Assignment C - Part 2.i
Authentic Text
✓ Check the Class Description and Notes on Part 2 on the assignment platform before you begin.
✓ The text should be 500 - 700 words long. (4-5 minutes for listening texts).
✓ In this document, provide a copy of the reading text or a transcript of the listening text you
have chosen.
✓ Ensure the text is referenced, and if you have selected a listening text or video, provide a link.
✓ If you choose a reading text, you can shorten and/or adapt it slightly.
✓ Please supply a copy of the original and your adapted version.
✓ If you have adapted the text, briefly explain the decisions you've made about changing the text
in section b) of the essay.
✓ Highlight 12 vocabulary items (words or phrases) which would be useful to pre-teach.
Clusters of Weather Extremes Will Increase
Risks to Corn Crops, Society
Drought caused an Iowa corn crop to fail in 2012. As the changing climate increases the
frequency of extreme events, the risk will double that corn harvests will fail in at least three of
the world’s five major breadbasket regions in the same year.
To assess how climate warming will change risks such as crop failures and wildfires, it’s
necessary to look at how the risks are likely to interact.
Troubles never come singly, the proverb says. A new NASA study shows that the old saying will
become increasingly true of climate troubles in a warmer world. The study shows that extreme
weather events such as floods and heat waves will increasingly cluster closer in time and space,
heightening the risks of crop failures, wildfires, and other hazards to society.
By the year 2100, increases in heat waves, drought, and excessive rainfall combined will double
the risk of climate-related failures of corn harvests in at least three of the world’s six major
corn-growing regions in the same year, according to the study, published in Environmental
Research Letters. The U.S. Midwest is at the highest risk of being the site of one of these
multiple harvest failures.
Many previous studies have modelled changes in a single climate indicator, such as the number
of days above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) in a certain region. But the greatest
impacts usually come when extremes occur simultaneously or in close sequence. For example,
Western states are all too familiar with the scenario where excessive heat and drought fuel a
wildfire, and then heavy rainfall creates a new hazard, landslides, in the burned area.
© 2020 The TEFL Academy. All rights reserved. 1
Authentic Text
✓ Check the Class Description and Notes on Part 2 on the assignment platform before you begin.
✓ The text should be 500 - 700 words long. (4-5 minutes for listening texts).
✓ In this document, provide a copy of the reading text or a transcript of the listening text you
have chosen.
✓ Ensure the text is referenced, and if you have selected a listening text or video, provide a link.
✓ If you choose a reading text, you can shorten and/or adapt it slightly.
✓ Please supply a copy of the original and your adapted version.
✓ If you have adapted the text, briefly explain the decisions you've made about changing the text
in section b) of the essay.
✓ Highlight 12 vocabulary items (words or phrases) which would be useful to pre-teach.
Clusters of Weather Extremes Will Increase
Risks to Corn Crops, Society
Drought caused an Iowa corn crop to fail in 2012. As the changing climate increases the
frequency of extreme events, the risk will double that corn harvests will fail in at least three of
the world’s five major breadbasket regions in the same year.
To assess how climate warming will change risks such as crop failures and wildfires, it’s
necessary to look at how the risks are likely to interact.
Troubles never come singly, the proverb says. A new NASA study shows that the old saying will
become increasingly true of climate troubles in a warmer world. The study shows that extreme
weather events such as floods and heat waves will increasingly cluster closer in time and space,
heightening the risks of crop failures, wildfires, and other hazards to society.
By the year 2100, increases in heat waves, drought, and excessive rainfall combined will double
the risk of climate-related failures of corn harvests in at least three of the world’s six major
corn-growing regions in the same year, according to the study, published in Environmental
Research Letters. The U.S. Midwest is at the highest risk of being the site of one of these
multiple harvest failures.
Many previous studies have modelled changes in a single climate indicator, such as the number
of days above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) in a certain region. But the greatest
impacts usually come when extremes occur simultaneously or in close sequence. For example,
Western states are all too familiar with the scenario where excessive heat and drought fuel a
wildfire, and then heavy rainfall creates a new hazard, landslides, in the burned area.
© 2020 The TEFL Academy. All rights reserved. 1
