Speaking

Many regions in the world face problems with air pollution. What can be done to
decrease the amount of air pollution in these areas? Use details and examples in
your response.

Some students who study abroad prefer to live with roommates from the same
cultural background. Others prefer to live with roommates from different countries.
Which would you prefer and why?

1: I can’t believe Bill wrote another letter to the paper.

2: I know, with another terrible idea.

1: You think so? I actually thought this one made sense.

2: Not me. I mean, I take four, sometimes five classes a semester and I have to do
research papers for almost all of them.

1: Yea, so you need a lot of books.

2: Of course! When you do research papers, you really need to read a lot about your
subject before and while you’re writing your papers, so it’s good to be able to have a
lot of books at home. I’ve checked out as many as 20 books at one time.

1: Yea, come to think of it… I’ve had more than that at once and I’ve actually used
each one.

2: Right. I can’t think of a time when I took out a book that I didn’t use.

1: I guess, but like he said, haven’t you ever lost or forgotten to return one or
something?

2: Never.

1: Really?

2: No and that’s another reason I disagree with him. We’re adults. They should trust
us to take care of books, not assume we won’t.
1: You’re right. I hardly ever misplace my books.

Ok, research scientists have observed vervet monkeys in their natural habitat doing
this. Vervet monkeys normally move in groups to find food and whenever they find it,
they share it, eat it together. Now, the researchers observing the monkeys saw that
each time the monkeys were feeding in a group and a leopard approached, leopards
prey on monkeys you know, that whichever monkey saw the leopard first made a
screeching noise. When the other monkeys heard the screeching noise, even if they
didn’t see the leopard, they all scattered, running to climb the branches of nearby
trees to be safe from the leopard, but one day as the researchers followed a group of
monkeys that were looking for food, the monkeys came upon a bunch of fruit. As
they settled down to eat the fruit, one monkey began screeching. The other
monkeys scattered and ran for the trees. The researchers looked around for any sign
of a leopard. They didn’t see any leopard in the area, but when they turned to look
back at where the monkeys had been sitting before, getting ready to eat, they saw
the monkey who’d been screeching standing there alone eating all the fruit.

1: Hey Karen, what’s up? Anything exciting planned for the weekend?
2: Well kind of, I guess. My parents are coming to visit.

1: That’s cool.

2: I know. They’ll be staying at my place for the weekend.

1: That’s right. You’ve got your own apartment off campus.

2: Yep. Should be fun. I’ll bring them around campus and show them some of our old
buildings here. Give them the tour.

1: Awesome.

2: Think is though… my apartment’s kind of a big mess right now. I haven’t cleaned it
for a while. Had some major tests and a paper to write, so I haven’t had time to
clean. There’s like dishes in the sink, floors are dirty…

1: I can relate to that. Well, maybe you can clean up before they come.

2: Possibly. It’s just that they’ll be arriving tonight and I’m supposed to go to a study
group for my chemistry class in a little while.
1: Oh, no time to clean then because of your meeting.

2: Right. I mean, I guess I could just skip meeting with the study group, go home to
clean now. Then I’d have plenty of time to make it look really nice for my parents,
but chemistry’s a pretty hard class and these weekly study group meetings are
usually helpful in explaining the concepts and stuff.

1: Yea.

2: So, I don’t know. I could just go to my study group meeting and then rush home
afterwards to do a quick ten-minute cleaning right before my parents arrive. I
wouldn’t be able to do a thorough job in so little time, but they are my parents, so
they’re used to me and know I can be messy.

A product’s packaging, the container it’s stored and sold in, is actually a very
important part of the product and its marketing, so companies spend a lot of time
deciding what kind of packaging to use. Sometimes, after a company has been selling
a product for awhile, it may decide to change the product’s packaging, offer the
same product in a new, redesigned container. Why would a company do this? Well,
lets talk about two reasons. One reason a company might change their products
packaging is in response to new technology, like the invention of better materials. As
technology improves, new materials are invented and better ways of packaging
products may emerge. For instance, when milk was first being marketed in the
United States, it was mostly sold in glass bottles, but this was expensive since glass
costs a lot and is fragile. If you accidentally drop the glass bottle, it would break and
make a mess. With the invention of plastic however, a new material became
available that was cheaper and more durable because plastic didn’t break as easily as
glass, so to take advantage of this new technology, some companies started selling
milk in plastic containers. Ok, another reason a company might change a products
packaging is to better compete with other companies; to make the packaging more
competitive with the packaging of other products. Sometimes this is done by
changing the size of the package. So, back to our milk example. The bottles that milk
were originally sold in were large. They were large containers, but now you also see
milk being sold in small, portable containers that hold only single servings. Why this
change to a smaller container? Well, because other competing companies producing
beverages like juices, teas, or soft drinks were selling them in smaller, more portable
containers that people could take to work with them or drink in the car. So to
compete, milk companies also started selling milk in smaller, portable containers.