Unit 1 A world in one family



Unit 1 A world in one family

Part 1 The Paz family

The Paz family live in Mahwah, a small town in New Jersey, about 45 minutes north west of New York city on the east coast of the USA.

Gerry and Michele have four children, three sons and one daughter.

Amanda, who is at high school, is their eldest child.

Gerald, is 12 and Jeremy is 7.

Their youngest son, Julian, is four years old.

The family have two guinea pigs called Bart and Spider-pig.

The family have lived in Mahwah for 14 years.

Before moving to their four-bedroomed house nine years ago, they lived in an apartment.

Like many families in the United States, Gerry and Michele come from very different cultural backgrounds.

Gerry’s parents, Victor and Lola, live nearby.

Lola: My name is Lola Paz.

Victor: My name is Victor Paz, we come from Lima, Peru.

Gerry was also born in Lima.

But in 1978, when he was 13 years old, his parents made the difficult decision to move to the United States.

The family had five children and hoped that there were more jobs and opportunities in the USA.

Today Gerry works in a hospital.

Gerry: I work at the Valley Hospital as an information systems technician.

I’ve been working there for the past ... almost seven years now, and it’s been not only, pretty much a rewarding job but also I have learn a lot from ... from the business point of view.

Michele was born in the US, but her birth parents were from the Philippines.

She was adopted by an Irish-American family when she was just six days old, and she grew up in the New York area.

Michele: Well, I was born in the now closed, St Vincent’s Hospital in New York City, in the early 70s and I was given up for adoption when I was six days old.

My biological parents are Filipinos, from the Philippines, and because I was born in New York, that makes me Filipino American and my adopted parents are Irish American …

I think, like, my great-grandparents came over from Ireland and the grandparents, and then my parents were also ... were born here in New York.

Michele isn’t working at the moment. She stays at home to look after the kids.

I used to work outside the house.

Years ago I worked in the garment district in New York for a women’s clothing retailer, for about seven years, but the economy changed … so I lost my job.

So I’ve been home with the kids for the last couple of years.

Part 2 Cultural identity

Gerry and Michele met 20 years ago and they have been married for 15 years.

They met while they were working together in a department store.

Michele: I was still in high school and I started talking to him ... and I – just as a joke because again this is ... I didn’t know a lot about the Philippines or its culture – I see Gerry walking down the aisle and I said, “Excuse me, excuse me, are you Filipino?”

And he thought ... he said, “Are you talking to me?” And I said, “Yeah, yeah, you. Come here, come here.”

And I started talking to him. I said, “Hi, my name is Michelle.

I’m just curious, are you Filipino?”

And he says to me, “Yes,” and then he walks away.

So I go back to folding my sweaters and doing my job as a part-time sales person.

He comes back over and he says, “I’m sorry Michele, I’m not, I ... I was only kidding. I’m not Filipino.”

I’m like, “Oh okay, well where are you from?” He said, “Peru.”

He started laughing and we started talking, hanging out and 15 years, four kids later we’re married and doing the best we can living our lives.

The family is close-knit and Lola and Victor play an important role in family life.

They teach their children and grandchildren about their Peruvian cultural identity.

For Michele it’s more difficult to pass on her Filipino identity.

Michele: I’m glad that my in-laws are involved in our lives and I can honestly say that I’m very lucky for having such wonderful, open-minded, welcoming people in my family.

I’m still trying to learn about the Philippines and its culture because I know nothing of it, so at this point in time I can’t really pass any knowledge onto my children.

Any kind of cultural identity, cultural customs, traditions have been passed down to the children from the Peruvian side … as my children have their father – you know my husband – and their grandparents who are still in touch with their culture … to teach them about the language, the customs, the traditional dress, the dances, which they’re learning.

My mother-in-law, she’s an amazing Peruvian food cook and she’s been feeding me basically since Gerry walked in and introduced me to his family!

So I’ve seen all different kinds of cuisines and entrées from the Peruvian side and a lot of the stuff is delicious.

I’ve also learned how to cook some of the things and, which has also made Gerry happy.

Part 3 Challenges and hopes

The Paz family are happiest when they are together and Gerry cherishes his time at home.

Gerry: Whenever I see them smiling, laughing, having a good time and ...

There are quite a few times like I just can’t wait to get out of work, be home with my kids, you know, see them, be with them, be with my wife and er, see them happy.

But still sometimes life can be difficult, and there are many challenges to overcome.

Their oldest son, Gerald, suffers from autism.

It’s very difficult for him to communicate with other people and he needs special help and support.

But the family not only work together to help Gerald overcome his disability, but they also help raise money for research into autism.

Michele: Some of the things that make the family the happiest are when we are doing activities that are either helpful to ourselves or helpful to others.

For example, we did a Northern New Jersey autism walk last weekend.

We were very happy to walk as a team and help raise money to fund autism research.

Gerry and Michelle worry about the future for all of their children.

Michele: I worry that there’ll be ... there will be appropriate jobs for them after they finish college.

Or I worry that they’ll find the right people and whether it’s someone of their own race and culture or just ... or someone different.

I worry that they’ll be happy and not have to go through personal pains and challenges.

But like their parents before them, they simply want to do the best for their children, and hope that whatever happens their children are happy.

Unit 2 The working week

Part 1 Free time by the sea

It’s the weekend in Cornwall in the south-west of England.

The sun is shining and people are enjoying their free time at the seaside.

Cornwall is famous for its stunning scenery, pretty villages and beautiful beaches.

And it’s a popular destination for people getting away from stressful jobs and busy lives in towns and cities.

And there’s plenty to do with your free time here.

For some people, the weekend is about the simple pleasures and taking the time to relax.

At the beach, people take their dogs for walks, catch up with friends or spend time with their families.

And for others it’s all about getting active.

During the working week, many people spend their time sitting at a desk, and the weekend is their chance to get moving, and keep fit.

You can be a successful accountant during the week and a passionate surfer at the weekend.

All you need is a wetsuit, a board, and perhaps a few surfing lessons first!

The beaches are full of enthusiastic sportsmen and women; all you need is a ball, a bat and a group of friends.

You can go for a swim, or perhaps explore the coastline by kayak.

The more adventurous can even try to catch some fish for dinner!

But while the sea and coastline are beautiful, they can also be treacherous, with strong currents, and unpredictable weather conditions.

Every year thousands of people get into difficulty on the coast, and it’s not just the holiday-makers who are at risk.

For people like the commercial fishermen who work along the coastline, the sea is a place of work, and it’s a dangerous workplace.

Fishermen work long hours and are paid very little for doing the most dangerous job in the UK.

They are 50 times more likely to die at work than people with other jobs.

Part 2 The RNLI

In the UK, when something goes wrong at sea or on the beach, whether you are working or just enjoying a day out, there’s an amazing group of dedicated people who give up their free time to help.

The members of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, the RNLI.

The charity that saves lives at sea.

The RNLI was formed in 1824 to help anyone who got into trouble in the seas around the coastline of the United Kingdom.

The RNLI has both lifeboat volunteers who respond to emergency calls 24 hours a day, and lifeguards who patrol more than 160 beaches.

The charity uses money donated by the public to pay for its work.

For every £1 given to the RNLI, 81p is spent on providing a rescue service, while the rest is spent on programmes focused on preventing accidents happening, and raising more money for the charity.

Since it started the RNLI’s boats, and lifeguards, have saved more than 139,000 lives.

Today, there are over four and a half thousand lifeboat crew, and over 900 seasonal lifeguards, working for the organization.

Most of these people are volunteers who give up their free time, and put their own lives in danger, to prevent accidents and rescue people in need.

For RNLI lifeguards, 95 per cent of the job is to prevent accidents before they happen at the beach.

They watch the sea carefully to check that no-one is getting into trouble.

They have to be ready to rush to help swimmers or surfers if they get into difficulty.

Lifeguards have to concentrate hard, and they only stay on duty for short periods of time before they have to take a break.

Lifeboat crew members attend emergencies at sea and can be called at any time, day or night.

The crew members’ pager will go off, and they will rush down to the lifeboat station and launch the lifeboat.

They have to spend many hours of their own time to become highly skilled and efficient lifesavers.

Part 3 The RNLI volunteers

So, what kind of people volunteer for the RNLI?

Robin Howell is a senior lifeguard on Perranporth beach in Cornwall.

It’s 10am on a Sunday in June and Robin is starting work.

He’s setting up all his equipment, and getting ready for a day keeping people safe on the beach.

People are only allowed to swim between the red and yellow flags, as this is the area that Robin is watching.

Robin has a radio to stay in contact with the Lifeguard base.

Robin: My name’s Robin Howell, I am a geography teacher at a secondary school in Cornwall.

I have a second job which is senior lifeguard on Perranporth Beach.

I work all year round as a teacher.

As a teacher I don’t work at the weekends but from March all the way through to September, I work as a lifeguard on Perranporth Beach at the weekends.

The lifeguard hours are between 10 and 6pm in the evening.

Having two jobs doesn’t leave much time for relaxing, and even when he’s not working Robin likes to stay busy.

I think the main problems with having two jobs is just literally trying to fit it in, you know, in the space of a week but I’d rather be busy than sitting at home watching TV.

In my free time I try and do as much as possible.

There’s not a lot of free time but I’m doing a Master’s in film and I try and do as much sport as possible, I swim in the mornings at 6.30.

But I also try and do some running and I go to a yoga class once a week as well.

And like all the busy people who work for the RNLI, Robin does two jobs, because he loves them both.

I have two jobs because I love both of them.

I love the lifeguarding because it’s outside, it’s very physical and I love the teaching because I just like the interaction with the pupils and the fact that I can try and make a difference to their education.

25 year-old Ben Eglington is part of the RNLI lifeboat crew in the town of Newquay in Cornwall.

His crew is made up of many volunteers from the local community.

Ben: There’s fishermen, builders, landscape gardeners, hotel/pub owners, fishmongers.

All sorts basically, people that own shops, fish and chip shops, all sorts.

Ben’s been part of the Newquay crew for eight years.

He’s a busy man, who works full time as an engineer in the Royal Navy during the week.

So, I currently work in the Royal Navy.

During the week I work away in Portsmouth, which is 210 miles away.

Every weekend I make the epic journey back to Newquay to help out with the RNLI.

But Ben doesn’t mind giving up his free time to help.

I volunteer my time with the lifeboat ’cause it’s good to give something back to the community.

It’s also a great achievement when you’re out there and you actually save somebody’s life.

And it’s thanks to Robin, Ben, and all the amazing RNLI volunteers that the beautiful beaches, coastline and seas around the UK are safer for everyone to enjoy.

Unit 3 Shakespeare

Part 1 Who was William Shakespeare?

William Shakespeare is internationally recognized as one of the greatest literary geniuses in history.

Although he died nearly 400 years ago, his plays and poetry are still studied by 50 per cent of all school students around the world, both in his native English and in translation… and his writing has shaped the English language we know today.

But despite the global recognition of his work, very little is known for certain about the life of William Shakespeare.

Most of the information we have about Shakespeare’s life comes from his time living in the small town of Stratford upon Avon in England.

Today, Stratford is a town dedicated to Shakespeare’s life and work.

It’s home to Shakespeare’s birthplace and museum, and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.

Visitors come here from all over the world to learn more about Shakespeare’s life, and to experience his plays being performed live by some of the best Shakespearean actors in the world… the Royal Shakespeare Company.

So, what do people think they know about Shakespeare’s life?

Anne: We studied him for GCSE but apart from that, you don’t really learn much about his life.

Mariesa: No ... You learn about his works like Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet, and King Lear, but you don’t really learn about him as a person.

Stephen: He was born in Stratford upon Avon, I know that much. That’s why we’re here to have a look.

He was a playwright, he wrote loads of plays, and married Anne Hathaway, did he? Did he? Yeah, he did. And that’s it.

Danny: He was a playwright and an actor, and he’s from Stratford upon Avon, and he moved to London from a young age.

And there’s a few years of his life I believe where we don’t know what happened to him.

Six or seven years missing, where we don’t know what he did or where he was.

Denise: Well, he was born here, in Stratford.

Mike: And he lived in London for quite a long time where he wrote plays and ran the company for the Globe theatre.

Denise: He had twins. I can’t remember, who was he married to?

Mike: Anne Hathaway. He was married to Anne Hathaway.

Denise: We went to her cottage last year. That was good.

Part 2 Shakespeare and the theatre

So, what are the facts? What do we actually know about Shakespeare?

William Shakespeare was born on 23rd April 1564 in this house in Stratford upon Avon.

His father, John, was a successful glove-maker and had a workshop in the house.

William was one of eight children; four boys and four girls.

He went to school in Stratford, but he’d left school by the age of 16.

At 18, William married the 26-year-old Anne Hathaway, and they had three children, a daughter, Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith.

Hamnet died when he was just 11.

We know that in 1592 Shakespeare was living in London.

He was writing plays and acting in theatres like the famous Globe Theatre.

But we don’t know when he left Stratford, or how he became a playwright.

At this time, the theatre was extremely important, and by the time he died in Stratford at the age of 52, Shakespeare was a successful and wealthy man.

His 37 plays had been performed for audiences from royalty to the poor in theatres in London, and around the country.

The Globe used to be one of the biggest theatres in London… and since its restoration in 2000, audiences here have been able to experience what going to the theatre used to be like 400 years ago.

It was a very different experience, as Jacqui O’Hanlon from the RSC explains.

Jacqui O’Hanlon: Theatre in Shakespeare’s time was an incredibly popular form of entertainment.

There wasn’t anything else, there was no television!

Everybody went to the theatre, everybody.

The tickets were cheap, all kinds of society, all kinds of people would be in a theatre together watching the play.

The Globe held an audience of up to 3000.

They were really big events and they were the kind of thing that you would take an afternoon off work to go to.

In Shakespeare’s time, the audience misbehaved, it shouted out, it threw things at the actors.

Another difference is that women did not perform on stage when Shakespeare was writing plays.

The other crucial difference about theatre in Shakespeare’s time was that it happened during the day, so evening performances couldn’t happen because it was dark.

So a lot of performances happened in the day time outside.

Part 3 Shakespeare in the modern world

In 2011 the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford was transformed to provide the best possible venue for bringing Shakespeare to a wider audience.

Jacqui O’Hanlon: In this new Royal Shakespeare Theatre, everything is brought much closer together, so the furthest seat from the stage is 15 metres away.

In the old theatre it was 24 metres, so really big difference.

We wanted to create a sense that the audience and the actors are in the same room, that we’re sharing this story together.

The Royal Shakespeare Company also works hard outside of the theatre to bring the work of Shakespeare to modern audiences in new and unusual ways.

Last year we launched a Twitter play called Such Tweet Sorrow, based around Romeo and Juliet.

Five actors played five key characters from the play and Tweeted in 140 characters over a five week period, their journey through the play Romeo and Juliet, but in modern language.

It created this enormous new audience for Shakespeare.

And that’s what we’re trying to do all of the time, is surprise audiences by who Shakespeare is and what he was writing about.

But the genius of Shakespeare is his use of the English language and the stories that he tells.

Shakespeare uses about 20,000 words throughout his 37 plays.

That’s not a huge number today but when he was writing, it was.

And it’s possibly not what the words are but it’s how creatively he uses those words that is his genius.

It’s the way he places words next to each other that creates their beauty and their very unique meaning to us.

However, while most people have had to study Shakespeare at school, they rarely continue to read his work as adults.

So what do we learn from his stories, and why are they so popular?

I think what we learn from Shakespeare, whether we read the plays or perform the plays or watch them as an audience member, is we learn about ourselves.

I fundamentally believe that.

The reason the plays have sustained, have stayed alive for 400 years is because they speak about us.

They speak about the world we live in, each other.

These days, for many people, seeing Shakespeare performed at the theatre is reserved for a special occasion.

People worry that they can’t understand Shakespeare – but as Jacqui O’Hanlon says, this should not be a barrier.

I will first of all look at a Shakespeare play and not immediately be able to understand it.

So the first thing is to accept that’s normal and good.

And we find this a lot with students that we work with that have English as an additional language, that actually they will make more progress with Shakespeare than students who speak English as their first language… because speakers of English as an additional language, are used to learning new words all the time and Shakespeare’s just another language to learn.

And even if people are sometimes unsure about Shakespearean language, most people can remember at least a few quotes – although not always correctly!

Andrew: ‘Tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow.’

Danny: ‘To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows ...’

Denise: ‘O reason, not the need.’ That’s a good one when you are shopping. From King Lear.

Mike: ‘All’s well that ends well.’

Denise: ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth ’tis to have a thankless child.’

Mike: My mother used to quote that to me all the time.

Danny: I’m trying to think of more, I can’t!

Elaine: ‘To be or not to be’ is the obvious one.

Stephen: ‘A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse.’ ‘Shall I not compare thee to a summer’s rose?’

Elaine: Yorrick?

Stephen: Ooh … ‘Alas, I knew him so well.’

Andrew: ‘If music be the food of love, play on.’

Danny: That’s a good one.

Andrew: It is a good one.

Danny: That’s a very good one.

Unit 4 Growing up

Part 1 Keith

[Tell us about your childhood.]

When I grew up the world seemed to be a much smaller place.

There were far fewer choices for us to make.

My mother was quite a strict person.

My father died when I was quite young, when I was six, and she had to work a lot ,so it was very hard for her and I think that had an affect on her.

There was no video games, hardly any electronic equipment in the house at all.

Entertainment was pretty much what you made yourself.

Television was only on for a few hours a day and children’s television only ran for an hour or so in the afternoon.

But a lot of the time I’d be out playing with friends if the weather was good.

Of course, there was no way of communicating with us.

So if, for example, say a meal time was set for half past five, you had to be home for that time.

[Are we are as strict today?]

I don’t think we are as strict these days as they used to be.

I have two of my own children, a boy aged 24 and a girl aged 22.

When they were growing up, I think ... life was different for them.

We had a firm few rules, certainly that my wife enforced.

They weren’t allowed out as much as we were.

I used to be out a lot during the day but my children had to be home a lot more.

Expectations with say homework ... certainly my wife was far stricter than my mother ever was in making sure homework was done.

But they have so much homework now when they’re young.

My children weren’t allowed televisions in their rooms until they were old enough to buy their own.

We had one television downstairs and er, for a while, my wife made us all – including me – write out lists of what we wanted to watch during the week.

So you wrote down your list and that’s what you watched.

If it wasn’t on the list, you didn’t have it on.

[Do children have it easy today?]

I don’t think children have it easy these days.

I think the pressures on them are different to my generation and my mother’s generation.

I think this generation have a lot more choice than our generation did when I was growing up.

Children are faced with many choices and many pressures that I didn’t face when I was growing up.

I think there is a problem that comes with choices, because it’s easy to make the wrong choices.

When you only have one choice to make it’s very hard to get it wrong.

Part 2 Maria

[Tell us about your childhood.]

When I was growing up at, at school, I think the biggest thing I noticed was that I didn’t know anyone else who was half ... mixed race.

Because I’m half Thai and my dad’s from Thailand.

There wasn’t a Thai community in Cheltenham and ... so I quite liked being a bit different, it helped me sort of find my way, become an individual.

My mum’s very strong and independent and she came from a very busy city.

And my dad is quite, he’s ... he’s very zen, he’s very calm and he has some traditional ideas about bringing up girls and things and er ... he grew up in a rural area of Thailand.

[Were your parents strict?]

Well, when I was growing up I wasn’t allowed to go to the cinema if any boys were going.

I wanted to get a part-time job, like a paper-round or something, but I wasn’t allowed.

I think ... I think that the way my brothers were brought up was different.

And I don’t know if it was because they’re boys or whether I’m ... because I’m the eldest so they let them go out a bit more, sooner and not ...

They, they didn’t worry about them as much I think and you know, Ben had a paper round ... a couple of years ago.

And so, yeah, I think they were much more lenient with them which really used to frustrate me as well but I’ve kind of come round to understanding why it was that way.

[Do you think it’s different for mixed race children today?]

I think nowadays children are growing up a lot more aware of other cultures.

There are more children now who have perhaps a similar upbringing maybe?

Just because I think now that there are more mixed race children.

When I was growing up, there were separate communities.

So people are much ... becoming much more inter-cultural and sort of understanding a bit more of other, other communities and other cultures and things.

Part 3 Merinda and Amy

Merinda: My name’s Merinda, Merinda Wilson and I’m British. I come from the UK.

I’m in my early 50s. I’ve got two children, they’re called Amy and May.

Amy: My name’s Amy, I’m 21 years old and I’m at university at music college, studying opera.

[Are you a strict parent?]

Merinda: I think I’m a strict parent, I think rules are very important.

I thought that my children were quite adventurous and a little bit on the wild side and therefore, rules are very important.

We had, especially our meal time rules were quite, were quite interesting because they got so badly behaved at meal times that I really decided that we had to have rules… and I wrote them on a piece of paper and put them on the wall by the table, so that when we sat down to have our meals, they could see the rules written on the wall and that was quite important.

We had to sit at the table, we had to eat nicely, and had to have good table manners.

I think the other rule, really important rule, is bed time.

Because what I’ve noticed is that as soon as they don’t have enough sleep, they behave badly.

So bed time is very important and making sure that they do get to bed on time and obviously get up on time.

Those were just two places where I imposed strict rules and they seemed to then create a certain amount of structure in the day.

[What does being strict mean to you?]

I’m not necessarily in control but I know everything that they do.

So I know when they go out, I know where they’re going, I know what time they’re coming back.

I know what their homework is, I know when they’ve got particular things to do and I know for example whose turn it is to clear the table.

So it’s just sort of making sure that they know, that I know what they should be doing and I think that really makes a lot of difference and that’s how I interpret being strict.

[So, does Amy agree?]

Amy: I think my mum was quite a strict parent.

She was certainly strict about food, no sort of crisps and junk food.

And I totally appreciate that now.

She had a lot of rules about manners at the dinner table.

Eating, using your knife and fork properly and we had to say “Please may I get down now?” when we’d finished dinner.

I remember her getting us to help with a lot of household chores and gardening and not being one of those mums who just does everything for us.

I remember rules about bed time were to go when she said to go!

We had to do reading before bed, either we would read to Mum or sometimes she would read to us, depending on how sleepy we were.

So she was strict but I think in all the right ways and she made us respect her.

When I was younger I used to disagree with her sometimes.

Mainly to do with social events and sort of hanging out with friends or what I was gonna do after school… because Mum would try and encourage me to not overdo things so that I wouldn’t get tired.

And also, to do school work and do practice for my hobbies, for example singing practice or piano practice… and there were times when I didn’t agree with what she’d said and I rebelled.

She let us make our own decisions but would always say what she thought about them.

So, for example, she’d say, “Well you can go to the disco if you want to but I think you might be tired the next day.”

Or, “You might not enjoy it as much as you think. But if you want to, you can do what you want.”

So at times I did go against what she said and sometimes those things were okay and sometimes they didn’t go as well as I wanted.

And now I realize that Mum is normally ... 99.9% she’s right.

Unit 5 Space

Part 1 The history of space exploration

Throughout history, mankind has always been fascinated by space.

With the development of new technology humans have travelled further into space than anyone predicted was possible just a hundred years ago.

In the 1950s and 60s, enormous progress was made in space exploration.

It reached its peak when Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the moon on July 20th 1969.

But this progress wasn’t made just because of developments in technology, as physicist, Anu Ohja, explains.

Anu Ohja: Human space exploration started in 1961, that was half a century ago with Yuri Gagarin being the first human being to orbit the earth.

Now when we look back in time, the original reason for going into space was this political battle… this struggle between the Soviet Union – Russia nowadays we think of it – and the United States, communism against capitalism and that’s why humans went to the moon.

Throughout the 1970s and 80s, the United States and Russia continued to dominate space exploration, but in the past 20 years things have started to change.

It’s true to say that in the early years of space exploration, it was individual countries competing against each other – we had the United States against the Soviet Union.

But in the last 20 years we’re seeing more and more international cooperation.

And the greatest example of this cooperation is the International Space Station, which has been in orbit since the late 1990s.

The international space station is a collaboration between the Russians, the Americans, the Europeans, the Japanese, the Brazilians, and many other countries.

And, while countries like the United States are reducing their investment in space, other countries are just starting to get involved.

When it comes down to space exploration, space science, space technology, a lot of people have this idea that it’s just NASA or it’s just the European Space Agency or it’s just the Russians.

What we’ve found in the last 10 to 15 years is some of the countries that are emerging financially are also starting to play a bigger and bigger role in space.

The Chinese launched their own astronauts on their own rocket in their own spaceship in 2003.

I expect that we’ll see India launching its own astronauts in its own spacecraft in the next few years.

And space truly now, it’s an international collaboration.

Part 2 Space technology today

In the future it could become increasingly difficult for many countries to justify spending on space programmes, when people ask the questions…

“Why do we spend all our money on space science and space technology?”

“What difference does it make to our everyday lives?”

To understand why space programmes are so necessary we need to ask ourselves what would happen if we didn’t have any of this space technology.

Anu Ohja: The best way of trying to understand just how much we get from space science and space satellites is to imagine what would happen right now, in the 21st Century, if we switched off all the satellites orbiting the earth.

What effect would it have on our lives?

No GPS systems, no Sat Navs in cars, global telecommunications, getting signals, getting news, getting sports coverage, global communications… all of it would completely stop within one or two days and the way we live our lives is so dependent on this, that life would get pretty uncomfortable, even in the space of just a week.

We need satellites to maintain the way we live our lives in this century.

Space technology also plays a vital role in monitoring the weather and environmental change.

Every year thousands of lives are saved by the information coming from weather satellites.

And if we want to understand what humans are doing to the environment, there are lots of concerns about climate change, is climate change real? Yes.

How much of it is being caused by humans? That’s what we’re still not sure about.

But in the last 10 years, we’ve got a network of satellites that are what we call earth observers – they’re looking down at the planet, they’re helping us understand the planet better.

Increasingly, travelling into space has less to do with human exploration, and much more to do with big business.

Unmanned spacecraft are being used to launch commercial satellites and for space enthusiasts like Anu, this is a concern.

In my opinion, there is a difference between space science and space applications from satellites and human space exploration.

Humans have been into space since 1961 but only 500 people have gone in the last half century.

And of those 500 people, only 24 went to another world.

Those were the Apollo astronauts that went to the moon between 1968 and 1972, and 12 of them walked on the moon.

When we think of how long ago that was, there is a lot of concern about ‘why do we do human space flight’?

Why do we explore?

Now in my mind, being an explorer, wanting to know what’s over the horizon is part of what it is to be human.

When I was a child growing up, it was human space exploration that made me want to be a physicist, then a scientist and that is what led me to the job I have now.

But for the last 40 years, we’ve just been going around the earth.

Part 3 Space tourism

So, what’s next for the people who still dream that one day they will be able to see the earth from space?

For the people who hope that one day they might be able to set foot on the moon or even visit another planet?

For many years, some people have believed that the age of mass space tourism is on the horizon.

But, over 10 years since the world’s first orbital space tourist Dennis Tito, paid around $20 million to spend six days on the International Space Station, the development of this industry has been slower than predicted.

And Anu is a realist about the future.

Anu Ohja: When it comes down to space tourism, the idea of thousands of people taking holidays in space will be as much a fantasy in 50 years’ time as it is today.

The challenges of human space exploration and staying in space are still extreme.

Companies like Virgin Galactic are already selling trips into space on their own spaceships.

Virgin are currently building a Spaceport in the desert of New Mexico in the USA.

A ticket will cost about £200,000, but the whole trip will take less than four hours, and passengers will experience zero gravity for just a few minutes.

If you want to be an astronaut, the official definition is that you must go above 100 kilometres’ altitude.

If you go higher than that, you are one of the 500 people that have ever been astronauts.

And what they’re developing are spacecraft that will not go fast enough to go around the planet but will just go up and down.

And the people paying hundreds of thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands of Euros, will have a fantastic experience.

They will feel the thrust of a rocket ride into space.

They will get an experience of floating and they’ll see the beautiful curvature of the earth from space, and they’ll see the blackness of space.

But they’ll only see it for a few minutes before they fall back down to the surface.

For some people this might be enough, after all, they will be able to say that they are an astronaut.

But for others this simply won’t be worth the enormous cost and the very real risks.

There is a very good reason why since 1961, only 500 people out of the billions of people alive, have ever been into space.

And it’s to do with the enormous amounts of energy we need and the enormous limits of science and engineering that we have to try and face.

Now rocket science and rocket engineering, it’s safe but even though 500 people have been into space, 18 have died in the process.

Human space flight is not 100% safe, it’s a risky business and so whenever human beings want to explore and they want to go further, there is always a risk factor.

I think for the foreseeable future, human space flight is going to be about going around the earth, is going to be about doing experiments that we can’t do on earth.

And it’s going to have some fantastic discoveries that are made, but for me, that is not what space exploration is.

While space tourism is an idea that I think would be fantastic and I would love to experience, I don’t think we’re going to see a time in the next century when we have thousands and thousands of tourists taking holidays in space.

I think that’s more science fiction than science fact.

Unit 6 Treasured possessions

Part 1 A treasured possession

Vincent: It would be this hat because this is my father’s hat.

It’s a suede hat, feels like very, very good material.

The hat is brown with a black band around it and a feather.

Now the funny thing is that the hat doesn’t fit me, okay, so I really can’t wear it anywhere.

What it means for me today is mainly luck, I kinda keep it for luck.

John: My most treasured possession is my album, London Calling by The Clash.

It’s a vinyl record, it was a double album made in 1979.

On the front cover we have a photograph of the bass player, Paul Simonon and it was taken by Penny Smith.

On the back we have the full track listing as well and more photographs of the band.

And I think this is the greatest rock photograph ever taken and certainly the best album cover of all time.

I came by this album by ... by accident actually.

I was in a record shop and I was just looking through lots of records and this album just caught my eye and I picked it up and I liked the cover.

I took it home, listened to it and I fell in love with it from that moment.

I haven’t stopped listening to it since then and that was 20 years ago.

Unfortunately, I don’t play this any more on a record player.

This record lives on my desk to look at.

But I do own this on CD and as a digital download as well.

I still listen to the music.

I’ve been listening to this music for over 20 years now and I ... I keep the record as a memento of my discovery ... of discovering music.

Leah: If my house was on fire and I could only save one possession, it would be my cell phone.

This cell phone that I have now, I got I think on my 16th or 17th birthday.

I use my cell phone a lot.

I do it for everything, when I’m driving I use it for GPS, text, emails, Internet ...

On the screen I have a mirror so that when the screen isn’t lit up, I can just like look at myself and make sure that I look okay and it’s really good for, like, putting lipstick on and stuff.

The screen itself is cracked ‘cause I’ve dropped it a few times.

But I’d say for having it for a year and a half, two years, it’s in pretty good shape.

I’ve lost my phone a few times.

I’m definitely emotionally attached to my cell phone, it’s like my best friend!

Part 2 Traveller’s possessions

Ben: My most treasured possession is my ‘maté’ from Argentina.

It was given to me by work friends as a birthday present a few years ago when I was working in Argentina.

It’s something which is very common over there and it’s used for drinking a kind of South American tea.

So you put the tea inside – there’s a little bit of it there – and you pour in hot water and then you use the metal straw – which is the ‘bombilla’ – to drink the tea like that.

This one is quite plain but it’s covered in leather on the outside and you can see it’s stitched there and it’s got a little stand, so you can stand it up.

It’s got a metal ring around the top.

The straw, the bombilla, is just made from metal.

And it’s not very heavy, it’s probably about the size of a tennis ball I would say and it’s very nice to hold in fact, it fits perfectly into the hand.

Now, it sits on my desk in my office, and my work colleagues in this country think it’s rather strange because they’ve never seen one before.

So people come up to me and they say, “What’s that strange thing on your desk?”

It brings back memories of Argentina.

It’s something that I like to have with me to remind me of my, of my time there.

Sean: My most treasured possession is my charango, which is a kind of small guitar, that comes from South America and I bought this one in Ecuador about 15 years ago.

It cost about US$50.

It’s made of wood.

It’s probably heavier than it looks and it has strings that are just like guitar strings, really like classical guitar strings but shorter.

I think it’s incredible how much sound it makes, it makes a really loud sound for something so small.

And it’s also a sound that instantly transports me back to ... to that part of the world, to Ecuador, to Bolivia, to Peru where you hear the music that’s played with the charango quite a lot.

I promise myself I’m going to learn to play it properly but really I just know one or two chords.

But it’s so ... it sounds so nice just playing a few chords that I’m kind of happy with that.

Part 3 Family ties

Laura: If my home was on fire and I had to grab something, it would be my crystal jewellery box.

The history of the jewellery box is that my grandmother always had this on her dresser with her perfume bottles.

My grandmother’s prized possessions, you know, were always in here.

This jewellery box means so much to me because I really loved my grandmother.

I know it’s an object and most objects can be replaced.

You can’t replace this – this is my life, this is my mum’s life, this is my grandmother’s life and it’s just something that I treasure.

Ahlam: If my house was on fire and I could only save one thing, it would be the package of letters that me and my brother exchanged.

These letters were actually an exchange between him and me maybe about four or five years ago… and we wrote them back and forth to each other when he was in Texas and I was in Chicago and we were both living on our own.

And I’ve just kept them in this manila folder and it’s coming apart. This is actually an envelope that he used to send me some of his drawings, so I’ve saved them for this long… and I don’t think it’s been that long but I’ve travelled with them everywhere and I haven’t read them all the time but just having them with me is, is comforting.

We’ve developed a relationship through writing each other, whether it’s been on letters, through letters or whether it’s been on email.

And so just the exchange of our experiences and our stories helps to give us a better sense of where we come from and what we’re going through and to also help, you know, inspire and motivate each other as well.

“Well it’s time for me to end this letter. I hope you enjoyed it.”

“You’re always in my thoughts and in my heart, I love you more than words.”

“Take care big sis, I miss you so much. Write back. Your brother, Akram.”

Unit 7 Baseball

Part 1 An American passion

Since 1876, there has been an American national baseball league.

But no one is quite sure when or where the game of baseball began.

There have been many different stories told about the game’s origins over the years.

In the early 18th century, a game called baseball was played in England.

And many people have suggested that the games of baseball and cricket have very similar origins.

But what is certain is that today baseball is thought of as an American sport.

It’s the national sport of the United States that’s played and watched by millions of fans across the USA every year.

Even Americans who’ve never played the game will often wear baseball caps – it’s almost a national costume.

And real baseball fans are passionate about their sport.

For some people, baseball becomes their life.

Author, Vince Gennaro writes about baseball and is a life-long fan.

Vince Gennaro: I was introduced to baseball at a very young age.

My grandfather and my father were both big baseball fans.

May 17th 1957 at five years old, I went to my first baseball game at Yankees Stadium… and I can remember the sights of seeing the green grass ‘cause of course back then we were looking at black and white television, so to see the colours and the green grass and the smells of the hot dogs and the popcorn just was captivating.

And if you go to nearly any park in the US, you are sure to see the game being played by people of all ages – old and young.

In many parks, there are baseball diamonds where fans can practice pitching, catching and batting safely, and amateur leagues can play.

Like football, all you really need is an open space and a few people who want to play – add the bat and the ball and the game is on!

Part 2 A family affair

What is it that makes baseball such a popular sport in the US?

By the time most American children start school, they’ve already learned how to catch a baseball, and many play the sport through elementary school, high school and into their college years.

Baseball is a competitive game for even the youngest players.

Some high school games are covered by local media, and watched by professional teams looking for new talent.

Often Major League teams snap up the gifted young players before they even reach college.

16-year-old Mike plays for his high school team, The Blue Devils, and hopes to continue playing as he enters college.

Mike: I started playing baseball when I was three or four years old and now I’m 16 and I’m the back-up to the second baseman.

Countless teenagers like Mike have dreamed about becoming professional baseball players ever since they first picked up a bat.

And there are great rewards for the best players.

Much like the world’s best footballers, baseball superstars are getting higher and higher salaries.

Vince: Baseball players can make as much as $25–30m dollars for one season.

Now that’s rare and reserved for the top stars but that’s the kind of dollars that we see.

But baseball is most popular as a spectator sport with hundreds of thousands of fans regularly going to stadiums to support their favourite teams.

Vince explains what makes the game so attractive to him as a spectator.

It’s a game that’s passed down from mothers and fathers, to sons and daughters.

It’s a way to share a weekend afternoon in the summer.

It really gives a family an opportunity to be part of something and share something together and that’s one of the things I love about baseball.

Watching the crowds arriving for a Major League game it’s easy to see what Vince means.

Going to a baseball game is a great day out for families.

And it’s as much about the socializing, the food and the merchandise as it is about the sport for many fans.

You don’t even have to leave your seat to get food in many stadiums!

Of course it’s a game for serious sports fans too.

In baseball in America today, there are 30 Major League baseball teams and these teams, like the New York Yankees or the Boston Red Sox or the Chicago Cubs or the Los Angeles Dodgers, very much are linked to the identity of their city.

And baseball is a complex sport of scores, statistics and team rivalries, where fans record every hit and run, and follow their home teams with passion.

Part 3 Baseball around the world

Despite all the attractions of baseball, the sport hasn’t become a global passion in the same way that football has.

It isn’t even an Olympic sport any more.

But baseball has been working hard to change this, and interest has been growing around the world.

Vince: Some of the areas around the globe where baseball has caught on and is popular include the Pacific Rim, Japan, Korea, Taiwan… it’s become popular.

Japan is a baseball-mad country and many of the stars of the game are Japanese stars.

One of the early stars of Japan was Sadaharu Oh, who became the all time home run leader in baseball.

In the more contemporary times we have players like Ichiro Suzuki and Daisuke Matsuzaka, who have come to this country and taken their stardom from Japan and transplanted it into the Major League baseball… and have done exceedingly well, particularly Ichiro as a star for the Seattle Mariners.

Latin America has produced more modern baseball superstars than anywhere outside the US, but most of them have been lost to the rich American clubs.

What we’re seeing are as much as one third of all Minor League baseball players are from two countries, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela.

The New York Yankee’s superstar Alex Rodriguez, the highest paid player in the Major League, comes from a Dominican family.

In many ways countries like ... a country like the Dominican Republic where the standard of living is not that high, baseball has provided an outlet for young men to leave the island and make a career for themselves.

And oftentimes, a high earning career if they are successful in Major League baseball.

And so that’s one of the reasons why it’s so popular among the youth of the Dominican Republic.

But what about the rest of the world?

We have begun to see development in Europe – the Netherlands actually is one of the areas within Europe where there is a serious baseball interest.

In fact some Major League baseball players have come from the Netherlands.

So have people started to think about Baseball as a global game yet?

Not really, but there is progress.

The globalization of the game, its popularity in the Pacific Rim, its popularity in Latin America, Australia and other parts of the globe and its growing popularity, start to mean that this is more than an American game.

Unit 8 Machu Picchu

Part 1 A dream destination

Peru is one of the most beautiful and fascinating countries in the world.

So, it’s not a surprise that the country is a dream destination for many travellers young and old.

The country of around 30 million people is located on the Pacific coast of South America, and has borders with five other countries:

Ecuador, Columbia, Brazil, Bolivia and Chile.

The country has something to offer everyone who visits.

For eco-tourists, Peru’s natural scenery is as varied as it is beautiful.

Without leaving the country you can travel from the beach to the desert and from the soaring Andes mountains, to the depths of the Amazonian rainforest.

You can experience trekking through the wilderness and encountering stunning wildlife.

And it’s not just the natural environment that is extraordinary in Peru.

Cultural tourists will enjoy the vibrant modern cities, like Lima.

In old cities like Cuzco you can learn more about the ancient Inca culture of Peru in fascinating museums and palaces.

And there’s the chance to buy Peruvian handicrafts and art at one of the many markets.

And in isolated areas of the country there are some of the most astonishing manmade sites in the world: ancient and mysterious Inca settlements, and the amazing floating homes on Lake Titicaca.

But there’s one place in Peru that has become the ultimate destination for adventurous travellers from around the world.

It’s a place that has been voted one of the seven wonders of the modern world and is an iconic symbol of Peru with nearly a million visitors every year ...

It’s Machu Picchu, the lost city of the Incas.

Machu Picchu is located at 2,430 metres above sea level in the mountains about 80 kilometres from the ancient Inca capital of Cuzco.

In July 2011, Machu Picchu celebrated the 100th anniversary of its rediscovery by an American explorer called Hiram Bingham who worked at Yale University.

While Bingham’s discovery brought the hidden site to the attention of the world, the mysterious origins of Machu Picchu stretch much further back into history.

Part 2 A lost city

Explorer and writer Hugh Thomson has spent a lot of time in Peru, exploring the Machu Picchu area.

Hugh Thomson: I first went to Peru almost 30 years ago and I went because someone told me that there was a ruin near Machu Picchu which had been found once and then lost… and it was such a strange story, this idea of a mislaid ruin, that I thought I’d go and try and find it again with a group of friends, so I went off on my first expedition.

I think one of the most extraordinary things about Machu Picchu, which is the greatest of all the Inca sites or ruins, is that we have only known about it for 100 years, which seems extraordinary if you think how important it is.

If you compare that to the pyramids in Egypt or the other great ruins of the ancient world, it’s incredible that Machu Picchu should have been lost, so to speak, for so long.

Machu Picchu was described by Hiram Bingham as ‘The Lost city of the Incas’, and we still know very little about this amazing place.

We don’t know exactly when Machu Picchu was built because of course there’s no written record, but we think around 1450 to 1470, some 50 years or so before the Spanish arrived in 1532.

And then there’s no record at all of Machu Picchu until 1911 when the American explorer, Hiram Bingham, discovered it.

So what exactly was Machu Picchu?

Was it really a city built in the mountains?

We think that Machu Picchu was built as a winter estate for the Inca emperor, Pachakuti and his court, so that they could escape from the winter cold of Cuzco, their capital, which is much higher than Machu Picchu and come down to the warmer climate for a few months in winter.

Seeing the ruin today, it’s almost impossible to imagine how it was lost for hundreds of years.

But there’s an unusual explanation.

So with Machu Picchu we think that when the emperor who built it, Pachakuti died, it was then owned so to speak by his mummified body and the next emperor had to build a different palace somewhere else, so Machu Picchu was forgotten if you like and lost.

So how did Hiram Bingham rediscover Macchu Picchu?

Hiram Bingham was not an archaeologist himself.

His great speciality was Spanish, he spoke Spanish well and he used his knowledge of Peruvian books and Peruvian histories, to give him clues as to where he might find Inca ruins.

He started off down this valley from Cuzco, down a road that had only just been opened so most people hadn’t travelled that way before and he was very lucky.

He was lucky because he bumped into a local farmer who said, “If you go up that hill señor, you will see some very interesting ruins.”

In this case, it was a very steep hill that Bingham had to climb with the farmer to have a look.

None of the rest of his expedition believed the farmer or went with him so Bingham went up on his own and discovered Machu Picchu.

Bingham returned to the site the following year.

He explored the area and took many photographs that were published in newspapers and magazines around the world.

Hiram Bingham wrote a great deal about Machu Picchu but his most famous book is called Lost City Of The Incas and it’s probably the one most people have heard of and that phrase has almost entered the language.

And he used the book to paint a very romantic picture of Machu Picchu and maybe that’s why so many people still want to go there today.

Part 3 The Inca Trail

For many tourists today, the journey to Machu Picchu is almost as important as being at the palace.

Hugh Thomson: If you want to visit Machu Picchu today, you can either go the easy way, which is to take a train and then a bus up to the ruins, or you can do what the Incas themselves would have done, which is to take the Inca Trail.

The Inca Trail is a route the Incas built themselves to travel from Cuzco to Machu Picchu.

The amazing high-altitude track takes four or five days for the modern visitor to walk.

Walkers need to prepare well for the journey, or they can get into trouble.

Because they are walking through forests, and along narrow paths at high altitudes, the Inca Trail is not for the faint-hearted or unfit, and walkers need to plan their journey well in advance.

The Peruvian authorities have restricted numbers on the Inca Trail to conserve it, so only about 500 people a day are allowed to be on the trail.

It is a difficult route, you have to cross mountain passes of over 15,000 feet, so many suffer from altitude sickness.

And it’s physically extremely demanding, there’s a great deal of up and down.

So, what advice would Hugh give walkers?

The advice I’d give anyone who’s considering walking the Inca Trail is that obviously you need to be fit, it’s a tough route but also you need to acclimatize to the altitude.

You need to get used to the altitude for quite a few days before you begin the trail itself.

The good news about doing the Inca Trail is that you usually have porters who are carrying all the heavy stuff for you, so that you yourself might just be carrying a small day pack.

And you’ll have a camp in the evening, it’s often very comfortable and often very, very good food.

While Machu Picchu is an amazing place to visit, for Peruvians it is much more than a tourist attraction.

It’s an icon, a symbol of their national identity and provides a very clear link to their incredible Inca heritage.

I think one of the reasons that so many people want to visit Machu Picchu – I mean, along with the pyramids it’s one of those must see destinations – is that Machu Picchu… you feel when you go there, that you’re touching a completely different culture, a different way of thinking, a different way of life… one that’s still quite mysterious of course and one that we don’t fully understand.

Unit 9 Making a difference

Part 1 Words into actions

We all like to think that we have a social conscience.

We want to do the right thing, and we believe that if we could, we would try to help people who are less fortunate than ourselves.

But it’s still inspiring to see other people putting these thoughts into action.

When Bill Gates started his computer company, Microsoft, in 1975, he couldn’t have guessed that fewer than 25 years later he would have become the richest man in the world.

Gates made billions of dollars at Microsoft, and in 1994 he and his wife, Melinda, started using their wealth to help others.

In 1999 they started the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and, with the help of other rich individuals like Warren Buffett, they began making a real difference to the lives of people around the world.

In 2008 Bill Gates started working full-time at the Foundation.

By 2010 the foundation had given over $24 billion dollars to programmes around the world, with work focusing on global development and healthcare.

Much of this work focussed on preventable diseases that affect the developing world.

Two-thirds of deaths in children under five in developing countries are due to diseases that can be prevented, such as Malaria.

Malaria is spread by the bite of a mosquito and it causes nearly one million deaths every year.

95 per cent of these deaths are in Africa, and 85 per cent of those who die are under 5 years of age.

But you don’t need to be wealthy to make a difference to people’s lives.

The day-to-day work of an individual can be just as important as the huge resources of a billionaire’s foundation.

Sometimes you just need to have the time and the desire to help make a real difference.

This is Pam Llewellyn, a nurse from a small town called Upton, in England.

When Pam retired at the age of 59, she knew that she wasn’t ready to simply stop helping people.

And just a year later she was living in a remote rural town in Uganda in East Africa, using her experience as a nurse and working as a member of an organization called Voluntary Service Overseas, or VSO.

So, were her family surprised at her decision to give up her comfortable life in England to go and work in Africa?

Pam Llewellyn: I don’t think they were surprised really.

They know that during my life I’ve done slightly different things.

I retired at 59 knowing that I wanted to do something different and exciting and that was the beginning of my VSO journey, and the beginning of my first ever visit to Africa and my beginning of understanding diseases like malaria.

Part 2 A different world

VSO is an international organization that works through volunteers to fight poverty and disease around the world.

Pam Llewellyn: Over a period of years I’d heard a couple of interviews about people that had gone to Russia, South East Asia, Africa and I always thought, “Mmmm, I’d like to do that one day.”

And coming up to retirement, I thought “I’m going to fill in the form and see what happens.”

VSO sent Pam to the district of Miirya in the north-west of Uganda.

In this remote, rural area many people live in poverty.

A lot of villages haven’t got running water, and people have to get their water from a pump.

Life expectancy in Uganda is only 45.

Pam worked with a team of local community volunteers who travelled around the district giving families mosquito nets and talking to them about malaria prevention, as well as other health issues.

I was lucky because when I arrived in Uganda, VSO gave me medication and that was a tablet every day of my stay, during my two years.

So I took the tablet, I never forgot and I never got malaria.

They also gave me a treated mosquito net, which I used every night of my stay there.

If Pam hadn’t taken malaria tablets or had forgotten to use her mosquito net she might have caught malaria living in Miirya.

And, unfortunately, this is the reality for many of the people she worked with who couldn’t afford tablets or mosquito nets.

The only way to prevent getting malaria is to sleep under a treated mosquito net and of course, local people can’t afford to buy them.

They’re not provided free by the government, they are given out by some charities some of the time.

The volunteers all knew that if the nets weren’t used properly they wouldn’t protect anyone from malaria, so education was an essential part of their work.

You need to understand why you need the net, what you’re preventing and how it is best to use the net.

So the project that I was working on really believed that giving a net alone isn’t enough, you need to have an education package with it.

It was quite a change from Pam’s life in England.

Pam lived in the community and had to adapt to a very different standard of living.

Although there were also many similarities.

Surprisingly you can go to a cash point, you can go to a hole in the wall, you can get some money out of your UK bank account if you need it.

Having said you can go to the hole in the wall, some days it doesn’t work, some days there’s no electricity.

It’s very much the same, there are shops of a sort, Lucky 7 supermarket which we used to joke that if there were seven things you wanted, you were lucky but you just adjust your life.

Part 3 A life-changing experience

Pam spent two years in Uganda and became part of the community in Miirya.

Through her work, she didn’t just help to change the lives of many people she cared for; she changed her own life, too.

Pam Llewellyn: I don’t think I will ever be the same again. I feel differently about how I live here.

I feel differently about how my family live.

And I’ve now been back over a year and I still haven’t been into a big supermarket.

If Pam hadn’t gone to Uganda she would have missed out on a life-changing experience.

But is there anything that she would do differently if she could do it all again?

If I were to have the experience again, I probably would have done more homework before I left.

I bought the guide to Uganda and I bought a map and I thought that was probably enough preparation.

If I could do it again, I probably would make more effort to contact more people who had actually been in Uganda for, as a volunteer or working short term… so that I could have been better prepared for what to expect professionally and culturally, from first-hand rather than from a book.

Many people are surprised at Pam’s decision to start work for VSO at the age of 60, but she believes that waiting until she retired was a good thing.

I don’t think I could have done this when I was younger.

I wouldn’t have had the confidence to do it.

I wouldn’t have had the skills to have done what I actually did in Miirya as a nurse and I don’t think I would have survived very well.

I don’t know but personally for me, I think it was the right time and it would not have worked so well had I gone when I was younger.

And what was the most rewarding part of her two years in Uganda?

People ask this question quite a lot and it would be quite easy to say that during the time that I was there, that we distributed over 6000 mosquito nets so that I know that 6000 families were benefiting.

But it was the friendships and the people that I met, and that contact with ordinary people in Africa.

And visiting their homes, sitting on the floor in their mud hut laughing over something is a joy and an experience that I don’t think you can buy.

And I felt very, very privileged to be able to do that.

Unit 10 Dubai

Part 1 Small beginnings

The United Arab Emirates is located on the south-eastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.

The UAE is a federation of seven states, or Emirates, formed in 1971.

With borders to Saudi Arabia in the south-west and Oman in the east, fourth-fifths of its 83,600 square kilometres of land are desert.

The biggest Emirate, and capital city of the UAE, is Abu Dhabi on the Gulf coast.

But it’s the second largest Emirate, and the UAE’s biggest city, Dubai, that’s become its most internationally well-known.

And it’s the stunning architecture of the city that is its most distinctive and recognizable feature.

Buildings like the seven-star luxury Burj Al Arab Hotel, and the amazing Burj Khalifa, dominate the city.

But what’s remarkable when you see the towering skyline today, is that if you had visited Dubai just 50 years ago, this city would have been almost totally unrecognizable.

Before the 1950s, Dubai was a small, but thriving, port at the mouth of the Dubai Creek.

Members of the Bani Yas tribe, led by the Maktoum family, had settled in the area in 1833, and what was once a tiny fishing village had grown into a centre of trade in the region.

Traders from Iran and India brought their fish, spices, pearls and fabric by boat to sell at the market, or souq.

The canal between the Deira and Bur Dubai sides of the city was full of trading barges and traditional boats, called dhows, with their distinctive sails.

But in the 1960s everything started to change.

Oil was discovered in the region.

Part 2 An ultramodern city

Today, it’s impossible to think about Dubai without thinking about its extraordinary architecture.

With more than 60 buildings over 200 metres high, skyscrapers dominate the heart of the city.

Two of the most talked about structures are the Burj Al Arab and the Burj Khalifa.

The Burj Khalifa was officially opened in January 2010 and, at over 828 metres, it was the tallest building in the world.

Remarkably, it only took 1,325 days to build the tower.

At one point, there were over 12,000 people working on the tower at the same time, with workers from 100 different countries.

The building cost about $1.5 billion.

There are thousands of people living and working on the 160 floors of the tower.

Along with a hotel, there are 37 floors of offices, over a thousand apartments and one of the biggest shopping malls in the world inside.

On level 124 there’s an observation deck with stunning views across the city and coastline.

By Dubai standards, the Burj Al Arab hotel is almost an historic building, and a short one, too!

The hotel opened in 1999 and stands at a mere 321 metres.

Inside, it’s like a vast palace where guests can enjoy themselves in seven-star luxury.

But it’s the distinctive shape of the building that has made it an architectural icon.

The hotel stands on a man-made island 280 metres from the coast.

And its design mirrors the shape of the sail of a traditional Arabian dhow.

In this way, the contemporary building is linked with the city’s heritage as a trading port.

This connection between the past and present is something that can easily be lost in the forest of modern metal and glass high-rise structures.

Part 3 Keeping traditions alive

So much of Dubai is brand new, that it sometimes feels that the traditions of the Emirati culture could get lost.

But there are elements of traditional architecture that are not only being preserved, but becoming increasingly popular in modern designs.

Aylin Orbasli is an architect who has worked extensively in the Middle East.

Aylin Orbasli: I’m an architect by training, but I specialize in historic buildings and the conservation of historic buildings and historic areas.

Aylin has spent time looking at the historic buildings in Dubai.

The main architectural tradition or the main house type of the sort of richer merchants was the coral built courtyard houses.

They were square or rectangular with a big courtyard in the middle that would provide shade during the hot summer days.

And most notably they had wind towers, which is an idea the Iranian merchants brought from Iran with them when they settled in Dubai.

In the past, wind towers served a very practical purpose.

They were an early form of air-conditioning.

The air captured by the tower, circulated round the home keeping it cool in summer when the temperature can rise above 50 degrees.

And today, wind towers are increasingly common, even in new buildings.

But with modern technology, are they still needed?

Not in the hugely practical sense because buildings are sort of built and cooled in very different ways using air conditioning and a lot more mechanical ways.

But it remains a very strong symbol of Dubai so if people talk about traditional architecture in Dubai, the wind tower is that sort of known symbol.

And therefore, many new buildings in Dubai have used the wind tower in one form or another.

In more in a sort of symbolic way rather than actual useful way.

Dubai is a city of many faces, there is pride in different forms of architecture.

There is pride in the historic buildings that have survived and that have been restored.

There is pride when people choose to use the wind tower in their architecture, in their buildings and they are, sort of, well talked about amongst locals.

At the same time they’re very proud of technological innovation and buildings that are breaking boundaries, that are the highest, the biggest… and gradually moving towards buildings that are highly energy-efficient and things.

So there is pride in all these different elements.

So, like the sail of the Burj Al Arab, the architectural design of the wind tower, is a strong symbol of both old and new Dubai.

And it’s this combination of old and new that makes the city such an interesting place for architecture.

Unit 11 Forensic science

Part 1 The first detective

Sherlock Holmes is not only one of the most famous detectives in the world of English literature; he was also one of the first.

Today, when detectives appear in so many books and television programmes around the world it’s hard to imagine just how exciting the Sherlock Holmes stories must have been when they were first published in the late 19th Century.

The creator of Sherlock Holmes was the Scottish author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Born in Scotland in 1859, and educated in medicine at Edinburgh University, Conan Doyle was a scientist as well as a writer.

And it was the combination of these two interests that shaped the character of his ground-breaking detective, Sherlock Holmes.

While Sherlock Holmes was a fictional character, Arthur Conan Doyle was often inspired by real-life criminal cases.

Conan Doyle’s writing was also very influential in the development of what was, at the time, the new detective technique of Forensic science.

Dr Carolyn Morton teaches Forensic Science at the University of the West of England in Bristol.

Dr Carolyn Morton: Forensic science is using science to help investigate crimes and then bring evidence to court.

There’s a range of evidence that’s very useful.

The best would be something like DNA or fingerprint evidence, where we might be able to say with a fingerprint, that one particular person must have left that fingerprint.

DNA’s extremely good.

But all sorts of things like mud on someone’s shoes, fibres from their clothing, a bit of broken glass, all sorts of things can be a link between a person and the scene of a crime.

She explains more about Conan Doyle’s impact on the science:

There’s not much recorded until really the end of the 19th Century, beginning of the 20th Century.

And Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who invented Sherlock Holmes, in many ways led the way.

He was giving the police and the scientists ideas.

He was trained as a doctor, he knew about investigating crime, looking at post-mortem injuries.

And in his stories, Sherlock Holmes was investigating using some science.

… so he was coming up with ideas for linking people to places, following their footprints, mud on trousers, that people weren’t doing and he made people think how to use science to solve crime.

Part 2 Fact or fiction?

Today, we often hear about forensic science being used to solve crime.

A lot of criminals may have avoided the police if they hadn’t left fingerprints or DNA evidence at the scene of their crimes.

But now we know more about forensic science from fictional television programmes than from factual news reports… and one programme more than any other might be responsible for this – the American crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

Dr Lindsay Steenberg is writing a book about forensic science in popular culture:

Dr Lindsay Steenberg: So CSI starts in 2000. The original series is called CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and it is about a group of people solving crimes in Las Vegas.

It is so popular that it has two spin-off series, the first series is CSI: Miami and the second, which follows several years later, is CSI: New York.

And CSI is a global phenomenon.

The three programmes are shown in over 200 countries to a global audience of around 2 billion people.

What’s interesting about the current forensic science craze on television is that much of it actually isn’t new.

Sherlock Holmes is always doing experiments in his house, he’s always referring to all the books that he’s written about footprints or cigar ashes and he uses that knowledge to help him solve the crimes at hand.

Now that is very similar to what happens in the laboratories at CSI.

What has perhaps changed a little bit is what’s going on in the development of science.

So with the discovery of DNA, for example, now we have a different procedure.

Generally, every CSI episode has the same structure.

There’s a crime. The Crime Scene Investigators examine the scene, collect evidence and take it back to their laboratory.

They test the evidence and it will show who committed the crime.

This person will be arrested and they will confess.

So, why does Lindsay think these stories are so popular?

I think CSI really convinced us that in a world that is increasingly frightening, where answers aren’t clear, where we’re not sure who to trust, we can always trust science.

They really show science as being able to tell us the absolute truth.

Now science isn’t really like it is on television and I think everybody who watches TV knows that but it would be really nice if it was.

I think what we want is a system like the science on television, that can tell us truth, that can tell us who’s good, who’s bad and I think that’s why it’s so popular.

Part 3 The CSI effect

Obviously, we all know that science can’t be like it is on television.

So, what’s it really like?

Dr Morton helps to train investigators in a special crime scene house, where rooms are adapted to resemble real crime scenes.

Teachers can observe the students working in the house.

Dr Morton explains some of the differences between the television version and reality.

Dr Carolyn Morton: The first thing that happens is a crime scene is sealed off and nobody enters.

You think about where you’re going to find the evidence and how you’re going to go about the search.

There are a lot of decisions to be made before you go in and I haven’t often seen that on television!

Then you have to get kitted up, the protective suit, so that you don’t leave any evidence from your own clothing or your own hair or your own DNA at the scene, so a mask, gloves, the whole suit.

One of the big issues with television dramas generally is that one or two people do the work of maybe 40 professionals in the real world.

And of course, none of those meet the suspect and ask questions.

The other thing is the speed with which everything is resolved.

It can take a long time to do a lot of the work in the lab and to do a lot of the police investigation.

Despite real forensic investigation being so different from the television version, one of the most remarkable things about the popularity of CSI, is that it looks like the programmes are influencing real life in a number of ways, good and bad.

This has become known as the ‘CSI effect’.

One positive outcome is that more people want to study science at university.

Dr Lindsay Steenberg: The CSI effect isn’t just about the law, about the legal system, it’s also changed the way the education system works in many ways because lots of people want to take degrees in forensic science.

So the CSI effect is widespread and it is ... it is sort of changing the way that we think about how science fits into our culture.

But there are problems too. Real life and TV drama are not one and the same.

And there’s some evidence that the CSI effect might be influencing the way people behave when they’re on a jury.

What they expect when they go serve on a jury is that criminal investigations will work the same in real life as they do on TV, and there’s been many interviews with lawyers, who are very, very worried about this.

And, as a forensic scientist, Carolyn has concerns about the CSI effect.

Dr Carolyn Morton: I think the biggest negative is that people expect too much.

They expect the police to solve crimes very, very quickly, so always find perfect evidence.

They expect the evidence to prove guilt and prove what happened, and dramas are always starting with the ending known and you work a story towards that end.

Real situations start with the ending unknown – you start not knowing who the offender was, not knowing if you will find them.

Like Sherlock Holmes before them, the fictional characters of CSI have captured the imagination of the public who still love murder mysteries.

And who knows … maybe a hundred years from now people will still be watching CSI too.

Unit 12 My hero

Part 1 A scientist

Keith: One of my all time personal heroes is Professor Richard Feynman.

I just think he was an outstanding, extraordinary man.

Richard Feynman was born in New York City in May 1918.

He developed some of the greatest physics theories of the 20th century.

And, in 1965, Feynman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Many people argue that he is as important as Einstein in the development of the science.

Feynman was also passionate about teaching physics.

Throughout his career, he turned down jobs at many prestigious universities because they didn’t offer the opportunity to regularly teach students.

His lectures had a reputation for being entertaining as well as educational.

And he was known for being a talented musician and artist as well as having one of the greatest minds of the last 100 years.

When he was on a sabbatical working at a university in South America, he went off and joined a samba band.

He was a skilled artist and he learned how to break into safes… because I think he was a little bored at one time… but he was just fascinated by how things work and why they work, which is what made him such a great person and such a great teacher.

Feynman died on February 15, 1988, at the age of 69.

It is reported that his last words were, ‘I’d hate to die twice. It’s so boring!’

I’ve found Richard Feynman inspirational for many reasons.

He was a truly great physicist, he was an inspirational teacher and probably one of the best teachers of physics that we will ever see.

But above all of that, there was his childish enthusiasm for everything he came into contact with.

We still have access to Richard Feynman and I would recommend anybody just to go onto the Internet and put in Richard Feynman… and you can see videos of his lectures with people, and just sit and listen and watch the man.

He has, even in his later life, such enthusiasm for his subject when you watch him on the screen.

Part 2 An entertainer

Meagan: My personal hero is comedienne and actress and producer and writer, Tina Fey.

Tina Fey started performing comedy in the early 1990s in Chicago.

She joined the American comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live as a writer in 1997.

She says that she had dreamed about this job as a child.

She became the programme’s first female head writer in 1999 and started acting on screen in 2000.

Fey has written, produced and starred in a number of films.

She created her own television sitcom called 30 Rock, and she has won countless awards for acting and writing.

She is now considered to be one of the most powerful women in the US entertainment industry.

I remember growing up think most of the comedians that I saw on television or in films were all male.

Tina Fey has changed things so that now films like Bridesmaids can come out and women are funny.

And in the same way that men are funny.

And I feel like that reflects the reality of life, because women are funny.

There are a lot of very, very funny women, who are quirky and witty and I feel like now television and films are actually finally catching up.

Tina Fey has often spoken about being a woman in the male-dominated comedy world.

While she has said that men and women sometimes prefer different jokes, she believes that most of the time, funny is simply funny.

She’s smart and she’s one of those people that is not afraid to say what she means and to take control.

And she’s not afraid to step on people’s toes because I think she realizes that strong women need to be there, to get things done.

Part 3 A political campaigner

Ben: Someone I really admire is Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese political protestor.

Aung San Suu Kyi was born in Rangoon in 1945.

Her father, a Burmese independence hero, was assassinated when she was just two years old.

She left Burma when she was 15, but after studying and living around the world for many years, she returned home in 1988.

She said that as her father’s daughter she could not remain indifferent to all that was going on in her country, which was being run by a military regime.

She was first arrested for her political activities in 1990, and she spent much of the next 20 years either in prison or under house arrest in Rangoon.

In 1991, Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

As she was unable to leave Burma, her British husband Michael and her sons Alexander and Kim collected the award for her.

Aung San Suu Kyi has insisted that even when she was in prison she was always free because the people holding her were not able to touch the things that mattered:

Her mind, her principals, and what she believed in.

Over the years Aung San Suu Kyi became one of the most recognizable and high-profile political prisoners.

And people around the world continued to campaign for her release, which finally happened in November 2010.

She’s someone that I admire a lot because of her strong belief in the power of peaceful protest.

She could have left the country at several times and returned to England to be with her husband and her children, but she decided to stay in Burma because she didn’t think that she would be allowed back into the country.

So, she chose imprisonment or house arrest because of the things that she believed in and I find that quite incredible and quite inspiring.

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