talk trees

Vocabulary and Reading Section

A. Read the following text without a dictionary, and try to get the message. Don’t worry if you don’t know some of the words.

Trees talk about a plot to kill caterpillars

	Trees talk to each other! At least they do in the woods near Seattle, where Dr. Gordon Orians and Dr. David Rhoades from the University of Washington have found that the willows and the alders warn each other when they are being attacked by leaf-eating insects. ‘I know it sounds like something right out of a comic strip, but it is definitely a form of communication we’ve witnessed in dozens and dozens of trees’, Dr. Orians said. ‘We cannot explain what happened without assuming that trees being damaged by insects released a chemical in the air that warns nearby undamaged trees to prepare a defense against these insects.’ About four years ago, Dr. Orians and Dr. Rhoades set out to find how trees survive mass attacks by insects such as tent caterpillars and webworms. The two ecologists placed swarms of as many as 700 tent caterpillars and webworms in the branches of willows and alders. The trees being attacked began producing chemicals such as alkaloids and terpenoids. ‘The insects began to loose their vitality,’ Dr. Orians said.

Now, write T if the statement is true according to the text and F if the statement is false.

1. ‘they’ in line three refers to the trees.
2. Dr. Orians and Dr. Rhoades are ecologists.
3. Caterpillars and webworms are leaf-eating insects.
4. Willow tree and alders tree communicate to each other.
5. The chemicals produced by the tree make the insects loose their vitality.

B. Learn the following idioms and their meanings.

idiom	meaning
In apple pie order	very well organized
Full of beans	full of nonsense
Out of the frying pan into a fire	from a bad situation to a worse situation
Apple of someone’s eye	someone’s favorite person or thing
As cool as cucumber	calm

Writing Section

Make one sentence for each of the above idioms.

Example:

- In apple pie order: Her room is so neat; everything is always in apple pie order.

1. Full of beans
2. Out of the frying pan into a fire
3. Apple of someone’s eye
4. As cool as cucumber

Translation Section

Translate the following text.

Habitat

A habitat is a place where organisms live. Habitat is the place where the animals can obtain food, shelter, and protection. Two kinds of habitat are natural habitats and man-made habitats. The man-made habitats are such as the zoo and the aquarium. These habitats are prepared by man for animals to live in. they are not natural and built in based on man’s understanding towards the surrounding needed by animals in their home. The forests, lakes, rivers and seas are all natural habitats for various kinds of animals. These natural habitats are found and exist naturally.

what an animal

Vocabulary and Reading Section

A. Find the animals hiding in the following sentences.

Example: Close the door at once! (rat)

1. That will be a real help.
2. She came late every day.
3. Eric owes me ten cents.
4. We made errors in each one.
5. Do good workers succeed?
6. If I shout, he’ll hear me.
7. If Roger comes, we’ll begin.
8. We will go at two o’clock.
9. Is it the sixth or seventh?
10. In April I only came once.

B. Read the following text without a dictionary, and try to get the message. Don’t worry if you don’t know some of the words.

A new branch of ant learning

Seeing ants gather around the early broad beans is not a sight to gladden the amateur gardener. For the ants are there because tiny aphids have arrive earlier. Aphids feed on the plant sap, and they produce a kind of nectar which the ants collect and carry off to their underground nests. Everybody wins – except the plants. But scientists at Cornell University in New York have been investigating another case of ant-plant behavior where both sides come out winning. It is described as ‘mutualism’, a state in which both plant and insect derive benefit from the other. The plant, a tropical shrub, has the ability to produce globular food bodies – comfortable ant-sized meals – on the interior of hollow stems. The stems make a cozy home for the ants, while the ants defend the plant against the hordes of other insects which would otherwise consume it. This seems sensible and beneficial relationship. But there is a twist to the tale or at least to its biochemistry. In some way, as yet not defined, the plant knows when the ants arrive to colonize its attractive apartments. When the ants are not there, it produces no food for them. When the yare there it produces food in abundance. How does the plant know when the ants are there?

Now, write T if the statement is true according to the text and F if the statement is false.

1. The ants consume the plant where they live.
2. Mutualism means give benefit to each other.
3. The plant grows in a place with a tropical climate.
4. The plant does not know whether the ants are there.
5. In a beneficial relationship, the ants win and the plant loose.

Speaking Section

How do you feel about these statements? Say a few words giving your opinion about some of them. For example:

- I strongly agree

- I agree

- It depends

- I have no idea

- I disagree

- I disagree strongly

1. Animals should not be kept in zoos.

2. It is wrong to hunt animals for sport.

3. People shouldn’t buy clothes made of animal fur.

4. It is wrong to kill animals for food.

5. Hunting and fishing are good, natural sports.

Translation Section

Translate the following facts about some animals.

Did you know?

- A giraffe’s heart weighs 22 kilos.

- A grizzly bear can run as fast as a horse.

- In a lion family, the females do more than 90% of the hunting.

- The first camel lived in North America.

- A new-born baby blue whale weighs as much as an adult African elephant.

- A new-born panda is smaller than a mouse, and weighs about 100 grams.

selamat datang

Hello students!

Selamat bergabung di mata kuliah English for Biology.
Mata kuliah ini akan melatih para mahasiswa untuk: (1) memahami teks yang ditulis dalam bahasa Inggris; (2) membuat reportase sederhana dalam bahasa Inggris, serta (3) menerjemahkan teks sederhana dari bahasa Inggris ke dalam bahasa Indonesia.
Teks yang dijadikan materi perkuliahan berhubungan erat dengan disiplin ilmu Biologi.
Selamat bergabung.

Salam Pendidikan,
Atti Herawati