Part 1. Warming up.

　　A. Keywords. -est.

　　Vocabulary. peninsula, altitude, trench,

　　Greenland, the Sahara Desert, the Caspian Sea, Lake Superior,

　　Mt.Qomolangma (Mt.Everest), Baykal, Mariana Trench, the Nile.

　　Here are some statements of some superlative world geographical statistics.

　　Listen carefully and complete the following chart.

　　Pay special attention to the numbers.

　　The biggest continent in the world is Asia.

　　It covers 16,998,000 square miles.

　　The Pacific Ocean is the largest ocean with 64,186,300 square miles.

　　Which is the biggest island? It's Greenland.

　　It occupies an area of 840,000 square miles.

　　The Arabia peninsula is the largest peninsula and has an area of 1,000,000 square miles.

　　Do you know which is the largest desert?

　　Yes, it's the Sahara Desert in north African.

　　It covers 3,320,000 square miles.

　　The biggest saltwater lake is the Caspian Sea which is 143,244 square miles large.

　　Lake Superior is the biggest fresh water lake and it covers a total area of 32,483 square miles.

　　The smallest continent is Oceania with an area of 2,966,000 square miles.

　　And the smallest ocean is the Arctic Ocean with 5, 105,700 square miles.

　　You all know the world highest peak, Don't you?

　　Mt. Qomolangma or Mt. Everest is 29,028 feet above the sea level.

　　In contrast, the lowest altitude in the world is the Dead Sea,

　　1,312 feet below the sea level or you can say -(negative)1,312 feet.

　　The deepest lake is Baykal in Russian, the depth is 5,315 feet.

　　Mariana Trench near the Philippines is the deepest oceanic trench with a depth of 36,198 feet.

　　The longest river in the world is the Nile in African.

　　It's 4,144 miles long.

　　B. Keywords. country, population, census, estimate, rank.

　　Vocabulary. census, estimate, federation, statistics,

　　Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria.

　　You are going to hear some sentences telling you the 12 most populous countries in the world.

　　Listen carefully and supply the missing information.

　　Pay special attention to the numbers.

　　The country with the largest population in the world is China.

　　According to 1997 census, the total population was 1,243,738,000.

　　The second largest in population is India.

　　It listed a population of 955,220,000 in 1997.

　　And the third largest is United States, with its estimated population of 267,901,000 in 1997.

　　Which country is the forth largest in population?

　　It's Indonesia, about 199,867,000 people live there.

　　Brazil ranks the fifth in its population.

　　There the population was 159,884,000.

　　Next comes the Russian Federation, with the population of 147,105,000.

　　The seventh in line is Pakistan, with an estimated population of 138,150,000.

　　Japan is the country with eighth largest population.

　　Its population estimated in 1997 reached 125,638,000.

　　The next largest country in population is Bangladesh.

　　The estimated population was 122, 013,000 in 1997.

　　Nigeria in Africa ranks the tenth in its population.

　　There are about 118,369,000 people living there.

　　The eleventh? Mexico.

　　According to statistics, its population is 96, 400,000 in 1997.

　　And last, the twelfth largest is Germany.

　　Its 1997 census showed it had a population of 82,071,000.

　　C. Keywords. speaker, language.

　　Vocabulary. Bengali, Hindi, Portuguese,

　　Javanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Telugu,

　　Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Ukrainian.

　　In the following passage, you're going to hear the names of some languages and the numbers of native speakers of these languages.

　　Listen carefully and fill in the missing languages and numbers.

　　Do you know which languages spoken by more than 40 million people?

　　Chinese has the largest number of speakers,More than 1,300 million.

　　Next, Spanish is spoken by 332 million people.

　　The next on the line is English, which has more 322 million speakers.

　　No.4, Bengali, is spoken by 189 million people.

　　Next comes Hindi, the language spoken chiefly in India, which has 182 million speakers.

　　Portuguese and Russian are next on the line, and they are both spoken by 170 million people.

　　No.8 Japanese is spoken by 125 million.

　　Next, German has 98 million speakers.

　　While Javanese has 75.5 million.

　　we have Korean on the list, with 75 million.

　　And it's followed by French, which is spoken by 72 million.

　　No.13, Vietnamese is spoken by 67 million.

　　And Telugu is spoken by 66 million.

　　Next, we have Marathi on the list, and it has 64 million speakers.

　　Marathi is followed by Tamil, with 63 million speakers.

　　Next comes Turkish, The language spoken in Turkey, and it has 59 million speakers.

　　No.18, Urdu is spoken by 58 million people.

　　Gujarati has 44 million speakers.

　　And polish is also spoken by 44 million people.

　　No.21, which is 42.5 million people speak is Arabic.

　　And last, the number of people who speak Ukrainian is 41 million.