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A. Previewing

Familiarize yourself with the following entries before watching a video about the traffic in India.

  1. Delhi - India's second-most-populous city after Mumbai and the largest city in terms of area
  2. provincial - in or from the parts of the country that are not a city
  3. highway - an important road that joins cities or towns
  4. dual carriageway - a road that has a division in the middle, dividing the lanes of traffic that are moving in opposite direction
  5. tractor - a motor vehicle with large back wheels and thick tires, used on farms for pulling machinery
  6. chap - a man
  7. wide-load – also called oversize/ overweight load, a load that exceeds the standard or ordinary size and/or weight limits for a specified portion of road, highway or other transport infrastructure
  8. bloody hell - a rude way of expressing great anger
  9. Ganesha - is one of the best-known and most widely worshipped deities (gods) in the Hindu pantheon. His image is found throughout India and Nepal.
  10. strewth – an exclamation,  expressing surprise or  disappointment. Generally used to add emphasis.
  11. holy moly – a slang, used as an exclamation to express surprise or astonishment

B. Comprehension

Watch the video and answer the following questions.


Video ©BBC.co.uk

Using vocabulary
Complete the following sentences using the words in the box. Use the correct grammatical form of the words.

Click here to show answers
Answers:

BBC Two - Top Gear - India Special - World's Most Dangerous Roads
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ8SxeL2CmA (with 2:28 to 3:10 removed)

0:04 –0:09 The journey to Delhi would give us our first taste of life on provincial Indian highways.
0:09 – 0:14 An experience which we've been told would be terrifying.
0:18 – 0:21 Let me give you some alarming statistics.
0:21 – 0:25 Throughout India there are now 74 Million vehicles
0:25 – 0:27 roughly twice what we have in the UK.
0:27 – 0:30 So, you'd expect the death rate to be twice as high.
0:30 – 0:35 In Britain around about 3000 people a year are killed on the roads.
0:35 – 0:41 Last year in India, it was 196,000. That's 22 an hour.
0:45 – 0:52 This country has the most dangerous roads in the worldand they get worse at night.
0:52 – 0:54 This was a problem for us.
0:54 – 0:59 Because as night fell, our overnight halt was still 80 miles away.
0:59 – 1:04 …and we were on the most dangerous kind of road …a dual carriageway...
1:10 – 1:13 Jesus Christ! That car is going on the wrong side of the road.
1:16 – 1:18 Unlit tractor up ahead chaps.
1:22 – 1:26 That's completely unlit! An unlit wide load.
1:26 – 1:28 In the dark on an unlit road.
1:30 – 1:33 Whoah! A man on the road... God!
1:35 – 1:37 Ooh this is tight...
1:40 – 1:43 Whooah! Oh that was scary!
1:44 – 1:46 Bloody hell!
1:47 – 1:50 You know in England, when a child is badly behaved the mother says,
1:50 – 1:52 "Your father will be very cross with you when he gets home!"
1:52 – 1:54 Here it's different. It's always,
1:54 – 1:58 "Your father will be very cross with you, IF he gets home!"
1:59 – 2:01 Oh God! Oh God!
2:05 – 2:07 Jesus! Look at that!
2:10 – 2:12 I mean Ganesh look at that!
2:14 – 2:15 Blinded!
2:16 – 2:18 Yep, can't see a thing!
2:20 – 2:22 That lorry is very close!
2:25 – 2:29 #@!&... Road narrows for no obvious reason.
2:31 – 2:37 God's Truth! ...Two nerve jangling hours later, we arrived
2:37 – 2:39 at the town where we'll be staying the night.
2:39 – 2:45 And as we re-fuelled, I took my revenge!
2:54 – 2:58 Funny! Very Funny!
2:58 – 3:01 What James has done is turned my heater up to full
3:01 – 3:04 and then removed the heater knob
3:04 – 3:07 so I can't turn it back down again.
3:07 – 3:09 What a monumental bell end he is!
3:14 – 3:19 The next morning, the dual-carriageway madness continued.
3:19 – 3:23 Only, now we could actually see what was going to kill us.
3:24 – 3:27 Oh! Ah! Oh God! Now look!
3:27 – 3:31 Holy Moly!
3:32 – 3:36 A man here just got out of his lorry in the middle of the road!
3:36 – 3:39 Whoooooah!
3:44 – 3:47 I wonder how much else we missed last night
3:47 – 3:50 What else was going on that we never saw!
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