UNIT 4 - Урок 2 - Тексты для аудирования к рабочей тетради

Аудиозапись № 14

An Unusual Tree and an Unusual Bird

As New Zealand is a long way from anywhere, it has many trees and flowers that you don’t find in other places of the world. New Zealand’s best-known tree is the kauri, which can live for as long as two thousand years. It can grow up to fifty metres high. The Maori used it to make their wooden boats. Europeans also used the kauri tree to make their houses. There are still some of these houses in the older parts of Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. Northland, in the North Island, is a good place to see the kauri trees. New Zealand’s tallest tree is in Northland too. The tree’s name is Tane Mahuta. It is more than 51 metres high and more than 1,200 years old.

You can’t find the kakapo parrot in other parts of the world either. It cannot fly. This parrot is green and grey and it is the heaviest parrot in the world. It makes a very loud sound and it can live up to ninety years. Kakapo parrots lived on Stewart Island without anyone knowing about them until 1845. But now there are not many birds of this kind in the country — not more than a hundred.

Аудиозапись № 15

The Kiwi

The most famous bird in New Zealand is the kiwi. Most kiwi birds are brown and about the same size as a chicken. The kiwi is famous because it cannot fly. People from New Zealand are often called kiwis because of their famous birds.

Kiwi birds cannot fly because hundreds of years ago there were no animals in New Zealand except bats and sea animals like dolphins. The kiwi did not need to fly to get away from anything. It was safe.

Kiwi birds cannot see very well. They find food by smelling it. They are the only birds in the world with nostrils at the end of their long bill. In some ways they are more like a land animal than a bird. If anyone comes near, they run away. Then they stand and smell the air to see if it is safe.

Kiwi birds are difficult to see, because they are the colour of the earth. They live in thick trees in quiet areas and they come out at night, not in the day.

Now the kiwi is an endangered bird. Most New Zealanders can see them only in a zoo. This is because of the animals that came to the islands with Europeans. Some of them began to kill and eat the kiwi birds. People also cut down many trees where the kiwi likes to live. Today there are only about seventy thousand left in the country.

Аудиозапись № 16

Breathe, breakable, curious, especially, rainforest, twin, including, domestic, moveable, scientific, similar, support, relative, spacious, hide.

Аудиозапись № 17

a) An ape, a beetle, a blackbird, a butterfly, a monkey, a caterpillar, a dragonfly, an insect, a ladybird, a lizard, a magpie, a nightingale;

b) a strong ostrich, a wise owl, a funny penguin, a white and brown pigeon, a tiny robin, a noisy seagull, a long snake, a grey starling, a fast swallow, a hard-working woodpecker, a white moth;

c) a beech, a bluebell, a daffodil, an elm, a lily, a water lily, an oak, a pine, a shamrock, a sunflower, a thistle;

d) a tall beech, an old pine, a fantastic lily, a wonderful bluebell, a strong oak, a water lily in the pond, spring yellow daffodils, tall elms in the forest, under the pine, sunflowers in the field.

Аудиозапись № 18

a) Another, human, close, enjoyable, everyone, fur, hide, including, similar, someone, soil, species;

b) a twin brother, to be close relatives, to be curious about plants growing in rainforests, including insects, especially domestic animals, common birds, similar problems, a spacious office, to breathe in deeply, an unusual species;

c) He has paid for all of us. We have never had anything in common. Pirate Jack has hidden the money, no one will be able to find it. Different species of animals live in rainforests. Her parents supported her till she was twenty-one. A narrow river flows down this beautiful valley. We have been to Canada but never to any other English-speaking countries.