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GENERAL ENGLISH · BREAKING NEWS · UPPER-INTERMEDIATE (B2-C1)

MAURITIUS
OIL SPILL

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1 Warm up

Use the pictures to help you answer the questions about Mauritius.

1. Where is Mauritius? 3. Why do people visit Mauritius?

2. What languages are spoken in Mauritius? 4. What animals is Mauritius famous for?

2 Watch for main idea

Video
Watch this news report about Mauritius and then answer these questions.

1. What has happened? 3. Who is responsible?

2. How serious is it? 4. What or who is most affected?

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MAURITIUS OIL SPILL

3 Watch for detail

Read the sentences from the report and remember/predict the missing words. The words you write
will have the same or similar meaning as the words in brackets. The first letters of the missing words
have been given. Watch the report again to check.

1. On the coast of Mauritius, clear waters and p (perfectly clean) beaches that attract
more than a million tourists each year are now s (completely covered or full of) with oil.
2. Environmentalists are calling this an ”ecological disaster” and on Sunday (August 9) the Japanese
operator of a bulk carrier [a large ship] that r a (hit the land and
couldn’t move) said sorry.
3. And that trouble could be w (happening in many different places).
4. Reuben Pillay, director of virtual tour site reubsvision.mu, says the s (oil which
has come out of the ship) is next to Ile aux Aigrettes – a natural reserve with e (native,
found in this area) and endangered species.
5. The MV Wakashio hit a r (line of rocks just below the surface of the sea) off the
southeast coast of the East African island nation on July 25 but first started l (losing
liquid) oil on Thursday (August 6).
6. Japan is sending a six-person d r t (group to help after
something terrible has happened), and France – the island’s former colonial power – will send specialist
teams and equipment.

4 Checking understanding
According to the report, what are the answers to these questions?

1. How many tourists visit Mauritius every year?

2. Which three living things does Reuben Pillay mention?
3. Why is it going to be a challenge to protect these species now?
4. Where is the reef in relation to Mauritius?
5. How many tonnes of oil has the ship leaked?

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MAURITIUS OIL SPILL

5 Talking point
Discuss these questions in pairs or small groups.

1. Why do you think Japan and France have been the first foreign governments to offer help to
Mauritius?
2. The owners of the ship have apologised. What else do you think they should do? Do you think
they should be punished?
3. In the report, you saw people cleaning the beaches with shovels. Look at this picture, which shows
people holding a ”boom” filled with leaves and human hair, that has been donated by local people.
How do you think this works to clean up an oil leak?

4. What is the most pristine place in your country? What plants and animals are endemic to this
area? Are any of these endangered?
5. Has your country ever experienced a similar event? What happened and how did people react?

6 Extension - Did you know?

Read these two sentences. Have you heard this expression? How do you think it relates to Mauritius?

• The political party is as dead as a dodo. We need to vote them out of office.
• Are you still using an MP3 player? That technology is as dead as a dodo!

The dodo was a bird endemic to Mauritius. It was a member of the pigeon
family, but it was huge – 1 metre tall and up to 17 kg! Unsurprisingly, it could not fly. When the island
was first explored by Europeans after 1507, they introduced other animals which competed with the
dodo for food. They also hunted and killed dodos, which was very easy as the birds had no fear of
humans. The last dodo died in the middle of the 17th century. The informal expression ”dead as a
dodo” is used to refer to something that is completely gone or out of date, possibly as result of its own
stupidity.

Do you have the same/a similar expression in your language? Can you think of any more people or
things that could be described as ”dead as a dodo”?

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