besides, mother tongue, experience, absolutely, fluently, to be honest, point

Babak Saberian is a translator who works for IRIB. Today, he is hosting Meysam in his office. Meysam is a high school student. He is interviewing Mr Saberian for his school project.

Meysam: Thank you Mr Saberian for inviting me to your office.

Mr Saberian: You're welcome!

Meysam: I heard you know three languages. Is that right?

Mr Saberian: Well, actually four languages.

Meysam: Four! Really?! What languages do you know?

Mr Saberian: Besides my mother tongue, Persian, I know English, French and Russian well.

Meysam: Interesting! And when did you learn them?

Mr Saberian: I began learning English at school when I was thirteen. Then I began learning French in a language institute when I was fifteen. And I learned Russian when I was a university student in Moscow.

Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting.

Meysam: Can you use all of them fluently?

Mr Saberian: I know all of them well, but I use English more.

Meysam: OK. Do you think language learning should start as early as possible?

Mr Saberian: My experience says interest and hard work are really more important than age.

Meysam: Hmm... that's an important point. May I know what your favorite language is ? English, French, or Russian?

Mr Saberian: To be honest, I enjoy using them all, but my favorite language is absolutely my mother tongue!

Answer the following questions orally.

1. Where does Mr Saberian work?

2. Was Mr Saberian living in a foreign country when he was 13?

3. How many languages do you know?

A. Look, Read and Practice.

Mazandaran is one of the best farming regions of Iran.

Does water really exist on Mars?

Asia is the largest continent of the world.

Spanish is Diego's native language.

Dictionary prices range from $5 to $15.

Rice is the most popular food in Iran.

Imagine you are traveling in space.

We are living in the twenty-first century.

Today, less than 40 percent of people live in villages.

Scientists say that by 2050, wind power can meet the needs of the world.

Our teacher tried to explain the new word by means of sign language.

B. Look, Read and Practice.

society: a large group of people who live together.

We live in an Islamic society.

ability: the physical or mental power or skill to do something.

Human's ability to talk makes him different from animals.

vary: to be different from each other

In some cities, prices vary from shop to shop.

make up: to form a thing, amount or number

China makes up 18% of the world's population.

despite: without taking any notice of

I enjoy the weekend, despite the bad weather.

C. Go to Part II of your Workbook and do A and B.

Languages of the World

Language is a system of communication.

It uses written and spoken forms.

People use language to communicate with each other in a society.

They exchange knowledge, beliefs, wishes, and feelings through it.

Languages vary greatly from region to region.

They are so different that a person may not understand the language of someone from another region, country or continent.

It is not surprising to hear that today about 7000 languages exist in the world.

There are more than 2000 languages in Africa, 1000 in the Americas, more than 2250 in Asia, about 230 in Europe, and more than 1300 in Oceania.

Native speakers of these languages range in number from very large, with hundreds of millions of speakers, to very small, with fewer than 10 speakers.

The most popular language in the world is Chinese.

More than one billion people in the world speak Chinese.

Interestingly, English has fewer native speakers than Chinese, but there are about one billion learners of English all around the world.

They learn English as an international language.

About fifty percent of the world's languages have fewer than 5000 speakers.

In the beginning of the twenty-first century, 204 languages had fewer than 10 speakers and 344 languages had between 10 and 99 speakers.

The 548 languages with fewer than 99 speakers make up nearly 8 percent of the world's languages.

We call them 'endangered languages'.

As the speakers of such languages grow old and die, their languages will die, too.

All languages are really valuable, despite their differences.

Every language is an amazing means of communication that meets the needs of its own speakers.

It is impossible to imagine the world without language.

Therefore, we should respect all languages, no matter how different they are and how many speakers they have.

You can scan a reading passage to look for and find specific information quickly such as a number, a name, a word, or a phrase.

Follow these steps to scan:

Make a clear picture in your mind of the information you are looking for.

Look for that information.

Move your eyes quickly across the text.

Don't read every word.

When you find the information, stop, read the sentence and mark the information.

A. Scan the passage for the following numbers. Match them with the information. There is one extra number.

1. The number of languages with speakers fewer than 10.

2. The percent of endangered languages

3. The number of languages with speakers fewer than 99.

4. The number of languages in Oceania

B. Scan the passage for the proper nouns.

a) The language with more than one billion learners:

b) The continent with one thousand languages:

c) The language with the largest number of native speakers:

C. Scan the passage and answer the following questions.

a) How many languages are there in the world?

b) What is the number of endangered languages?

c) Which continent has the largest number of languages in the world?

D. Read the sentences; put T for true and F for false. If a sentence is false, correct it.

a) Through languages, people can exchange only knowledge.

b) When a language has no speaker, it dies out.

c) Only a few languages can meet the needs of their own speakers.

Synonyms are words with similar meanings, for example, 'hard' and ' difficult' ;or 'begin' and 'start' are synonyms.

Learning synonyms is a good way to develop our vocabulary.

A. Write the words that mean the same under the picture where they belong.

small, fast, powerful, tiny, quick, simple, strong, easy

B. Two of the words in each group are synonyms. Find them.

a) amazing/ probable/ wonderful

b) seek/search for/ exercise.

c) quit/ live/ give up

d) fortunately/ luckily/ really

C. Look back at the Reading to find synonyms for the words.

a) In paragraph 2, find a synonym for 'largely'.

b) In paragraph 4, find a synonym for 'nearly'.

c) In paragraph 5, find a synonym for 'to form'.

d) In paragraph 6, find a synonym for 'to think of'.