Name ________________ Class_____ Date _____


Vocabulary related to Population and Babies

PART ONE: Match the words with the correct meaning.

20 January 2010
Adapted from BBC, Words In The News
South Korean government workers are being told to 'go home and multiply'. Tonight the Ministry of Health, concerned about the country's falling birth rate, will force staff to leave the office early and return to their loved ones.

Reporter:

John Sudworth



Report

Forget that still unwritten report or the backlog of paperwork building up on the desk, on this cold and rainy mid-week night there can be no excuses to stay late in the office. South Korea's Ministry of Health, Welfare and Family Affairs will be turning off all the lights at 7pm in a bid to force staff to go home to their families and, well, make bigger ones. It will repeat the experiment once a month.



The country now has one of the world's lowest birth rates, lower even than neighbouring Japan, and boosting the number of newborn children is a priority for this government. Staring into the abyss of a rapidly ageing society, falling levels of manpower and spiralling health care costs.

The Ministry of Health, now sometimes jokingly referred to as the “Ministry of Matchmaking”, is in charge of spearheading that drive and it clearly believes its staff should lead by example. Generous gift vouchers are on offer for officials who have more than one child and the department organises social gatherings in the hope of fostering love amongst its bureaucrats. But critics say what is really needed is wide-scale reform to tackle the burdensome cost of childcare that puts many young people off from starting a family.

Jonh Sudworth. BBC News, Seoul



Matching.



WORD/PHRASES ANSWER MEANING

1. the backlog of paperwork building up a. difficult and requiring a lot of responsibility, time and money.

2. birth rates b. encouraging office workers to start having relationships with each other.

3. boosting c. taking charge of the plan

4. staring into the abyss d. steadily increasing

5. rapidly ageing society e. when there are not enough young and fit people to do all the jobs needed to maintain the country’s economy.

6. falling levels of manpower f. when the population of a country is getting older with not enough younger people to take their place

7. spiralling g. looking to a future situation which will be difficult

8. fostering love amongst its bureaucrats h. increasing

9. burdensome i. the number of babies norn in a particular place during a certain period.

10. spearheading that drive g. the large and increasing amount of office documents( letters, reports,etc) that you should have dealt with before but which you still need to deal with











PART TWO: Vocabulary related to Babies and Natural Disaster
Underline the correct word
Earthquake at Haiti, Port-au-Prince

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) - – Nurses at Port-au-Prince's General Hospital clapped heartily as they welcomed Monday a baby girl pulled from the 1. (rubble/ monument/ garbage) six days after the earthquake that 2. ( slammed/ struck / felled) Haiti and destroyed her home.

The child, believed to be just 18 months old, was covered with 3. ( mites/ wreckage/ dust) otherwise appeared healthy. No one knew her name and

4. ( survivors/ terrorists/rescuers )believe her family died when her home 5. ( avalanche/collapsed/ excavated)

"This is 6. (horrendous/ alarming/incredible)," said a nurse that held the baby, carefully cleaning her body and giving her water. "She has no 7. ( wounds/ scrapes/injuries). Only a child is able to survive six days in this condition."

The unnamed girl is the second baby to be 8. ( buried/unearthed/ identified) in Haiti in as many days.

Medics at an Israeli field hospital outside the capital have also treated Jean-Louis Brahms, an eight-month-old baby 9. ( buried/ entombed/trapped) for five days under what used to be his house.

The baby's father and older brother 10. ( detained/ arrested/escaped) the house in time and 11.( afflicted/ suffered/ sustained)only minor injuries, but Jean-Louis remained trapped under the rubble for days until a neighbor heard him crying and contacted UN peacekeepers.

The child's mother said she had been back to the home several times. "I waited, called for him, and there was no 12. (exclamations/ questions/answer).

"I could not stay there, I could not accept that he was dead and buried in the rubble, so I left," she said, 13.( laughing/ sputtering/ choking) back her tears.

"When I look at him now I 14. ( wail/ hum/cry) out of happiness and believe in God more than ever," she said. "I had lost all hope of finding him alive."

Jean-Louis was close to 15. (health/ home/death) when he was rescued and had to be revived, said Amit Assa, an Israeli doctor at the field hospital. He only reacted to the antibiotics hours later," said Assa.

"It's 16. ( regrettable/ impressive/ incredible) that he is alive after five days without water, without food and in this heat."

However one of the infant's legs was 17. ( tortured/ plastered/ crushed) and gangrene had set in. "We don't know if we can save it," Assa said.

The Israeli field hospital has 18. ( warned/ shocked/ treated) some 250 victims, the vast majority of the them pulled found in the collapsed 19. (ruins/piles/terraces) of the city. Eighty have been children, mostly dazed orphans struggling to 20. (grasp/marvel/wonder) what has happened.

Even the adults found in the 21. (utter/ some/a bit of )destruction that littered the capital found the reality hard to bear. Perhaps it is better to be young, not to understand the scale of the catastrophe. Related article: Haiti relief surge fails to bring security

A young woman named Rose-Marie had been constantly crying ever since she was rescued from a collapsed restaurant four days after the quake struck. She was having a meal with friends, all of whom died close to her -- and according to the doctors, she does not yet realize that she has survived.

"She just repeats names and 22. (groans/laughed/moans)," said a nurse at the field hospital, as she gently treats Rose-Marie's injuries. "She still believes that she's in the restaurant."

On a nearby cot another survivor, Jacky Desbois, constantly 23. ( remembers/ repeats/ relives) the two days he spent in the ruins of a church.

"It was like being alive inside a tomb," he said. "I believed that God would not abandon me and I prayed, but I felt like I was going crazy. I thought I'd die there and no one would find me.

"Some friends got me out but they broke my leg. Now they have to operate on me, but I'm happy to be alive. I don't care about the leg," Desbois said.

Almost a week after the earthquake, fewer and fewer survivors were being found.

Among those so-called lucky survivors was Marie-France, 22, pulled out late Sunday after having his right arm 24. ( broken/ healed/ amputated). Related article: For thousands, successful healing pivots on amputation

"I didn't know what was going on outside, my only thought was to live," she mumbled, resting at the hospital's intensive care unit and still under the effect of morphine.

Nearby a 70 year-old man said he was trapped for four days in his bakery.

"I had already prepared myself to die. Time was 25. ( futile/ wonderful/ endless). When I was pulled out I did not know if two days or two weeks had gone by," he said.

Source: yahoo.com / 20 Jan 2010



Answers

PART ONE:

1. g 2. I 3. h 4. g 5. f 6. e 7. d 8. b 9. a 10. c



PART TWO

1. rubble 2. struck 3. dust 4. resources 5. rescuers 6. incredible 7. injuries

8. unearthed 9. trapped 10. escaped 11. sustained 12. answer 13. choking

14. cry 15. death 16. increduble 17. crushed 18. treated 19. ruins

20. grasp 21. utter 22. moans 23. relives 24. amputated 25. endless