Episode 22

EPISODE 22
LEVEL A1.2/A2.1

 

READING COMPREHENSION

 

TOWNS AND CITIES

 

I could never live in the country (= area outside cities and towns). People say city life has many disadvantages, but still I prefer a city or a town (= a small city) to a tiny village with no cinemas, pubs or shops. I know that the cost of living (= how much you pay for food and your flat etc.) is high, the air is really polluted (= dirty because of too many chemicals or substances) and you get stuck in traffic jams (= when many cars are very close together moving very slowly) during rush hour (= the time of the day when everybody goes to or comes back from work), but life in a city is so much more interesting. Big cities are cosmopolitan (= people from different parts of the world live there) and there are many job opportunities (= people can get a job easily). If you live in the suburbs (= far from the city centre), you will get some peace and quiet, too. And the nightlife is so much better than in the country…

 

More contexts for the new words:

• Property prices are extremely high.
  (= prices of houses, flats etc. are extremely high)
• It’s quite a residential area.
  (= It’s an area where many people have flats or houses and there are no offices etc.)

 

 

EXERCISE 1

Complete the sentences with the words in bold above.

 

• There are lots of factories which produce lots of smoke, so the area is quite …………………………
• Big cities offer lots of job ………………………… – it’s really easy to find work if you want.
• I hate spending long hours in ………………………… jams.
• She lives in London, not in the city center, but in the …………………………
• It takes me ages to get to work during the morning ………………………… hour.
• Flats and houses in Warsaw are really expensive – ………………………… prices are very high.
• In Chicago, you can meet people from all parts of the world. The city is really …………………………
• There are no offices of factories here, only houses It’s a ………………………… area.

 

 

EXERCISE 2

Match the halves of the questions and then answer them yourself.

 

1. Would you prefer to live
2. What’s the longest you’ve ever spent
3. Is the cost of living in your area

 

a) in a traffic jam?
b) in the city or in the country? Why?
c) high or low?

 

 

ENGLISH IN USE 

 

Look at this sentence from the text above:

I prefer a city to a tiny village.

We use ‘prefer’ when we compare two things and we want to show which one we like more. We use it with ‘to’:

I prefer jogging to swimming.
I prefer the cinema to the theatre.
I prefer tea to coffee.

 

 

IDIOM CLOSE-UP

 

 

A/ I’ve heard that lots of young people come to Buenos Aires with hopes for better future.

B/ Yes, they do, but often they end up in CARDBOARD CITY.

 

A cardboard city is an area of a large city where many people without a home sleep outside. Cardboard is a type of thick, stiff paper used to make the type of boxes that people living outside sometimes sleep in to keep warm.

 

 

 

PHRASAL VERBS CLOSE-UP

 

 

1. If something IS SPREAD OUT, it is in different parts of a large area and not close together.

We could see a few farmhouses which were spread out over the village.

 

2. If something STRETCHES AWAY, it continues over a long distance.

Farms and woods stretched away to the horizon.

 

 

EXERCISE 3

Complete each gap with one word.

 

1. A huge cloud of smoke from factories stretched ………………………….. as far as we could see.
2. The city of Chicago is spread ………………………….. over many miles.
3. There are lots of homeless people living in cardboard ………………………….. in Brazil.

 

 

NEWS

 

THE CITIES OF THE FUTURE

Scientists often wonder what the cities will look like in the future. Will they be full of ultra-modern skyscrapers made of glass and metal, or will we rather get back to nature and promote cities full of green areas? Will we live in multi-storey apartment blocks, or will people prefer small housing estates in the suburbs? And what about transport – will we come to rely on public transport, or will the cities be blocked by millions of private cars? Only the future will tell.

 

 

GLOSSARY

– a skyscraper – a very tall building

– multi-storey – with many floors

– an apartment block – an American expression for ‘a block of flats’

– a housing estate – an area with a lot of houses close together

 

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