Starting a collection

Each Monday, the back page of the Outlook section is devoted stories about nature. In fact, the page itself is entitled "Nature". This page contains a short, very attractive column about an interesting or surprising fact about animals or plants. I have reproduced seven examples on this page. Just cut them out and you already have a good start on an interesting and fun collection.

The purpose of this lesson is to help you become familiar with the column and to give you some ideas on how to use it to improve your English. Let's begin with an easy example. Notice that you don't have to understand every word to understand the main idea.

Have you ever wondered why dead fish float belly-up?

When fish die, their innards decay, giving off gases which fill up their abdominal cavities and make them float like a buoy. The upper, meaty part of the fish hangs underneath because it is heavier.

Interesting question, isn't it? We've all seen dead fish floating belly-up (stomach up) in the water, but few of us have probably understood why this happens. Now we know. A dead fish's innards (internal organs) decay, giving off gases which fill up the empty spaces (cavities) inside its abdomen (lower part of the body containing the stomach and other digestive organs). This makes it lighter than the top part of the body.

Notice that if you understood the question, the rest of the information was easy to understand even if you didn't understand the words. And the picture made it easy to understand the question even if you didn't know the term "belly-up". I suggest you review this several times in the next few days and soon you will be able to remember almost all of the words. In fact, why don't you try explaining why dead fish float belly-up to someone else in English?

Now here's a second example. If you don't know already, try to find out from the text what a crocodile uses its nostrils for. And what does the word submerged mean? Finally, what does the word prey refer to? (And what about unwary prey?)

Activity

Do you know why a crocodile's eyes are level with its nostrils and positioned high on its head?

Crocodiles as well as other crocodilians - like alligators and caiman - are built this way so they can breathe and see even when most of their body is submerged in water.

With this, plus the ability to swim quietly, almost without a ripple, a crocodile appears to be a harmless log to unwary prey.

Read each of the five remaining nature columns, first to understand them and then to be able to explain them to someone else. Your teacher may design an activity whereby you will actually have to give an explanation, so read carefully and thoroughly.

Do you know

It's the whale shark, which can grow up to 15 metres long - maybe even longer. Unlike a whale - which is a mammal - the whale shark is a fish. And despite its scary name it does not pose a danger to humans - it is a gentle giant which eats plankton. Divers can occasionally swim with whale sharks off the Thai coast in the Andaman Sea and a few months ago some of these big fish made an appearance off Patong Beach in Phuket.

Do you know

Apparently the parasite is not as blood thirsty as people think. A leech bite is as small as a dot and the amount of blood it sucks is equal to just a few drops. However, due to the extremely effective anticoagulant the creature injects into the wound, blood continues to seep out after the leech is full and has dropped off. But the bleeding poses no real harm and, even without help, will stop in just a few minutes. As for the leech, that one meal can last more than six months!

Have you ever wondered

Of course, its mother can't lift it up, but she does offer some help by lowering her body so her offspring can reach the rim of her pouch with its front legs. Then instead of swinging one of its rear legs up and pulling itself over, the way a human would climb over a fence, the young kangaroo simply slides head first into its mother's pouch. After the successful entry, the little one adjusts to a comfortable position just like in the picture.

Do you know

Well it's not saliva! Spitting cobras can "spit" a spray of venom into the face of intruders and cause temporary or permanent blindness. They are able to do this because their fangs are modified to direct venom outward and forward rather than downward. The venom can be sprayed two metres away. When the victim is close, snakes do not bother to spit, they just bite. Thailand is home to two species of spitting cobras, namely the golden spitting cobra (Naja sumatrana) and the Siamese spitting cobra (Naja siamensis).

Do you know how to tell a diurnal snake from a nocturnal one?

An easy way is to look at the shape of their pupils, the opening in the middle of the iris where light gets into the eye. Diurnal snakes, which are active during the day, normally have round pupils. Meanwhile, the nocturnal snakes sport elliptical pupils which are more suitable for night-time activities because they can open wider than the round ones and thus can gather more light.

Teacher’s Note

It is usually easy to identify the teachers who are most experienced and most comfortable using the Bangkok Post with their classes. They are the ones who make frequent use of their scissors, cutting out stories, pictures, or cartoons for later use. Sometimes they collect single stories for a reading lesson, but often they will cut out many different examples of a single type of story or column to help their students to quickly become familiar with the subject. This week's lesson is a good example of this technique, but I could just have easily have used eight examples of a comicstrip like Garfield or Blondie or several news stories on pollution.

I suggest you divide your class into five groups (10 or even 15 groups if you want to make group sizes smaller) and set up an information gap activity. As you will remember from last term, such an activity is done in two phases. First, each group is assigned to prepare one of the columns so that each member is able to explain it in English. In the next phase, new groups are formed with each member coming from a group having prepared a different column. Since each member has prepared different information, an information gap has been created. Each member explains his or her column to the other members.

Seminar news: Archarn Sunee Canyook of our educational services department has been on the road again. Here is where she has been most recently:

Next week: Asian Games special.

•This lesson was prepared by Acharn Terry Fredrickson, BA Stanford, MA (TESL) University of Minnesota, Manager of the Educational Services Department at the Bangkok Post and general editor of this programme.