Read and give the title to the text below, draw the schemes to the first paragraph of the text and make up the plan of its second paragraph.

Example: Living conditions Places of living

 

Life exists in many places on the earth, often in spite of very difficult conditions. In the Arctic regions, the temperature may fall to 60 degrees below zero, while in deserts it may climb to over 120 degrees. Some animals live under the immense pressure of the deep seas, and others live near the tops of the highest mountains. But no matter where they exist, all living things must have certain necessary conditions. Let us see what these are: living things need oxygen, living things must have water, living things need the proper temperature, living thing must have food.

Most people think that plants are not alive in the same sense that animals are, or that there is some fundamental difference between plant and animal life. But this is not so. Plants and animals have much in common. Their more important points of resemblance are: 1) the living substance of plants and animals is organized into protoplasm. Protoplasm is the basic material of all living systems and its general properties are fundamentally the same in each system both in plants and animals. 2) The living matter is organized in both plants and animals into microscopic units called cells. 3) Certain vital processes take place in plant bodies in the same manner as animal bodies. These processes are respiration, digestion, assimilation, growth and reproduction. 4) Both animals and plants cannot live without water, air, food, light and moderate amount of heat. They both are of different shapes, sizes and colours. In fact, the differences are not so many as the likenesses although they are more apparent, for only there are important, namely: plants are not conscious, they are unable to move about, they make their own food.

Match the words from column A with its meaning from column B

A B

To exist living

Immense to name

To form certain

To need basic

Vital to require

To call to live

Definite great, huge

Fundamental to build

 

Answer the following questions using the information from

text 1.14:

1. What is the basic material of all living systems?

2. What elements does living matter consist of?

3 Are plants and animals similar?

4 What are the differences between them?

1.18 Work in groups. Read the text and say what new information about plants and animals you have got from it:

Biology is the study of living things. In studying them we learn the relations of plants and animals to one another, with the world about them and how we can control them. Biology is commonly divided into two branches – botany and zoology. Both animal and plant life is continually changing and there are great differences and likenesses between them.

All organisms are capable of responding to changes in the environment by reacting to external stimuli. In animals this coordination and response to stimuli are accomplished by sense organs and the endocrine and nervous systems.

Plants lack a nervous system and specific sense organs but they respond to external stimuli and chemical coordination in somewhat analogous to that regulated by the endocrine system of animals.

Both plants and animals have hormones. Thus substances are produced in one part of the organism and in very small amounts influence specific physiological processes when transported to another part of the organism. Plant hormones, however, are not produced in specific glands as animal hormones are, and they differ chemically from the hormones of animals, being in general simpler substances. Other substances, which act like hormones but are not known to be produced by the plant, are called plant regulators. The study of plant hormones and these synthetic substances is one of active fields of plant physiological research, and their use in agriculture has become very important.

 

Complete the gaps in the following text with the words from

the list:

external, apparent, chemical, varied, variety, unit, animal

In (1)... appearance plants are usually green. Some plants have (2)... and colourful flowers and others have no (3)... blossoms. Among animals there is great (4)... of sizes, shapes and colours. The basic difference between plants and animals lays in the (5)... of structure and function of each, namely, the cell. Plant cells have a cell wall, which is actually non-living in (6)... nature. (7)... cells do not have this.