Exercise
You will be presented with short Notes in Exercise 1 of the Exercise link before you hear each Listening. Read the Notes with your group and then write a short paragraph in complete sentences from the Notes which links all of the ideas together. Try to include all of the vocabulary from the notes you read.
Afterwards, listen to the original Listening passages. For each, check your sentences with your group and see how close you are to the original.
Listening
Number 1
Transcript
One interesting misconception about lions is that they are the kings of the jungle. Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but Tarzan would never have met one. Lions don't live in jungles at all. They live on a savannah, which is a relatively flat, dry, grassy plain in parts of Africa. It's there that they find their prey, the animals that they systematically hunt and kill. The most common types of animals they'll target are quite large, such as zebras, antelope, and buffalo. Although the males are larger, at around 500 pounds and as much as 9 feet long from nose to tail, it is the female that generally does the hunting. The females are closer to 300 pounds and 8 feet long. The male's role is to protect the pride. That is what a group of lions is called, from other invading males. It's not so much that there is danger to the females and the cubs, but that another, perhaps younger and stronger male, might come in and try to drive the reigning male out.
Number 2
Transcript
Number two, of all the types of horses out there, one seems to stand above the rest in strength and endurance. Over a period of centuries in the Arabian Peninsula, the area we can find Saudi Arabia and other countries, animal breeders worked hard to create the perfect horse through selective breeding, and the result is what we call the Arabian horse. What makes this horse so much better than others? Well, it is superior in a number of ways. Most importantly, it's endurance, because the bones of the Arabian are different in two specific ways. First off, they are extremely dense. That is, they are heavier and stronger than those of other horses, without being any larger. What this means is that this horse has fewer problems with its legs when traveling over long distances. In 1919, the 300-mile endurance ride was held to put this to the test, with the first four of eight finishing horses being Arabian. It was found that only 15% of Arabians had mild to severe leg problems after the race, whereas up to 90% did among other breeds. The unique skeletal structure of the Arabian horse also explains its tireless endurance in that it actually has less bones than other horses. It has one less vertebra in its back, and one less rib on each side. These two features make its back shorter, and therefore much stronger and more able to carry a heavy load without tiring.
Number 3
Transcript
Number three, the salmon fishery is a huge industry for Western Canada. These big fish start out quite small, as millions of eggs laid throughout the river systems in the interior. There are five main species along the Pacific coast, starting with the biggest, the Chinook, or king salmon, which can weigh in excess of 30 kilograms. These are highly sought after by sports fishermen, but can be quite difficult to find. After the Chinook, we get the coho, at up to 10 kilograms, quite different from the massive Chinook. These are big jumpers and are popular among fishermen and chefs alike. The next in size is the chum, which only gets up to around 8 kilos. These salmon are usually caught to be used for canned salmon. Sockeye salmon are by far the most highly prized and expensive of the species. They are found up to 4 kilograms, so are much smaller than the previous fish, but their flavor is superior. That's what you'll eat when you order sushi that has salmon in it. Finally, pink salmon, which are the smallest and usually grow to reach 2 kilograms, are the most abundant.
Number 4
Transcript
A major breakthrough that helped with reducing mortality, or death rates, was the discovery of penicillin, which, surprisingly, was discovered completely by accident.
Today when someone has an infection, perhaps they have a sore throat, or even a cut that got dirty and swells up, they go to the doctor, get a pill, and BAM! They're cured in a few days.
That's the power of penicillin. In the past, you could have easily died.
Scientists had been trying for years to create a medicine that would fight infection, but it wasn't until 1928 that Dr. Alexander Fleming managed to do it.
It's how it happened that has become an equally amazing part of the story. He had a number of dishes which contained a staph infection, that's S-T-A-P-H, which he stacked up in a corner and left for a family holiday.
Now Fleming was brilliant, but apparently not exceptionally clean. So some foreign matter in his laboratory must have gotten into one of the dishes.
When he returned from vacation and opened that dish up, a mold had grown inside it, that white fuzzy looking stuff you get on fruit that's left out and begins to go bad.
Anyway, wherever the mold touched the staph infection, the staph had been killed.
Fleming noted his observation, repeated the experiment, and in that way, penicillin was born.
Number 5
Transcript
One iconic Canadian food, and there are many well-known outside of Canada, is maple syrup. It's great on pancakes and can be made into all sorts of candies and treats. Most people know that it comes from, as the name implies, maple trees, but it's not an easy product to produce and is quite a detailed process. Canada is the world's number one producer of maple syrup, pumping out over 25 million liters a year, which is 80% of world supply. The province of Quebec itself accounts for 75% of global demand. Three types of maple tree—black, silver, and red—are the main sources of syrup, and in order to get the sap out of the tree, which will become the syrup, first a hole must be drilled into the tree about 7 centimeters deep so as to get into the softer interior of the tree. A metal spout, a hollow tube, is inserted into the hole and a bucket or bag is hung on the spout. Now producers simply need to wait for the sap to run through the tube and fill the bucket. The sap is collected daily, poured into large containers so it can be boiled. The objective here is to boil off the water inside the sap and leave only the syrup. But this is a delicate process. Too much water and the syrup will be too thin and go bad. Too little water and it will crystallize into hard sugar chunks. Usually between 20 and 50 liters of sap will boil down to produce only 1 liter of syrup. No extra chemicals are added at this point as the pure maple syrup is poured into bottles and shipped off for sale.