Unit 11. Visions of the future.

Part 1. Warming up.

A. Keywords. businesses, office, transport, advertising.

Vocabulary. clerical worker, client.

Listen to some predictions some people have made about the business world in the next 20 years or so, add missing words to the following statements.

What do you think might happen in the business world in the next 20 years or so?

Um...there will be no more telexes, businesses will only use fax and electronic mail.

Mm...office cleaning will be done by robots.

Well, there will be much more unemployment.

I think people will have to retrained for new skills every ten years.

I think robots will replace production workers. Computers will replace clerical workers.

People will buy their food from home.

There will be less need for transport as people will work from home.

Most consumer advertising will be delivered directly to the home.

Well, business travel will be replaced by live video meetings, there won't be any need to go to see the clients any more.

B. Keywords. Mars, court, population, nuclear, brain, computers.

Vocabulary. dome, tower block.

Listen to some 13-year-old children talking about the way they think life will be like in the future.

Add the missing words to the statements.

I think I'll probably be in a spaceship on my way to the planet Mars.

I may be in charge of a robot court, judging some robots.

I think the population will have gone up so much, that everyone will be living in big plastic domes in the Sahara Desert, or also be living under the sea.

Obviously nuclear war worries me, but I don't think that will happen.

Because I don't think that any human being can...is capable of actually pressing some button that release all the nuclear arms.

Perhaps we'll be able to convert brain waves into radio waves, then change back to brain waves.

So you could actually have a conversation with someone without talking.

And there will be so many people, I think there may, unless they have another plant to go to.

There will be loads and loads of tower blocks for people to live in.

It will probably be computers that are running country by then.

C. Keywords. The Earth, planet, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.

Vocabulary. diameter.

C1. you're going to hear a passage about the solar system.

Put the names of the plants of the solar system in the right places.

The Earth is a planet just under 8,000 mile in diameter, moving around the sun at a distance of 93 million miles, and completing one circuit in 365.5 days.

It is not the only planet, eight others are known, all with their own special points of interest.

Mercury and Venus are closer to the Sun than we're,

Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are farther away.

Of course, the nearest to us are Mars, which may approach the Earth to within 35 million miles.

And Venus which has a minimum distance from us of only about 24 million miles.

Mars and Venus are also the only two planets which do not appear to be overwhelmingly hostile.

However, they are much more remote than our one natural satellite, the Moon, which moves around the Earth at a mean distance of less than a quarter of a million miles.

C2. Now listen again. Write down the numbers which correspond to the information given to you.