B. Choose a heading for each section.

Vocabulary tasks

A. Match these words with their definitions:

B. Word families.

Complete the chart:

C. Complete these sentences with the word from the box:

1. People pick up subtle hints and clues that tell them what ___________ is approved and what is forbidden.

2. Improving a company’s ethical performance depends on the values and _________ of its managers.

3. He annually donated five percent of its company _________ to charity.

4. Five key forces are the business – society ________.

5. Government goals can include deliberate attempts to solve social _______.

6. The __________and costs need to be balanced against each other in judging the system’s effectiveness.

7. ________ need social skills.

Discussion

Using the major ideas of the text identify:

a) the types of conflicts;

b) the major sources of conflict;

c) method of conflict resolution.

Unit 24

Ecology

Before you read

Discuss the question:

How and why has ecological damage become a major global issue?

Now read the text. What does it say about the question above?

The Aral Sea, located high in the steppes of central Asia, was once the world’s fourth largest freshwater lake and a thriving ecosystem. In the 1960s, central planers in the former Soviet Union decided to divert water from the two major rivers feeding the Aral Sea to irrigate the surrounding plains. Agriculture flourished, but results for the lake were disastrous. By the 1980s, the Aral Sea, cut off from its water sources, had lost 60 percent of its volume and was three times as salty as normal. The fishing industry, which supported 60.000 jobs in the 1950s, shut down because all the fish disappeared. In the early 1990s, the five newly formed republics in the Aral basin were faced with deciding what to do. Any meaningful effort to restore the ecological health of the Aral Sea would certainly require international aid.

Astronauts orbiting the earth in the Discovery spacecraft in 1993 were startled to observe huge plumes of black smoke rising from the South American continent, drifting high into the atmosphere. The smoke they saw was coming from tropical rain forests, being deliberately burned to clear land for cattle ranching, farming, and housing. During the 1980s, Brazil lost on average about 5 million acres of rain forest a year. This development came at great cost. Many species were destroyed, and widespread burning injected carbon into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming. Some economists believed that the long-term value of the rain forest would be much greater if it were cleared.

In the early 1990s, hundreds of thousands of tons of waste, much of it hazardous, were exported from the United States. Some was loaded on ships bound for the Far East. One destination was the Guo Fu smelter, a scrap-metal processing facility near Zhuhai City in southern China. Here, workers earned $2 a day dismantling old car batteries, electrical motors, transformers, and even used computers. The Chinese government welcomed the project, a joint venture with a U.S. firm, because it provided jobs and earned valuable foreign exchange when recycled copper, aluminum, and steel were shipped out of the country. But in a ravine behind the facility, unusable materials – including polychlorinated biphenyls, and other heavy metals – were carelessly dumped, threatening the long-term health of residents in the area.

Reading tasks

A. Understanding main points. Answer these questions:

1. What was done with the Aral Sea in the 1960s?

2. What were the results?

3. Why were tropical rain forests burned?

4. What contributed to global warming?

5. Why did the Chinese government welcome the joint venture with US firm?

6. What threatened the health of China residents?

B. Understanding details. Which of these statements are false according to the information in the text:

1. The Aral Sea is a thriving ecosystem.

2. The Aral Sea was cut off from the two major rivers.

3. The Aral Sea was two times as salty as normal.

4. All the fish disappeared.

5. Brazil lost many million acres of rain forest.

6. The Chinese government did not welcome a joint venture with a US firm.

Vocabulary tasks

A. Fill in the gaps with a word from the box:

1. The ecological __________ of the Aral Sea certainly requires international aid.

2. The Aral Sea became three times as _________ as normal.

3. The Aral Sea was a _________ ecosystem.

4. Tropical rain forests were burned to clear _________ for cattle ranching.

5. Many species were __________ .

Role play

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 792