Watch this short National Geographic video on Yosemite National Park, one of America's first parks.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and complete the blanks in the transcript with the missing words.
The activity is suitable for intermediate students.
Located in the granite heart of California’s mighty Sierra Nevada mountain range, Yosemite is one of the United States’ first (1) ... parks.
It’s visited by 3-and-a-half million people each year.
Yosemite National Park is home to North America’s highest (2) ... : Yosemite Falls.
A nearly two and a half thousand foot drop makes this an iconic image of Yosemite.
Some visitors look for adventure, and may climb Half Dome, a granite peak more than (3) ... feet high. Although a long and challenging hike, a climb here requires no special (4) ... .
More experienced climbers aim for El Capitan, a 3-thousand foot peak. It is the largest monolith of granite in the world.
Yosemite’s great granite peaks were once the (5) ... ... of an immense volcano.
100 million years ago, massive bubbles of magma rose into a huge (6) ... five miles beneath the surface of the earth.
That magma cooled into a single gigantic (7) ... of granite- 350 miles long, 60 miles wide, and 10 miles thick. As water eroded the (8) ... rock, the granite rose.
We see parts of it today as El Capitan and Yosemite’s other great stone sentinels.
And Yosemite (9) ... other iconic images… much younger than the granite, but very old when compared to other living things on earth. Giant sequoias, reach 300 feet up, as high as a 27-(10) ... building. Some sequoias have been around for up to 3,000 years.
Scientists here are climbing the giants to study how well the trees (11) ... water from the ground, and how climate change could be affecting them.
Yosemite, providing a (12) ... at earth’s ancient past, and offering a window to its constant changes.
Key:
1 wilderness 2 waterfall 3 4800 4 expertise 5 fiery heart 6 chamber 7 slab 8 overlying 9 boasts 10 story 11 pump 12 glimpse
