THE WORLD HERITAGE

How long would it take you to see the most famous places in the world? Three months? Six months? Twelve months? No. If you visit one famous place every day, it will take you fifteen months!

At the moment there are more than 460 heritage sites around the world from Albania to Zimbabwe. Some of them are man-made, such as Machu Picchu in Peru, others are natural, for example the Los Glaciares National Park in Argentina. However, every site is important because each one is part of everyone’s past, present and future.

Unfortunately, our children and grandchildren may not have a chance to visit many of these places. They are damaged by wars, weather, age, traffic and pollution. However, one of the biggest problems for them is vandalism. Some people, visiting the attractions, destroy or damage them. They sometimes spray paint on the walls of the buildings or steal valuable items like mosaics.

At some sites, such as Stonehenge in England, governments have built high fences to protect the site from vandals. But high fences are very ugly and very unfriendly. So, experts suggest some other ideas about how to solve the problem of vandalism. Guards, dogs and television cameras are among them. The problem is that all these solutions are very expensive.

Other experts say that the best solution is education. When people are taught to respect their history, they will not destroy or damage it, but pre­serve it.

In 1972 countries around the world united to form The World Heritage Organisation. Today, the organisation helps to maintain and restore the most important attractions from our history and spreads the information about the value of historic sites.

4.2 Conjunctions. Match the following English and Russian expressions:

1. как …, так и… 2. ни … ни … 3. посредством, с помощью 4. что касается (меня) 5. по сравнению с 6. либо …, либо … 7. между прочим, кстати 8. с одной стороны 9. (а) также и 10. с другой стороны a. as for (me) b. both … and … c. by means of d. by the way e. on the other hand f. as well as g. compared with/to h. either … or… i. on the one hand j. neither … nor …

4.3 Match the conjunctions to the sentences.

because if while since until unless when as though although 1.She was painting a landscape ____ I saw her. 2.The wind was cold ____ it was the month of December. 3.Let’s sunbathe ____ the sun is in the sky, then go indoors. 4.You need not come with us ____ you wish to. 5.I really like rock music. I don’t like jazz ____. 6.We will go sightseeing ____ the weather is fine. 7.He hasn’t visited any museums ____ last summer. 8.The match did not take place ____ of the heavy rain. 9.We waited ____ she came. 10. ____ they were very tired, they continued working.

4.4 Read the text and complete it with the appropriate sentences 1-3.