Facts and figures

Facts and figures

Listen to the lecturer giving some facts and figures to practise and improve your listening skills.

Do the preparation task first. Then listen to the audio and do the exercises.

Preparation

Transcript

… and the next part of this talk is on the Panama Canal. It's amazing how this one small section of a small country can be so important to the world. Let's learn a little bit about the canal itself, before we look at how it connects to everything else.

The Panama Canal is an artificial waterway in the Central American country of Panama that connects the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean. It is only 82 kilometres long. If you go around South America by ship then you need to travel another 15,000 kilometres. So the canal saves a lot of travel time. It takes around 8 to 10 hours to cross the canal.

The French started building the canal in 1881, but they couldn't finish it. The project was started again in 1904 by the United States and the canal was finally finished in 1914. Many people died while they were building the canal, some say up to 25,000. For the rest of the 20th century, the United States controlled the canal, but gave control back to Panama in 2000.

Every year, around 40,000 ships come through the canal. These are mostly commercial ships. They transport goods for trade between Asia and America, or Europe. In 2016 the government of Panama made the canal bigger, so that now 99 per cent of ships can pass through it.

Let's now turn to the role of the Panama Canal in the global economy …

Task 1

Task 2

Discussion

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Average: 4 (57 votes)

Submitted by Ugulhan on Fri, 16/10/2020 - 13:45

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It is difficult, sometimes I can forget the specific numbers with history.

Submitted by Moon Wathan on Thu, 15/10/2020 - 05:43

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No, I am not good with number even I am graduated in Math. Even I can't remember my phone number.

Submitted by ishaan on Thu, 08/10/2020 - 05:15

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u guys are bad i got 100% on both

Submitted by habibao.medo on Sun, 04/10/2020 - 11:00

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not very good with numbers i am trying to improve my self

Submitted by zozo on Thu, 10/09/2020 - 18:40

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i'm good but its need to concentrate

Submitted by facuabel on Wed, 09/09/2020 - 15:48

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the task 1 is so hard!

Submitted by biso01 on Tue, 25/08/2020 - 15:02

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yes i am good with number only i can concentrate with them but number only i am not good with ordering the sentences, its so hard to me

Submitted by c.lopes23 on Thu, 20/08/2020 - 10:27

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Yes, I'm good with numbers, but I don't practice so much there are some years

Submitted by Rinaa on Thu, 13/08/2020 - 21:49

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As an economist, I must have to be good with numbers because I have to deal with them every day. Preparing financial statements, collecting data, analyzing data, and using accounting software is my daily routine. When it comes to numbers, we should be so careful and focused, because if you slip a number or add one more, we can change all the results. But today the computer and software are helping us too much, by correcting our mistakes and giving us a chance to check them twice. But unfortunately, I'm not good at remembering the phone numbers, except for my self and my parents I hardly remember other people's phone numbers, and this is bad because in case of an emergency we should keep in mind some contact numbers of our relatives. And as many of the members here, I have a problem with numbers in English, in this audio, I couldn't define forty with fourteen without seeing the script.