Lesson 19

Across cultures

Aims and objectives:

• developing socio-cultural competence

• developing basic skills

Equipment: writing paper, handouts

Sequence

I. Warming-up

The teacher may either use the warming-up activities described earlier or invent the ones of his / her own.

II. Main part

1. Reading

Pre-reading

The teacher informs the students they are going to read some information about environmental protection in Great Britain, the USA and Ukraine and initiates a discussion on what the students think about environmental protection in those countries. The ideas may be jotted down on the blackboard.

Reading and post-reading

The class is divided into three groups, each getting a separate text.

After the texts have been read, the students share their ideas on how much they guessed in the pre-reading activity, then a representative of each groups joins another one, so that the newly formed groups contained A, D and C representatives. The task is to share information and find the common and the different in the three countries’ environmental policies. The results are reported to the class.

Group A

Environmental Protection in Great Britain

For more than a century Britain has been developing policies to conserve the natural and cultural heritage and protect the environment against pollution from industry and other sources. The environment White Paper "This Common Inheritance” published in 1990, was the first comprehensive statement by the Government on environmental policy. In 1992 Britain participated in the "Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro and signed the convention negotiated there to protect biological diversity and to guard against global climate change through the "greenhouse effect”. The Conference also adopted a statement of principles designed to promote environmentally sustainable development, and a declaration on forestry.

In Great Britain building of special architectural or historical interest are "listed”. It is against the law to demolish, extend or alter the character of any listed building without special permission.

A government body, English Heritage, is charged with protecting and conserving England’s architectural and archeological heritage. It manages over 400 ancient monuments, most of which are open to public.

Similar organizations operate in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The Government supports the work of voluntary bodies in the protection of Britain’s heritage by giving grants. The National Trust, a charity with over 2 million members, owns and protects 319 properties open to the public and 230,000 hectares of land.

Britain supports international cooperation on environmental protection.

Britain’s legislation on pollution control sets out a wide range of powers and duties for central and local government, including controls over waste, air and water pollution, litter and noise. Britain also supports measures that help to improve the global environment. It stopped throwing waste at sea after 1990 and ended sea dumping of sewage in 1998. along with its European partners, it has agreed major cuts in emission of the main gases that lead to acid rains from large plants (such as coal-fired power stations).

Group B

United States Environmental Protection Agency

In July of 1970, the White House and Congress worked together to establish the EPA in response to the growing public demand for cleaner water, air and land. Prior to the establishment of the EPA, the federal government was not structured to make a coordinated attack on the pollutants that harm human health and degrade the environment. The EPA was assigned the daunting task of repairing the damage already done to the natural environment and to establish new criteria to guide Americans in making a cleaner environment a reality.

EPA employs 17,000 people across the country, including our headquarters offices in Washington, DC, 10 regional offices, and more than a dozen labs. Our staff are highly educated and technically trained; more than half are engineers, scientists, and policy analysts.

In addition, a large number of employees are legal, public affairs, financial, information management and computer specialists EPA leads the nation’s environmental science, research, education and assessment efforts. The mission of the Environmental Protection Agency is to protect human health and the environment. Since 1970, EPA has been working for a cleaner, healthier environment for the American people.

WHAT WE DO

Develop and Enforce Regulations

When Congress writes an environmental law, we implement it by writing regulations. Often, we set national standards that states and tribes enforce through their own regulations. If they fail to meet the national standards, we can help them. We also enforce our regulations, and help companies understand the requirements.

Give Grants

Nearly half of our budget goes into grants to state environmental programs, non-profits, educational institutions, and others. They use the money for a wide variety of projects, from scientific studies that help us make decisions to community cleanups. Overall, grants help us achieve our overall mission: protect human health and the environment.

Study Environmental Issues

At laboratories located throughout the nation, we identify and try to solve environmental problems. To learn even more, we share information with other countries, private sector organizations, academic institutions, and other agencies.

Sponsor Partnerships

We don’t protect the environment on our own, we work with businesses, non-profit organizations, and state and local governments through dozens of partnerships. A few examples include conserving water and energy, minimizing greenhouse gases, re-using solid waste, and getting a handle on pesticide risks. In return, we share information and publicly recognize our partners.

Teach People About the Environment

Protecting the environment is everyone’s responsibility, and starts with understanding the issues. The basics include reducing how much energy and materials you use, reusing what you can and recycling the rest. There’s a lot more about that to learn!

Publish Information

Through written materials and the Web site, EPA informs the public about our activities.

Group C

Environmental protection in Ukraine

For many centuries the people who lived on our planet before us had been trying to make their life easier and more comfortable. They thought that resources of the Earth were endless. They used those resources without thinking about the generations that would come after them. Our ancestors chopped down the forests, killed animals that lived there and invented machines and instruments that polluted the water, the air and the soil.

In the 19th century the word "ecology” was born, but the idea of environmental protection was not clear yet, and did not seem urgent for either the majority of the governments or common people. People still considered themselves "lords and lings of nature” and used its riches only as consumers.

In the 20th century, the rapid growth of science and technology resulted in an increasing negative effect on the biosphere of the Earth. Huge industrial enterprises pollute the air we breathe, the water we drink and the land, which gives us bread, vegetables and fruit. Their discharge of dust and gas into the atmosphere returns to the Earth in the form of acid rains. It also destroys the ozone layer of the Earth and causes "greenhouse effect”. It affects forests, rivers, crops and people’s health. This leads to the reduction of the life-span of man. People die younger because of cancer, AIDS and other diseases which are directly connected with the polluted environment they live in. many species of animals and birds face extinction due to the pollution of the biosphere.

The world’s oceans are in danger, too. They are filled with poisonous industrial and nuclear waste, chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

The Aral Sea in Russia is already dead, the Mediterranean and the North Sea are slowly dying.

The worst situation with air pollution is in big overpopulated cities. In Cairo and Mexico-City, for example, breathing is equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. The big industrial cities in Ukraine

Another threat for the environment is nuclear power plants like Chornobyl. In April 1986 that nuclear power plant just north-west of

Kyiv suffered the worst nuclear accident in history: dozens died immediately, thousands were evacuated, while the long-term effects to human life are difficult to calculate. A large part of Ukraine, Russia and Belorussia was polluted by radioactive substances. Great damage was done to their economy, nature and people’s health. The problem of Chornobyl has not been solved yet because of the economic difficulties that Ukraine is having now. The power plant was closed in 2000.

Nowadays people of Ukraine, like most people in developed countries, realize that without solving environmental problems the life of the future generations will be in real danger. Many people join the Green Party of Ukraine to unite their efforts to save the planet where we live, to make our world healthier and more beautiful.

2. Writing

Since the text about Ukraine has no information about what is done on the national level to help protect the environment, the students work in groups creating recommendations for the Ukrainian Government about what should be done on the national scale borrowing the ideas from British and American environmental policies and adding some of their own.

The teacher suggests using "should” for making recommendations.

If the class is bright enough, Passive forms may also be used, if not — Active ones will do as well.

The students in groups discuss and note down their recommendations, which they will use at the next lesson.

III. Summary

IV. Homework

Revising the material, preparing for a group project.

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