In 1971, biologist Roger Payne set out on what would
be the first of many trips to Argentina. It was on one of
these trips that Payne
came across
a female white
whale and moved in closer. “She was asleep,” he
recalls
, “but after a while she opened her eye and
looked me over.You could see her eyeball rolling in her
head and then she closed her eye again. Basically, the
whale was just saying, Well, if you've seen one of us,
you've seen them all.”
Born in 1935 in New York, Payne has been studying
whales for 40 years. He has built his career on
science and
activism
, but ask him what it's like to
swim with a whale and what you hear in his voice is
awe
. “It's like nothing you've ever done. You can’t
imagine that an animal that big could be so graceful.
When you swim with them, you discover that they
can turn and manoeuvre in ways that leave you
stunned.”
There is a similar quality to the stories of whale
watchers, astronauts and mountain climbers: a
desire
to experience an extreme feeling of smallness in the
face of something
enormous
. However, Payne
decided to study whales without ever having seen one.
He had spent much of his career studying bats, owls
and then
moths
.
So I thought, “With your
training, which animal could you work with that needs
help, for which sounds are very important?”
1
Lead-in
1
What do you know about humpback whales?
Which of these sentences are true about them?
1
Humpback whales move gracefully.
2
They produce songs that contain rhyme, rhythm
and structure.
3
They never sing the same song more than once.
4
They can hear each other across oceans.
5
They face extinction.
6
The hunting of humpback whales hasn’t been
banned yet.
Read the text and check your answers. What is
the author’s purpose?
Reading
2
You are going to read a newspaper article about
humpback whales. Six sentences have been
removed from the article. Choose from the
sentences A‒G the one which best fits each gap
(1‒6). There is one extra sentence you do not
need to use.
A
The songs varied a little every year, with bits
being added and removed.
B
However, as people understood more about
how whales lived, they became increasingly
horrified by how they were killed.
C
I wasn’t doing anything that was directly
related to people’s destruction of the wild
world.
D
The sea was so rough that the captain thought
the boat might sink if we went any further.
E
These countries have also campaigned to get
the ban lifted completely.
F
Now I have come to believe that if the whales
can’t save us, nothing can.
G
Other scientists laughed at his discoveries,
which made it difficult to get government
grants for his research.
3
Match the words in bold to their meaning.
•
unimportance
•
remembers
•
wish
•
only one
•
prohibited
•
met by chance
•
admiration
•
huge
•
destroyed
•
freely
•
make the phrase
•
campaigning in public
•
base
•
insects like butterflies
Listening
4
Listen and read the text above. Then,
choose the correct word to complete the
summary.
After fighting to protect whales for 40 years,
the biologist who discovered that
humpbacks sing still feels nothing but awe
for the huge animals.
MODULE 4
10
Roger Payne first came across a female
1) white/blue
whale on one of his trips to Argentina. Payne was born in
1935 in New York. He was impressed by the whales’
2) graceful/clumsy
movement. Together with researcher
Scott McVay he discovered that
3) male/female
humpback whales create
4) songs/sounds
which have
rhyme, rhythm and structure also found in human
5) music/speech
. He tried hard to persuade other
scientists that whales could
6) communicate/travel
with
each other across oceans. Payne worked hard on whale
7) preservation/conservation
and started the Save‒the‒
Whales campaign. Sadly, although commercial whaling
was
8) banned/stopped
in 1986, whales are still in
9) danger/threat
, as many countries ignore the ban.
READING & USE OF ENGLISH
PART 6
