Transcript
One, two, three… It’s census time at London Zoo.
Zookeepers are kicking off the New Year with the mammoth task of counting every single animal. The zoo houses more than 750 different species.
For penguins, food is an incentive to show up for the count.
Monkeys are known to be clever animals. Here the question is: who’s counting who?
Vocabulary
census
official count of the population
kicking off
starting
mammoth task
very big task
houses
gives a place to live
incentive
encouragement
To do
Use one of the words or phrases below to complete each of these sentences from news reports. Note that you may have to change the form of a word to complete the sentence correctly.
census / kicking off / mammoth task / houses / incentive
1. The fall in the price of coal is a classic case of supply and demand, says senior economist at St George Bank, Janu Chan.
“Over the past decade, prices went up. There was an __________ to increase coal supply, and more mines opened or became profitable. However, as capacity increased, it generated too much coal and prices fell again.”
2. A man with a collection of nearly 500 radio sets, some dating back to the early 1900s, has opened a museum to __________ them in a former Suffolk chapel.
3. In 1911, as far as work went, the government just wanted to know occupation, industry, and status. In 2011, the __________ has 15 nuanced questions on work and employment.
4. The Franco-German meeting in Paris __________ a week of meetings involving European leaders, the European Central Bank (ECB) and US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, culminating in Brussels on Friday with an EU summit.
5. In Kazinga, MSF assembled a team of 55 porters to carry all the equipment necessary to perform the __________ of vaccinating communities far removed from any kind of infrastructure.
Answers
1. The fall in the price of coal is a classic case of supply and demand, says senior economist at St George Bank, Janu Chan.
“Over the past decade, prices went up. There was an incentive to increase coal supply, and more mines opened or became profitable. However, as capacity increased, it generated too much coal and prices fell again.”
2. A man with a collection of nearly 500 radio sets, some dating back to the early 1900s, has opened a museum to house them in a former Suffolk chapel.
3. In 1911, as far as work went, the government just wanted to know occupation, industry, and status. In 2011, the census has 15 nuanced questions on work and employment.
4. The Franco-German meeting in Paris kicks off a week of meetings involving European leaders, the European Central Bank (ECB) and US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, culminating in Brussels on Friday with an EU summit.
5. In Kazinga, MSF assembled a team of 55 porters to carry all the equipment necessary to perform the mammoth task of vaccinating communities far removed from any kind of infrastructure.