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: 4.1 (45 votes)
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Submitted by zehrizer on Wed, 22/12/2021 - 12:14

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unfortunately not. ı skip the numbers even when ı read a research paper. ı dont care about dates.

Submitted by ANOUAR on Thu, 25/11/2021 - 10:00

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Yes I am good at numbers because I love Mathematics and I enjoy solving problems .

Submitted by LamVanPhuong on Fri, 19/11/2021 - 09:33

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I think not because my worst subject is math when I was a high school student

Submitted by azharbgskr on Wed, 17/11/2021 - 15:56

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Yeah, I'm good with numbers. I have loved math since elementary school. For me, numbers are things that can represent anything logically.

Submitted by KyawMinThu on Sat, 06/11/2021 - 14:38

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When I was a child between 7 to 14 years, I had learned about the numbers from our school. But I felt I am not good enough at numbers.

Submitted by vuhoap on Sat, 30/10/2021 - 03:32

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No, I think that I am not good with numbers. Because my mental math ability is very poor without using the calculator.

Submitted by Suraj paliwal on Wed, 06/10/2021 - 02:06

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No, I'm not best in numbers. I'm trying to master in numbers.

Submitted by KATIELLE RAIAN… on Tue, 20/07/2021 - 12:30

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No! Unfortunately, I suck at numbers.

Submitted by Veronikka on Sat, 05/06/2021 - 22:23

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Weel I'm little good with the numbers.

Submitted by karinaelizabeth on Fri, 07/05/2021 - 22:26

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Not at all, I'm no good for numbers that's why I chose to be an English teacher because in this career we don't have to do with numbers. It was an excellent option for me.