Vocabulary and grammar: Antarctic adventure

Vinsight Phrasal verbs: stages in a journey

1Choose the correct words to complete the sentences about a journey to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. 

Walking up Mount Kilimanjaro

1Sally, Claire, Pete and I set outup very early. We travelled by Land Rover to the start of our walk up Kilimanjaro.

2The Land Rover broke updown about half an hour from the start, so we got out and started walking.

3After a few kilometres, we came overacross some people who were on their way down.

4At this point, unfortunately, Sally turned backoff because she felt ill.

5She went downback the mountain to the village at the bottom of the valley.

6The rest of us decided not to give downup and continued the long and difficult walk.

7We carried offon to the top and enjoyed amazing views. Kilimanjaro is almost 6,000 metres high, and it’s the highest mountain in the world that you can walk up.

8After a few hours, we began to walk down. We stopped offon at Millennium Camp for food and water on the way.

VPersonality adjectives

2Choose the negative word in each group. 

• 1braveunkindhonest

• 2meanfunnytalkative

• 3generouslazyquiet

• 4kindhard-workingdishonest

• 5cowardlyextrovertedfunny

VPersonality adjectives

3Read about explorers on an expedition to Antarctica and choose an adjective in exercise 2 to desctibe each person. 

• 1Larissa was the first person to walk across dangerous places during the expedition.

• 2Belinda paid for the expedition and bought equipment for the other explorers.

• 3Jerry hardly did any work on the trip.

• 4Fatima never stopped speaking during the whole expedition.

• 5Karen hardly spoke to anybody for the whole two weeks.

• 6Edward told everyone that he’d been to Antarctica before. This was a lie.

Present perfect with for and since

4Complete the sentences with for or since. 

• 1There have been permanent research stations on the continent of Antarctica forsince 1904.

• 2The Argentinians have had an Antarctic station forsince about fifty years longer than the Americans and the Russians.

• 3ForSince the early part of last century, thirty countries have built an Antarctic station, including India and South Korea.

• 4People live at some of these stations all year round. Antarctica has had a permanent population of about 1,000 people forsince the last five years.

• 5Scientific researchers have lived at the Amundsen-Scott Station at the South Pole forsince the Americans built it over fifty years ago.

• 6McMurdo Station is Antarctica’s biggest station. It has been in operation forsince governments signed the Antarctic Treaty in the 1950s.

Present perfect with for and since

5Choose the correct words to complete the text. 

So, ¹how longhow often have I been interested in polar exploration? Well, ²forsince I was a small child, I ³readhave read lots of stories about famous Arctic and Antarctic explorers, like Scott and Amundsen, who came from Europe or North America. However, I ⁴didn’t knowhaven’t known anything about Inuit explorers until my sixteenth birthday, two weeks ago, when my grandfather ⁵gavehas given me a book about Natkusiak. I ⁶spenthave spent the last two weeks reading about his life and although I ⁷didn’t finishhaven’t finished reading it ⁸yetalready, I can confidently say that it’s an amazing story. The Inuit are traditional people who ⁹livedhave lived in the Arctic regions of Greenland, Canada, the USA and Siberia ¹⁰forsince over a thousand years. They’re still there now. Natkusiak was one of these people. During the Canadian polar expeditions of 1908–1912, he ¹¹ledhas led explorers from North America across thousands of kilometres of snow and ice. Thanks to him, explorers were able to make maps of huge areas of the Arctic.

6  Describe a famous explorer or adventurer that you know about. What are or were they like? What have they achieved? Speak for no longer than one minute.

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