Card # 6

LISTENING (7 minutes)

Task 1. Listen to the recording [T.6] ‘Great inventions we can’t live without’ and complete the test.

(listening - 2 minutes; time for fulfilment - 1 min., for answering -1 min.).

#		true	false
1	Speaker 1 couldn’t do without his car
2	Speaker 2 couldn’t do without her dish washing mashine and her hair dryer
3	Speaker 3 couldn’t live without contact lenses
4	Speaker 4 goes everywhere with his coffee mill

Task 2. Retell the listened text (time for preparation – 2 min., time for answering - 1 min.)

SPEAKING (10 minutes)

Task 1. Discuss the following questions (Time for preparation – 2 min. Time for answer – 2 min.)

1.Which places in your country do visitors enjoy visiting most?

2.What are some of the benefits of going away on holiday?

3.Have there been any recent changes in the types of holiday that are popular in your country?

4.What kinds of benefits might a significant increase in tourist numbers bring to a location?

5.What are some of the negative effects of a dramatic increase in tourism?

Task 2. Speak on a given topic. Some countries have come to rely on tourism as their major source of income. However, many people believe that the problems caused by tourism are more serious than those it has solved. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion? (Time for preparation – 5 min. Time for answer –1 min.)

READING (9 minutes)

Task 1. Read the text (silent reading – 1 min., reading aloud – 2 min.)

Make a plan to the text (time for preparation- 1 min., time for answering- 1 min.).

Smart trucks

Ever noticed how road-sweeping trucks just seem to rearrange dirt and garbage rather than removing it? Make the trucks smarter and they will do a much better job: just arm the vehicles with a laser, a digital camera and an image-processing computer.

The problem with standard road sweepers, says Graham Parker at the University of Surrey, is that they are dumb. The settings for the brushes - the speed and the force with which they are pushed onto the road, for example - are usually set at the beginning of a run and then left alone.

But some rubbish needs only light sweeping while other types of debris, like patches of split builder's gravel or wet sand, call for more vigorous scraping, so having just one setting makes the sweeping process inefficient.

"These vehicles are often not that effective, hence sweeping becomes a two-man operation with one in the truck and another behind on the foot sweeping up what the truck misses," Parker says. Identifying the types of trash to be dealt with should help the truck to pick up more rubbish at the first attempt. This will remove the need for a second pass, speeding up the operation and cutting fuel consumption and diesel emissions.

So with his colleague Gareth Peel, Parker set about making the trucks smarter. A laser mounted near the front projects a line onto the road ahead. A digital camera in the truck sends the images to an on-board computer.

Parker says that an image- processing programme monitoring the shape of the laser line can pick out and identify lumps of rubbish lying in the road. This information could then be used to move the truck's brushes to the litter, or to raise the alarm if the debris is in danger of clogging up the vacuum unit.

Task 2. Translate the 3-rd paragraph of the text (Time for preparation- 3 min., time for answering – 1 min.).

WRITING (14 minutes)

Task 1 Write an essay on the ‘Organizational and corporate culture’ (100 words)

(time for preparation – 13 min. , time for answering – 1 min.)