Unit 11a: Book

1. Introduction

Unit 11a uses the context of the Sayano–Shushenskaya power station accident to give you an opportunity to revise cause and effect expressions covered in Unit 5a of the AEL5 course. You are also going to revise some language used for making recommendations. And you will above all come across lots of new vocabulary related to the accident on the Yenisei River, which was one of the greatest disasters in the history of Russia. What is alarming is the fact that if it hadn´t been for the poor management and maintenance by the power plant technicians, the accident would have never happened. In short, on one hand, humankind can be proud of the many technological achievements we make use of, but on the other hand, we still need to understand that technology is a lot about making mistakes and fixing bugs. By going through the material of this unit, you will find out details about the power-station tragedy.

Contents

Revision:

• Cause and effect expressions: cause, lead to, because of, as a result, etc.
• Making recommendations: should

Technical terms describing a power station accident

2. Warm-up: Forum

As explained above, the context of Unit 11a is hydropower. Some people think hydropower is very ecological and should be used to replace the use of fossil fuels. What do you think? What are the advantages and disadvantages of hydroelectric power stations? Give your opinion in this forum.

3. 3. Listening: How Hydroelectric Power Plants Work

Unit 11a deals with the incident at the Sayano–Shushenskaya power station, which is a hydroelectric power plant located on the Yenisei River in Russia. In order to fully understand what happened, you first need to know the principle of a hydroelectric power plant. Watch the video to see how a hydroelectric power station works. As you watch the animation, complete this listening comprehension task.

4. Reading: The Three Gorges Dam

As you could see in the listening task above, to be able to harness the kinetic power of water, dams are usually needed. One of the greatest dams in the world is the Three Gorges Dam in China. Read this text on the opening of this dam in 2009.

5. Causes of the Sayano–Shushenskaya Power Station Accident

Unfortunately, hydropower plants are not without problems. On 17 August 2009, a serious accident happened at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station in Siberia, Russia. On p. 117 of the coursebook, you can find an article on this accident. Scan the text to find facts to be able to complete this rapid reading task. After you finish, read about this accident in this text, which gives detailed information on the incident.

As you know, the previous reading task asked you to complete the text with some cause-effect expressions. These were covered in the AEL5 course, but take this opportunity to revise them here. Then find out more about the possible causes of the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station accident in this task.

Note: If you feel you need to practise/revise the grammar of cause-effect expressions further, ask your teacher for access to the AEL5 Moodle course, where you can find this grammar point in Unit 5a.

6. The Investigation of the Case and Recommendations Made

After going through all the previous tasks, you should now have enough information on the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station accident to be able to complete this task, in which you are asked to put the events occuring during the accident in the correct order.

Of course, the case of the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station accident was investigated. Do this task to find out what recommendations the investigators made.

7. Word list

The key terms related to the topic of Unit 11a can be found:

• in the Excel format here.
• in the interactive flash card format here. This format is particularly good for drilling the new vocabulary.
• in a zip file here. This file is downloadable, so that after unpacking it, you can drill the new vocabulary on your desktop, laptop or any other portable device where you have a browser installed. Important: after unzipping the zip file, make sure to keep all the related files in the same directory at all times. Do not change any file names and do not transfer or delete anything.

Recommendation: Remember that the best way to learn new vocabulary is to see each new word in a context; that is, step by step as you complete all the tasks in the unit.

8. A printer-friendly version of Unit 11a

A printer-friendly version of Unit 11a exercises and the key to these exercises can be found here.