My River Hero 1

I

Against the odds

(listening 1:    ) Sentence completion

neałzno-

1 Which of the following jobs could you not do if you were blind? Give reasons for your answers.

shop assistant politician    musician

teacher    lawy et-    dancer *riter

train driver _{car m}echamc    physiotherap^st

What difficultics woulcl you face in lhosejobs you could do?

2 Read ihe following Listening Part 2 instructions.

You will liear part of a radio i n lenie w wilh Grace, a singer who suffers from an eve disease. For questions 1-10, complete the sentenccs.

Grace has been partially sighted sińce she was about 1    ~[T1

I ²ieye.

pi

LU school.

She is only able to see out of her L_

She says that her eyesight will not get [

~6~1 and bullied by other childrcn.

During a ehcck-up. Grace was found to have[_ When she was younger, Grace walitcd to go to a At school she was I

She says that many ot these children [_

JE

Jol

After she tefl school. Graces father persuaded her to [ She enjoys her cateer, particularly I    ~_L

She says her cxperiences al school helped her overcome her |7

0    Do you know of anybody else who has managed to overcome their disability and achievc success?

Word formation: Miscellaneous nouns

In the listening exercise Grace says:

My sight didnt derelop until 1 was about a year old.

The noun sight comes from the vcrb see.

What is the noun form of the following verbs?

ckoose lose complain speak

Check your answers in exercise 2 of make and do on page 166 in this unit.

Use the verb given in capitals at the end of each linę to form a noun that fits in the space in the sentence. You may need to usc a plural form.

SELL SIGN

LAUGH ¥

behave J

ARRIV'E I BE PROVE SAY

1    _of mobile phones have fallen recently.

2    Don't forget to piint your name helów your_.

3    I roared with_the first time I heard that jokc.

4    Youll find yoursclf in trouble if your_doesni improve.

5    Communications were revolutionized with the_of the Internet.

6    The capacity of human_to overcome illness is remarkable.

_of their age in puhs.

. that ‘Money is the root of all evil\

7    Many foreign students are asked to show.

8    lin not surę I agree with the_

Aga instthe odds

(Reading'!; ")

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Gapped text

Discuss how you might react in the following situations:

•    You see somcone drowning in a frcezing cold river.

•    You hear same people shouting that they are trapped in a building.

•    You sec an old man being attaeked in the Street latc at night.

•    You are in the mountains when your friend falls and breaks his leg.

2 You are going to rcad a magazinc article about a reseue. Seven sentences have been removed from the article. Choose from the sentences A-H the one which fils each gap (1-7). There is one extra sentence which you do not need to usc.

My river hero

It was Just after 9.30 on a cold, wet February momlng that I got a cali from my 17-year-old son Matthew.

1¹ !    I Terrible thoughts started going

through my head but before I realty had a chance to worry, he added very matter-of-factly, Tve just saved a baby girl from drowning.’ 12 |    |

Matthew loves flshing and you’11 find him by the River Medway in Maidstone in his spare time. That day the water was high and dangerous because there’d been a lot of rain. Matthew was sitting by the river when he heard a woman scream, 'My baby, my baby, she’s dying!'

At the local hospital, the doctors praised Matthew for reacting so puićkly. 15 ,    [ 8ut it wasn’t only

Emity that was lucky to be aiive. A few daysTater I was reading the local paper when I saw a danger waming for the river. It was only then that I realized I could have lost my son, too.

Ś:V..

Soon afterwards, Matthew, myself and my two younger daughters went along to Emil/s second birthday party. There, her grandmother drank a toast to Matthew.

'6 |__| lt sent a stwer down my splne and it

still makes me go all funny thinking about it now.

He ran up to them to see if there was anything he could do to help. In the water he saw an upside down pushehair. [4~

|7 I    I He madę the front page of the local

paper and even appeared on television. I'm proud of my son. He’s a caring lad who puts other people before himself. And he has obviously got a level head - I thlnk l’d have panicked. He’11 always be my river hero.

A Without thinking, Matthew divcd in and went underwater to push the chair up towards the linie girls mum.

B He was hailed as a hero and recehed a lot of altention from the media.

C She thanked him forsating Ernilys life and saicl they'd think of him on every one of her birlhdays.

D He was warned against going fishing again until the river water had gone down to its normal leve).

E 'Mum, Tm at the hospital,’ he said.

F They said that if little Emily had been in the freezing water for just another three scconds, the outeome could have been horribly different.

G He Jooked over to see a woman and a young girl by the waters edge.

H What I didn't know at that slage was tliat he had put his own life at risk in order to save her.

Reacting to the text O

Have you ever been in a life-threalening situation?

Have you ever reseued someone or had to be reseued yoursclf?

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