Joy English · Level C1 · Naturejoy-english.com
The patient strategy of the forest
Name:Date:
Follow a nature talk with scientific vocabulary and cautious, hedged claims.
Listen to each sentence and write what you hear.
Audio and answer checking: https://joy-english.com/listening-lessons/the-patient-strategy-of-the-forest
Words to know
- intricate
- Having many small, connected parts.
- fungi
- Living things such as mushrooms and moulds.
- sapling
- A young tree.
- by-product
- A secondary result of making or doing something else.
Answer key
- A forest may look still, but beneath the soil an intricate network of fungi connects the roots of many trees.'Fungi' can be said 'FUN-guy' or 'FUN-jy'. 'Intricate' is stressed on the first syllable: IN-tri-cate.
- Through this network, trees appear to exchange water and nutrients, which may help weaker saplings survive a dry summer.'Appear to' and 'may' are hedges: the claim is cautious. 'Nutrients' is stressed on the first syllable.
- Scientists are still debating how much of this sharing is deliberate and how much is simply a by-product of growth.'By-product' can also be written as one word or two. 'Deliberate' as an adjective ends with a weak -it sound.
- What seems certain is that a forest behaves less like a crowd of rivals than like a loosely connected community.'What seems certain' is a noun clause used as the subject. 'Less ... than' compares two images.
- Cutting down a single old tree can therefore affect far more of the surrounding woodland than we might expect.'Far more' strengthens the comparison. 'Cutting down' means felling. 'Woodland' has stress on the first syllable.