Flower markets

Lekce angličtiny ve virtuálním prostředí Languagelab

IELTS: Writing and speaking lesson

Teacher: Elaine Bergan - from USA

Students: Abeer Lyric, Gianni Deluxe, Zein, Fatima, Jerry, , Mikki Linn (Europe, Asia)

Have you ever thought about where the flowers from your local supermarket come from? They usually come from very far away. Here is an article we read.

1. When you purchase cut flowers from your local florist, do you think about where they came from?  Common sense might tell you that they were grown close by because cut flowers can't survive a very long trip.  The reality, though, is 5. that your cut flowers might come from places like the Netherlands, Ecuador, and Kenya.7. Flowers can now travel long distances thanks to air freight and high-tech cooling systems.  Even the most delicate orchid can be shipped to arrive fresh in most places on Earth.  This allows countries, like the US, to import some 70 percent  of the cut flowers people buy. The country that exports the most cut flowers is the Netherlands, which dominates the world cut flower trade. There, seven auction houses handle about 60 percent of the 15. world's cut flower exports. Some auction houses are very large indeed--Aalsmeer, near Amsterdam, is an auction house in the sense that Tokyo is a city or Everest is a mountain.  Its scale is daunting.  About 120 football fields will fill its main hanger, which holds five auction halls.  Nine-teen 20. million cut flowers are sold here on an average day. 

After reading this article we were given questions to answer.

1. Which of the following are mentioned as large investors in flower research?

a. American companies and their government

b. private companies and the Dutch government

c. Mauricio Davalos and Ecuador's flower industry

d. air freight and high-tech cooling companies

We discussed these in pairs. Then we brought our answers into the discussion with other students. 

Elaine introduced us two graphs. They were both summarized the Dutch flower auctions.

  

At the end of the lesson we had to describe the second paragraph. Here is an example.

The second chart shows us the top foreign destinations where the flowers were exported to in 2008. On the top of this   chart is Germany. The export to this country is worth almost 1,500 million Euros. It covers more than a quarter of the export from the Dutch flower auctions. Britain is the second largest foreign country that buys flowers from Dutch auctions. However they buy flowers for just around 800 million Euros. Last but not least is Russia with just 3.5% of the market coverage.