Unit 12: Book

1. Introduction

Living in the heart of Europe, which is in the mild temperate zone, we can hardly imagine the problems people living in hot desert regions must face. The lack of fresh water is an everyday reality with all its consequences: accessing clean water is difficult, related health problems are common, and farming is difficult, too. Engineers have worked hard to find solutions to this problem, and one such solution is a project called “Seawater Greenhouse”, which could help at least hot desert coastal regions with a minimum investment. Unit 12a will provide you with details of this project. In addition, this context will give you an opportunity to revise past and present participles, as well as learn the form and use of perfect participles. Thus, you will learn how to talk about earlier and later events in a formal way. Finally, when learning about details of the project, you will come across some ways to express a necessity in the past.   

Contents

Revision:

• Present Participle: He rushed out of the room, slamming the door. (covered in AEL5, Unit 1b)
• Past Participle: Located near my house, the shop is easily accessible. (covered in AEL5, Unit 2b Workbook)

New grammar point:

• Perfect Participle: Having finished the homework, I submitted it.

2. Forum: Seawater Greenhouse

Look at the diagram in Unit 12a (in Task 1 on p. 90 in your coursebook). Study it carefully and answer at least two questions in this forum. Don´t forget to give reasons for your opinions. In addition, respond to at least one contribution of one of your fellow students.

3. Reading: The Technical Principle of the Seawater Greenhouse Described

After studying the diagram of the seawater greenhouse, you may have a basic idea of its function. This task will give you a full description of its principle. Look at the diagram on p. 90 of your coursebook again and put the parts of the technical description in the correct order. After you complete the task, leave it open so that you can refer back to it to find examples of the newly covered grammar point.

4. Grammar: Present and Perfect Participles

Look back at the previous mixed-up text explaining the principle of the seawater greenhouse. Find a sentence that means the same as the following sentence:

The seawater is first pumped to the top of the greenhouse and then trickles down the cardboard of the front evaporator. As it evaporates, it cools and humidifies the air inside the greenhouse.

If you selected the following sentence, you were correct:

Having been pumped to the top of the greenhouse, the seawater trickles down the cardboard of the front evaporator and evaporates, cooling and humidifying the air inside the greenhouse.

Now, look at the following analysis. You can see that the perfect participle is used to describe an event that happened before the action expressed in the main clause, while the present participle is used to talk about events happening at the same time or after the event expressed in the main clause.

The present participle was covered in Unit 2b in the AEL5 course, so you should be familiar with this grammar point. To be able to fully understand and use the perfect participle, further explanation is necessary. Find it in this grammar overview. After you have gone through the grammar overview, practise this grammar point in a general English context first by completing this task. Then see if you can distinguish between present, perfect and past participles here. After that, see how participles are used in an unbroken text. Finally, use perfect and present participles in a technical context here.

5. Listening/Reading: The Seawater Greenhouse

Now that you understand the technical principle of the seawater greenhouse, it is time to look at the background behind the project. What was the objective of the project? To what extent was it successful? What were the evaluation criteria? Listen to or read transcript 32 on p. 125 in your coursebook (Bonamy, D. (2013). Technical English Level 4 Coursebook. Pearson Longman) and complete this task.

6. Grammar 2: Expressing Necessity in the Past

Careful listeners to the recording in the previous task must have noticed that the presenter also talked about some necessities; in other words, what the engineers had to or did not have to do in the past to complete the project. To distinguish properly between what was necessary and unnecessary, it is vital to understand the tiny nuances in what the associated grammar structures mean. Therefore, complete the overview in this task. After that, practise this grammar point by completing this task. Finally, complete the concise report on the Seawater Greenhouse project by filling in all the gaps here.

7. Your Achievements in English

Similarly to the evaluation of the seawater greenhouse project, it is your turn now to evaluate your performance in this English course. Below, you can see five questions that you are supposed to answer either in writing or in speaking. If in writing, make sure to revise the material of this unit first. Then open a new Word document and write at least 250 words for your response. If in speaking, use at least three phrasal verbs from this matching task. Then record your answer as an mp3 recording not longer than three minutes and not bigger than 40 MB. Upload your written or oral answers here.

1)      What were your targets in starting this course?

2)      Is there anything that you were supposed to do, but failed to do? What should you have done?

3)      Was there anything that you were unable to do during the course, or anything you couldn´t understand?

4)      To what extent have you met your aims? If there were any targets you couldn´t meet, why couldn´t you do so?

5)      If you could take the course again, would you go about your studies in the same way, or would you set about things differently?

Adapted from: Bonamy, D. (2013). Technical English Level 4 Coursebook. Pearson Longman, p. 93.

8. Word List

The key terms related to the topic of Unit 12 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.

9. A printer-friendly version of Unit 12

A printer-friendly version of Unit 12a exercises and the key to these exercises can be found here.