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Welcome! This site is for students to practice their English and keep up to date with environmental issues.

TEN MINUTES OF ENGLISH A DAY!
You can find a mixture of reading, crosswords, videos and short English lessons: these will normally be vocabulary, but I may also treat you to some grammar!

There are now over 260 lessons on this blog. Look through the Blog archive, Post labels and Popular Posts to find what you want.

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''Let nature be your teacher''
William Wordsworth, poet, 1770-1850

''Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift''
Albert Einstein, physicist, 1879-1955

''... to find the word, or words, by which [an] idea may be most fitly and aptly expressed''
P.M. Roget, lexicographer, 1779-1869

Friday, 2 February 2018

Strips of wildflowers across farm fields could cut pesticide spraying

Level: advanced C1

Please click the 'Print Friendly' icon at the bottom of the page if you want to print this exercise.

Strips of wildflowers have been planted across England as part of a trial to boost the natural predators of pests that attack cereal crops.
Read this short article about it and then answer the following questions:

1) How many farms are involved?
2) How long is the trial period?
3) Where are wildflower strips usually planted?
4) How wide are the strips in the trial?
5) Where are similar trials also taking place?

And a bonus question:
what is the difference between strip and stripe?!



Answers below!



1) 15
2) five years
3) around fileds
4) 6m
5) in Switzerland

And the bonus question:
what is the difference between strip and stripe?!

There are many meanings for strip:
The one we are using here is:
'a long, narrow area of land.'

Stripe has fewer meanings
'A long, narrow band or strip differing in colour or texture from the surface either side of it.'

So, because the strips of wildflowers in this article are of different colour to th ecrops on eihter sied, you can also call them stripes!