节目资讯
刊物:空中英语教室
日期:2012-09-15
难易度:High
关键字:reptile, perspective, saunter, restoration, biodiversity, creepy-crawly
Hello, everybody.
Welcome to Studio Classroom Worldwide.
My name is Steve.
If you live in a city and you're looking to get away for a day, there are few
places better than Green World in Taiwan's Hsinchu County.
As its name implies, Green World is all about nature, the environment, plants
and animals.
It's an ecological farm designed to be both educational and recreational.
Green World is made up of 16 parks.
One of them, the Biodiversity Adventure Area is our focus in this next portion
of the lesson.
Let's read about it now on page 33.
Discover the Wonderful World Around You.
The Biodiversity Adventure Area is where things really start to get wild.
The area contains all kinds of exotic animals from around the world.
In addition to a range of creepy-crawlies, there are reptiles, sloths and
flamingos.
Also worth a visit is the Rainforest Skyway - an elevated pathway that winds
through the forest 15 meters above the ground.
The Skyway gives visitors a whole new perspective on the area's rain forests.
Expect to see lots of wild orchids and vines and to hear lots of frogs and
birds.
Hello, friends.
Thank you so much for joining us here in the studio.
My name is Kaylah.
My name is Ryan.
Friends, we are back at Green World, a park in Hsinchu dedicated to discovering
nature.
Yesterday we saw two sections of the park: Swan Lake, where you can enjoy some
bird-watching as well as a macaw show,
and Discovery Land, where you can see all kinds of fascinating and interesting
plants.
That's right.
You can get out and experience nature.
You can see plants such as cacti and orchids and even carnivorous plants.
And maybe you've grown up in the city and have never had the chance to be around
small animals.
Well, you have the chance now.
If you visit Green World, you can get out, especially with children, to pat and
play with small, very friendly animals.
OK. Well, we've seen birds and plants, and maybe you're looking for something a
little bit more exciting.
Friends, you can visit the Biodiversity Adventure Area.
That's where things really start to get wild.
OK. The Biodiversity Adventure Area.
Oh, let's look at that word "biodiversity." Well, we see the beginning of that
word "bio." That is like biology.
It has to do with nature.
Mmhm, it has to do with life.
And here "biodiversity" has the second half of that word, "diversity." That
means many different things, many different parts.
So here the word "biodiversity" combined means the number and the types of
plants and animals.
So it's a diverse group of different living things, biodiversity.
So this is an adventure area.
It's really going to get more wild in here.
If you don't like the tame animals of the Critters section, maybe you'll like
this.
That's right.
The area here contains all kinds of exotic animals from around the world.
Now this is fun because sometimes you don't have the opportunity to travel or
maybe you can't afford to go to certain places,
but you're still really interested in some of these exotic or very special,
exciting, mysterious animals.
Well, visit this section and you can see animals from all over the world.
Exactly. And that is what makes them exotic.
Something exotic is not found usually where you are, you have to find it far
away.
So you can see these animals from exotic places all around the world.
Well, there's not just interesting animals from around the world, there's also a
range of creepy-crawlies.
Now we need to describe what a "creepy-crawly" is.
That is actually used as a noun here, even though the word "creepy" is an
adjective.
That's right. This is a pretty informal word here.
But we see the word "creepy." And that means something that is scary, something
you might be afraid of.
But here "creepy-crawlies" is talking about bugs, insects. Right, Kaylah?
That's right.
Now usually insects that would cause you to have some sort of fearful reaction.
So probably not butterflies but maybe cockroaches.
But hopefully, I'm going to say they may... probably don't have cockroaches to
look at,
but there are different kinds of creepy-crawlies from different places.
Yeah, maybe special kinds of spiders or other small insects.
And I don't know how much I'd want to see that.
But you can also here see reptiles, sloths and flamingos.
Now a "reptile" is a kind of animal that is known because it lays eggs, and the
body... their body heat is determined by the heat of the sun.
Now the most common example of these are snakes and lizards.
And you can see a picture of an iguana on page 33.
That is an example of a reptile.
OK. Well, here you can also see sloths, which are known for being very slow
animals and they have a lot of fur.
And you can also see flamingos, which are birds.
They're very pink, and they usually stand on one leg.
Now also worth a visit is the Rainforest Skyway.
It's an elevated pathway that winds through the forest 15 meters above the
ground.
That's pretty high.
And that would give you a good view.
You can see here that the Skyway gives visitors a whole new perspective on the
area's rain forests.
Now "perspective" means the way you're looking at something or the way you
consider something.
So usually we look at something from the ground up.
And in this opportunity, you get to look from the sky down.
So it's a good perspective, a new one to look from.
OK. So what can you see from this new perspective, friends?
Well, you can expect to see lots of wild orchids, vines and you can hear frogs
and birds.
That's right.
There's lots to hear and see you when you're up in the trees of the rain forest,
getting a new perspective on all the nature around you.
All right, friends.
Now let's take a look at this video showing us the Biodiversity Adventure Area
in Green World.
Surrounded by an exceptional landscape of mountains and lush green foliage,
Green World Park covers more than 70 hectares and has more than 38 unique spaces
for exhibits.
This puts Green World among the finest ecological parks in the world.
The Amazon Rain Forest Area offers a grand display of mammals, fishes and
reptiles native to the Amazon.
This will be the first time that people in Asia will have a chance to see most
of these species.
After you have visited the Butterfly Ecological Park, you will understand why
Taiwan is called The Kindom of Butterflies.
This park is enclosed under a giant roof.
Inside this huge enclosure are small waterfalls and rivers.
Winding paths allow you to walk among the plants and flowers where the
butterflies dart back and forth.
(Music).
At the Bird Ecological Park, more than 100 species from different parts of the
world fly freely inside one of the finest aviaries in Asia.
This complex is built on the slope of a mountain, and allows you to walk freely
among the birds and watch their behavior in the wild.