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Unit 1 Another country
Part 1 Living abroad
These days, people don’t always stay in the country where
they were born.
Many people choose to live in other countries and in other
cities.
They sometimes live a long way from home.
In an international city, like London, you can meet people
from lots of countries.
Some people left their home country a long time ago, and
some people have just arrived in the city.
They all have different reasons for moving to another country.
Mary: I left about five years ago and came to London just to
work, really.
Jann: I left my home country about 20 years ago to go
abroad to study.
Eva: I left in September of this year to study Shakespeare at
Shakespeare’s Globe.
Living in a different country can be very exciting.
You experience a new culture, and it’s great for learning a
new language.
People often love their new home.
Mary: The food, culture, music, theatre is really wonderful
here and you get a sense that there’s a real … great buzz
around London.
Jann: What I like is the weather, the adventure of being in a
new country, and the people.
Eva: I love the international feel of London.
The fact that, walking to and from school, I hear five or six
languages easily.
Jann: What I like is the weather, the adventure of being in a
new country, and the people.
But it can also be a challenge living far from your own
country.
And there are some things that everyone misses …
Mary: I suppose I miss my friends and my family a lot. I have
a lot of friends in London as well, but you always remember
your friends from home.
Jann: I miss the culture, the language, and my family.
Eva: I miss having children in my life. My nephews and my
nieces running round.
Living in a different country, whether it’s for family, work, or
study, can be a great opportunity.
And for some people, the longer you stay, the harder it is to go
home.
Part 2 Adriana: Life in England
Adriana Gonzalez-Vera trained as a vet in her home country.
She came to the UK with her British husband Mark 10 years
ago.
Adrianna: I was born in Santiago, capital of Chile, in South
America.
She didn’t only work with animals when she lived in Chile.
I worked as a veterinary surgeon, and I also worked as a
consultant in retail and pharmaceuticals.
I met my husband through work.
He was the managing director of the company where we
worked.
Adriana swapped the busy lifestyle of a South American city
for the peace and quiet of the English countryside.
What did her family think about her moving to another
country to live?
They thought that it was very far away for all of us, and that it
was going to be a little bit more difficult to meet up.
Adriana doesn’t work as a vet in the UK.
She’s using other skills from her home country, Chile.
I run my own Spanish consultancy company, where I train
company directors and help them with their presentation.
I also do some translations, and some Spanish teaching.
Most of my family are still in Chile.
I have my mother, my father, my younger sister, her husband
and her daughter, and my two grandmothers living in Chile.
I miss the weather, I miss the hot summers, and I miss the
warm people, the friendly people in Chile.
I miss my Mummy’s cooking, really, and I miss the long talks
with my father.
Adriana’s two daughters are now 9 and 7 years old.
They are very adorable girls.
Camilla loves reading and she loves the outdoors.
Isabelle, she likes fashion, she likes make-up, and everything
in pink!
For now, Adriana enjoys the quiet country life in England, but
she would like to go back to Chile one day.
I would really like to work as a vet again.
Unfortunately I would have to qualify again in the UK.
Perhaps we will stay here for a long time, or maybe we will
go back to Chile if my husband can find work there.
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a really long time.
Part 3 Anita: Life in Barcelona
So, for now it’s nice, and I’m really happy here, I enjoy it a
Anita Patwardhan moved from her home city of San Francisco lot, but I don’t know if I will be here forever.
to live in the Spanish city of Barcelona.
Her parents are Indian, but she was born in the United States.
Anita: Well I first came to Barcelona in 2003, because I
wanted to study Spanish, and then I fell in love with the city at
that time, so I decided that I wanted to come back.
Luckily, in 2005, Anita found a job in Barcelona.
So I decided to come back and, and I’m really happy here, I
really enjoy it.
Today, Anita’s home is in an area called San Gervasi, about
15 minutes walk from the city centre.
It’s very convenient for me because I have my job within
walking distance.
I can take the bus directly to the beach, and I’m there in 15
minutes.
Anita spoke fluent Spanish when she came back to Barcelona,
and found a job with an American online marketing company.
I work for a company that provides different online marketing
services for hotels, and specifically my team builds websites
for hotels, so I work with designers and programmers.
As well as a great job, Anita has many friends in Barcelona.
We’re all very close, we’re friends, so it’s almost like a
second family away from home; we have dinners together, we
celebrate birthdays together, so, it’s, it’s a nice feeling.
Although she has got a good job and close friends she still
misses home.
I miss my family most of all.
It’s very difficult to not be able to give my mum a hug, or to
enjoy my Dad’s barbecue.
So I feel happy if I can see them.
But staying in touch with family overseas is much easier
today.
So my family and I, we speak generally every weekend, either
through Skype, or through e-mail, and every now and then on
the telephone too.
They have come to visit me a few times, and I try to go back
and see them at least once a year.
Anita really loves her new life in Barcelona.
Barcelona is an amazing place, you have a combination of so
many wonderful things with weather, cultural activities,
beautiful architecture, and most importantly the beach.
How can anyone not like the beach?
But still she’s not sure where her life will take her in the
future.
I don’t know if I will stay in Spain forever, forever seems like
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Unit 2 A park in the sky
Part 1 New York City living
New York City is one of the busiest, noisiest, but most
popular cities in the world.
Eight million people live in New York’s five boroughs.
The largest is Queens, then there’s Brooklyn, the Bronx, and
Staten Island.
The smallest borough is Manhattan.
But this is the borough most people talk about when they talk
about New York.
For people who love city life New York is the perfect place to
live and for visitors it’s the trip of a lifetime.
There’s so much to see and do.
It’s got amazing shopping and restaurants, exciting theatres,
and some of the most famous architecture in the world.
But not everyone enjoys New York life.
It’s hard to wake up refreshed in a city that doesn’t sleep.
Living in the city can be very stressful and it’s easy to feel
lonely.
So where do New Yorkers go to get away from the crowds,
traffic, and stress?
There are many beautiful parks in Manhattan, and they are
great places to relax.
Some, like Washington Square Park, aren’t very big, but they
are very popular with local residents.
People come here to chill out and have fun.
Central Park is 2.5 miles long and half a mile wide and it has
over 35 million visitors every year.
When you’re in Central Park you can forget that you are in the
middle of a busy city.
Part 2 The High Line
In 2009 a new and very unusual park opened in Downtown
Manhattan.
The new park, called The High Line, is now one of the city’s
most popular attractions, and it’s easy to see why people love
it.
The High Line is nearly one and a half miles long, but it’s less
than 20 metres wide.
It runs right through the buildings three storeys up, over the
traffic and crowded streets below.
Before the High Line was a beautiful park it was a train line.
The High Line opened in 1934.
Before that, from the 1850s until the early 1930s, trains
travelled along the streets of Manhattan.
The trains carried milk, meat, and goods.
But with more cars on the roads, along with people and
horses, it was very dangerous and there were many accidents.
Because of these accidents, the High Line was built and the
trains now travelled safely above the traffic.
Trains used the High Line until 1980, when the train line
closed.
Then, for many years, the High Line was empty and its
landscape started to change.
Without any trains travelling on the tracks plants started to
grow.
Some people wanted the High Line demolished, but a group
of city residents fought to protect it.
They dreamed of making the old train line into ‘a park in the
sky’.
And finally, this dream came true.
After years of work the first section of the High Line park
opened on June 9th 2009.
In 2011 the second section opened, and the park isn’t quite
finished.
But already three million visitors come to the park every year.
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Part 3 A great success
On a perfect hot and sunny day in July the High Line is busy
with visitors and staff.
Gardeners are looking after the plants and flowers, while the
guides are helping visitors, telling them more about the park’s
history and environment.
In the park there are plenty of places to sit where you can
relax, listen to music, or meet with friends and chat.
Many visitors are enjoying the views over the Hudson River,
as far as the Statue of Liberty, or watching the busy streets
below.
So what do today’s visitors think of the High Line?
Betty: Oh, this is an amazing resource.
It’s this green oasis in an urban setting that is just surprising
and beautiful.
Derek: It’s a little bit of the country in the city, you know,
that you really don’t get enough of here.
Jeanie: I think it’s beautiful.
It gives … it’s a great place for people to spend their time off,
their lunch breaks, their time with family.
So, I think it’s a fabulous place in the city to go.
Lance: Beautiful. It’s an amazing treasure.
We just arrived an hour ago and we’ve just started walking
along, but it’s amazing to see the sites of the city and all the
foliage, all the green trees and plants, and all the people
enjoying the beautiful day.
The High Line is an amazing success.
It’s a pathway of flowers and grass that runs through
neighbourhoods where many people haven’t got gardens.
For local residents it’s a place where they can chill out and
escape the stress and noise of the crowded city.
And, for visitors, it’s an opportunity to explore New York’s
amazing architecture and experience one of the world’s
greatest cities in a very different way.
In New York City, the High Line makes a difference to
people’s lives.
It makes people happy.
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Unit 3 The Titanic
Part 1 A tragic story
In April 1912 newspapers around the world were full of the
tragic story of one of the most famous ships in history – the
Titanic.
At the time, the Titanic was the largest passenger ship in the
world.
She was nearly 270 metres long and over 53 metres high with
nine decks.
She was owned by the White Star Line.
The Titanic left the port of Southampton on the south coast of
England on the 10th April 1912.
She stopped briefly at Cherbourg in France, and Queenstown,
now called Cobh, in Ireland, and then started her journey
across the Atlantic towards her final destination, New York.
She was carrying 1343 passengers and 885 crew members.
The trip to New York was her maiden voyage.
Some passengers, in first class, were rich and famous.
But most second and third class passengers weren’t rich.
They were people from across Europe travelling to America to
start new lives.
The story of the Titanic is so famous that everyone knows
how the voyage ended.
Just before midnight on Sunday 14th April, as she was sailing
towards the coast of North America, the ship hit an iceberg
and was badly damaged.
Two hours 40 minutes later the ship sank.
Tragically, there weren’t enough lifeboats and only 710
people survived.
In 1985 the wreck of the Titanic was finally found at the
bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, two and a half miles down.
A hundred years after the Titanic sank people are still
fascinated by its story.
But, while there are hundreds of books, television
programmes, and famous films about the ship’s short voyage,
many people still know very little about where the ship came
from and the people who built it.
Part 2 Building the Titanic
The birthplace of the Titanic is Belfast.
Belfast is the capital city of Northern Ireland in the United
Kingdom and the city was famous for ship-building in the
20th Century.
The Harland and Wolff shipyard, where they built Titanic,
still exists today.
You can see the dock where they finished the ship.
They don’t make ships here anymore, but you can still see the
yard’s two massive cranes, Samson and Goliath, from all
across the city.
Today, the old shipbuilding area of Belfast is called the
Titanic Quarter.
There’s a lot of new development in this area.
And there’s a huge new Titanic Signature Building at the old
shipyard where you can learn more about the ship.
From the outside this amazing new building looks like the
bow of the Titanic.
And behind the new building you can still see the old offices
of Harland and Wolff, where they designed the ships for the
White Star Line.
This building is empty today, but in 1900 there were hundreds
of people working here, and around 15,000 people working in
the shipyards.
The Titanic was the second of three ships that Harland and
Wolff were building for the White Star Line in the early 20th
century.
The plans for the Titanic and its sister ship, the Olympic, were
almost identical both inside and out, but the Titanic was
slightly bigger.
The designers marked the Titanic’s differences in red on the
ships’ plans.
You can see these original plans at the Ulster museum of Folk
and Transport’s Titanica exhibition in Belfast.
You can also see a lot of the objects from the Olympic.
The Titanic had identical items on board when she sank.
At the exhibition you can also learn much more about the
people who built the ship, and the people who were travelling
on her when she sank.
And this is just one of many Titanic exhibitions around the
world.
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Part 3 My great-grandfather’s story
The tragedy of the Titanic was very difficult for the people of
Belfast and for many years no-one in Belfast talked about how
they built the Titanic.
But this changed over time and today people in the city are
proud of their family histories.
There’s a memorial to the men of Belfast who died on the ship
outside the City Hall.
And tour guide Susie Millar has her own very special family
story.
Susie: I can remember as a small child, my grandmother
taking me to see the Titanic memorial, which stands in the
grounds of Belfast City Hall, and she pointed up at, at the
name, Thomas Millar on the plinth and told me that that was
my great-grandfather.
My great-grandfather worked here in Harland & Wolff, in the
shipyard which built Titanic and he had helped to construct
the engines for Titanic and its sister, Olympic …
And Tommy Millar has a special place in the history of the
Titanic.
He’s unique, he’s the only one of the crew who worked on the
construction of Titanic for Harland & Wolff and then worked
for White Star as one of the crew.
Like many people on the ship, Tommy was leaving Ireland to
start a new life in America.
Before my great-grandfather left Belfast, he said his goodbyes
to his two sons and he gave each of them two new pennies
dated 1912 and he told them not to spend those coins until the
family was all together again.
Sadly, Tommy was one of the crew members who died. But
his family never forgot him.
… my grandfather kept those two pennies all of his life and he
passed them down through the family and we still have them
in the family today.
But why is the story of the Titanic still so famous after a
hundred years?
Susie Millar thinks that there are two reasons that people will
always be interested in the Titanic.
… you’ve got the biggest ship in the world with the richest
people in the world and the poorest people in the world,
sailing across the Atlantic and on the maiden voyage, it hits
this iceberg and it’s a disaster.
And within that bigger story, there are all these little threads
of stories, individual stories about families and people, and
people who were heroes and people who were cowards and
people who were villains, so you’ve got all those elements
within it, so I think those two things combined give you a
really good story.
Unit 4 Healthy eating
Part 1 A diet for a long life
There are many reasons for differences in life expectancy, that
is, the average age that people live to.
But one of the most important secrets to a long life is food –
having enough food, and eating the right food.
We all know it’s not always easy to eat well.
We have busy lives. Nowadays, a lot of people don’t cook
traditional food at home.
Fast food is quick and cheap everywhere.
But a bad diet can reduce your life expectancy by many years.
So, do you think you have a healthy diet?
Dan: I think I have a healthy diet, 80 per cent of the time.
I eat whole foods, home-cooked food, meat, vegetables.
I don’t like much junk food or processed food.
Tim: I feel I have a balanced diet. But you could always eat
more fruit and vegetables.
Anne-Marie: Not so healthy. I eat a lot of sugar, so, sugar’s
not very good for you.
Angus: I do not have a healthy diet at all. I like
cheeseburgers, I like bad food.
Do you think some countries have a better diet than other
countries?
Beth: Country that has the healthiest diet?
I probably think the Mediterranean countries, places like
Italy, and France, and Spain.
They eat a lot of locally produced food.
Angus: I believe that the countries which have the healthiest
diet are places such as Spain, Portugal, Italy, this is because
of their reliance on things like olive oil and fish.
Edel: I’m not too sure. I’ve been to Japan before and they
seem to eat a lot of fish and oily foods.
I think they have a very healthy diet.
Dan: I spent a lot of time in Spain and I think they have a very
healthy diet.
They eat a lot of natural food.
They eat a lot of vegetables, they eat a lot of fresh fish, it’s all
fresh food.
So I always felt very healthy when I was in Spain.
In the United States the average life expectancy is only 78
years.
A lot of traditional American food isn’t very healthy.
Often there’s a lot of fried food and meat and there aren’t
many fresh vegetables or salad.
But luckily in cities like New York there are lots of places to
eat and drink where you can find the most delicious food from
around the world.
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Part 2 Italian food
At over 81 years, the average life expectancy in Italy is one of
the highest in the world, and food is one of the most important
parts of Italian culture.
And when Italians move to other countries, they take their
food with them.
New York is full of Italian restaurants.
Italian food is a great example of the Mediterranean diet – a
diet that is one of the healthiest in the world.
This is PJ Charlton, an Italian Restaurant on Charlton Street in
Greenwich Village, New York.
Phil Mouquinho opened the restaurant in 1979.
The area around the restaurant has changed a lot in 30 years,
but PJ Charlton’s still serves fabulous Italian cuisine to
residents and visitors to the city from around the world.
So, what is it that makes Italian food so healthy?
The heart of any good Italian cuisine begins with garlic,
onions, and olive oil.
And once you begin with that, and you introduce the great
San Marsano tomatoes, you begin to create a Marinara
sauce.
Your greens, I like to refer to all of those greens as captured
sunlight.
It’s basically all of the vegetables that you can think of, err,
with a little bit of garlic and oil.
In addition to that, when you talk about pasta, it’s nothing
more than flour and eggs.
What could be more simple than that, more healthy and more
nutritious?
Some of the pastas that we use here at the restaurant are
linguini, spaghetti, and we have rigatoni, penne, and then we
have the cannelloni, and we have ravioli, and we have what
we call the stuffed pastas.
Part 3 Japanese food
The longest life expectancy in the world is in Japan.
Life expectancy for women in Japan is over 86 years old!
And one of the secrets to the long lives of the Japanese is their
traditional diet.
The traditional Japanese diet is very healthy, and today
Japanese food is popular around the world.
Jing Chen is the manager of Miraku, a Japanese restaurant in
Long Island, New York.
So, what is it that makes Japanese food so healthy?
Jing Chen: Japanese people live a very long life, and I think
that’s mainly due to their diet of eating a lot of fish.
Fish have omega 3, which is good for the body.
What ingredients are popular in Japanese food?
Some of the key ingredients in Japanese cuisine are rice, fish,
seaweed, and soy.
How do you cook the food?
There’s grilling, there’s ‘sautéing’, there’s braising.
What about Jing? What’s her favourite meal?
I love Japanese food.
The ingredients are very fresh, because it focuses on
seasonality.
Sushi is really unique to Japanese cuisine, there’s no other
cuisine that uses raw fish.
Raw fish tastes really, really great, has a lot of, you know,
natural flavours.
And it’s also very, very healthy.
Like the Mediterranean diet, the Japanese diet isn’t good for
you just because of the healthy ingredients.

How do you cook the food? It’s about a different way of eating.

We sauté many of our vegetables, we broil many of our meats Japanese food looks beautiful.
and poultry, we don’t fry, we try to stay away from the frying There are a lot of small dishes, and a lot of variety.
process, because it’s not that healthy for you.
People eat slowly, and they eat less food.
When my customers come in and they greet me and they’re
happy, and they sit and they tell one another this is the best But everything tastes amazing!
kept secret in New York City, it makes me feel very, very
good.
I love doing what I do. I’ve been doing it for 32 years.
I feel that, watching my customers eat my food, get healthy,
stay happy, is what I want to do.
The Mediterranean diet isn’t just good for you because of the
healthy ingredients.
Eating a healthy Mediterranean diet is about eating delicious
food together, and most of all it’s about enjoying your food.
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Unit 5 Alternative energy
Part 1 Fuel for the future
Today, one of the biggest global challenges we face is how we
are going to be able to supply enough energy for everyone in
the future.
Globally, we are using more and more energy.
We all want electricity for our homes, and fuel for our cars.
We need our factories to work and our planes to fly.
But we know that traditional energy sources, fossil fuels like
oil, gas and coal, won’t last forever and are causing
environmental problems like climate change.
Some energy sources, like nuclear power, can also be harmful
when accidents occur.
The development of new energy sources is becoming more
important across the world.
People are looking for sources of energy that are safe and
cheap, like wind power, solar energy from our homes or huge
solar farms, or hydro-electric power using our rivers and
lakes.
We need energy that won’t run out, renewable energy, and
energy that won’t damage the environment, green energy.
Some of these energy sources are already well-known.
And most people have opinions about what kind of energy we
will be using in the future and what’s the best kind of
renewable energy.
Ijeoma: I think we’ll use more wind energy and I think that
we’ll use more solar energy.
I believe the government is investing in that.
Judy: People will probably use more solar energy, more
wind power, more hydro-power.
Andrew: In the future I think we will use more renewable
forms of energy, especially as fossil fuels are running out.
I feel solar power, wind power will be increasing in the
future, and I think that will be more sustainable for our
development.
Part 2 Alternative living
A few countries, like Iceland, are lucky.
They already have their own renewable power supply;
geothermal power.
Geothermal power provides over 60% of Iceland’s energy.
Across the country they use the boiling hot water from under
the surface of the earth to make electricity.
This electricity is clean and green, and will never run out.
But other countries are looking at the problem of energy use
in a different and dramatic way.
They are building new cities that try to change the way we
live and use energy today, and in the future.
In the United Arab Emirates they are building a new ‘green’
city, where renewable energy is at the heart of the
development.
Masdar City is a walled city 11 miles from the city of Abu
Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
British architects Foster and Partners designed the city and the
Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company is building it.
The first residents moved in in 2009 but it probably won’t be
finished until 2025 or 2030.
Masdar City is a very big project.
Masdar is going to be a square, nearly a mile wide and when it
is finished they hope that about 40,000 people will live in the
city, and another 50,000 will commute to Masdar every day
from across the United Arab Emirates.
Part 3 A green city
The brand new hi-tech Masdar City will use only solar, wind,
and other clean, green renewable energy sources.
They will also try to reduce energy use as much as possible.
By designing buildings and streets to use shade and wind to
stay cool when the temperature outside can rise to over 40
degrees, the city will use less energy.
The city will also recycle most of its water and waste.
One of the most important ideas for reducing energy use in
Masdar is that you won’t be able to drive a normal car in the
city.
Instead, there will be public transport using electric vehicles
and a ‘Personal Rapid Transit’ system.
The Personal Rapid Transit system uses small pods that travel
on magnets in the roads across the city.
You will get into a pod at stations around the city, choose
where you want to go on the touchscreen and the pod will
carry you to your destination.
The design of the city encourages people to walk – the
staircases are large and lifts are hard to find!
Building a new city is very expensive and complicated.
But at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, and
across Masdar city, they are using and testing technology that,
hopefully, will be used around the world in the future.
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Unit 6 Scotland
Part 1 The country
The United Kingdom is made up of four countries; England,
Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
England is the biggest country and has a population of over 50
million.
Northern Ireland is the smallest and has a population of fewer
than two million.
Scotland’s population is a lot smaller than England’s, at just
over five million, but the country has got some of the most
beautiful scenery in the UK.
Scotland has got the tallest mountain in the UK, Ben Nevis,
and the deepest lake, Loch Morar, as well as historic castles,
amazing beaches, and a dramatic coastline.
But there’s much more to Scotland than beautiful countryside,
it’s also got some of the most exciting and important cities in
the UK.
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland.
It’s an important city for business and culture, with some great
modern architecture.
Edinburgh isn’t as big or as modern as Glasgow, but it’s the
capital city of Scotland and it’s the top destination for
international visitors to the country.
Around one and a half million international visitors come to
Edinburgh every year.
So what do international visitors think about the country?
What’s Scotland like?
Jazz: I came to Scotland last week. I’ve been here about a
week, so far. It’s gorgeous.
The countryside’s beautiful, Edinburgh is stunning and the
people are really friendly.
And the food’s great.
Jackie: It’s miserable. Firstly, I really like sunny weather and
it’s grey here all the time.
Sandra: I think it’s really nice place; a lot of young people,
many parties and the university is great.
I really like it.
How different is Scotland from your home country?
Amrita: It’s a lot colder than where I’m from.
Robin: I don’t know, just the people are a lot nicer here than
in Germany.
Isabelle: The people are very polite here, whereas back home
it’s not as, not as nice. Very friendly.
What’s the best thing about Scotland?
Sandra: The best thing about Scotland? I think maybe the
landscape, the mountains, the Highlands.
Jackie: In summer it’s… there’s really gorgeous light, you
know, in the summer it stays light a really long time and
that’s nice.
Cassandra: I think that people are willing to share cultural
differences which, for me, is interesting so, the atmosphere is
something I love.
And the worst thing about Scotland?
Sandra: The weather. It’s really cold compared to Spain.
Robin: Cold.
Isabelle: I hate the rain, it’s windy and I don’t like the food
apart from fish and chips.
Part 2 The people
Although it is part of the United Kingdom, Scotland has its
own Government, which meets at the modern Parliament
buildings in Edinburgh.
People from Scotland are called Scots.
Over the past 400 years hundreds of thousands of Scots have
left to live in countries around the world.
Generations on, many of the families of these emigrants still
feel a strong connection to Scotland, and they often return to
the country to visit.
Scots have got their own vocabulary for example; – small is
‘wee’, a lake is a ‘loch’ and a child is a ‘bairn’.
Sometimes even English people find it hard to understand
Scots when they are speaking English as they can have strong
accents.
So, what are the Scots like?
Isabelle: Very friendly. They are funny to understand, some
speak funny.
Amrita: Pretty bubbly, friendly.
Rory: Often very loud.
Conor: They’re very friendly, very welcoming.
Alex: I would say Scotland was more … feels more like a wee
community, compared to England.
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Part 3 Edinburgh
The most popular tourist attraction in Edinburgh is the castle,
and it’s one of the oldest buildings in the city.
There’s been a castle here for nearly a thousand years.
Edinburgh Castle stands on Castle Rock and has got amazing
views over the city and across to the River Forth.
But once a year the castle isn’t the centre of attraction, and
many people agree on the best time to visit the city.
Isabelle: Summer during the Fringe Festival. Absolutely
amazing.
Alex: Oh, Edinburgh Festival.
Andy: Edinburgh Festival. There’s lots of things happening.
Street artists and different kind of shows on and stuff in the
theatres. It’s good.
Every year, in August, the city holds the biggest arts festival
in the world, the Edinburgh Festival.
It’s the most exciting time to visit Edinburgh, and the city is
busier in August than at any other time of the year.
Edinburgh’s population of 450,000 people doubles and the
city becomes the cultural capital of the world.
The Festival began in 1947 and is a 3-week celebration of art,
music, theatre, film, dance and comedy.
During the festival, there are performances all over the city –
over 30,000 performers come to the city to work in over 2,000
shows.
The most popular shows are comedy, but there’s something
for everyone.
Edinburgh isn’t a cheap city and everything gets even more
expensive in August.
Luckily there are a lot of free shows during the festival, from
music and magic, to street theatre and there’s so much to do
that people come back year after year.
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Unit 7 Writers’ houses
Part 1 Places that inspire writers
There are many cities around the world that have inspired
great works of art and literature.
For hundreds of years artists have come to Paris to live and
work.
Writers like George Orwell, F Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest
Hemingway, and many others travelled from across Europe,
and around the world, to experience life in the city.
The beautiful city of Prague inspired the work of Franz Kafka,
and since the early 20th Century New York has been home to
many writers and artists.
London has changed a lot since Charles Dickens wrote about
the city in the early 19th Century, but the city still attracts
writers from the UK and around the world.
Of course, it isn’t just great cities that inspire writers.
Every year people travel from around the world to the Lake
District in the North of England, to visit a tiny farmhouse in
the middle of beautiful English countryside.
Hill Top farm was the home of Beatrix Potter.
Potter wrote and illustrated the Tale of Peter Rabbit and many
other stories for children.
Since she wrote Peter Rabbit in 1902 publishers have sold
more than 40 million copies, and they have translated the
story into more than 35 languages.
Hill Top has been open to the paying public for over 60 years,
and it’s still as popular as ever.
In 2011 there were over 100,000 visitors.
Part 2 Jane Austen
Around a hundred years earlier another female British author
was at work.
In the city of Bath in the South West of England there’s a
museum about one of England’s most well-known writers of
the early 19th Century; Jane Austen, the author of Pride and
Prejudice.
Austen wrote about this city in her novels, and it’s a favourite
location for film and television adaptions of her work.
But Austen only lived in Bath for a short time.
She wrote most of her famous novels in the peace and quiet of
the English countryside.
This is Chawton, a 17th century country house where Jane
Austen lived with her mother and sister Cassandra from 1809
until just before her death in 1817.
Today the house is a museum that has been open to the public
since 1949.
The Austen family weren’t very wealthy and they didn’t have
a great estate.
Jane’s own home isn’t as large or as beautiful as the homes of
the characters in her novels, like Mr Darcy.
But the house is quite comfortable, pretty and light and there’s
a beautiful garden.
Visitors today can see many of Jane’s possessions including
the desk where she completed her six novels.
Jane Austen didn’t become a famous writer in her own
lifetime.
Her own name did not even appear on her work until after her
death.
She wrote as ‘a Lady’.
But slowly she has become one of the most read female
novelists in the world.
Since the early 20th century, there have been many famous
film and television adaptations of her novels.
The first famous film of Pride and Prejudice was made in
1940.
In recent years there have been many adaptations of her work,
as well as films about her life.
Keira Knightly played Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and
Prejudice, and Anne Hathaway played Jane Austen herself in
a film about her life, Becoming Jane.
And still today fans come to this quiet and gentle part of the
English countryside to learn more about her life and work.
Part 3 The Brontës
Over 200 miles away from the gentle countryside and bright,
comfortable living rooms of Jane Austen’s world there’s
another house with a far more dramatic and remarkable
literary history.
This is the town of Haworth in Yorkshire, in the North of
England, and at the top of the steep cobbled high street is the
Brontë Parsonage.
This house was the home of Charlotte Brontë, the author of
Jane Eyre, Emily Brontë, the author of Wuthering Heights and
Anne Brontë, the author of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
The sisters moved here with their father Patrick and their
brother, Branwell, and it was in this small home they wrote
the famous novels that have sold millions of copies and have
been adapted into hundreds of stage plays, films and
television programmes.
Haworth is surrounded by Pennine Yorkshire moorland and
this dramatic scenery was the inspiration for many of the
Brontës’ novels.
Life was very hard here in the mid-1800s.
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The Brontës’ mother died soon after arriving at Haworth, and
two sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, died when they were just 10
and 11.
The sisters were very close and rarely left the Parsonage, as
Ann Dinsdale from the Brontë Parsonage explains:
What they really wanted to do was to be together at the
Parsonage and to write and that’s what they did.
The sisters wrote in the evening, sitting together at the table
in the small dining room.
Like Jane Austen, the sisters didn’t use their real names when
they first published their books.
They published their novels under the names Currer, Ellis,
and Acton Bell, hoping that they would be treated as, as
writers rather than women writers.
Their books were instant hits and everyone wanted to know
the true identity of the authors.
So, Charlotte and Anne travelled to London by train to tell
their publishers their real names.
But tragedy was never far away.
In 1848, Bramwell died, followed three months later by Emily
and then Anne five months after that.
Shortly after she married, Charlotte died in 1855.
But by the time she died, Charlotte was a famous writer.
She died in 1855 in this house and two years after her death,
a biography written by Elizabeth Gaskell was published, ‘The
Life of Charlotte Brontë’ and that attracted a huge amount of
interest in the Brontë’s lives … people wanted to come to
Haworth and see the place where the Brontë novels had been
written and to see where the family had lived their lives.
There has been a small Brontë museum in Haworth since
1895, but it wasn’t until 1928 that the Parsonage opened to the
public.
Today, inside, visitors can see many of the sisters’ possessions
including Charlotte’s wedding dress, and many of the sisters’
handwritten letters and manuscripts.
Experts still come to the Parsonage from around the world to
research the sisters and their work.
Every year we get 75,000 visitors on average and they’re
drawn from all over the world, from America, from Japan,
from places in this country.
The Brontë novels have been translated into, into over 26
different languages … they’re read by people all over the
world.
For many visitors, it is exploring the dramatic Yorkshire
countryside surrounding the Parsonage that really helps them
to understand the powerful novels of the remarkable Brontë
sisters.
Unit 8 Twins
Part 1 Why are twins special?
It doesn’t matter if you have boys or girls; it’s always a
challenge bringing up children.
But bringing up twins is an even greater challenge.
Can you imagine two of everything, at the same time?
The Department of Twin Research at Kings College London
has a database of over 12,000 twins who are taking part in a
fascinating research programme.
Throughout their lifetimes, the twins regularly visit St
Thomas’ Hospital in London to have a range of medical tests.
Today, hundreds of pairs of twins taking part in the
programme have come to a summer party at the hospital.
It’s a chance to meet other twins and share their experiences.
So, why are all these twins so important to scientists?
All identical twins, like Xand and Chris, share 100 per cent of
their genes – they are genetically identical.
Twins usually look exactly the same, and they often have very
similar abilities, interests and personalities.
Xand: Chris and I are similar in that we enjoy the same
things, we both have a lot of the same friends.
Chris: We both did medical degrees, we both did exactly the
same A levels.
But, identical twins can often be good at different things, and
even suffer from different diseases.
Chris: I think I am different to you, I think I do have some
free choice.
There are differences in our personalities.
Remember when we were ten and I failed, you know, I came
bottom of the class in every single exam and everyone said
oh, you know why don’t you just work a bit harder like your
brother and you’d do a bit better.
So, if two people are genetically identical, why is one loud
and boisterous and the other quiet and sensitive?
Or why does one get an illness and the other doesn’t?
It is these differences between identical twins that are so
important to researchers.
They give us a clearer picture of the influence of ‘nature’ –
our genes – and ‘nurture’ – how we live – on the development
of our personality and health.
And scientists hope that this will help them to identify and
prevent health problems in the future.
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Part 2 Being a twin
Runyararo and Rufaro Mapfumo are twins.
They live together in East London.
Rufaro: My name is Rufaro Mapfumo, I’m 20 years old.
I’m 23 minutes older than my twin sister and I study bio-
medical science at Middlesex University.
Runyararo: I’m Runyararo Mapfumo, um, also 20 years old,
and I’m studying film and visual effects at Sheffield Hallam
University.
For Rufaro and Runyararo, there are many more advantages to
being twins than disadvantages.
Rufaro: Having a double wardrobe is great.
As a twin, umm, one of the advantages about being a twin is
getting to play tricks on people.
When we were younger, we swapped classes a few times,
which was interesting.
I went to her maths class, and she went to my English class,
and we swapped because we thought it would be really funny.
We never got caught though. We used to look even more
similar.
When they were teenagers, the Mapfumo twins did some
acting.
They learnt new skills, but, as at school, they were still able to
take each other’s place when necessary.
Because they were twins, they once had the chance to work on
a Harry Potter film.
Rufaro: They would give us one role and divide that between
us.
So I would go on set for three hours, while Runyararo was in
school, and then, once I’d finished and I’d had my time on set,
they used to swap us over.
So I suppose that’s good, because we, even though we got to
do what we loved, we still had enough time to go to school,
and get a really good education as well.
Runyararo: Rufaro’s a bit more of a joker. She liked to make
everybody laugh, whereas I could possibly be seen as more
serious.
Rufaro: Runyararo has a lot of patience, and I think when
you do film, you need to have a lot of patience, and kind of
speak to the people you’re working with and artists, and be
able to guide them patiently, whereas I kind of want things
done then and there. I have a little bit less patience.
It’s always nice having someone that you have close
connection to, and having a twin, I don’t think there’s a
stronger bond. It’s like living with your best friend really.
Part 3 Bringing up twins
Rachel: I love that! That’s nice seeing that.
Rufaro: Yeah. Us dressed the same with our jackets.
Runyararo: I think that’s probably when we looked most
similar actually...
Rachel Mapfumo is the mother of the Mapfumo twins.
Rachel: Oh yes I remember.
Rufaro: That’s when we went for our audition, … our first
audition as twins.
Rachel: I remember buying those t-shirts in Marks and
Spencer’s.
So, what’s it like trying to raise identical twins?
Rachel: I had to rely a lot on my parents, because, having
two babies, they had different times of feeding, that was one
of the difficulties, different times of sleeping.
So you find, if you didn’t have any help then you would be up
24/7.
Another difficulty is the cost. Everything you pay for is
double.
Not so much when they’re young, but when they’re older, it
becomes very costly.
Rufaro: Our spotlight picture, there…
Rachel: The girls bonded right from the first day.
I used to keep them more or less together.
They had different cribs, they had different, you know,
separate chairs.
But for some reason they always used to reach out for each
other, or look out for each other.
Sometimes it seems the girls can communicate without
talking.
Rachel: I can’t even tell you sometimes as a mother what they
do, but I know they have a silent way of communicating.
If Runyararo is say at Sheffield, and Rufaro is in London, and
if something is happening to Runyararo that she is not happy,
Rufaro can pick it up.
She was in the library, and she left to go to the toilet, and she
… when she got back her laptop had been stolen, and she was
quite upset.
She hadn’t rung me or she hadn’t rung her sister.
But at the moment when she was so desperate, her sister rang
her from London to see if she was all right, because she just
felt something was going on.
So it’s things like that as well, even when they’re apart, that
they can still communicate.
They know if one is in trouble, or one is not happy.
Or if one is happy, for that, for that matter.
What advice does Rachel have for parents of school-age
twins?
Video script
Rachel: You mustn’t be given a report where the teachers are
using ‘They’.
You should have single reports for each individual child.
The problem I’ve found was that the teachers could not
differentiate between the two girls.
Who was Rufaro and who was Runyararo.
You have to be absolutely sure that the teacher is talking
about the correct twin.
Half the time they got it all wrong and mixed up.
Runyararo: Very nice, smiling in the background … your
teddy making its way into every picture.
Rachel: Is that you or Runyararo?
Rufaro: Oh yeah!
Rachel: That’s not you, that’s your sister.
Rachel: They’ve got a very close bond. I don’t worry so much
about them because I know they’ve got each other.
They talk to one another, and the most interesting is at the
moment to see them grow up to be very confident and
individual young ladies.
Video script
When he was only nine years old Roald’s mother sent him to
Unit 9 Roald Dahl boarding school a long way from home.
Part 1 The man He was terribly homesick and he wrote her letters nearly
every day.
Roald Dahl is known to generations of children as the man
that brought them magical stories like Charlie and the Although he was lonely and unhappy, his letters were always
Chocolate Factory, Danny the Champion of the World and cheerful and full of stories.
James and the Giant Peach. And school wasn’t all bad.
Many people remember his stories from their childhood. A chocolate company sometimes sent new sweets for students
Olive: I’ve got a few favourites. There’s Matilda, The to test.
Witches, James and the Giant Peach. This gave Roald a life-long love of chocolate, and became the
They are so fantastic and different it’s like going into another inspiration for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
world.
Gemma: Roald Dahl absolutely loved chocolate and
Beth: I used to read a lot of Roald Dahl when I was little, and whenever he ate them, instead of just throwing the wrappers
I had a lot of Roald Dahl read to me by my parents. away he actually kept them and he would scrunch them all
He’s very funny. He’s a very witty author who makes good together to make a silver ball and he actually kept that ball as
stories for children and for adults. a little souvenir on his desk next to him when he wrote.
Kate: The BFG, The Big Friendly Giant, is about a big
monster and he goes around catching dreams.
I can’t even remember.
Edel: I can’t remember.
I think my dog ate that book.
Tom: I’ve taught Roald Dahl to children.
I read four or five of his books and the ones that I taught were
Danny Champion of the World, which I think is probably my
favourite of all his books.
But they are great children’s books.
Children love them and it’s great to be able to teach them to
children who want to learn, who want to know.
And he’s a great man. I love his books. I think they’re great.
He invented his own words and he wrote about fantastic
places and people.
By the end of the 20th century people had bought over 35
million copies of his books.
At the Roald Dahl museum and Story centre you can learn
more about him and his world.
Gemma Holland works at the centre.
She explains why Dahl’s stories are still popular today:
Gemma: I think that the children still find the same things
funny as they found funny 50 years ago and I think that Roald
Dahl had a really amazing way of being able to reach the
children, but also be able to reach the adults that were
reading with the children.
So the humour isn’t just for the child but it’s also for the
parents or the adult reading with that child and I think that is
a massive appeal as well for everybody.
Roald Dahl’s parents were Norwegian, but they had left
Norway to live in Wales before Roald was born on 13
September 1916.
Dahl wrote about his childhood in his autobiography, ‘Boy’.
He told many stories about being naughty at school.
Video script
Part 2 The writer Part 3 The magic
Roald wasn’t the best student at school, but he was always Millions of children have heard or read the stories of Roald
good at sport and he enjoyed adventure. Dahl, but at the Roald Dahl story centre they encourage young
people to write their own stories.
He didn’t go to university after he finished school.
Gemma explains…
Instead, he started working for an oil company.
I think story telling is important because it helps to make life
They sent him to Africa.
more interesting.
Gemma: Then World War II broke out and Roald Dahl saw
Around the museum there are lots of things to inspire young
this as another part of an adventure, so he actually joined the
writers.
Royal Air Force and he became, and and learnt to fly a plane,
um and he actually flew a variety of different planes, Tiger So how did writers like Dahl turn their ideas into a story?
moths, Hurricanes, Gladiators and um unfortunately er Roald
Roald Dahl er always wrote his ideas down in his ideas books
Dahl was actually involved in quite a serious accident when
that he kept with him at all times.
he crashed his plane in the desert, and he was very badly
injured. He actually had some ideas in his notebook for 20 years
before he used them.
And all of that adventure actually led to his first ever
published piece of writing and it was called ‘Shot Down Over And Dahl always wrote in the same way.
Libya’.
He always wrote in his writing hut and I’m sitting in his
By this time, Dahl already knew how to tell a great story. replica chair right now um, and we’re surrounded by lots of
really interesting things that he kept in his writing hut.
He wrote a dramatic report about his accident while he was
recovering in the United States. Dahl always wrote with a pencil.
He described how the Germans had shot him down, but really So he would sharpen six of them and then he would sit down
he had crashed because he had run out of fuel! to write on his special yellow paper.
Dahl had moved to the United States in 1942. Everything he did he wrote by hand.
He was working as a TV presenter when he met his wife, He would write for two hours every morning and then he
Patricia Neal. would stop for lunch and then he would write for two hours
every afternoon as well.
She was a film star.
Roald Dahl died in 1990 at the age of 74. One of the last lines
They married in 1953 and moved back to England.
he wrote was, ‘Those who don’t believe in magic will never
The couple lived in the small town of Great Missenden and find it’.
they had five children.
I think that’s a lovely way to finish off his last book.
By the 1960s he had become a very successful short story
Basically saying that if you believe in magic you will find it,
writer.
and I think story storytelling definitely helps us to keep that
At this time most of his stories were for adults. magic alive.
Then the first story that he wrote for children was called ‘The
Gremlins’ and it was all about little creatures that got inside
the engines of planes and caused them to crash and break
down.
And it was after that story and after the success of that story
that he started writing stories for children including those
famous ones such as James and the Giant Peach and then
obviously Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Video script
Unit 10 Three inventors
Part 1 Emily Cummins
Many of the inventions of the past 100 years have changed the
way we live our lives.
Mobile phones are owned by almost six billion people
worldwide and when over six trillion texts are sent every year,
many of us believe that we can’t live without them.
People are always trying to think of the next big invention
that’s going to change the world.
But for some inventors this doesn’t mean designing a new
phone app, or building a smaller, quicker, lighter computer.
For some inventors it’s about looking at what everyone really
can’t live without.
Emily Cummins is a young inventor who is looking for new
ways to help people.
She started inventing at a very young age.
Emily: At the age of 4, my granddad gave me a hammer.
I used to spend hours with him in his shed at the bottom of the
garden.
As I got older, he would teach me about the different
properties of materials and how to use the tools and the
machinery in his shed.
While she was still at school Emily designed a new type of
fridge.
But her fridge doesn’t look like the ones that most of us have
in our kitchens.
It’s designed to be used in areas where there isn’t any
electricity.
I spent a lot of time researching how to redesign the
refrigerator.
I realized that people in Africa weren’t able to store food and
medicine because they didn’t have access to electricity or
refrigerators.
The design was very simple. A small cylinder inside a larger
one.
You put your food or medicine in the small cylinder.
Between the two cylinders you put some material that stays
wet like sand or soil.
In the sun, the fridge then ‘sweats’, just like a person.
The water evaporates and pulls the heat out of the small
cylinder and the contents stay cool.
The fridge was designed so anyone anywhere could make it
with simple tools and materials.
And Emily wanted to help people do this.
When I was 18, I travelled to Africa on my own which was
really scary at first but actually, when I got there, people
were really welcoming, they invited me into their homes, they
looked after me, they listened to me and we shared ideas, so
although initially I was frightened about the experience, it
was actually incredible.
Part 2 Josh Silver
It is estimated that about 60 per cent of the world’s population
need eye-glasses to see clearly.
Everyone should have their eyes checked regularly by an eye-
care professional.
But, in parts of Africa, there’s only one eye-care professional
for eight million of the population.
If you can’t see, you might not be able to read, or drive, or
even work.
Josh Silver is a Professor of Physics.
He invented a new kind of eye-glasses to solve this problem.
John: These, these eye-glasses are rather interesting, rather
special in a way, I call them adaptive eyeglasses and I will
demonstrate them for you.
The eye-glasses work by adding liquid to the lenses.
I want to see clearly in the distance, I just… I’m covering up
one eye, I’m adjusting the lens now until I’ve got nice clear
vision and then do the same with the other eye and there we
are.
Right, I can now see clearly in the distance so these glasses
have the interesting feature that I can change each lens so as
to suit my vision and get clear vision.
When you go through this correction procedure and you get
the eye-glasses set to your vision, you don’t wear them like
that, you do up the screws on this frame and you cut off the
adjusters and then you end up with this, which you can wear
and this is my pair and there are about 40,000 or so of these
in use now in about 20 countries.
It’s taken Josh over twenty years of research to develop these
eye-glasses.
He travelled to Africa to see how his eye-glasses could help
people.
Henry Ajay Mensa was the first person to get a pair of Josh’s
eye-glasses.
Shall we try the glasses and see if that helps you with
threading it?
Henry was a tailor in a small village in Ghana.
He needed good eye-sight to do his job making clothes, but
his eye-sight was getting worse…
Ah! That did it immediately! So it works!
He was trying to thread a needle and he couldn’t and he put
them on and he adjusted them and he just threaded a needle
immediately and what he did was he then, he then started
Video script
operating his sewing machine much faster. projects around the world to make sure that people have
access to clean water, not just for a day or for a week but for
This experience proved that Josh’s eye-glasses can work.
life.
Today he is still improving his invention and looking for ways
of producing adaptive eyewear for everyone who needs it.
My motivation for the work is to see those billions of people
that need eyewear get it.

Part 3 Michael Pritchard

No-one can live without water, but today over a billion people
live in water poverty.
They haven’t got easy access to clean water.
Drinking dirty water makes millions of people sick, and kills
thousands of people every day.
After seeing the terrible result of the Asian Tsunami in 2004,
inventor, Michael Pritchard, decided he wanted to do
something about this problem.
It is expensive and difficult to send bottles of clean water to
disaster areas.
Michael thought it was a simple problem.
Michael: … water is everywhere and Mother Nature has her
own way of getting water to people, they’re called the clouds,
they pick the water up from the sea for free, they take the salt
out of it for free, they transport it hundreds of miles for free
and then they dump it on the mountains and the rivers and the
streams and where do people live? Near water.
So, Michael Pritchard invented the Lifesaver water bottle.
Using a special filter, the bottle can clean any water making it
safe to drink.
What the lifesaver bottle allows people to do is take that
water, put it in the bottle, give it a few pumps and the bottle
just through filtration, very small holes, removes all of the
bacteria and all of the viruses and makes the water sterile and
safe to drink.
This new technology saves people’s lives and Michael has
developed more products using his technology, like the
Lifesaver jerry can.
The Lifesaver jerry can, can process up to 20,000 litres of
water and is specifically designed to go into people’s homes
and to be used on an everyday basis.
[The Lifesaver jerry can came like a gift for us, because
without the jerry can we would not have life.
Everyone would die.
So, the jerry can means life for us.]
Michael has travelled around the world seeing his products in
action saving lives.
We do many projects around the world to help people who do
not have access to clean drinking water, whether that be in
Malaysia or in Haiti, or in Pakistan or in India, we do lots of
Video script
Unit 11 The Homeless World Cup
Part 1 The power of football
Football, or soccer, is one of the most popular sports in the
world.
It’s played by millions of young people around the world
every day.
At the professional level it’s an international game.
Talented young players often leave their home countries to
train at the youth academies of famous football clubs around
the world.
Becoming a successful player can change their life.
One of the world’s best footballers, Leo Messi, is Argentinian,
but he has been playing for FC Barcelona in Spain for many
years.
Messi moved to Spain when he was just 13, and he was only
16 when he started playing for the first team.
For a few lucky players, like Messi, playing football has not
only been a life-long passion, but it has also made them rich
and famous.
And sometimes this fame gives them a chance to help others.
Messi now works as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF
helping children around the world.
But even if it doesn’t make you a star, football can make a
dramatic difference to people’s lives.
Once a year, over 60 teams from around the world meet to
play in a very unusual football tournament, the Homeless
World Cup.
The Homeless World cup brings together teams of homeless
people to play football for their country and helps them
change their lives forever.
Part 2 The tournament
Mel Young is the co-founder and President of the Homeless
World Cup.
Mel started his career in journalism.
But since 1993 he has been working on projects helping the
homeless.
Today, he works at the global organization’s offices at a
football stadium in Scotland.
He explains how the tournament started:
Mel: The idea of the Homeless World Cup came in a
conference that we were having in 2001 in Cape Town.
I was talking with a colleague with mine, Harold Schmidt
from, from Austria about how, how we could include more
homeless people.
Mel and Harold thought of things that brought people together
across the world.
We used football because it’s very, very simple, everybody
understands it, it’s an international language first of all so …
you, you can involve anybody, male, female, big, small, really
good player, really useless player, doesn’t matter, it’s a great
way of including people.
Teams in the Homeless World Cup don’t play matches in a
football stadium.
They play a kind of football called Street Soccer.
Street soccer is, is just a simple form of football which is
usually played in, in the street.
I mean football’s just this wonderful game, you can play it
anywhere, you, you can play it on an 11 a side standard
football pitch but you can also play 2 a side or 20 a side or
you can play indoors or outdoors or – and you can mix teams
of really good people and not very good people so street
soccer’s like that, it’s just a space in the street.
The teams play on a small court.
There are eight players in each team, but only four play at the
same time.
The games only last for 14 minutes.
In the World Cup Tournament the teams play about three
games a day.
Organizing an international football tournament with teams of
homeless people isn’t simple.
It takes a lot of work and it’s a challenge for Mel’s team in
Scotland and their partners working around the world.
As well as organizing the tournament, they have to raise
money and get passports and tickets for all the players.
So it’s all year round work that we’re doing to, to make sure
that they, they come to, to the event.
But the hard work is worth it.
The tournament has grown every year and now there are
around 50,000 homeless people from 70 countries training for
a place in their national team.
The organization has many famous supporters and you even
can watch the matches on television.
Part 3 Changing lives
For Mel, and his team, the most important thing about the
Homeless World Cup is that over 70 per cent of the homeless
players change their lives for the better because of the
tournament.
The coach of the Kenyan team agrees:
I can tell you that over 95 per cent of all the players who took
part – it has changed their life for the better.
Because of Homeless World Cup that they are where they are
now.
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They say now: This is not my life. I was not meant to be on the
street.
I must get out of it, go back home, and start a new life.
Mel believes that the project is so successful because it helps
the homeless become part of a team.
This helps them to improve their own lives while the project
supports and encourages them.
Mel: I mean… I think my view is that homelessness … you
are on your own.
And football is this great way in which you can be included so
we get people from that position and say, do you want to play
football… and then the training sessions build so you create a
kind of, if you like a family, which is the team.
And the results for people like David Duke can be amazing.
David: I was living in a homeless project in Glasgow.
I took part in the Homeless World Cup which was held in
Gothenburg in 2004.
David had become homeless as a teenager in Glasgow in
Scotland, but the Homeless World Cup helped him change his
life.
I went back into further education once I came back from the
Homeless World Cup.
David completed his college course and got a full-time job.
And he continued to work with the Homeless World Cup.
My participation in the Homeless World Cup has led to me
being a player, an assistant coach, a coach, manager, project
manager, and I’m now a global ambassador for Homeless
World Cup.
Today, David runs Street Soccer, an organization helping
other homeless people in Scotland get involved with football.
David is a wonderful example of the success of a project that
believes a ball can change the world.
The Homeless World Cup helped me change my life by
providing me an opportunity to change my own life, it
inspired me, it gave me motivation, and it encouraged me to
be all I can be.
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Unit 12 Where next?
Part 1 Cities
It’s always nice to think about your next holiday.
It’s good to have something to look forward to and most
people know where they will go for their next holiday.
Dorothy: Spain.
Yoni: On my next holiday, I’m going to stay in New York.
Mary: To Paris.
Tiffany: Probably Dubai.
Joanna: I’m going to stay in a few different places, but one of
the places I am most excited about is we’re going to stay in an
eco-lodge in the jungle in Cambodia.
Reed: Los Angeles, California.
Selina: The next place on our list is Scotland.
Justin: The Bahamas.
There are so many amazing places to visit around the world.
It would be great to see them all.
But most of us haven’t got the time or the money to visit other
countries and explore new places.
But what if your life were different?
If you were rich, would you travel the world?
If you didn’t have to go to work every day, where would you
go next?
Is there a city you’ve always wanted to visit?
There’s so much to see and do in San Francisco in the USA.
There’s the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge, the famous hills,
and the historic island prison of Alcatraz.
And if you go down to Pier 39 you’ll see the bridge and the
prison, and you might see some of San Francisco’s famous sea
lions.
Or you might prefer to visit Shanghai in China.
It’s a huge city with a fascinating history.
It’s changing all the time so you’ll always see something new
and exciting.
The Pudong skyline looks even better by night.
Or what about New Dehli, the capital city of India?
If you visit Dehli you’ll see amazing buildings like the Lotus
Temple and the Akshardham Temple.
If you like cricket, it’s a great place to see some of the players
of the future.
If you drive in Dehli, you’ll need to be very careful on the
roads – but you’ll experience one of the most exciting and
interesting cities in the world.
Part 2 Festivals
If you could travel around the world, which cultural festivals
would you like to see?
You can experience Chinese New Year celebrations, or St
Patrick’s Day parades, in many different countries.
If you visit the United States in early July you’ll enjoy the
Independence Day celebrations.
The Stars and Stripes flags will be flying and people will be
wearing red, white, and blue.
In cities like Boston you’ll see parades of people dressed in
historic costumes, and celebrating the birth of the United
States.
If you go to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil in February you’ll see the
amazing Carnival.
And, with over 500,000 people celebrating, you might get the
chance to join in!
And there’s the Notting Hill Carnival in London every
August.
It’s a celebration of Caribbean culture in the United Kingdom,
with music, dancing, and food.
And if you are very lucky, it won’t rain!
And if you visit the historic city of Venice in Italy, you might
experience the Carnival of Venice.
Venice is one of the most amazing cities in the world with
beautiful bridges, homes, and piazzas, and kilometres of
canals you can explore on a gondola.
There has been a spring time festival in Venice since the 11th
century.
At this time the carnival lasted about two months.
Today, the modern carnival lasts for two weeks and takes
place in February or March every year.
It’s a colourful celebration.
There are parties and processions with everybody wearing
beautiful costumes.
You’ll see many people wearing masks.
Masks are an important part of the traditional celebrations.
At huge masked balls people dance to classical music.
The parties continue in the streets through the night.
If you come to the Carnival it will be an experience you’ll
never forget.
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Part 3 Adventure
If you were more courageous would you try a more
adventurous kind of holiday?
How about trying surfing or kite-surfing?
For some people sight-seeing or going to cultural festivals
isn’t exciting enough.
They don’t want to relax in their time off; they want an
action-packed holiday.
And there’s one place that is the perfect destination for people
looking for adventure – Queenstown in New Zealand.
Queenstown is a small town on New Zealand’s South Island,
next to Lake Wakatipu.
Tourists come here looking for fun and adventure.
In the past, people came to see the beautiful scenery.
They went hiking in the summer and skiing in the winter.
This beautiful boat, the TSS Earnslaw has travelled across
Lake Wakatipu for over a hundred years.
And it still carries passengers every day.
But today, there are a lot more cool things to try in
Queenstown.
If you like speed, you’ll enjoy the Shotover Jet.
This was one of the first adventure sport attractions in
Queenstown.
Over two million people have enjoyed the high-speed trip
down the Shotover River since 1970.
If you’re feeling really brave and you want a great view of
Lake Wakatipu, you should try sky-diving.
If it’s your first time, you won’t jump alone.
But even if you jump with an instructor – it will be one of the
most amazing experiences of your life.
But if you come to Queenstown, and you’re into action,
there’s one activity you have to try … a bungee jump!
This is the Kawarau Bridge, near Queenstown.
The bridge over the Kawarau River is 43 meters high.
People come here from all over the world, because this was
the world’s first bungee jump.
Bungee jumping looks dangerous, but really it’s very safe.
Over 300,000 people have jumped here since 1988.
Of course, many more people haven’t jumped because they
are too scared.
But they’ve watched their friends and family jump!
If you had the chance would you jump?
Are you brave enough?