full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Dianna Cohen: Tough truths about plastic pollution

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Upon educating myself a little further about plastics, I actually realized this was a bad thing. It's a bad thing that plastic breaks down into salmelr little bits, because it's always still plastic. And what we're finding is that a lot of it is in the marine eoirvmnennt. I then, in the last few years, learend about the Pacific garabge patch and the gyre. And my initial reaction — and I think this is a lot of people's first reaction to learning about it — is, "Oh my God! We've got to go out there and clean this thing up." So I actually developed a proposal to go out with a cargo ship and two decommissioned fishing trawlers, a crane, a chipping mnacihe and a cold-molding machine. And my intention was to go out to the gyre, raise awareness about this isuse and begin to pick up the plastic, chip it into little bits and cold mold it into bricks that could potentially be used as building mltiraaes in underdeveloped communities.

Open Cloze

Upon educating myself a little further about plastics, I actually realized this was a bad thing. It's a bad thing that plastic breaks down into _______ little bits, because it's always still plastic. And what we're finding is that a lot of it is in the marine ___________. I then, in the last few years, _______ about the Pacific _______ patch and the gyre. And my initial reaction — and I think this is a lot of people's first reaction to learning about it — is, "Oh my God! We've got to go out there and clean this thing up." So I actually developed a proposal to go out with a cargo ship and two decommissioned fishing trawlers, a crane, a chipping _______ and a cold-molding machine. And my intention was to go out to the gyre, raise awareness about this _____ and begin to pick up the plastic, chip it into little bits and cold mold it into bricks that could potentially be used as building _________ in underdeveloped communities.

Solution

  1. garbage
  2. machine
  3. environment
  4. issue
  5. smaller
  6. materials
  7. learned

Original Text

Upon educating myself a little further about plastics, I actually realized this was a bad thing. It's a bad thing that plastic breaks down into smaller little bits, because it's always still plastic. And what we're finding is that a lot of it is in the marine environment. I then, in the last few years, learned about the Pacific garbage patch and the gyre. And my initial reaction — and I think this is a lot of people's first reaction to learning about it — is, "Oh my God! We've got to go out there and clean this thing up." So I actually developed a proposal to go out with a cargo ship and two decommissioned fishing trawlers, a crane, a chipping machine and a cold-molding machine. And my intention was to go out to the gyre, raise awareness about this issue and begin to pick up the plastic, chip it into little bits and cold mold it into bricks that could potentially be used as building materials in underdeveloped communities.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
plastic pollution 3
marine environment 3
pollution coalition 2
bigger picture 2
glass bottle 2
plastic bottle 2
choose alternatives 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
plastic pollution coalition 2

Important Words

  1. awareness
  2. bad
  3. bits
  4. breaks
  5. bricks
  6. building
  7. cargo
  8. chip
  9. chipping
  10. clean
  11. cold
  12. communities
  13. crane
  14. decommissioned
  15. developed
  16. educating
  17. environment
  18. finding
  19. fishing
  20. garbage
  21. gyre
  22. initial
  23. intention
  24. issue
  25. learned
  26. learning
  27. lot
  28. machine
  29. marine
  30. materials
  31. mold
  32. pacific
  33. patch
  34. pick
  35. plastic
  36. plastics
  37. potentially
  38. proposal
  39. raise
  40. reaction
  41. realized
  42. ship
  43. smaller
  44. trawlers
  45. underdeveloped
  46. years