How Fluent is Your British English? Dive into the Ocean Crisis Now!
Do you want to unleash the power of your English? Are you ready to tackle two birds with one stone? Gain confidence in British English while you dive into one of the world's most pressing issues - the Plastic Crisis! With our lesson:
- 📚 Learn valuable British English phrases that'll have you sounding like a native in no time!
- 🌍 Tackle real-world topics like the Plastic Crisis - engage in meaningful conversations!
- 👥 Join a community of English learners, share your thoughts, challenge your perspectives!
✔Lesson transcript: https://adeptenglish.com/lessons/english-listening-practice-plastic-oceans/
The living world is a unique and spectacular marvel. Yet the way we humans live on Earth is sending it into a decline. We must act now, not just to save the planet, but to save ourselves.
⭐ David Attenborough, famous British broadcaster and natural historian.
Can you believe less than 10% of plastics are recycled? This lesson isn't just about teaching English; it's about helping you become an effective communicator in English.
By delving into real-world issues such as the 'North Pacific Garbage Patch', you're not only expanding your vocabulary but also learning to use English in a context that mirrors actual conversations and discussions. Learn English and be part of the solution! #EnglishForChange 🌍
With every drop of water you drink, every breath you take, you're connected to the sea.
⭐ Dr. Sylvia Earle, world-renowned marine biologist and National Geographic explorer-in-residence.
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Every lesson carries a good reason to engage with the content, immersion in your English listening practice will maximise your learning efficiency. #LearnWithPurpose 🎯 Don't just learn English, learn it efficiently! Join us now and get ready to Crack the Plastic Crisis with British English! 🚀
More About This Lesson
Imagine how enriching your life could be by mastering British English, an invaluable skill that shapes your golden years, helps you age gracefully, and opens doors to a world of knowledge! Join us today on a journey where language learning intertwines with environmental awareness. Together, we'll explore the North Pacific Garbage Patch, a hot global issue, as we continue to build your language skills.
We are part of the natural world. What we do to the environment, ultimately we do to ourselves.
⭐ Jane Goodall, world-famous primatologist and environmental advocate.
Things you will learn in today's English listening lesson:
- The differences between UK and US English: rubbish vs garbage.
- Learn new vocabulary: 'gyre', 'microplastics', 'ingested', 'treaty'.
- Insights into pronunciation of challenging words like 'Pacific' and 'current'.
- Dive into the nuances of 'in principle' and 'voting with our wallets'.
- Experience authentic English conversation on a contemporary issue.
- Dissect the usage of terms like 'feels like' and 'it's got to be'.
- Explore language used to discuss statistics: 'less than', 'more than', 'double'.
- Unravel the complex language of international policy discussion.
- Master the art of narrating a complex environmental issue.
- Grasp the imperative voice through calls to action.
Benefits of our listen & learn approach to learning
Embarking on this English journey provides you with opportunities beyond the mastery of a new language. Not only will your vocabulary expand, but you'll also develop the ability to express thoughts and engage in global discussions with ease and confidence. And remember, it's not about knowing every word – it's about effortless communication in English with a classic British charm.
- Embrace the Learning Process: Don't fret about not comprehending everything right away or making mistakes. Repeated listening and learning from errors are stepping stones to language mastery.
- Explore Real-world Issues: Diving into diverse topics like the 'North Pacific Garbage Patch' enriches your language skills and keeps them socially relevant.
- Overcome Fears: Building language fluency equips you with the tools to confront the fear of speaking, and listening to a range of topics enhances your confidence.
- Consistent Practice Equals Progress: Every lesson moves you one step closer to fluency, and regular engagement ensures continuous language improvement.
- Exciting Lessons: Learning English should be fun! We cover captivating real-world subjects to keep you motivated.
Our language lessons offer more than just English learning; they offer insights into critical global issues. Uncover facts like how microplastics pose a threat to marine life and human health, or how plastic production has become an alarming concern. Engaging with these topics will elevate your language skills and enhance your understanding of environmental issues.
Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed.
⭐ Mahatma Gandhi, Indian political leader and symbol of peaceful resistance.
Why wait? Start doubling your progress in half the time today! Subscribe and elevate your English while broadening your worldly knowledge. Your journey to English fluency is just a click away!
Questions You Might Have...
This lesson isn't just about teaching English; it's about helping you become an effective communicator in English. By delving into real-world issues such as the 'North Pacific Garbage Patch', you're not only expanding your vocabulary but also learning to use English in a context that mirrors actual conversations and discussions.
- How does this lesson help improve my English skills while exploring the North Pacific Garbage Patch? By engaging with the topic of the North Pacific Garbage Patch, you'll be learning key vocabulary and phrases, improving your listening comprehension, and sparking discussions that can refine your speaking skills.
- Do I need advanced English skills to understand this topic? Not at all. The lesson is designed to guide you through the topic step by step, so even beginners can follow along and learn effectively.
- Can I improve my British English pronunciation with this lesson? Absolutely! You'll be listening to native British English speakers, which can significantly enhance your pronunciation and understanding of the British accent.
- How does learning about the North Pacific Garbage Patch benefit my English? Discussing real-world topics like the Garbage Patch can make your learning more engaging and practical. It equips you with relevant vocabulary and lets you practice English in meaningful contexts.
- Is the content about the North Pacific Garbage Patch complex and hard to understand? The content is simplified and explained clearly to make sure that you, as an English learner, can comprehend and discuss the topic effectively.
Most Unusual Words:
- Garbage: Refers to waste or rubbish.
- Patch: An area or a spot.
- Microplastics: Very tiny pieces of plastic.
- Ingested: Eaten or consumed.
- Current: A flow or movement in a particular direction.
- Gyre: A circular pattern of currents in an ocean.
- Feasible: Possible and practical to do easily or conveniently.
- Treaty: A formal agreement between countries.
- Discarded: Thrown away after use; disposed of.
- Decompose: To break down into smaller parts or to decay.
Most Frequently Used Words:
| Word | Count |
|---|---|
| Plastic | 19 |
| Garbage | 13 |
| About | 11 |
| Pacific | 11 |
| North | 10 |
| Means | 10 |
| Plastics | 9 |
| There | 9 |
| English | 7 |
Listen To The Audio Lesson Now
The mp3 audio and pdf transcript for this lesson is now part of the Adept English back catalogue . You can still download and listen to this lesson as part of one of our podcast bundles.Transcript: Click To Learn English And Save The Ocean
Practise English and learn about the North Pacific Garbage Patch!
Hi there. In today's podcast, you'll practise your English listening skills, gain understanding of an alarming issue affecting our oceans and seas, and discover surprising facts and statistics about the 'North Pacific Garbage Patch'.
So keep listening and broaden your knowledge, sharpen your language skills, and engage with the pressing ecological issues of our times.
And you'll get some good practice in this podcast, understanding facts and statistics ready for those English language tests and examinations.
If you are curious about how the world is trying to address the problem of plastics in our oceans, then stick around to the end of the podcast.
We'll look at the international discussions that are taking place and at the dynamics between the different countries and their industries, which may be getting in the way of solving this problem.
This is a great chance to learn some new vocabulary and to understand a real world issue that affects us all.
Hello, I’m Hilary, and you’re listening to Adept English. We will help you to speak English fluently. All you have to do is listen. So start listening now and find out how it works.
What is the North Pacific Garbage Patch?
One of the things I've read about in recent weeks is the North Pacific Garbage Patch. Have you heard of that? Some vocabulary here. The North Pacific. That's P A C I F I C. Well, of course the North Pacific is an area of the Pacific Ocean. And a 'garbage patch'? So that's 'garbage', G A R B A G E, and it means 'rubbish'. What we call in UK English 'rubbish', they call in US English 'garbage', 'stuff you throw away'. And a 'patch', P A T C H? That just means an 'area'. You might talk about your 'vegetable patch' in your garden. So the word 'patch' has quite nice associations, but not in this case.
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Microplastics are in every corner of the globe, even our drinking water
So the North Pacific Garbage Patch is a large area of the ocean where all the plastics and microplastics collect. ' Microplastics', M I C R O P L A S T I C S. That just means all the little tiny pieces of plastic, which exist in our seas.
When plastic bottles or other plastic rubbish, 'garbage' if you like, find their way into the ocean, into the sea, they are gradually broken down into smaller pieces, by the action of the waves and sunlight.
Microplastics are even more of a problem than plastic rubbish as they cannot be collected easily. The pieces are too small.
And they can be ingested. That's I N G E S T E D. That means 'eaten' by sea creatures, by marine animals. They harm those animals and they harm the ecology of the sea. And those microplastics also find their way into our food chain, harming us as well.
How did it happen?
And this North Pacific Garbage Patch? It's been discovered recently. Because there are certain currents in the ocean, it means there are certain areas of the ocean where the plastics collect. A current, C U R R E N T - that means 'a flow', ' a substance running in a particular direction'. There are 'currents' in our seas and oceans, but you can also use this word of electricity. You would talk about 'electric current'.
So you can imagine this - water moves in a certain way, so things floating in that water tend to collect in a particular place. Hence the North Pacific Garbage Patch.
Listening Lessons
How big is the North Pacific Garbage Patch?
How big is this North Pacific Garbage Patch, full of plastic? The answer, according to the BBC News website, the North Pacific Garbage Patch is thought to hold the most floating plastic, 79,000 tons of it. In an area covering 1.6 million square kilometres.
And actually this North Pacific Garbage Patch, it consists of two areas. There's a Western Garbage Patch, near the coast of Japan and an Eastern Garbage Patch, which is located between Hawaii and California, the western coast of the United States.
A new English word for me here, a 'gyre', G Y R E. A 'gyre' means 'an area of swirling currents'. And usually there's a calm area in the middle. And it's in this calm area that the garbage, all the plastics get trapped.
Can the North Pacific Garbage patch be cleaned up?
I suppose in one sense it's good that these plastics, this garbage is collecting in one place, but the possibility of cleaning it up - no one has thought of a solution to this problem. It's too difficult, currently. There isn't a way of collecting this plastic and removing it from the ocean.
If you used nets, that's N E T S, then the net would have to be so fine to catch the microplastics that tiny sea creatures would get caught up in it.
You have to bear in mind also the size of this North Pacific Garbage Patch - 1.6 million square kilometres. It's not really feasible to take boats in there and to gradually haul the plastic out.
And actually much of this plastic is believed to rest on the ocean floor at the bottom of the sea. It's thought that 70% of the plastics sink to the bottom of the sea, so it's not easy to collect.
Another issue. This area where the plastics collect in the sea is too far from any particular coast for any one country to take responsibility for it, to take responsibility for trying to clean it up.
Where does the plastic waste come from?
Did you know that an estimated 33 billion pounds of plastic enters our oceans every year? That's the same as dumping two garbage trucks or two rubbish trucks full of plastic into the sea every single minute. That's a lot! Just think about it. Every minute that passes our oceans are becoming more polluted with plastic.
And according to National Geographic, 80% of plastic in the sea is believed to come from land-based sources, with the remaining 20% coming from boats and other marine sources. So basically it's what we throw in there from the land that makes up 80% of the problem.
Lots of talking, but so far no action
As we haven't currently thought of a way of solving this problem, of removing the plastic from the oceans, the governments of various countries are instead discussing reducing the amount of plastic we produce and reducing what finds its way into the sea. In February 2022, nations agreed, 'in principle' - that means 'on the idea of' - the need for a legally binding UN treaty by 2024, a treaty to end plastic pollution around the world.
But as 2024 approaches, is this deadline actually going to be met? Are they going to find a way of agreeing on a 'treaty', that's T R E A T Y or 'agreement'? Our industries, particularly food production, is completely geared around plastic and plastic packaging. So's the car industry.
Industry and government 'vested interests' get in the way!
There is a group of around 50 countries, who have agreed to work together on achieving a reduction in plastic production. But there are also a powerful group of countries whose economies depend on the petrochemical industries.
They're reluctant to reduce production and are talking instead about recycling being the solution. These countries include China, the US, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries, countries concerned with oil production of course. So, as with many things, it's the economic forces, it's the need of business and ultimately of government to continue making money.
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More recycling seems unlikely to be an answer
And this gets in the way, perhaps, of achieving something positive. To me, recycling doesn't really seem to be the answer here. According to Apple News, and I quote, " Annual plastics production has more than doubled in the last 20 years to 460 million tons and is on track to triple within the next four decades." that means the next 40 years. " Two-thirds of this output is discarded, having been used once or a few times, and winds up as waste, as rubbish in other words.
Less than 10% of plastics are recycled.
That's terrible. Less than 10% of plastics are recycled. We'd have to make a lot of change to make recycling the solution here. This feels like another of those issues, which ordinary people care about a lot if they're informed about it. It also feels like it can only be up to governments or big industries to make a difference here. And no one organisation or country can take whole responsibility for this. It's just too large! It's got to be a collective responsibility.
There are no easy solutions, but it has to be arrived at by agreement. Not one country, not one government, but many working together.
Industry isn't going to do it. Their primary purpose is to make profit, but of course, they can be influenced into doing it.
Things need to change!
When I look at this sort of problem, I conclude that our lives really have to change - a lot - in the next few years, if we're going to make a difference. It's hard to imagine our lives without plastics. Impossible perhaps. But maybe it would look a bit more like the 1950s when our food came in brown paper bags and our drinks came in glass bottles rather than plastic. Glass is much easier to recycle.
Millions of animals are killed by plastics every year. Is plastic worth this cost?
I do hope that we're going to put an end to this problem and respect our planet more than we do at the moment. We can't just keep on doing this as though it's not a problem. Plastic can take hundreds of years to decompose, to break down in other words.
Can we make a difference individually to our planet drowning in plastic?
Well, if you feel strongly about this, I do believe we can.
Can each of us make a difference?
How can each of us make a difference to this seemingly overwhelming problem? I guess we choose a reusable bottle over a plastic bottle. I guess we choose a reusable coffee cup rather than using one containing plastic. I guess we use reusable bags for our shopping instead of plastic bags. And perhaps we say 'No' to products with too much plastic packaging.
Download The Podcast Audio & Transcript
In this way, we are 'voting with our wallets'. That means we're telling industries that it's not OK to carry on producing this plastic, especially those that are single use. Or those that can't be recycled.
If we start demanding change, not just from our governments, but from the industries, the businesses that produce our products, supply our goods, maybe that's the way to get the message across. Imagine if millions of us started to make these changes, imagine the impact that that might have!
It's a bold idea, but one worth considering. After all, our oceans, the health of our marine life and ultimately our own human health, are at stake here.
Goodbye
Let us know what you think. Let us know your opinion on this - we love to hear from you!
Enough for now. Have a lovely day. Speak to you again soon. Goodbye.
Thank you so much for listening. Please help me tell others about this podcast by reviewing or rating it. And, please share it on social media. You can find more listening lessons and a free English course at adeptenglish.com
Links
- Great Pacific Garbage Patch
- Plastics in the Ocean
- Pacific Ocean garbage patch
- 25 Plastic Waste Statistics
- The world's plastic pollution crisis
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