Read the article about Saudi Arabia and study the vocabulary.

Use the links at the bottom of the page to study the definitions and collocations. A. Read the article Drained Dry

Forty years ago, when intensive modern farming started, there was a staggering 120 cubic miles (500 cubic kilometers) of water beneath the Saudi desert, enough to fill Lake Erie. But in recent years, up to 5 cubic miles (21 cubic kilometers) has been pumped to the surface annually for use on the farms. Virtually none of it is replaced by the rains, because there effectively are no rains. Based on extraction rates detailed in a 2004 paper from the University of London, the Saudis were on track to use up at least 96 cubic miles (400 cubic kilometers) of their aquifers by 2008. And so experts estimate that four-fifths of the Saudis' "fossil" water is now gone. One of the planet's greatest and oldest freshwater resources, in one of its hottest and most parched places, has been all but emptied in little more than a generation.

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/saudi-arabia-wateruse/?rptregcta=reg_free_np&rptregcampaign=20131016_rw_membership_r1p_intl_se_w#closemodal B. Read the vocabulary and their meanings intensive involving a lot of effort staggering very shocking and surprising beneath - under recent happening a short time ago annually - yearly effectively used to describe what the result of a situation or action is estimate to guess parched dry C. Study the definitions of these words in an online dictionary:

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/ http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/

D. Study the collocation and the context of these vocabulary words on the British National Corpus: http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/

Malena Sager, Student ID: C7132902 Multimedia Resources and Independent Learning