Joy English · Level C1 · Historyjoy-english.com
How ancient traders measured distance
Name:Date:
Follow a historical explanation with time clauses and a cleft sentence.
Listen to each sentence and write what you hear.
Audio and answer checking: https://joy-english.com/listening-lessons/how-ancient-traders-measured-distance
Words to know
- merchant
- A person who buys and sells goods.
- terrain
- The type of land in an area.
- elapsed
- Passed, when talking about time.
- imprecise
- Not exact.
Answer key
- Before accurate maps existed, merchants often described a journey by the time it took rather than the distance covered.'Rather than' joins two ideas. 'Distance covered' is a reduced passive clause: the distance that was covered.
- A route might be described as six days by camel, a figure that varied with the weather and the load.'A figure that varied' adds information about the number. 'Camel' is said CAM-el.
- Sailors, meanwhile, relied on the stars and on careful records of speed, direction and elapsed time.'Meanwhile' signals a change of subject. 'Elapsed' ends in a t sound: e-LAPST.
- Such methods were imprecise, yet they were sufficient for generations of traders who valued experience over exactness.'Sufficient' is stressed on the second syllable: suf-FI-cient. 'Exactness' ends with the sounds -ness.
- It was only when travel became fast and frequent that a single shared standard of distance became essential.This cleft sentence, 'It was only when ... that ...', stresses the moment of change. 'Travel became' links the l and b.