Group 3ae – April 2012

1. There is an article about huricane Irene that hit America in 2011. Your first task (1) is to read, understand and ‘design’ an exercise for your classmates. The exercise must have about 5-7 multiple choice questions. They have to check the general understanding of the text below.

2. Your second task is to choose 6-8 words (and this time they should be more difficult) and to write their meanings in a descriptive way or give their synonyms. Your classmates’ task will be to find the chosen word looking only at definitions or synonyms.

If anything is not clear feel free to ask questions at any time. Here is my address: kam__3@wp.pl

The deadlone for handing the exercise is the 30th April

Hurricane Irene Hits Northeastern United States

The hurricane struck the coast of North Carolina with winds of up to one hundred twenty kilometers an hour last Saturday. The storm weakened as it moved north. But Irene brought heavy rains and destructive winds to the densely populated east coast.

Hundreds of thousands of people were told to leave areas likely to suffer flooding. That included parts of New York City where Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered over two hundred fifty thousand people to evacuate.

Irene is blamed for more than forty deaths in the United States. Five deaths were reported in the Caribbean.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo estimated his state suffered one billion dollars in damage. Estimates place the total damage from the storm at about seven billion dollars. Insurance companies are expected to pay forty to fifty percent of these costs. But costs of lost trade for the travel industry, especially in North Carolina, will be high at a time when the nation’s economy is struggling. The government reported Friday that the national unemployment rate held at nine point one percent in August.

High winds and flooding from Irene brought down electrical lines, causing about four million people to lose power. Days after the storm, hundreds of thousands were still without electricity.

Many states in the path of Irene declared disasters. Governors in several states activated over four thousand National Guard members to help in rescue and relief efforts.

In North Carolina, some communities near the ocean were flooded and cut off from the mainland. And the small northeastern state of Vermont was especially hard hit.  Emergency workers have had to airlift food and supplies to thousands of people trapped by flood waters. Officials said it was the worst flooding in Vermont in almost one hundred years. This man describes what he saw in the community of Woodstock.

MICHAEL RICCI: “The water in the yard was almost up to the house, which is another ten feet above this level, which is probably fifteen or twenty feet above the normal river level.  So the water was really, really up very high.  And the force of it was beyond our comprehension.”

President Obama has made major disaster declarations for North Carolina, New York, New Jersey, Vermont and Puerto Rico. Emergency declarations were made for all coastal states from North Carolina to Maine. These declarations release federal aid through FEMA -- the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Roger Pielke is a professor in environmental studies at the University of Colorado. He says the economic costs of hurricanes have grown many times over the years. This is because millions of people in the United States have crowded coastal areas that are often affected by storms.

ROGER PIELKE: “Along the entire coast from Texas all the way up through Maine in the United States, there are today very few locations where a hurricane can make landfall without causing an enormous amount of damage.”

September is normally the most active month of the hurricane season. Experts predicted eight to ten hurricanes in two thousand eleven. That is higher than normal.

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The article from www.manythings.org/voa  (1st April 2012)

Group 3ae – March 2012

1. There is an article about poverty rate in the USA in 2010. Your first task (1) is to read, understand and ‘design’ an exercise for your classmates. The exercise must have about 6-8 gaps to fill. Missing words should be removed from the text and should be written in the separate table in a basic form (different that this which appears in the article). Remember not to choose too difficult words to let other students do the task.

2. Your second task is to choose 6-8 words (and this time they should be more difficult) and to write their meanings in a descriptive way or give their synonyms. Your classmates’ task will be to find the chosen word looking only at definitions or synonyms.

* You can choose the whole article or only its part.

If anything is not clear feel free to ask questions at any time. Here is my address: kam__3@wp.pl

The deadlone for handing the exercise is the 31st March

Poverty Rate in America

A new report says the poverty rate in the United States last year was the highest since nineteen ninety-three. The official rate was 15.1 percent, up from 14.3 percent in two thousand and nine.

Poverty meant yearly income, or earnings, of less than twenty-two thousand three hundred dollars for a family of four.

The new findings did come as a surprise to Michael Ferrell of the Coalition for the Homeless in Washington, DC.

MICHAEL FERRELL: "Unless there's a turnaround within the economy in the very near future, it's most likely to get worse."

The Census Bureau says median household income fell more than two percent from two thousand nine to two thousand ten. Median means half earned more and half earned less. Last year, the median income was about forty-nine thousand dollars. The Census Bureau says more than forty-six million people were living in poverty. It was the largest number since estimates began in nineteen fifty-nine. They included more than one-fourth of blacks and Hispanics, twelve percent of Asians and about ten percent of non-Hispanic whites.

Some economic measures were unchanged. Women in full-time, year-round jobs continued to earn an average of seventy-seven percent as much as men did.

The number of people without health insurance rose from forty-nine million to almost fifty million last year. But the rate -- 16.3 percent -- was about the same as in two thousand nine. (…)

Experts say the biggest driving force of poverty is unemployment. About fourteen million Americans are unemployed. Millions more have stopped looking for work or wish they could work more hours.

Las Vegas, Nevada, is famous for its casinos and hotels. But the city was hit hard by the recession and the housing market crash that helped cause it. Former construction worker Richard Scanlon is disabled, but he says many able-bodied friends are out of work. (…)

RICHARD SCANLON: “Ten, fifteen years ago, if you couldn’t get a job in Vegas, you weren’t looking for one. Now it’s tough.”

Family Promise is a national group that helps people get jobs and housing. Director Terry Lindemann says Family Promise of Las Vegas works with religious organizations that offer short-term housing.

TERRY LINDEMANN: “We bring together Catholics, Protestants, Jewish congregations, Muslims, to open up their congregations at night to be overnight shelters.”

The article from www.manythings.org/voa/scripts (1st March 2012)