Unit 17

Weather Forecast

1. Transcribe the following words and identify the sound phenomena in them.

climatic atmospheric pressure
to expect to spread to enter
widespread temperature patch
meteorological scattered Centigrade
flurries Farenheit horrible
dreadful marvellous fascinating

2. Underline the stressed syllable in these words and identify the sound phenomena in them.


fa bu lo us (fabulous)
su perb (superb)
ter ri fic (terrific)
sun bath ing (sunbathing)
post card (postcard)
sight see ing (sightseeing)
bad min ton (badminton)
su bur ban (suburban)
ne at ly - kept (neatly-kept)
al lot ment (allotment)
com pe ti ti ve (competitive)
im men se ly (immensely)
me re ly (merely)
all - we a ther (all-weather)
a es the tic (aesthetic)

3. In each line circle the word with a different sound in the stressed syllable.
trip picnic visit bike
journey club excursion prefer
theatre pleasant excellent terrible
drive strive visit delight
run draughts fun sun

4. Listen to Martin Cinert from Prague talking about the night the River Vltava flooded. Mark the sentences T (true) or F (false).
His office wasn’t at risk, but his flat was.
He took his wife and child to his parents’ house.
He went back to the flat because he was excited by the situation.
Martin went to a place near his flat to watch the water level rising.
He looked out of the window and saw that his car park was starting to flood.
He was the last person to leave his block of flats.
All of the roads he tried were flooded now.
He decided to follow another car through the water.
Martin’s car broke down as he drove through the water.
All the flats in the building were seriously damaged.

Look through the sentences again and underline the functional words which are reduced. Which group of functional words do they belong to?

5. Listen again and fill in the gaps.


1. It with rain for several days and I could see that the River Vltava was .
2. Now it appeared that there was a real danger that the river .
3. ..., so I was both at work and at home.
4. ..., so I did the and went home immediately.
5. So , so !
6. ... or maybe I just , because I finally decided to get into the car and .
7. I was one of the .
8. My office and my flat wasn’t damaged at all.
9. But the who lived on the floor – their flats were very badly .
10. They had been completely .