Before you listen to the tape discuss with your partner the advantages and disadvantages of building a dam. Tell the class your ideas.

Now Listen to Part A and find out what happened when a dam was built in Egypt. Number the key words as you hear them.

1 - Aswan High Dam    3 - River Nile    5 - Abu Simbel     2 - electricity

4 - Covered by water    □floods       6 - engineers       7 - UNESCO

Listen to Part B and number the key words as you hear them.

1 - Move the temple        3 - 1,900 workers

2 - Stone by stone          6 - more than $70,000,000

7 - Worth                 5 - rebuild

8 - In 1996                4 - four years

Listen to Part A and Part B again and then answer the questions in pairs.

1. Why did Abu Simbel need to be moved and rebuilt?

Abu Simbel needed to be moved and rebuilt because otherwise it would have been covered by the water when the dam was completed.

  2. How did the engineers solve the problem? Was it successful? How do you know?

They solved this problem by moving the statues. They marked every stone with a number and took the statues apart. Then they resemble them in another site. It was very successful because many tourists com to visit Abu Simbel which looks as impressive as it did in its original site.

Listening Text of the workbook

HOW ABU SIMBEL WAS SAVED?

Part A

The Aswan High Dam in Egypt is one of the biggest dams in the world. It provides half of Egypt’s electricity. However, it caused problems while it was being built. There were many temples along the River Nile. It was clear that when the dam was finished many of them would be covered by water. One of the most important of these temples is Abu Simbel, which was built in the 13^th century BC. It is made of rock and at the entrance there are four large stone persons, each twenty metres high. Nobody wanted the beautiful temple of Abu Simbel to disappear but they needed the dam. Finally, the engineers of UNESCO studied the problem and found a way to rescue the temple.

Part B

The engineers agreed to move Abu Simbel temple stone by stone and built it again above the waters of the dam. It took 1,900 workers four years to rebuild the temple in the 1960s. It cost more than seventy million US dollars. However, it was worth it. The Aswan High Dam was finished in 1966. Ever since then Abu Simbel has been one of the most beautiful temples in Egypt. It is still in a quiet and beautiful place which visitors are glad to visit.