Deserts
Before Reading
Date palms are important for desert people and you
can find them near an oasis. People eat the dates or give
them to their goats and other animals.
Activity 1 BEFORE READING
1 f
2 a
3 d
4 c
5 b
6 e
Chapter 5 WHILE READING
1 Jerboas can jump up to three metres.
2 Bactrian camels have two humps and live wild in the
Gobi.
3 Scorpions can live for one year without food.
4 Fennec foxes have very big ears and white coats.
5 Dromedary camels have one hump and do not live
wild in deserts.
Activity 2 BEFORE READING
Open answers.
While Reading
Chapter 6 WHILE READING
1 Where . . .? They live in houses in towns near the
desert in countries like Syria, Egypt, and Saudi
Arabia.
2 Who . . .? The Sheikh.
3 Where . . .? In the house or tent.
4 How many . . .? Three.
5 What . . .? Camel’s milk.
6 Why . . .? Because the world is changing quickly.
They need to change too but they don’t always want
to lose the traditional parts of their lives.
Chapter 1 WHILE READING
1 FA desert has less than 25 centimetres of rain
every year.
2 FIn 1971 there was some rain in the Atacama
Desert.
3 T
4 FIn the Sahara, the temperatures can go down to 0
°C.
5 T
6 T
7 FMore than one quarter of the world is desert.
Chapter 7 WHILE READING
1 Thousands of years ago, nomads looked for salt in
the Sahara.
2 In Mali, people put four big pieces of salt onto
every camel.
3 People found oil under the Arabian Desert in the
1930s.
4 A lot of the world’s copper is in the Atacama Desert
in Chile.
5 The huge mine in Chile is 4.5 kilometres long.
6 People need sand to make bottles and windows.
Chapter 2 WHILE READING
1 b 2 c 3 c 4 a 5 b 6 c 7 a
Chapter 3 WHILE READING
1 + e Thousands of years ago, the Aborigines began to
live in the big, dry deserts of Australia.
2 + g Traditional Tuareg families live in huge tents in
the desert.
3 + b At night, the San people sleep in small homes of
trees and plants.
4 + f Families in the Thar Desert in India live in
houses of sand and grass.
5 + c The people in Coober Pedy in Australia have got
homes under the desert.
6 + a Tuareg people wear blue scarves over their heads
and faces.
7 + d The women of the Thar Desert carry water in
bottles on their heads.
Chapter 8 WHILE READING
1
2
3
4
5
6
Chapter 9 WHILE READING
Chapter 4 WHILE READING
1 The Atacama Desert is one of the driest places in
the world.
2 You can only find Joshua trees in the Mojave
Desert.
3 The Sahara Desert is the world’s biggest desert.
4 Nomads in the Gobi Desert live in gers.
5 You can find very old mummies in the Atacama
Desert.
All desert plants are adapted to dry weather and they
can live without much water. Many desert plants have
huge roots – these sometimes go down deep into the
rocks.
Desert plants like the famous saguaro cactus live for a
very long time – sometimes 200 years! But others like
the paper daisy only live for a short time. They leave
their seeds in the sand and only come to life when it
rains.
oxford bookworms stage 1
Riyadh is much bigger than Alice Springs.
Long ago, Timbuktu was a very rich town.
In Timbuktu people changed salt for gold.
People used soil to make the buildings in Timbuktu.
A lot of people came to study in the city.
The Festival in the Desert is a music festival.
1
© Oxford university press photocopiable
activities Answers
Janet Hardy-Gould
activities Answers
6 The very hot, dry Death Valley is in the Mojave
Desert.
7 You can sometimes find snow in the Gobi Desert.
8 The world’s hottest temperature was in the Sahara
Desert.
Dear Dominic
We’re in Coober Pedy in South Australia. It’s a really
unusual town – a lot of the homes are built down in
the rock. We’re staying in the Desert Cave hotel and
our rooms are right under the desert. It’s nice and cool
there and the temperature is about 24 °C. Outside it’s
sometimes 40 °C!
Coober Pedy is famous for its opals – beautiful stones
of many colours from under the ground. Tomorrow
we’re going to visit an opal mine.
See you soon
Simon
Chapter 10 WHILE READING
1
2
3
4
Desertification.
In Oltenia, Romania.
Across China and sometimes into Korea and Japan.
They are beginning to grow a lot of trees next to the
desert.
5 It is when you go up and down dunes very quickly
in a 4x4 car.
6 In the Atacama, Gobi, and Sahara Deserts, and in
Antarctica.
7 Plants for food.
Activity 3 AFTER READING
Open answers.
Activity 4 AFTER READING
Gobi Desert
Size: Over 1,300,000 square kilometres.
Location: China and Mongolia
Name: It means ‘place without water’ in Mongolian.
People: Mongolian nomads.
Desert type: Cold.
Landscape: Rocks.
Interesting fact: Temperatures can go down to -30 °C.
Mojave Desert
Size: 57,000 square kilometres.
Location: California, USA.
Name: Comes from the Mojave tribe.
People: The Mojave tribe hundreds of years ago. Not
many people live in the open desert now.
Desert type: Hot.
Landscape: Dry sand, deep ravines and big rocks.
Interesting fact: It had the world’s second hottest
temperature.
Atacama Desert
Size: 181,300 square kilometres
Location: Chile
Name: Comes from the Atacama tribe.
People: Some of the Atacama tribe still live there.
Desert type: Cool.
Landscape: No trees.
Interesting fact: You can find mummies here.
After Reading
Activity 1 AFTER READING
1
V
3
4
G
O
U
O
A
T
S
C
I
A
S
7
C
O
R
O
N
U
R
N
R
E
D
T
P
I
O
N
9
S
11
R
E
13
A
8
P
I
T
F
P
M
2
E
5
S
6
12
L
O
O
A
S
V
I
N
L
O
T
W
E
Activity 2 AFTER READING
Dear Lily
I’m in Timbuktu – the most famous desert city in the
world!
Long ago, it was a very rich town and the people built
beautiful buildings from soil and water – isn’t that
wonderful? The University of Sankore from 1581 is the
most important one, I think.
This morning we saw some huge camels with salt from
the Sahara on their backs. But later, the wind suddenly
began to blow sand into the streets from the Sahara
and we all ran back to our hotel!
love,
Amy
oxford bookworms stage 1
2
© Oxford university press photocopiable