I. Vocabulary Practice. Find and circle each word from the list below in the puzzle

Find and circle each word from the list below in the puzzle. The words can run across, down, or diagonally. Then fill in the words in the sentences.

1. Cocaine interferes with the brain’s normal handling of the neurotransmitter __________________ .

2. Prescription medications save lives when used properly, but if _______________ they can take lives.

3. LSD binds to the receptor for the neurotransmitter __________________.

4. Cocaine can cause _______________________, even in healthy teens.

5. A ________________ is a drug that speeds up activity in the central nervous system and circulatory system.

6. LSD is not _______________, but it is dangerous nonetheless.

7. The brain’s _______________________ system is responsible for emotional reactions, and is highly active in teenagers.

8. In people addicted to drugs, ___________________ for the drug often replace the desire for food, friends, and other pleasures.

9. LSD can cause people to __________________ things that aren’t really there.

10. Brain _______________________ show that drug addiction actually changes people’s brains.

Draw a line from each of the drugs on the left, below, to its effects on the right. Each drug or cause has three effects. Some effects may have more than one cause.

II. Listening

Smoking

Pre-listening

1. Experts say that smoking kills an estimated five million people worldwide every year; smoking is the leading cause of preventable death; it is the second leading cause of death, after cancer. The World Health Organization estimates that secondhand smoke kills six hundred thousand people each year. What is the most effective way to safe ourselves? Express your personal opinion.

2. Read the list of some diseases and tick the diseases that smoking is sure to cause. The first one has been done for you.

Smoking also increases the risk of developing some diseases. Tick such diseases.

While-listening

1. Now listen and fill the chart:

After-listening

Answer the comprehension questions in written form:

1. What is the main suggestion the doctors gave the president Barack Obama?

2. How many lives could be saved each year if people quit smoking?

3. Name all diseases that can be prevented by quitting smoking.

4. What can you say about 2 studies that examined how smoking affects a person’s risk of 2 diseases?

5. Is there any way to smoke without harming your health?

6. Why the number of smokers is expected to grow?

7. How do smokers harm non-smokers?

8. What are the products to help people reduce their dependence on cigarettes?

9. What are the main recommendations to help people to quit smoking?

III. Reading

Pre-reading

1. Look at the title of the article and try to predict what it will be about.

2. Have you ever pondered on harm which is waiting for us at every corner? Don’t you think that our lives are full of different substances and things that aren’t good for our health? Can you suggest some way how to avoid harmful things?

While-reading

Read the article and draw a plan with the main ideas expressed in the text. Share your thoughts with your group.

DICING WITH DEATH

EVERY DAY is fraught with danger. You wake in the morning, rush to the window and take a deep breath. Don’t! Hasn’t anyone told you about the air being polluted with lead from petrol? Next you go to the bathroom. After touching the lavatory handle, your innocent-looking hands are covered in bacteria, which even a good wash won’t entirely remove. You sigh, and get dressed. Good heavens! Didn’t you realize that all that nylon won’t let your skin breathe? With a rash beginning to appear on your skin, you make your way to the kitchen for breakfast. Eating must be good for you – mustn’t it? Of course it is, provided you don’t have tea or coffee, which are bad for your heart, or a good old-fashioned English fry-up, which will fill your stomach with cholesterol-building fat.

Depressed – not to mention hungry – you go to clean your teeth. Put down that nylon toothbrush at once! It will ruin your gums. Do you have the courage to weigh yourself? Horrors! You’re at least half a stone overweight, which is sure to help send you to an early grave. Hesitating, you make your way to the car, knowing that (according to statistics) there’s a 1 good chance that either you or one of your nearest and dearest will be involved in an accident sometime during your life. After a heart-thumping journey, you reach work. Filled with relief you get into the lift. Get out at once and race up those stairs, unless you want a heart attack tomorrow. Panting, you reach the office, where you collapse into a chair. The cleaner has just left, leaving an aerosol’s delightful aroma floating the air. You inhale deeply, enjoying the sweet fragrance. Danger! Breathing in the substance will ruin your lungs (not to mention our atmosphere, if we are to believe the experts.) With trembling hands you light a cigarette to calm your nerves. A what? How dare you? In comes your colleague, Ms Brown, all ready for a busy day, blonde hair and make-up in place. Do you think she’s heard about the cancer scare concerning hair dyes and eye-liners?

At last lunch-time comes. You join your mates in the local for a sandwich. White bread, eh? A low-fibre diet is no good at all. You have “just one more drink”, which helps you on your way to liver failure, and you return to the office. You spend the afternoon fighting a battle with high blood pressure and chronic indigestion (or is it your heart at last?) and give a sigh of relief as 5.30 arrives. What a jam on the by-pass tonight. It gets your fingers tapping on the steering wheel, doesn’t it? You look in the driving mirror and see a large vein throbbing up and down on your forehead. It throbs even faster as you suddenly remember that article you were reading about strokes.

A nervous wreck, you reach home. You crawl up the path and fall into your wife’s protective arms. She won’t last much longer, of course. She’s inhaled a large amount of washing powder, quite a few asbestos particles from her hair drier and a great number of chemicals from aerosol sprays.

But do not fear, civilization is here. Are we really that much happier in our modern technological world with all its new-found knowledge than our ancestors who knew nothing of these things? Is it any surprise that there were no analysts or psychiatrists in any century before ours? I’m sure they didn’t need any.

After-reading

1. Fill in: low-fibre, wreck, bacteria, chronic, cancer, fraught, heart, innocent-looking, trembling, lungs, calm, fill, deeply, pressure, heart-thumping, deep breath. Make sentences based on the text, using the phrases.

2. What do you think?

1. What point is the writer making in the last paragraph? Do you agree?

Useful phrases:

I agree that this is a real danger.

This could be dangerous, but it’s not worth worrying about.

I don’t agree that this is a danger.

I don’t understand the point that the writer is trying to make.

2. Do you think the writer is …

a. much too worried about the dangers of modern life?

b. right to be worried about them?

c. being funny about them to make a point? Explain your choice.

IV. Speaking Tasks

There are five questions in Student’s A and Student’s B (in Appendix) question cards. You should work in pairs and ask your partner questions which you have in your own card. Then discuss and decide together how we can get rid of bad habits.

V. Grammar Check