Activities

Reading comprehension

The objective of this activity is to check the comprehension of a written text as well as practising the written expression.

Read the following text and then answer the questions below:

Facebook

In 2004, Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes, three Harvard University students, launched a Web site designed to put students in touch with one another, share their photos and meet new people. They called it thefacebook.com, and before long the site became extremely popular on the Harvard campus. A month after the site launched, the creators expanded it to include students from Stanford, Columbia and Yale. By 2005, students in 800 college networks across the United States could join the network, and its membership grew to more than 5 million active users. In August of that year, the site’s name changed to Facebook.

Facebook was originally intended for college students, but today anyone can join the network. Although the site’s scope has expanded to include more than just students, its purpose remains the same - giving people a way to share information in an easy and entertaining way. Like MySpace, Facebook is a social networking site.

To explore Facebook, you must create a free account on the site. Facebook’s terms of use state that members must be at least 13 years old, and any member between the ages of 13 and 18 must be enrolled in school. Facebook requires new members to provide a valid e-mail address before completing registration. Once you’ve created an account and answered a few questions about where you work, where you went to school and where you live, Facebook will generate a profile for you.

­­Facebook provides several ways to find friends:

  • You can browse and join networks, which are organized into four categories: regions (networks that are linked to specific cities or countries), colleges, workplaces and high schools. Once you join a network, you can browse through the list of members and search for people you know. You can sort people by age, sex, relationship status, political views and other criteria.
  • You can let Facebook pull contacts from a Web-based e-mail account. To do this, you have to give Facebook your e-mail address and password. Facebook uses a program that searches through your e-mail contacts and compares the list against its membership database. Whenever Facebook discovers a match, it gives you the option to add that person as a friend.
  • You can use Facebook’s search engine to look for a specific person. Type the person’s name into the search field, and Facebook will display any profiles that match the name.

From the website www.howstuffworks.com

Questions:

  1. Where and when was Facebook created?
  2. Which was the original purpose of Facebook?
  3. When did the social network get its present name?
  4. Which are the requirements to have a profile in Facebook?
  5. How can you find friends in Facebook?

Suggested answers:

  1. Facebook was created at Harvard University in 2004.
  2. The original puspose of Facebook was to put the students from the Harvard campus in contact with one another, share photos and meet new friends.
  3. Facebook got its present name in August 2005.
  4. The requirements are to be older than 13, all the members between 13 and 18 must be in school and members must provide a valid e-mail and answer a few questions.
  5. There are several ways to find friends. You can join a network and browse through the list of members, you can let Facebook pull contacts from a web-based email account and you can use Facebook’s search engine to look for a specific person

Speaking: making requests

The objective of this activity is to practise the speaking skills by making some requests.

Read the following situations and then make an appropriate request for each one. Record your voice to check your answers.

  • You turn on the computer, but it doesn’t work.
  • You are at work. You feel it’s very hot in the office.
  • You feel very thirsty.
  • Your workmate is playing music too loudly and you’ve got a headache.
  • You have a lot of work and have to take a packet to the post office, but you have no time.
  • You desperately need a coffee, but you have no money. You ask a colleague to lend you some.

Now download and listen to the following requests and respond appropriately, either to agree or to disagree.

Responding to requests ( 350.3 KB )

Note: there’s no correct answer to this activity. To check your pronunciation, introduce your answers in the text editor in the ‘Text-to-speech’ website and then listen to the pronunciation. Practice as much as you want by repeating the words that you hear.

Listening comprehension

The objective of this unit is to practice your listening comprehension.

Download and listen to the following text. Then answer the questions below.

Cyber-crime ( 858.9 KB )

Questions:

  1. Do people understand cyber-crime, according to the speaker?
  2. Is cyber-crime a new phenomenon?
  3. What happened in Latvia a few years ago?
  4. What would be the effects of an Internet attack?
  5. What type of attacj could ordinary people suffer?

Suggested answers:

  1. No, they don’t.
  2. Yes. it is. It’s just started.
  3. The internet was attacked by another country?
  4. All communication, transport, etc would stop, and damage to hospitals and other important buildings.
  5. Phishing.

Transcription

I don’t think people understand cyber-crime. It’s only just started. In the future, it’s going to be a huge problem. There have already been a few amazing examples. A few years ago the whole Internet in Latvia was attacked by another country. Cyberspace has become a new battleground. Countries spy on each other. If there’s a war, it’s possible one country could attack the other country’s Internet. This would mean all communication, transport, etc would stop. It would cause huge damage to hospitals and other important buildings. But cyber-crime is happening today to ordinary people. Have you ever heard of phishing? That’s with a ‘ph’ not ‘f’. You really need to be very careful about what information you put online.

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Computer networks
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Self-correcting exercises