Video exercise. The Great Filter

Watch the video and answer the questions below. Do your answers on paper.

1. What anatomical feature allowed humans to reach the step of the staircase we are currently on? 

2. What is the next logical step for a species like our own, after having occupied all the space possible on your planet?

3. Which of the following statements is true?

a. The Milky Way has around 500 billion planets, 10 billion of which are like Earth.

b. The Milky Way has around 500 million planets, 10 million of which are like Earth.

c. The Milky Way has around 500 billion planets, 10 million of which are like Earth.

4. Would it be better for the Great Filter to be ahead of us or behind us? Why?

5. If the filter is ahead of us, what kinds of potential existential dangers are mentioned?

6. If alien life is found to be quite common, is this better or worse for us? Why?

7. What is the Goldilocks zone?

Video exercise. The Space Race

Watch the video and answer the questions below. Some are multiple-choice and others are open questions for which you need to write an answer. Do your answers on paper.

1. What was the name of the competition/conflict between the two Superpowers?

2. What country provided the USA and USSR with many rocket engineers after World War II?

3. Who did Werner von Braun work for after the war?

a. The Americans

b. The Soviets

c. The Germans

d. The Ukranians

4. What did both countries do in 1955?

a. Launch a satellite.

b. Say they wanted to send a man into Space.

c. Say they wanted to launch a satellite.

5. Which of the following statements about the first man in Space is false?

a. The rocket was named Vostok I.

b. The first man in space was a Soviet cosmonaut.

c. The first man in space was an American astronaut.

d. He orbited the Earth.

6. How did the Americans feel at lagging behind the Soviet Union in the Space Race, according to the narrator?

7. What intention did President Kennedy announce to Congress in 1961?

a. That the USA wanted to get to the Moon by the end of the decade.

b. That the USA wanted to get to the Moon by the following year.

c. That the USA wanted to get to Mars by the end of the Century.

d. That the USA wanted to launch a space station by the end of the decade.

8. What was the name of the NASA programme designed to get to the Moon?

a. Explorer

b. Vostok

c. Gemini

d. Apollo

9. Which of these statements is true?

a. The USSR achieved the first docking of two spacecraft.

b. The USSR achieved the first spacewalk.

c. Apollo XIII was the first space flight to reach the Moon.

10. Which country ultimately won the Space Race, and why?

11. What did the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission symbolise?

Cambridge speaking test advice

Watch the video and take notes (on paper) about the advice given by the examiners for the Cambridge speaking tests.

Cambridge Advanced speaking test 3

Part 2 - candidate 1

Part 2 - candidate 2

Part 3 - both candidates

Cambridge Advanced speaking test 2

Part 2 - candidate 1

Part 2 - candidate 2

Part 3 - both candidates

Cambridge Advanced speaking test 1

Part 2 - candidate 1

Part 2 - candidate 2

Part 3 - both candidates

Cambridge First speaking test 3

Part 2 - candidate 1

Part 2 - candidate 2

Part 3 - both candidates

Cambridge First speaking test 2

Part 2 - candidate 1

Part 2 - candidate 2

Part 3 - both candidates

Cambridge First speaking test 1

Part 2 - candidate 1

Part 2 - candidate 2

Part 3 - both candidates

Video exercise. The Sinking of the Titanic

Watch the video and answer the questions below. Some are multiple-choice and others are open questions for which you need to write an answer. Do your answers on paper.

1. Where was the Titanic built, and how long did it take to build?

A. Belfast, 5 years

B. Southampton, 3 years

C. Belfast, 3 years

2. Which of the following statements is false?

A. It was the biggest luxury passenger ship in the world.

B. It was almost 270 metres long.

C. It weighed around 26,000 tonnes.

D. It cost 7.5 million dollars to build.

3. How many lifeboats did the Titanic carry?

A. 64 (the maximum that would fit).

B. 40 (enough for all the ship’s population).

C. 20 (enough for half the ship’s population).

4. What was the destination of Titanic?

A. New York

B. Cherbourg

C. Queenstown

5. What did most of the passengers and crew feel when the ship hit the iceberg?

6. How many of the watertight compartments flooded?

7. Who were first on the lifeboats?

8. What reasons were given as to why some people died?

A. Many lifeboats were sent out even though they were not full.

B. Some people gave up their place in a lifeboat to more vulnerable passengers.

C. Some preferred to die than to be accused of being a coward.

D. All the above.

9. Which of the following statements is correct?

A. There were 705 deaths and over 1,500 survivors.

B. There were over 1,500 deaths and 705 survivors.

C. Most people died of drowning.

D. The lifeboats rowed to the North American shore the next day.

Video exercise. The worst jobs in history

Watch the three short videos about some of the most horrible jobs in history and answer the questions below. Do your answers on paper.

The possible answers to all of the questions are:

A. Groom of the stool
B. Sewer hunter (tosher)
C. Chimney sweep

1. Order the jobs in payment from lowest to highest.

2. Which of the jobs involved going to work in groups of 3-4?

3. Which of the jobs involved planning meals?

4. Which of the jobs was for young boys?

5. Which of the jobs involved trying to find valuable objects?

Video exercise. The Plague Doctor

Watch the video and answer the questions below. Some are multiple-choice and others are open questions for which you need to write an answer. Do your answers on paper.

1. How many people were killed in Italy in the 1650's?

A. 20,000 – 40,000 people

B. 200,000 – 400,000 people

C. 2 million – 4 million

2. What did people at that time think caused the plague?

3. Is the bubonic plague a virus or bacteria?

4. What other type of uniform was the plague doctor’s costume based on?

5. What did the monk notice about plague doctors?

A. They didn’t seem to catch the plague as much as other people.

B. They seemed to catch it as much as the rest of the population.

C. They seemed to catch it more than the rest of the population.

6. What important detail did the monk write in his diary about the plague doctors (but not consider important)?

A. The fact that the doctors wore boots.

B. The fact that the doctors weren’t affected by fleas.

C. The fact that they looked terrifying.

Video exercise. TEDxSMU “Why COVID-19 is hitting us now - and how to prepare for the next outbreak”

Watch the video and answer the questions below. Some are multiple-choice and others are open questions for which you need to write an answer. Do your answers on paper.

Questions

1. Which of the following does the speaker currently do?

A. She is a doctor.

B. She studies contagious diseases on a local level.

C. She is writing a book about global health threats.

D. She studies the effects of epidemics.

2. How do coronaviruses attack cells?

3. What is a zoonotic virus?

4. Which of the following sentences is false?

A. Global warming will encourage viruses and bacteria to spread.

B. Cats are one of animals most prone to infecting people.

C. People living near previously remote animal populations will encourage diseases to spread.

D. There will be be more future epidemics because of how people manage the environment.

5. According to the speaker, what is the main medical reason that people have not contained the outbreak?

6. What is the best way for us to make disease outbreaks less serious?

A. Stop people from travelling as much as possible.

B. Establish a more effective quarantine system.

C. Improve medical care all over the world so these diseases can be stopped at source.

D. All of the above.

7. What is the main disadvantage of “just-in-time-ordering” of health supplies?

A. Not enough stock is built up for use in times of crisis.

B. You have to order it plenty of time in advance because it usually comes from China.

C. They should be domestically produced for strategic questions of national security.

8. Which of the following statements does not accurately reflect the speaker’s advice?

A. Consider stopping yourself from using certain mobile apps when outside your home.

B. Keep your hands and your mobile phone constantly as clean as possible.

C. Face masks are poor for your personal hygiene unless you are infected with coronavirus or work in the health sector.

D. Some drastic options (panic, authoritarianism etc.) can actually be helpful in preparing us for a pandemic because they stem from fear, which has evolved in order to protect us.

Video exercise. TED-Ed: "How pandemics spread"

Watch the video and answer the questions below. Some are multiple-choice and others are open questions for which you need to write an answer. Do your answers on paper.

Questions

1. What’s the difference between a pandemic and an epidemic?
A. They can be used interchangeably
B. A pandemic is an epidemic that spreads to multiple countries, or even worldwide
C. A pandemic is an epidemic that causes more than a thousand deaths
D. A pandemic affects multiple animal species, not just humans

2. Why are epidemics and pandemics a relatively recent phenomenon in human history?



3. Scientists have extracted from human remains which of the following infectious agents?
A. Tuberculosis bacteria from ancient Egyptian mummies
B. The bacterium responsible for the Black Death in 14th century Europe
C. The strain of smallpox virus that devastated the Aztecs in the 16th century
D. DNA from the earliest known case of Ebola virus in Sudan, 1970
E. Options B, C and D
F. Options A and B

4. How do war zones and natural disaster sites become breeding grounds for infectious diseases?



5. How many Europeans succumbed to the Black Death?
A. More than 30 million
B. 2.5 million
C. Unknown—we’re still discovering the plague burial pits

6. What happens to the influenza virus every 20-40 years, and why? What are the recent
example(s)?



7. What is antigenic shift?



8. Where did the 2003 SARS outbreak originate?
A. Malaysia
B. Hong Kong
C. Hanoi
D. a cruise ship docked in Acapulco

Video exercise. TED-Ed: “How do viruses jump from animals to humans?”

Watch the video and answer the questions below. Some are multiple-choice and others are open questions for which you need to write an answer. Do your answers on paper.

Questions

1. Which species would we expect pathogens to be most likely to jump between?
A. Distantly related species, in the same environment
B. Closely related species, in the same environment
C. Closely related species, in different environments
D. Distantly related species, in different environments

2. Given equal exposure, which species might we expect to be the greatest source of emerging infectious diseases in humans?
A. Chimpanzees
B. Dogs
C. Potatoes
D. Snakes

3. When a virus mutates this:
A. Helps the virus adapt to a new host
B. Can have no effect, be detrimental, or can be beneficial and help the virus adapt to its new host
C. Causes an outbreak

4. What does a virus need to bind to before it can enter host cells?
A. Host receptors
B. Immune cells
C. Host DNA

5. Where are viruses found?
A. Mostly in primates
B. Mostly in humans
C. In almost every form of life

6. What are the three steps are required for a pathogen to infect a novel host species?



7. What factors affect the likelihood of a pathogen successfully jumping to a new host?