Files 1&2

A farmers' market

Hi I’m Louise. Today I’m at a farmers’ market in Winchester in the south of England.
There are now over 750 markets in Britain. Unlike normal shops, these markets move from place to
place. They set up in each location at regular intervals. Some are weekly, some are fortnightly and
some are monthly.

At farmers’ markets producers can sell directly to customers. In an age of globalisation and internet
retailing some people want to return to a simpler way of shopping. They like to touch and taste what
they’re buying. And, most importantly, they want to know where it comes from.

When you shop in the supermarket it isn’t always easy to find out who produces your meat, picks
your fruit or grows your vegetables. But at farmers’ markets customers buy directly from the
producer, who can tell them all about the goods they sell.

Supermarkets also have a long supply chain. The food often has to travel from the producer to a
distributor and a wholesaler before it reaches the supermarket shelf. This means food can often
spend days in lorries and warehouses.

But at Farmers’ Markets there’s no supply chain. It comes directly from the farm to the market.
Producers sell it as soon as it’s ready, so it’s always fresh, organic and tasty.

Winchester market is the largest regular Farmers’ Market in the UK. It takes place twice a month and
it has around 90 stalls selling all kinds of food and drink. Bakers sell freshly baked bread and cakes,
farmers sell meat, vegetables and fruit, and beekeepers sell honey. There are lots of different stalls
and they sell everything from homemade meat pies to jams and sauces made from locally-sourced
ingredients.

The best part is that all this food comes from the local area. Winchester is in the county of
Hampshire. All the businesses that have stalls at Hampshire farmers’ markets must be based in the
county or within fifteen kilometres of its borders. This is good news for customers. There’s no
middle-man, like a shop or a supermarket, so customers can find out anything they want to know
about the product they’re buying. It’s also good for the local economy. The money stays in the area,
and as these local businesses grow they employ more local people.

This is Lyburn Farmhouse Cheesemakers. It’s an excellent example of a local business that has
benefited from these markets. They make all their produce in Salisbury, less than thirty miles away
from here. Lyburn Farm is a family-run business. They milk their own cows and they use this milk to
make their own cheese. Every morning the farm’s cheesemakers collect the milk and separate it into
curds and whey. When the curd is ready they drain it, squeeze it and put it into moulds. The next day
they package the cheese and store it on the farm until it matures. At any one time they have 8,000
cheeses maturing!

© Oxford University Press English File third edition – Intermediate Plus

When the farm’s cheese is ready these employees bring it to markets like this, where they sell it
directly to the customer. So this cheese comes straight from the farm. That’s why it tastes so good!
Everything about Lyburn Cheese is local. The employees work locally, the customers buy locally,
even the cows are local!

This is the reason people come to farmers’ markets. They want to support local producers and they
want to buy local produce. Here you know exactly what you’re buying and where it’s from. So more
and more people are trying to use the supermarket less and buy fresh, locally produced food
instead.

© Oxford University Press English File third edition – Intermediate Plus

Files 3&4
A New York sanitation worker
Good morning. I’m Aurora Leonard.

It’s early in the morning in New York City, but Rob started work over an hour ago.
He’s one of the six thousand men and women that work as sanitation workers for the New York City
Department of Sanitation. Today, he’s going to show me how he and his colleagues collect eleven
thousand tons of the garbage New Yorkers produce every day.

Rob arrives at work at 5.45a.m. He goes to roll call at 6 and receives his work order. This tells each
sanitation worker which route they are going to take that day.

After roll call, Rob and his partner set off on their route. Sanitation workers always work in pairs.
One is the operator and the other is the loader. The operator is in charge of the vehicle, and the
loader is in charge of collecting and loading the garbage. But they often have to work together.
There’s a lot of waste and the bags are usually big and heavy.

Today, Rob’s working in Manhattan. He works for eight hours and gets three breaks. Fifteen minutes
in the morning, half an hour for lunch, and ten minutes in the afternoon. He usually finishes at 2pm
after he and his partner have deposited all the garbage at the disposal site.

Rob’s work is very physically demanding. It can also be extremely dangerous. They work in busy
traffic and operate heavy machinery. Toxic waste is also a major problem, and the job frequently
appears in lists of the top ten most risky professions. In fact, it’s even more dangerous than being a
police officer or fire fighter.

But in spite of the hard work and the dangers, it’s a very popular profession. The starting salary is
surprisingly high and if you stay for five years, it increases significantly. The Department of Sanitation
is also a very big organization. So, if you’re ambitious, there are plenty of career opportunities.

A city like New York will always need waste management systems, but it didn’t used to have a street
cleaning service. Street cleaning started in 1881, but it wasn’t until Colonel George Waring became
its Commissioner that New York’s Sanitation Department became the highly organized operation it is
today.

Almost one hundred and twenty years later, the Department continues Waring’s mission to keep
New York’s streets clean. But the job has changed. The city has managed to reduce its waste by a
thousand tons per day, largely thanks to recycling. And people are much more environmentally
aware than they used to be. But while the waste may change, the essence of the job will stay the
same. New York will always need people to collect and take away its garbage.

For most of us, our responsibility ends when we leave garbage bins on the side of the street. It’s easy
to forget people like Rob, but imagine what would happen if they didn’t do their job. Sanitation
workers provide an essential service. They work to make our city a cleaner, healthier, and more
pleasant place to live.

© Oxford University Press English File third edition – Intermediate Plus

Files 5&6
The history of flat-pack furniture

Hi there, I’m Daniel. I’ve just bought a new book case. All I need to do is put it together. It shouldn’t
be difficult. After all, all I need to do is follow the instructions.

OK… this might not be as easy as I thought. I don’t know why surprised. People have warned me
about flat- pack furniture!

Almost everybody has a story about complicated instructions, and missing parts. But it’s incredibly
popular and today most people own at least one piece of flat-pack furniture. So, how has this
concept come to dominate the entire furniture industry? Well, the story begins with a man called
Erie J. Sauder.

Sauder owned a furniture business in Ohio in the 1930s. He made benches, but with the spare wood
he made small coffee tables. Because Sauder used leftover wood the tables were cheap but high
quality. In 1940 two travelling salesman noticed these tables. They really liked them. So they took
one and displayed it at a furniture show in Chicago. A few days later they returned with an order for
25,000 tables!

Sauder had to transport all of these new tables to Chicago so he invented furniture that he could
take apart and put into boxes. This made it easy to transport, and people could put it together at
home. He patented the idea in 1951 and the ready-to-assemble furniture industry was born.

But the idea didn’t become popular immediately. Five years later a Swedish man named Gillis
Lundgren was moving some furniture. He had never heard of ready-to-assemble furniture, and he
was finding it very difficult to fit a table into his car. But then he realised that if he took the legs off
he would be able to put it in the car and put it together again at home. He discussed the idea with
his employers, a small, local firm … called IKEA. They loved it and decided to focus their entire
business on it.

IKEA launched their first flat-pack product in 1956. Today it’s the largest furniture retailer in the
world, generating sales of over 27 billion euros a year. So it’s safe to say that the flat pack concept
has been a huge success.

Today almost everybody has a flat-pack wardrobe, table or bookcase. But did you know there are
entire flat-pack rooms? You can have a flat-pack bedroom, bathroom, or kitchen. You can even build
an entire house out of flat-pack!

There are many reasons why this type of furniture has been successful. Manufacturers are able to
produce it quickly and transport it easily, so it’s cheaper and more convenient than other furniture.
And while it might look complicated at first it is generally very well-designed so it’s very, very easy to
put together. In fact anyone can do it!

I’m nearly finished and I’ve only been working on it for a few minutes! I haven’t used these bits, but
they’re probably not important. So, what do you think?

© Oxford University Press English File third edition – Intermediate Plus

Files 7&8
The Globe Theatre

Hello, I'm Charlie. Welcome to Shakespeare’s Globe.

It’s an incredible building. It’s made almost entirely of wood, following authentic building practices,
and it has a thatched roof. Believe it or not, this is the only thatched roof that has been allowed in
London since the Great Fire of 1666.

In fact, it’s almost exactly the same as the original theatre. The first Globe was built by Shakespeare’s
playing company – who were called the Lord Chamberlain’s men – in 1599. It looked just like this but
it was about 230 metres that way.

The first theatre burned down during a performance of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII on the 29th June
1613. The company soon had the theatre rebuilt but sadly this second theatre was destroyed by the
British government in the 1640s, because they believed theatre was immoral.
This site was almost completely forgotten about for almost three hundred years, until an American
called Sam Wanamaker tried to find it in the 1950s.

Sam Wanamaker was an actor. He was from the United States, but the Government banned him
from working due to his political views. He decided to move to England, the home of his hero –
William Shakespeare. He started performing in Shakespeare plays all over the UK, especially in
Stratford-upon-Avon – Shakespeare’s birthplace.

Eventually Wanamaker followed his hero’s footsteps and came to London. He wanted to see the
spot where the world-famous Globe Theatre had been. He hoped to find a statue or a memorial. He
was shocked when all he found was a dirty, old plaque.

He came up with a plan to rebuild the famous Globe. In 1970 he launched the Shakespeare Globe
Trust and put his plan into action. But it wasn’t easy. First of all he tried to find out the size of the
original theatre. But the owners of the site refused to have an archaeological survey carried out.

Then he struggled to buy this riverside site from the local council. All this time everybody was telling
him that a true reconstruction of the Globe was impossible.
But Wanamaker didn't give up. He managed to buy the site, and with the help of historical advisers
and extensive research, he had a theatre built that was as close as possible to Shakespeare’s 1599
playhouse.

Sadly Wanamaker died four years before Shakespeare’s Globe opened in 1997. He is remembered as
the “visionary who recreated Shakespeare’s Globe” and the theatre he worked so hard to rebuild
has been a huge success.

Today it’s a fantastic place to see Shakespeare’s famous plays. There are 857 seats in the stalls and
700 people can stand in the pit, an area with no seats, which is in front of the stage.

Attached to the outdoor theatre is a modern building. The Globe Exhibition and Tour is here,
housing the largest permanent exhibition on Shakespeare in the world. This explores the life of
Shakespeare and recreates the London he lived in.

© Oxford University Press English File third edition – Intermediate Plus

There's also going to be a new indoor theatre. Like the Globe, this theatre will look and feel like a
theatre from Shakespeare’s time. It will be made from oak and have beautiful Jacobean designs on
the walls. Plays here will be lit by candlelight, giving the theatre an authentic Shakespearean
atmosphere.

And can you guess what it’s called? It’s the Sam Wanamaker playhouse, in honour of the man who
made all of this possible.

© Oxford University Press English File third edition – Intermediate Plus

Files 9&10
A wedding planner

Hi there. I’m Eileen and today I’m going to meet Danielle Bobish - a wedding planner based in New
York City. Danielle runs Curtain Up Events – a boutique firm that organises all kinds of events. They
organise trade shows, product launches and conferences, but around 75% of her business is
dedicated to weddings.

Weddings today are bigger and more expensive than ever before. The wedding industry in the
United States alone is worth around forty billion dollars, and as weddings become more elaborate
they require much more planning.

A wedding planner helps couples to design, plan and manage their wedding. They do the work that
the happy couple doesn't have time for, and as people’s lives become busier, wedding planners are
becoming more and more popular.

Danielle’s job starts at the beginning of the process. She meets with the couple and asks them to
explain the dreams and ideas they have for their big day. She then has to tell them what they can
and can’t afford. Danielle says that this is probably the hardest part of her job.

When Danielle and the couple have agreed on a budget, they have to choose a theme. Couples
usually have a clear idea of the theme they want, but sometimes they need more help. Curtain Up
Events offers a selection of themes. Customers can choose traditional, modern, Broadway or even a
Halloween theme. After they've selected the theme Danielle helps the couple with all the details.
Together they select a venue, a photographer, music, décor, food – all the things that make a
wedding.

A wedding is a big event, and everything needs to be coordinated perfectly. This can be very
stressful, so why does Danielle do it?

'I love what I do because I get to be creative and practical at the same time and use both sides of my
brain, erm, and really think on my feet and problem-solve in an instant. It's extremely busy and
stressful. Erm , there's a lot of chaos, but I thrive on chaos. I tend to be very proactive in stressful
situations.'

Danielle mentioned that she enjoyed making an idea come to life. So it’s no surprise that before
becoming a wedding planner she had worked in theatre.

'I used to be an actress and do musical theatre, and I found that it was a really seamless transition
that when producing a play you have sets, costumes, lighting, and it's very similar to an event. So
when it became time to leave show business I reached out to another wedding planner and
contacted her and became her assistant.'

Another industry that combines creativity and performance with practical problem solving. Danielle
had worked as an assistant wedding planner for three years before she started her own business six
years ago. Since then she has worked with lots of different couples and planned all kinds of
weddings. But what was the most memorable?

© Oxford University Press English File third edition – Intermediate Plus

'All weddings are, are beautiful and amazing. There was one that we did recently that particularly
stands out to me right now. Erm, it was a gentleman from Michigan and the bride lived in California,
and they were planning their wedding here in New York and it was on a rooftop, and toward, toward
the day of the wedding we realised that it was going to pour and so we went out and bought ninety
clear umbrellas for the guests to hold with the lyrics to 'Singing in the Rain' hanging on a tag on the
handle, and that night on the roof they, they sang as she walked down the aisle and everybody held
paper candles and there was a beautiful moonlit ceremony. It was beautiful and romantic.'

As a wedding planner Danielle is involved in a day that many people consider to be the most
important day of their life. There’s a lot of pressure but it's a very rewarding job.

© Oxford University Press English File third edition – Intermediate Plus