Intermediate 4 Unit 7 (Interchange 3) Prompt: Choose a problem from unit 7 that might be a reality in your community (or a problem outside of unit 7) and describe it in detail. Describe what the problem is and think about ways that the problem can be solved. Write a message to post on a local community website and make sure to offer some possible solutions to the problem. Example: Our schools are being neglected by the ministry of education. The education level of our student body is rapidly declining and things don’t seem to be improving. To make things worse, the city has decided to develop commerce in our city instead of focusing on building more schools; several open spaces that were ideal for new schools have been lost to commercial development. The entire education system of our city is being damaged as a result of the new initiatives the city has taken. Target vocabulary: get rid of (to throw away), dispose, junk mail, throw out, wasteful, pollution, endangered, extinct, overbuilding, overfishing, depleted, inflation, public housing, global warming, unemployment, farmland, crops, additives, droughts, fumes, potholes, displaced, funding, conservation, threatened, overcrowding, shelters, famine, trafficking, political unrest, publicity, vocational training programs, livestock, pesticides, wildlife, contamination Grammar Focus: Passive with prepositions Present continuous passive (be + being + past participle) The air is being polluted by fumes from cars and trucks. City streets are being damaged as a result of heavy traffic. Potholes aren’t being repaired due to a lack of funding. Present perfect passive (have/has+ been +past participle ) Many parks have been lost through overbuilding. The homeless have been displaced because of overcrowding in city shelters. Suggested practice: Once you have finished your writing, exchange papers with a classmate and think about which of the two problems, either the one you wrote about or the problem your partner wrote about, should be solved immediately.
