II. Guess the meaning of the following words:
any other place on earth.
The people of these nations feel frustrated. The sea, on which         global(adj)             microchip(n)
their economies have always been based, is suddenly threatening        technological(adj)      conflict(n)
their existence. They don't have the money for expensive               sum(n)                  nation(n)
technological solutions like seawalls. And they have no control        climate(n)              culture(n)
over the pollutants, which are being released mainly by activities
in large industrialized countries. All they can do is to hope that     III. Complete the sentences with the words from the box.
industrialized countries will take steps to reduce pollution.