SSC English First Paper | Unit: 4, Lesson 2 | Are We Aware? | Are we too many?

A. Read the text and do the following project work.

The next day when the teacher came to the class and was about to start the lesson, Shanti Barua stood up and said, "Teacher, can I ask you a question, please?"

"Go ahead, Shanti," said the teacher.

"In our last class, we heard Jamil's story of how too many people made the ferry boat sink. I have also seen crowds of people at the bus stand, railway station, launch and steamer ghats. It is not uncommon to sec people travelling on top of a bus or train and meeting with tragic accidents. My question is: Are we really too many people in the country?"

"Thank you, Shanti. Please sit down."

The teacher then looked round the class and askcd,"How many of you have the same question in mind?"

Almost all the hands went up.

"Okay," the teacher continued. "Finding the right answer to this question is very important for us—for our national development. So we will look at this issue with some facts so that we can find out if we are really too many or not."

Project work: Discuss in groups and cany out a survey on the topic: "Too many people" You can do the following things:

• Select only one small area such as your village or locality in the town / city where you live.

• Find out its area. (You can do it by walking around it. At normal speed you can cover about one kilometer in ten minutes.)

• Find out the number of people living in it.

• Find out about the people's occupations, unemployment and poverty.

B. Listen to the Audio. Listen how the teacher talks about the population of Bangladesh and answer the following questions.

 Listening text 3 

Questions

Tick the best answer.

1. Bangladesh is a small country, because 

a its land area is small.

b it has about 150 million people.

c it is the 8th most populous country in the world.

d it has limited resources.

2. Density of population in any country means 

a all the people in a country.

b number of people living in one square kilometer, 

c 1000 people living in one square kilometer, 

d too many people living in one square kilometer

3. Our yearly population growth rate is 

a 1.9%        

b 1.40%

c 2.1%       

d 1.1%

4. Our birth rate is-----------per thousand.

a 6.1

b 1.40

c 20.1

d 14

5. What will be the size of our population in 2050?

a 150 m

b 197 m

c 217 m

d 250 m

C. Listen again and answer these questions.

1. How do you get the population growth rate of a country?

2. Why will the population of Bangladesh be so large in 2050?

D. Read the chart and fill in the gaps with information from the table Use comparatives and superlatives where necessary. The chart shows facts about some countries including Bangladesh.

Bangladesh Sri Lanka India China

	Bangladesh	Sri Lanka	India	China
Land area	144,000 sq km (approx)	65,600 sq km	3,287,590 sqkm	9,600,000 sqkm
Population	150m	20 m	1.15b	1.33b
Density of	1000	332	382	143
population
Birth rate (per 1000)	20.1	17.42	22.22	12.29
Death rate	6.1	5.92	7.48	7.03
(per 1000)
Growth rate	1.40%	0.7%	1.41%	0.5%

In terms of land area Bangladesh is (1) (larger) than Sri Lanka, but (2)--------than India. China is, of course, (3)----------of all the four countries. Sri Lanka has the (4)--------population among the four countries. However, China has the (5)--------population shown in the chart. In fact, China has the (6)---------population in the world and India has the (7)---------highest population in the world. On the other hand, China   has  the  (8)----------growth rate among the 4 countries. Bangladesh has (9)----------growth rate than India, but higher birth rate than (10)----------and (11)-----------

E. Write a paragraph about the population situation of any of the countries above. Use the facts given in the chart in D above.

If you want to read the next lesson of this unit please click the link below:

Lesson: 3 | Our food and shelter