full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Alex Gendler: How the world's longest underwater tunnel was built

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Early surveys of the French coast revealed the site was full of fault lines. These small cracks let water seep into the rock, so engineers had to develop wtropoaref biorng machines. The bstriih anticipated drier conditions, and forged ahead with regular borers. But only mntohs into the work, water flooded in through undetected fissures. To drill in this wet chlak, the British had to use grout to seal the ckacrs craeetd in the borer’s wake, and even work ahead of the main borer to reinforce the chalk about to be drilled.

Open Cloze

Early surveys of the French coast revealed the site was full of fault lines. These small cracks let water seep into the rock, so engineers had to develop __________ ______ machines. The _______ anticipated drier conditions, and forged ahead with regular borers. But only ______ into the work, water flooded in through undetected fissures. To drill in this wet _____, the British had to use grout to seal the ______ _______ in the borer’s wake, and even work ahead of the main borer to reinforce the chalk about to be drilled.

Solution

  1. british
  2. boring
  3. waterproof
  4. created
  5. cracks
  6. chalk
  7. months

Original Text

Early surveys of the French coast revealed the site was full of fault lines. These small cracks let water seep into the rock, so engineers had to develop waterproof boring machines. The British anticipated drier conditions, and forged ahead with regular borers. But only months into the work, water flooded in through undetected fissures. To drill in this wet chalk, the British had to use grout to seal the cracks created in the borer’s wake, and even work ahead of the main borer to reinforce the chalk about to be drilled.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
boring machines 2

Important Words

  1. anticipated
  2. borer
  3. borers
  4. boring
  5. british
  6. chalk
  7. coast
  8. conditions
  9. cracks
  10. created
  11. develop
  12. drier
  13. drill
  14. drilled
  15. early
  16. engineers
  17. fault
  18. fissures
  19. flooded
  20. forged
  21. french
  22. full
  23. grout
  24. lines
  25. machines
  26. main
  27. months
  28. regular
  29. reinforce
  30. revealed
  31. rock
  32. seal
  33. seep
  34. site
  35. small
  36. surveys
  37. undetected
  38. wake
  39. water
  40. waterproof
  41. wet
  42. work