way2go! 7. Practice Pack, Arbeitsheft

18 UNIT 03 | Coming home Read the text about the problems of small towns. Some words are missing. Change the word in brackets to form the missing word for each gap (1–13). Write your answers in the spaces provided. The first one (0) has been done for you. LANGUAGE IN USE 4 Small towns have a place in our hearts, but how long can they survive? by Gaby Hinsliff Switzerland needs you. Or, more precisely, the tiny Alpine community of Albinen needs you, badly enough that it’s offering £19,000 a head to anyone prepared to move into town and stay there. Its chief (0) (attract) is said to be lots of lovely fresh air; and if that sounds (1) (suspicion) like admitting it doesn’t have all that many attractions, therein perhaps lies the problem. Young people are leaving Albinen, shrinking its population to that of a modest hamlet, and not coming back. And that’s a problem not confined to Switzerland. Small towns and villages all over Britain, from the shires to old (2) (industry) towns, are now struggling to keep their footing in a world where youth, energy and (3) (prosper) are draining away to the city. A million young people have moved out of small communities over the past 30 years, according to the new think tank ‘Centre for Towns’, which focuses on all the places that aren’t really rural or urban but awkwardly in between. They don’t always look as if they are struggling, and contrary to urban myth, not all their residents exhibit an unreasonable rage against the modern world. Some are the sort of (4) (sleep) market towns where holidaying Londoners hover wistfully by estate agents’ windows every summer, fantasising about snapping up a family house in Pembrokeshire or the boring and (5) (fashion) bits of Norfolk for the price of a flat at home. Thanks to their (6) (rapid) ageing populations, it’s small towns that will bear the brunt of rising demand for (7) (expense) health and social care, just as they are grappling with the (8) (pain) consequences of economic change. Their factories are closing, high-street shops being replaced by (9) (extend) warehouse facilities where the only work is picking and packing goods for invisible online customers. A few years ago, the Economist caused uproar with an article (10) (suggest) some rust- belt towns – places with stagnating economies and rapidly dwindling populations – were beyond saving and should just be left to peter out, like those eerie California ghost towns abandoned when the gold rush dried up. But that’s an inhumane response to communities that have simply found themselves in the wrong (11) (locate) ; whose only mistake was to be middling-sized, in an era where (12) (success) communities are usually huge global cities or tiny chocolate-box villages, or too far away from bigger cities to attract commuters. Small towns occupy a powerful place in British hearts and (13) (imagine) , and they have a right to survive. All they need now is a reason to exist. Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv