Country Profile
Science and Technology A2 Wales
Warm up 1
1 Cerys is visiting her cousin Evan in Canada. She has gone to his school to talk about Wales. Listen and fill in the gaps to complete the fact file.
Capital: ....................
Official languages: ....................
Population: ....................
Currency: ....................
National symbols: daffodil, leek, .................
Words to remember
awesome: grandiosa, notevole canaries: canarini
coal mining: estrazione del carbone
particle: particella sobering: che fa riflettere
Reading comprehension
2 Read the blog below and complete the spaces with the missing words or symbols.
aeroplane radio = + Internet particle*
Great Welsh Scientists!
It was the Americans that put the first man on the moon but there are lots of great Welsh scientists too.
Key Language
I think that .......... is the most important because .............… I agree / I don’t agree because
In 1557 Robert Recorde introduced the equals (1) .......... and the plus symbols.
In the 1960s and 70s, Donald Davies, a computer scientist, developed ‘packets’ which put computer data into groups. It was a fundamental step towards the invention of the (3) .
Some people believe that, in 1896, William Frost built and flew the first . Unfortunately there are no written records of this and so the glory goes to the American Wright brothers.
In 2012, Lyn Evans, ‘Evans the Atom’, was the leader of a group of international scientists who discovered the Higgs boson (5) , which gives mass to everything in the universe. It has taken scientists over 40 years to find this particle. And finally, most people know that Marconi, the inventor of the (6) .......... , was from Italy, but not many people know that his first radio transmission was between two points in Wales in 1897!
Over to you
3 Which of the inventions above do you think is the most important? Why?
Cardiff Castle
Welsh
Welsh is a Celtic language. About half a million people speak it fluently in Wales. School pupils have to study Welsh until they are 16. There is a Welsh language radio and TV station. ‘Cymru’ is the Welsh name for Wales. All road signs and place names are in English and Welsh. Llanfairpwllgwingyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllandysiliogogogoch is the name of a town in North Wales. It is the longest place name in the world!
The Big Pit
Reading and speaking
During the 19th and 20th century coal mining* was very important for the Welsh economy and for the Industrial Revolution. Now, nearly all the mines in Wales are closed. The Big Pit mine closed in 1980. Now it as an award winning museum located in a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
4 Read the trip advisor review of the Big Pit. Would you like to visit the Big Pit? Why / Why not?
96 reviews from our community
Visitor rating
➜
Reviewed 30 June NEW
Awesome* experience!
This was my kids’ first experience in the UK. They put on real mining equipment and we went down a mine with an ex-miner to guide us. Our guide was very funny and informative. NB: Children must be at least 1 metre tall to go underground! They even have canaries* at the end of the tour, which they used to detect carbon monoxide in the mines until the early 1990s. Although this is not the typical destination you imagine for a European vacation, I feel that this place actually taught us the most about how ordinary people lived, and it was a sobering* experience.
Class survey
5 Do a class survey about a local tourist attraction. Choose a place and ask your classmates to rate it from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent). Draw a graph to show the results. Then write your own review of the attraction.
Wales is the land of mythical King Arthur. Did you know...?
