Listen to the audio and do the tasks.
Choose THREE answers.
What topics must the assignment cover?
Choose TWO answers.
Which areas do the students decide to concentrate their efforts on?
Listen to the second part of the recording and complete the summary. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer.
The Arabian oryx is mainly in color. It lives in a climate. In it became extinct. Now, there are about in Oman. A crash in the population was caused by .
Listen to the audio and do the tasks.
Which THREE features of the starling does the lecturer talk about?
Compete for the summary below. Write ONE WORD ONLY for each answer.
Problems with starlings
Thousands of birds can congregate and feed on commercial .
The farmers suffer great damage and the public have to tolerate the .
It is suspected that the birds carry that can be harmful to humans.
What is the best of the three approaches?
What is regulated by legislation on species movements?
What is the ultimate deciding factor in species management?
Read the following passage. Do the statements agree with the views of the writer?
YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts what the writer thinks
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to know what the writer's point of view is
Schoolchildren in China learn that the opening of the East-West trading route popularly known as the silk road occurred in 139 B.C. when Zhang Qian, the Chinese ambassador adventurer, traveled westward across the Pamirs, a mountain range in Central Asia. He was the first known Chinese person to do so. The term 'silk road' was actually first used late in the nineteenth century by a German geographer, Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen (1833-1905). Silk was not the only material that passed along these routes. Other goods are known to have included ceramics, glass, precious gems, and livestock.
However, there are reasons to think that these roads were being used centuries, probably even millennia, earlier than Zhang's expedition. In Roman times, Pliny the Elder reported a 'stone tower' which he said existed on the Pamir Plateau where goods had been traditionally exchanged between traders from the East and the West. In the early second century, Maës Titianus, an ancient Roman Macedonian traveler, actually reported reaching this famous Stone Tower, but its exact location remains uncertain. According to one theory, it was at Tashkurgan in the Pamirs. (The word Tashkurgan actually means 'stone tower' or 'stone fortress' in the Uyghur language.) Scholars today, however, believe that its location was probably somewhere in the Alay Valley. Whatever the truth about the Stone Tower may be, it seems likely that some form of trade was taking place in this region millennia before more formal recorded trade took place.
On the other hand, it is difficult to believe that people in those times were able to travel such huge distances. Traveling from West to East, the trader first had to cross the Pamir Plateau, through the 20,000-foot-high mountains. If the weather in the mountains had been kind and the journey undertaken in the right season, the eastward bound traveler would then finally arrive at the Kashgar, a logical place for trade and rest, where they could exchange horses or camels and then start on the return journey back over the mountains before the winter snows started.
It is unlikely that in these earlier times traders or travelers would have continued further eastwards from Kashgar, as they would have had to go round the Taklamakan Desert. Going through it was not an option as its name suggests: it literally means 'Go in and you won't come out'. Beyond this desert, there still would have remained eight hundred miles of a dangerous journey before they would have found the first true signs of Chinese civilization.
Another name for the East-West trading route is 'silk road'.
Zhang Qian is admired by Chinese schoolchildren.
Zhang Qian was a Chinese adventurer.
At least one German used the silk road in the 19th century.
Silk was the main material to be traded on this route.
The silk road was used for trade in natural materials, man-made materials, and animals.
We know that Zhang Qian was the first person to use the silk road.
The Romans may well have used the silk road.
The reports about a 'stone tower' provide evidence that the Romans used the silk road.
Kashgar is a welcoming city.
People who go into the Taklaman desert never come back out.
The journey from West to East was so long and difficult that the travelers probably did not go all the way to China.