Vocabulary

I  

1.

1) percentage   2) zone

3) warmth   4) diverse

5) widen   6) looked around

7) in the face of   8) in perspective

9) temperate   10) theoretical

2.

1) Its profits shrank from $5 million to $1.25 million in the last global financial crisis.

2) They will have to adhere to the cultural norms of the organization in order to be successful with their database project.

3) My hometown is/lies halfway in between Salk Lake City and Denver.

4) I saw waves battering (against) the rocks at the bottom of the cliff.

5) Flood waters washed away the only bridge connecting the village to the outside world.

3.

1) Your report on the new car park is fine, but why don't you beef it up with some figures?

2) There is a wide variation among Internet providers in cost, features, software, reliability and customer service.

3) Poverty is one of the reasons for the high incidence of crime in this neighborhood.

4) I suggested we sing and dance for the elderly people in the nursing home, and all my roommates were in favor of my idea. 

5) Doctors who are compelled to work 36 hours at a stretch cannot possibly be fully efficient.

4.

1)  Much of the loss of biodiversity currently being experienced is attributed to human activity. Natural extinction is being accelerated by human populations wiping out entire ecosystems for development and single crop farming. Destroying naturally diverse vegetation destroys the life sustained by that habitat. We already know the scary effects of deforestation on global warming, but do we stop to think about the thousands of animal and insect species that are dying off because of global warming?

2) In August 2005, some scientists from esteemed scientific organizations predicted that a temperature increase of 2 °C above the pre-industrial level could trigger the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which would have overwhelming consequences for sea levels and biodiversity. At the current level of climate change, this prediction could become a reality in 10-15 years.

3) With huge amounts of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere global surface temperature would rise to a great extent, thereby melting the north and south pole glaciers causing drought, and throwing agriculture into turmoil.The effects would be magnified if temperatures keep going up dramatically.

5.

1) think back to/on  2) think … over

3) thought of   4) think of …as

5) think up

1) picked up  2) picked out

3) picked up  4) picked on

5) picks at

II. Word Family

1. 1) contaminated 2) contaminate 3) contamination 4) uncontaminated

2. 1) habitable 2) habitation 3) inhabit 4) uninhabited

  5) uninhabitable 6) inhabited

Comprehensive Exercises

I. Cloze

1.

1)  beef up  2) coastal

3) in favour of  4) residents

5) theoretical      6) disastrous

7)  battered     8) shrinking

9) migrate           10) washed away

11) Scary        12) humanity

2.

1) predicting   2) accuracy

3) basis   4) collide

5) atmosphere  6) melts

7) affected   8) actions

9) striving     10) technologies

II. Translation

Most scientists no longer doubt that the world is warming up and that humanity has altered climate. They agree that the long-term effects of global warming will be disastrous for the planet and its inhabitants. What is more, climate change won’t be a smooth transition to a warmer world. Some regions will be greatly affected by abrupt climate changes. Enormous areas of densely populated land like coastal Florida would become uninhabitable. Hundreds of millions of residents would have to migrate to safer regions. Therefore, it is no surprise that global warming has made its way onto the agenda of world leaders.