full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Bill Gates: Mosquitos, malaria and education

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Well, what's the history of this disease? It's been a severe disease for thousands of years. In fact, if we look at the genetic code, it's the only disease we can see that people who lived in Africa actually evolved several things to avoid malarial daeths. Deaths actually peaked at a bit over five million in the 1930s. So it was absolutely gigantic. And the disease was all over the world. A terrible deiasse. It was in the United sttaes. It was in erpuoe. People didn't know what caused it until the early 1900s, when a British military man figured out that it was mosquitos. So it was everywhere. And two tools helped bring the dtaeh rate down. One was kilinlg the mosquitos with DDT. The other was treating the patients with quinine, or quinine drvetivieas. And so that's why the death rate did come down.

Open Cloze

Well, what's the history of this disease? It's been a severe disease for thousands of years. In fact, if we look at the genetic code, it's the only disease we can see that people who lived in Africa actually evolved several things to avoid malarial ______. Deaths actually peaked at a bit over five million in the 1930s. So it was absolutely gigantic. And the disease was all over the world. A terrible _______. It was in the United ______. It was in ______. People didn't know what caused it until the early 1900s, when a British military man figured out that it was mosquitos. So it was everywhere. And two tools helped bring the _____ rate down. One was _______ the mosquitos with DDT. The other was treating the patients with quinine, or quinine ___________. And so that's why the death rate did come down.

Solution

  1. killing
  2. europe
  3. death
  4. disease
  5. deaths
  6. states
  7. derivatives

Original Text

Well, what's the history of this disease? It's been a severe disease for thousands of years. In fact, if we look at the genetic code, it's the only disease we can see that people who lived in Africa actually evolved several things to avoid malarial deaths. Deaths actually peaked at a bit over five million in the 1930s. So it was absolutely gigantic. And the disease was all over the world. A terrible disease. It was in the United States. It was in Europe. People didn't know what caused it until the early 1900s, when a British military man figured out that it was mosquitos. So it was everywhere. And two tools helped bring the death rate down. One was killing the mosquitos with DDT. The other was treating the patients with quinine, or quinine derivatives. And so that's why the death rate did come down.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
death rate 4
great teachers 4
top quartile 4
brilliant people 2
million children 2
bed nets 2
bed net 2
road map 2
high school 2
dropout rate 2
senior year 2
teaching quality 2
public schools 2

Important Words

  1. absolutely
  2. africa
  3. avoid
  4. bit
  5. bring
  6. british
  7. caused
  8. code
  9. ddt
  10. death
  11. deaths
  12. derivatives
  13. disease
  14. early
  15. europe
  16. evolved
  17. fact
  18. figured
  19. genetic
  20. gigantic
  21. helped
  22. history
  23. killing
  24. lived
  25. malarial
  26. man
  27. military
  28. million
  29. mosquitos
  30. patients
  31. peaked
  32. people
  33. quinine
  34. rate
  35. severe
  36. states
  37. terrible
  38. thousands
  39. tools
  40. treating
  41. united
  42. world
  43. years