5. Grammar Reference

In the article you can see the underlined sentence fragments. Can you translate them into Russian?

The rule:

The verbs believe, expect, feel, hope, know, report, say, think etc are used in the following passive patterns in personal and impersonal constructions

subject (person) + passive verb + to –inf

(personal construction)

Ex. The police say that she is in France.

She is said to be in France.

Говорят, что она во Франции.

It + passive verb + that-clause

(impersonal construction)

Ex. It is said that she is in France.

Говорят, что она во Франции.

Practice exercises

Turn the following sentences into the passive as in the example and translate them into Russian

1. They think he takes the right decision.

He is thought to take the right decision.

It is thought that he takes the right decision.

2. They believe he got lost in the forest.

He ……………………………………. .

It ……………………………………… .

3. They say she is very ill.

She …………………………………… .

It ……………………………………… .

4. They believe she takes drugs.

She …………………………………… .

It ……………………………………… .

5. They expect the temperature will rise.

The temperature ……………………… .

It ……………………………………… .

6. The report the president is seriously ill.

The president ………………………… .

It ……………………………………….

7. They hope he is leaving soon.

He ……………………………………. .

It ……………………………………… .

8. They know his health is very poor.

His health …………………………… .

It …………………………………….. .

9. They say she works in the laboratory every Monday.

She …………………………………… .

It ……………………………………... .

10. They expect the delegation will come tomorrow.

The delegation ………………………. .

It …………………………………….. .

6. Making a summary

The text is divided into six paragraphs. Decide which paragraph each of the following sentences refers to, and then arrange them in the right order to form a brief summary.

(a) Chemical persistence in soil is different from its persistence in organisms.

(b) Metabolism and excretion are important factors in the elimi­nation of pollutants.

(c) Different animals eat different types of food.

(d) Research in other areas can help present studies on pollutants.

(e) There is a relationship between intake of insecticides and concentration in tissues.

(f) Chemical pollutants can become concentrated in organisms.

7. Retell the text using the words and expressions from exercise 3 and the phrases given below

It is commonly believed that …. One can deduce from…

It is common knowledge that ….. In other words,

In general terms, …. One would expect ….

This is particularly true that ….

It is appropriate to…

Eventually, ….

UNIT 2

The Song of the Love-Lorn Whale

"Ditties" sung by humpback whales, possibly the most complicated songs in the animal kingdom, are really "operas". And even more remarkable, these operas vary from one ocean basin to another. Over the past 4 years, a team of scientists led by H. E. Winn, travelled the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to hear these "dialects".

Early recordings made in high latitudes, where a humpback spends the summer months feeding on tiny Crustacea, indicated a rather limited vocal performance consisting of "wheezing blows" and fast "clicks". Scientists thought these were used for exploring the local terrain by echolocation.

However, later recordings made in 1971 off Bermuda during the calving season revealed the winter songs to be a more complicated, ordered sequence of sounds lasting from 6 to 30 minutes. Winn's team was surprised to see the pattern of sounds repeated over and over again.

The song is composed of a great variety of sounds - from low "ele­phant snores" through moans, groans, "wavery oohs" and "long yups" to chirps, cries and the "surface ratchet" which the whale "sings" immediately before surfacing. All the songs heard in one locality closely resemble one another, and up to 18 different sounds may occur in the song, linked together into short rhythmical phrases. A number of these phrases are repeated in a certain sequence or theme. The singer then progresses in an orderly fashion through several themes, before surfacing briefly for a breath of air for another rendering.

In this latest study careful comparisons were made between the spectrographs of songs recorded in the Cape Verde Islands, off Africa in the North Atlantic, and those from the West Indies, 4300 km away.

Despite some minor differences the song formats were essentially the same. Similarly, in the North Pacific songs from Hawaii and Mex­ico, (5000 km distant) were nearly identical, though very different from the North Atlantic songs. Songs recorded off Tonga in the South Pacific (where whales migrate 6 months out off phase with those in the northern hemisphere) were unlike either of these types.

The singers are probably unpaired males, and it seems likely that the song serves some function in courtship. The hearing of a whale is believed to be acute, and the songs may be heard tens or even hundreds of kilometres away, allowing the singers to advertise their suitability and desirability to potential mates and rivals over a wide 40 area. Females may assess the suitability of future mates on the basis of a song's intricacy. Scientists have noticed that performance of some Herculean task during courtship is expected in species where a couple stays together for a long time - and the same pairs of hump­backs have been sighted year after year. The song could also be used 45 to identify particular whales, as individual peculiarities have been detected. It remains to be seen whether the isolation of whales in dif­ferent parts of the world's oceans means that genetic differences underlie the song dialects, or whether this is a purely cultural phenom­enon based on learned traditions.