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Use clichés of checking understanding in making conversations of your own.

12. Work in pairs. Read the statements and expand on them. You may be of the similar or different opinion on the subject. Your comment

should be followed by some appropriate speculation on the suggested point:

1. Everybody's talking about pollution. Pollution is what happens when things we eat, the place we live in and the air around us are

made dirty and unhealthy by machines and factories.

2. Men do not realize that a forest is more than a collection of trees. It is a complex community of plant and animal life. In a living

forest two opposing forces are constantly at work: growth and decay. The growth of new trees balances destruction by insects, plant

diseases, and occasional storms. But man's unrestricted cutting of timber disturbs this natural balance.

3. National forests and national grasslands are managed for many uses, including recreation and the continuing yield of such

resources as wood, water, wildlife, honey, nuts and Christmas trees.

4. Factories pay for the water they rise, but in our homes we only pay to have water. After that we can use as much as we want.

Apparently we lose every day enough water for the whole town. Finally what we have left in our rivers we make so dirty that we can't

use it.

5. Some scientists believe that, if airlines operate a large number of supersonic airplanes, their engines may inject so much water

vapour into the upper atmosphere that there will be many more clouds, more of the sun's heat will be prevented from reaching the

earth, and the earth's temperature will d r o p — this might change the climate of the whole world, with very serious results.

6. Europe is such an industrialized area that it sends about 20 million tonnes of sulphur into the air every year. There is an old

saying in English: "What goes up, must come down." This 20 million tonnes is picked up by the wind. Most of it is carried some dis-

tance, often to another country. Each nation in Europe produces hundreds of thousands of tonnes of poison each year, and then sends

it abroad.

13. Read the following text. Find in it arguments for protecting natural resources of your country. Think of the arguments that can be put

forward in favour of the opposite viewpoint than that reflected in the text. Copy the arguments out into two columns (I — "for", II — "against"): The True Story of Lake Baikal

It should be pointed out that the outcry about the threat of pollution faced by Baikal came from every section of society^ How to

protect Baikal was the subject for widespread debate. There was some difference of opinion between those who one-sidedly empha-

sized industrial production and those who insisted that the basic balanced approach had to be adhered to.

Baikal first faced such problems almost 200 years ago when its shores were settled and crop farming and cattle breeding devel -

oped, and timber was felled. The floating of loose timber, particularly, polluted its waters. The pollution problem grew, especially after