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Drone Deliveries

Learn English meaning of 'drone deliveries'

Date: Dec 28 2015

Themes: Hobbies, Tech

Grammar: First Conditional

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Intro

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

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Look up in the sky! What’s that? It’s the pizza you ordered. A drone is bringing it to you.

This could be the future. Drones are small machines. They use a propeller to fly and can track people and buildings using map coordinates. Many companies may soon use them to deliver packages. But is it safe to use drones? Some people think they could get in the way of air traffic. Other people do not like the idea of being tracked by a machine.

Gary and Jessica are talking about drone deliveries. Listen and find out what they think in this English lesson.

Dialog

1. Listen and Read - Listen to the audio and read the dialog at the same time.

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

Gary

Jessica

Gary: Did you know that very soon, you will be able to place an order on Amazon.com, and a number of other websites, and have your package delivered to you by a drone?

Jessica: Are you kidding?

Gary: I am not kidding.

Jessica: Wow! See, that is a game changer. That would be incredible.

Gary: It’s so exciting to think of the fact that we’re going to have these propeller-based devices just flying around in the air. But it’s going to have something we have to think about, and that’s air traffic control.

Jessica: Oh.

Gary: So, with all of that air traffic of all these drones, who’s going to maintain how many can be in the air?

Jessica: Are they operated by remote control? I mean, how do they hover?

Gary: I think they’re actually programmed with the coordinates of where you live, so it will use your phone’s GPS to actually track you. So, if you move, the drone will follow you.

Jessica: See, this is very fascinating. It’s a little scary…

Gary: It is.

Jessica: But it’s very cool. I think there’s potential for something really neat here.

Grammar Point

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Discussion

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Gary tells Jessica that, soon, many companies will use drones to deliver packages. Jessica doesn’t understand how drones work. She doesn’t know how they hover or how they find people. Gary explains that drones use coordinates from people’s phones to find them. They fly by using propellers.

However, Gary thinks that there could be a problem with using drones. They might get in the way of airplanes. There might be too many of them in the air sometimes. Jessica agrees that drones are a little scary, but she thinks they have potential to be very useful in the future.

Do you think drones are scary or useful? Would you order something that was delivered by a drone?

Comments

Max_NL

Netherlands

thats silly idea to use drones for delivery, because people with bad intentions will shot them down, steal them or give fake orders which will cost bad to company :))

and drones can be dangerous when fallen or damaged, even can be used as assasination

I have a Channel about drones, since i use a high end drone, so check it guys

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo8Sj2Glr1AA_b6BFiu05Jw

m4ir4

Peru

Wow so interesting! I think is a very good idea to carry pizza and maybe other kind of things too :)

Wordsmith

United States

I think drones will be wonderful for deliveries. I would love to have pizza and fresh groceries delivered by drone. However, I am afraid about surveillance. I don’t like people watching me without my permission.

Wuthering

United States

Drone deliveries would save a lot of traffic jam on the roads . It also conserves gasoline , fuel and time for humans too . Soon or later , humans will enter the ailen time zone .

schrodinger61

Turkey

It is good technology .It is being used to record or take picture for films or something like that.And I think it

can be used for urgent situations.for examle,it can deliver life preserver to people who is in danger in the sea.And in my opinion

we must have ID for our drone thus our drone can be detected or granted and we can take permission to deliver something with drone.

Goverment can take precaution thanks to ID.Otherwise we can cause air traffic jam in the air and drones can be used by low minded people.

albee1112

China

what if some terrorist use the drones carry a bombs or something dangerous…i think there will be a safety problems if drone deliveries are going to be real.