Bolds and italic

10.2 Natural wonders
Exercise 1b & 2a
Audio 10.7
a Mount Kilimanjaro is in Tanzania in East Africa. Its name means ‘mountain of light’ and it’s a very beautiful place. It’s the highest mountain in Africa, but it’s not difficult to climb.
b Victoria Falls are beautiful! It’s a very big waterfall on the Zambezi River between Zimbabwe and Zambia.
c Lake Baikal is in the south of Siberia in Russia. It’s the biggest and deepest lake in the world, but it often freezes in winter because Siberia has a very cold climate.
d The Amazon Jungle is the biggest area of rainforest in the world. It is mostly in Brazil, but some parts of it are in other South American countries such as Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. About half the world’s plants and animals live in rainforests.
e The Andaman Sea has some very beautiful tropical islands, with white sandy beaches, near the west coast of Thailand. The biggest and most famous is Phuket.
f The Gobi Desert is a very large desert in north-west China and Mongolia. It’s a cold desert because it’s so far north and it sometimes snows there.
Exercise 4b
Audio 10.8
1 Lake Baikal is in the south of Siberia.
2 The Gobi Desert is in north-west China and Mongolia.
3 Phuket island is near the west coast of Thailand.
Exercise 6b
Audio 10.9
Lake Baikal in Siberia is the biggest, deepest and oldest lake in the world. It’s more than 1,600 metres deep and more than twenty-five million years old. It has almost twenty per cent of the world's freshwater, and thousands of different kinds of plants and animals live there.
Mount Kilimanjaro, in Tanzania, is one of the largest volcanoes in the world. It’s 5,895 metres tall – the highest mountain in Africa. It’s sometimes called the ‘Roof of Africa’. It’s also one of the easiest mountains in the world to climb, even for tourists. The oldest person ever to climb to the top was a Frenchman, Valtee Daniel, who was eighty-seven years old.
An oasis is an area of water in a desert, and Al Hasa is the largest oasis in Saudi Arabia. It covers over 12 km² and gives water to over three million trees and a million people, even at the hottest times of the year. Many Saudis believe Al Hasa is the most beautiful and best area to visit in the country.
Pronunciation
Audio 10.10
We say the in superlatives with a weak sound /ðə/ when the following adjective starts with a consonant. We say the ending -est with a schwa sound /əst/.
Exercise 8
Audio 10.11
A Which river’s the longest in the world?
B I think the Nile’s the longest.
C Maybe, but I think the Amazon is longer than the Mississippi.
Exercise 9b
Audio 10.12
1 The busiest airport of the three is Beijing, then Dubai and then Los Angeles.
2 Of these islands, Greenland is the biggest, and Madagascar is bigger than Sumatra.
3 The Great Pyramid of Giza isn’t the oldest monument in the world, but it’s the oldest in this group. It’s older than the Parthenon, and the Parthenon’s older than the Colosseum.