1.What makes the world’s desert grow? First tick the causes you think are true. Then listen to the tape and tick what you hear.

                                                                    You think     You hear

(1) Heat and little rain.                                  □           ■

(2) Turing forests into farmland.                   □           ■

(3) Overusing fields to feed farm animals.   □           ■

(4) Using new scientific farming methods.    □           □

(5) Wasting water in farms and at home.      □           □

(6) Farming too much on poor land.               □           ■

2.Listen to the tape again and choose the best answer to each question.

Answer: (1)B   (2)A    (3)B

FIGHTING GROWING DESERTS

Why do we have deserts today? Deserts have not always been here. Most deserts that we have today were once green lands full of the plant life. One of today’s biggest deserts is in North Africa. However, in the 1st century BC farms in the North Africa grew corn and wheat to make bread for the whole city of Rome. How did this area become desert?

Both weather and people can help from a desert. Hot weather or very little rain makes the land so dry that nothing can grow. If people cut down or burn trees and plants to make land clear for farming, the wind can blow the soil away and turn the dry land into sand. Another big problem is farming on land that is not very good.

This poor land can very quickly turn into desert, if it is farmed too much. One of the biggest causes, however, is when people take their animals to the same fields to feed over and over, and the fields finally lose all their nutrition. Because of these problems, deserts are slowly taking over green land in many parts of the world, including China.

However, we can fight the growing deserts! In some parts of China people are working to prevent desert from expanding. In Xinjiang , for example, some farmers are trying new scientific farming methods. These methods make it possible to use less land for crops, so farmers then can plant trees on the rest of their land!

On Xinjiang farmer, used only half of his fields to grow the same amount of crops as last year. On the other half of his land, he planted fruit trees. The work of people like this is helping to fight the world’s growing deserts.