Unit 6 It’s your turn

Lesson 6.1 Define and describe things

Read and listen

1. Read and listen to a girl’s presentation in class.

The images that you can see on the board show the connections inside our brains. If you’re wondering whose brains they are, the ones on the left are a male brain. There are more connections between the front, where movements coordinated, and the back, which deals with sight. That suggests a brain that’s wired for action and doing one thing at a time. The female brain has more connections between the two sides, which might explain why girls are better at doing two things at the same time than boys, some of whom find multitasking really hard. So the images confirm what we already knew: Girls are superior beings.

          Comprehension check.

1. What do the images show?
2. Whose brain has more connections between two sides?
3. How did the writer comment at the end?

2. Read the article.

Still learning about the brain.

For a long time ago we completely misunderstood what the brain does. The ancient Egyptians, for whom it had little importance, removed the brain from the bodies which they mummified. One of the people who first started to think seriously about its function was the Greek philosopher Aristotle. He thought the heart, which beats faster when you get excited, was the organ in which our thoughts and feelings formed and that the brain simply controlled our body temperature.

We live at a time when the brain is much less of a mystery. We know the brain is divided into parts, all of which have a specific function, and that a quarter of it deals with just one sense: vision. We know it’s the organ in our body which uses the most energy, that makes of all the food which we eat is needed to feed the brain. But’s it’s also the organ about which have the most to learn.

Comprehension check

1. Who was one of the people to think about the function of the brain?
2. What controls our body temperature?
3. What deals a quarter of the brain?
4. What are the different types of senses?

3. The All-body Quiz
4. Christiaaan Barnard carried out the first successful transplant of this organ.

He was born in South Africa.

Question: Which organ?

2. James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the helix structure of this molecule.

Their work won them a Nobel Prize in 1962.

Question: Which molecule?

3. These organs filter the blood and remove things. They are each about the size of your fist. Your body doesn’t need these things.

Question: Which organs?

4. REM sleep is a time in your sleep. During REM sleep, your eyes move rapidly.

An important activity happens in REM sleep.

Questions: What activity?

5. The eye turns light into electrochemical impulses. The only visible part of your brain is located here.

Question: What part?

6. Dolly was the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell.

Her name became famous around the world in 1997.

Question: What mammal was she?

7. This technique works by stimulating our bodies to produce antibodies. It has saved millions of lives. These antibodies can fight a particular disease.

Question: What technique?

8. This organs is one of five body parts. The body parts have no obvious purpose.

The organ is located in your intestines.

Question: Which organ?