Present Perfect Tense

Intro

1. Learn Vocabulary - Learn some new vocabulary before you start the lesson.

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• advise
• campaign
• lawn
• fragile

• scarce
• drought
• conserve
• shortage

• polluted
• exceptionally

2. Read and Prepare - Read the introduction and prepare to hear the audio.

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Water covers over 70% of the Earth and makes up more than 60% of the human body. So how can it be that so many places on the planet do not have enough water?

Even though there is a lot of water on the planet, only about 1% of that water is drinkable. Unfair or poor management of the Earth’s water resources makes it even more scarce in many parts of the world.

In times of drought, the lack of water is even greater. During the summer, when there is less rain and higher temperatures, many areas experience drought and need to find ways to conserve water. Hear Jason and Amy talk about the water shortage in Jason’s home state.

Dialog

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2. Study - Read the dialog again to see how the vocab words are used.

Jason

Amy

Jason:  My parents live in New Mexico, and it recently rained for the first time this year.

Amy:  Wow. What?

Jason:  Yeah.

Amy:  Oh my gosh. Is there a huge drought there?

Jason:  Definitely. There’s kind of always been a drought there, like as long as I’ve been alive. But it’s exceptionally bad this year.

Amy:  So how is that affecting people? Is it difficult to get water, or are people being advised to try to conserve water?

Jason:  Definitely there’s a big campaign to conserve water. You know, everything from reducing your toilet flow to, like, people are…I think there’s only certain days you’re allowed to water your lawn, and only certain times.

Amy:  Right. Well, that takes a ton of water.

Jason:  Yeah. It’s not so bad, like you can still get drinking water and stuff. There’s underground water. But I guess that won’t last forever.

Amy:  It’s so funny, because I think there’s a lot less usable water out there than we think.

Jason:  Oh my gosh, yeah, it’s crazy. And it’s such a fragile system, like once it gets polluted it kind of never gets out of it. It’s a big problem. People are saying that, you know, energy was the crisis of the last century and sort of continues to be, but that water is going to be the crisis of the next century. And that is kind of scary, since we don’t need energy to live, whereas we do need water.

Amy:  Great, something else to worry about.

 

Grammar Point

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Lesson MP3

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