Name :

Longitude Geography Parallels Earth Greenwich Equator

Coordinates Hemispheres Nations Europe Latitude

Sphere Poles Continents Planet Meridians

TASK 1 : Read the text and try to fill in the numbered blanks with suitable words
from the list above

Imagine you have a pen pal from the United Kingdom and you want to tell him/her where
you live. You could say, ‘I live in Huelva, Spain’, that’s very general. You could also say,
‘Well, it’s in southwest of Spain, near Seville’. That’s better. But, what if your pen pal wants
to know exactly where Huelva is? You can give him/her Huelva’s geographical ______________
(1) so that he can find it on any map. Difficult to do? No, you just have to imagine the
______________ (2) as a globe on which there are imaginary lines forming a grid. These
imaginary lines are called _________________ (3) and parallels. ________________ (4) are horizontal
lines running in a west-east direction. They are perpendicular to the _______________ (5) or
parallel 0º. This is the largest parallel and divides the Earth into two identical halves
or_______________ (6), North and South. There are 180 of them, 90 north of the Equator and
90 south of it. As we approach the _______________ (7), parallels are smaller and smaller.
Meridians run from North Pole to South Pole in a northsouth direction. There are 360
meridians, 180 east of the Prime Meridian and 180 west of the Prime Meridian. But, what is
Prime Meridian or Meridian 0º, if all meridians are the same length? In 1884, 41 delegates
from 25 _______________ (8) met in Washington, D.C., USA, for the International Meridian
Conference. This conference selected the _______________ (9) Meridian as the official Prime
Meridian. Greenwich is a village near London where a Royal Observatory is located.

TASK 2 : Read the following statements. Then, listen again and say if the following
statements are True or False. Correct the false ones if possible:

1. Geographical coordinates give us the exact location of a

place._____________________________________
2. The Equator divides the Earth into two hemispheres: East and
West.________________________________
3. You can’t see parallels or meridiens.____________________________________________________________
4. There are 360 parallels._______________________________________________________________________
5. The Prime Meridian crosses Washington._______________________________________________________
6. The latitude of the Equator is 90º.______________________________________________________________