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Unit 1 Living well-ReadingMARTYS STORY Hi, my name is Marry Fielding and I guess you could say that I am one in a million. In other words, there are not many people like me. You see, I have a muscle disease which makes me very weak, so I cant run or climb stairs as quickly as other people. In addition, sometimes I am very clumsy and drop things or bump into furniture. Unfortunately, the doctors dont know how to make me better, but I am very outgoing and have learned to adapt to my disability. My motto is: live One day at a time. Until I was ten years old I was the same as everyone else. I used to climb trees, swim and play football. In fact, I used to dream about playing professional football and possibly representing my country in the World Cup. Then I started to get weaker and weaker, until I could only enjoy football from a bench at the stadium. In the end I went into hospital for medical tests. I stayed there for nearly three months. I think I had at least a billion tests, including one in which they cut out a piece of muscle from my leg and looked at it under a microscope. Even after all that, no one could give my disease a name and it is difficult to know what the future holds. One problem is that I dont look any different from other people. So sometimes some children in my primary school would laugh, when I got out of breath after running a short way or had to stop and rest halfway up the stairs. Sometimes, too, I was too weak to go to school so my education suffered. Every time I returned after an absence, I felt stupid because I was behind the others. My life is a lot easier at high school because my fellow students have accepted me. The few who cannot see the real person inside my body do not make me annoyed, and I just ignore them. All in all I have a good life. I am happy to have found many things I can do, like writing and computer programming. My ambition is to work for a firm that develops computer software when I grow up. Last year invented a computer football game and a big company has decided to buy it from me. I have a very busy life with no time to sit around feeling sorry for myself. As well as going to the movies and football matches with my friends, I spend a lot of time with my pets. I have two rabbits, a parrot, a tank full of fish and a tortoise. To look after my pets properly takes a lot of time but I find it worthwhile. I also have to do a lot of work, especially if I have been away for a while. In many ways my disability has helped me grow stronger psychologically and become more independent. I have to work hard to live a normal life but it has been worth it. If I had a chance to say one thing to healthy children, it would be this: having a disability does not mean your life is not satisfying. So dont feel sorry for the disabled or make fun of them, and dont ignore them either. Just accept them for who they are, and give them encouragement to live as rich and full a life as you do. Thank you for reading my story.A LETTER TO AN ARCHITECT Look at the pictures. Discuss the problems that people with walking difficulties might have in a cinema. Ms L Sanders Alice Major Chief architect 64 Cambridge Street Cinema Designs Bankstown 44 Hill Street Bankstown 24 September, 200_Dear Ms Sanders, I read in the newspaper today that you are to be the architect for the new Bankstown cinema.I hope you will not mind me writing to ask if you have thought about the needs of disabled customers. In particular I wonder if you have considered the following things: 1 Adequate access for wheelchairs. It would be handy to have lifts to all parts of the cinema. The buttons in the lifts should be easy for a person in a wheelchair to reach, and the doors be wide enough to enter. In some cinemas, the lifts are at the back of the cinema in cold, unattractive places. As disabled people have to use the lifts, this makes them feel they are not as important as other customers. 2 Earphones for people who have trouble hearing. It would help to fit sets of earphones to all seats, not just to some of them. This would allow hearing-impaired customers to enjoy the company of their hearing friends rather than having to sit in a special area. 3 Raised seating. People who are short cannot always see the screen. So Id like to suggest that the seats at the back be placed higher than those at the front so that everyone can see the screen easily. Perhaps there could be a space at the end of each row for people in wheelchairs to sit next to their friends. 4 Toilets. For disabled customers it would be more convenient to place the toilets near the entrance to the cinema. It can be difficult if the only disabled toilet is in the basement a long way from where the film is showing. And if the doors could be opened outwards, disabled customers would be very happy. 5 Car parking. Of course, there are usually spaces specially reserved for disabled and elderly drivers. If they are close to the cinema entrance and/or exit, it is easier for disabled people to get to film in comfort. Thank you for reading my letter. I hope my suggestions will meet with your approval. Disabled people should have the same opportunities as able-bodied people to enjoy the cinema and to do so with dignity.I am sure many people will praise your cinema if you design it with good access for disabled people. It will also make the cinema owners happy if more people go as they will make higher profits! Yours sincerely, Alice Major Unit 2 Robots - ReadingSATISFACTION GURANTEEDLarry Belmont worked for a company that made robots. Recently it had begun experimenting with a household robot. It was going to be tested out by Larrys wife, Claire. Claire didnt want the robot in her house, especially as her husband would be absent for three weeks, but Larry persuaded her that the robot wouldnt harm her or allow her to be harmed. It would be a bonus. However, when she first saw the robot, she felt alarmed. His name was Tony and he seemed more like a human than a machine. He was tall and handsome with smooth hair and a deep voice although his facial expression never changed. On the second morning Tony, wearing an apron, brought her breakfast and then asked her whether she needed help dressing. She felt embarrassed and quickly told him to go. It was disturbing and frightening that he looked so human. One day, Claire mentioned that she didnt think she was clever. Tony said that she must feel very unhappy to say that. Claire thought it was ridiculous to be offered sympathy by a robot. But she began to trust him. She told him how she was overweight and this made her feel unhappy. Also she felt her home wasnt elegant enough for someone like Larry who wanted to improve his social position. She wasnt like Gladys Claffern, one of the richest and most powerful women around. As a favour Tony promised to help Claire make herself smarter and her home more elegant. So Claire borrowed a pile of books from the library for him to read, or rather, scan. She looked at his fingers with wonder as they turned each page and suddenly reached for his hand. She was amazed by his fingernails and the softness and warmth of his skin. How absurd, she thought. He was just a machine. Tony gave Claire a new haircut and changed the makeup she wore. As he was not allowed to accompany her to the shops, he wrote out a list of items for her. Claire went into the city and bought curtains, cushions, a carpet and bedding. Then she went into a jewellery shop to buy a necklace. When the clerk at the counter was rude to her, she rang Tony up and told the clerk to speak to him. The clerk immediately changed his attitude. Claire thanked Tony, telling him that he was a dear. As she turned around, there stood Gladys Claffern. How awful to be discovered by her, Claire thought. By the amused and surprised look on her face, Claire knew that Gladys thought she was having an affair. After all, she knew Claires husbands name was Larry, not Tony. When Claire got home, she wept with anger in her armchair. Gladys was everything Claire wanted to be. You can be like her, Tony told her and suggested that she invite Gladys and her friends to the house the night before he was to leave and Larry was to return. By that time, Tony expected the house to be completely transformed. Tony worked steadily on the improvements. Claire tried to help once but was too clumsy.She fell off a ladder and even though Tony was in the next room, he managed to catch her in time. He held her firmly in his arms and she felt the warmth of his body. She screamed, pushed him away and ran to her room for the rest of the day. The night of the party arrived. The clock struck eight. The guests would be arriving soon and Claire told Tony to go into another room.At that moment, Tony folded his arms around her, bending his face close to hers. She cried out Tony and then heard him declare that he didnt want to leave her the next day and that he felt more than just the desire to please her. Then the front door bell rang. Tony freed her and disappeared from sight. It was then that Claire realized that Tony had opened the curtains of the front window. Her guests had seen everything ! The women were impressed by Claire, the house and the delicious cuisine. Just before they left, Claire heard Gladys whispering to another woman that she had never seen anyone so handsome as Tony. What a sweet victory to be envied by those women! She might not be as beautiful as them, but none of them had such a handsome lover. Then she remembered -Tony was just a machine. She shouted Leave me alone and ran to her bed. She cried all night. The next morning a car drove up and took Tony away. The company was very pleased with Tonys report on his three weeks with Claire. Tony had protected a human being from harm. He had prevented Claire from harming herself through her own sense of failure. He had opened the curtains that night so that the other women would see him and Claire, knowing that there was no risk to Claires marriage. But even though Tony had been so clever, he would have to be rebuilt -you cannot have women failing in love with machines.A BIOGRAPHY OF ISAAC ASIMOV Isaac Asimov was an American scientist and writer who wrote around 480 books that included mystery stories, science and history books, and even books about the Holy Bible and Shakespeare. But he is best known for his science fiction stories. Asimov had both an extraordinary imagination that gave him the ability to explore future worlds and an amazing mind with which he searched for explanations of everything, in the present and the past. Asimovs life began in Russia, where he was born on 2 January, 1920. It ended in New York on 6 April, 1992, when he died as a result of an HIV infection that he had got from a blood transfusion nine years earlier. When Asimov was three, he moved with his parents and his one-year-old sister to New York City. There his parents bought a candy store which they ran for the next 40 or so years. At the age of nine, when his mother was pregnant with her third child, Asimov started working part-time in the store. He helped out through his school and university years until 1942, a year after he had gained a masters degree in chemistry. In 1942 he joined the staff of the Philadelphia Navy Yard as a junior chemist and worked there for three years. In 1948 he got his PhD in chemistry. The next year he became a biochemistry teacher at Boston University School of Medicine. In 1958 he gave up teaching to become a full-time writer. It was when Asimov was eleven years old that his talent for writing became obvious. He had told a friend two chapters of a story he had written. The friend thought he was retelling a story from a book. This really surprised Asimov and from that moment, he started to take himself seriously as a writer. Asimov began having stories published in science fiction magazines in 1939. In 1950 he published his first novel and in 1953 his first science book. Throughout his life, Asimov received many awards, both for his science fiction books and his science books. Among his most famous works of science fiction, one for which he won an award was the Foundation trilogy (1951-1953), three novels about the death and rebirth of a great empire in a galaxy of the future. It was loosely based on the fall of the Roman Empire but was about the future. These books are famous because Asimov invented a theoretical framework which was designed to show how ideas and thinking may develop in the future. He is also well known for his collection of short stories, I, Robot (1950), in which he developed a set of three laws for robots. For example, the first law states that a robot must not injure human beings or allow them to be injured. Some of his ideas about robots later influenced other writers and even scientists researching into artificial intelligence. Asimov was married twice. He married his first wife in 1942 and had a son and a daughter. Their marriage lasted 31 years. Soon after his divorce in 1973, Asimov married again but he had no children with his second wife.Unit 3 Under the sea - ReadingOLD TOM THE KILLER WHALEI was 16 when I began work in June 1902 at the whaling station. I had heard of the killers that every year helped whalers catch huge whales. I thought, at the time, that this was just a story but then I witnessed it with my own eyes many times. On the afternoon I arrived at the station, as I was I sorting out my accommodation, I heard a loud noise coming from the bay. We ran down to the shore in time to see an enormous animal opposite us throwing itself out of the water and then crashing down again. It was black and white and fish-shaped. But I knew it wasnt a fish. Thats Old Tom, the killer, one of the whalers, George, called out to me. Hes telling us theres a whale out there for us. Another whaler yelled out, Rush-oo .rush-oo. This was the call that announced there was about to be a whale hunt. Come on, Clancy. To the boat, George said as he ran ahead of me. I had already heard that George didnt like being kept waiting, so even though I didnt have the right clothes on, I raced after him. Without pausing we jumped into the boat with the other whalers and headed out into the bay. I looked down into the water and could see Old Tom swimming by the boat, showing us the way. A few minutes later, there was no Tom, so George started beating the water with his oar and there was Tom, circling back to the boat, leading us to the hunt again. Using a telescope we could see that something was happening. As we drew closer, I could see a whale being attacked by a pack of about six other killers. Whatre they doing? I asked George. Well, its teamwork - the killers over there are throwing themselves on top of the whales blow-hole to stop it breathing. And those others are stopping it diving or fleeing out to sea, George told me, pointing towards the hunt. And just at that moment, the most extraordinary thing happened. The killers started racing between our boat and the whale just like a pack of excited dogs. Then the harpoon was ready and the man in the bow of the boat aimed it at the whale. He let it go and the harpoon hit the spot. Being badly wounded, the whale soon died. Within a moment or two, its body was dragged swiftly by the killers down into the depths of the sea. The men started turning the boat around to go home. Whats happened? I asked. Have we lost the whale? Oh no, Jack replied. Well return tomorrow to bring in the body. It wont float up to the surface for around 24 hours. In the meantime, Old Tom, and the others are having a good feed on its lips and tongue, added Red, laughing. Although Old Tom and the other killers were fierce hunters, they, never harmed or attacked people. In fact, they protected them. There was one day when we were out in the bay during a hunt and James was washed off the boat. Man overboard! Turn the boat around! urged George, shouting loudly. The sea was rough that day and it was difficult to handle the boat. The waves were carrying James further and further away from us. From Jamess face, I could see he was terrified of being abandoned by us. Then suddenly I saw a shark. Look, theres a shark out there, I screamed. Dont worry, Old Tom wont let it near, Red replied. It took over half an hour to get the boat back to James, and when we approached him, I saw James being firmly held up in the water by Old Tom. I couldnt believe my eyes. There were shouts of Well done, Old Tom and Thank God as we pulled James back into the boat. And then Old Tom was off and back to the hunt where the other killers were still attacking the whale.A NEW DIMENSION OF LIFE19th January Im sitting in the warm night air with a cold drink in my hand and reflecting on the day a day of pure magic! I went snorkelling on the reef offshore this morning and it was the most fantastic thing I have ever done. Seeing such extraordinary beauty, I think every cell in my body woke up. It was like discovering a whole new dimension of life. The first thing I became aware of was all the vivid colours surrounding me - purples, reds, oranges, yellows, blues and greens. The corals were fantastic - they were shaped like fans, plates, brains, lace, mushrooms, the branches of trees and the horns of deer. And all kinds of small, neat and elegant fish were swimming in and around the corals. The fish didnt seem to mind me swimming among them. I especially loved the little orange and white fish that hid in the waving long thin seaweed. And I also loved the small fish that clean the bodies of larger fish - I even saw them get inside their mouths and clean their teeth! It seemed there was a surprise waiting for me around every corner as I explored small caves, shelves and narrow passages with my underwater flashlight: the yellow and green parrotfish was hanging upside down, and sucking tiny plants off the coral with its hard bird-like mouth; a yellow-spotted red sea-slug was sliding by a blue sea-star; a large wise-looking turtle was passing so close to me that I could have touched it. There were other creatures that I didnt want to get too close to - an eel with its strong sharp teeth, with only its head showing from a hole, watching for a tasty fish (or my tasty toe!); and the giant clam halt buried in some coral waiting for something to swim in between its thick green lips. Then there were two grey reef sharks, each about one and a half metres long, which suddenly appeared from behind some coral. I told myself they werent dangerous but that didnt stop me from feeling scared to death for a moment! The water was quite shallow but where the reef ended, there was a steep drop to the sandy ocean floor. It marked a boundary and I thought I was very brave when I swam over the edge of the reef and hung there looking down into the depths of the ocean. My heart was beating wildly - I felt very exposed in such deep
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