Exercise 5B, page 3 - English File Studetn's book, pre-intermediate, Oxford

Adapted from a website

3 LISTENING

a Read about a recent experiment. Then cover the text and in your own words explain how the experiment worked.

What are the most (and least) honest cities in the world?
Reader's Digest organized an experiment to try to find out...

Their reporters 'lost' 12 wallets in 16 cities around the world. They left the wallets in different areas of each of the chosen cities, places like shopping malls, or in parks, or on the pavement. In each wallet there was the equivalent of 50 dollars in local currency, a family photo, and a couple of business cards with a name and phone number. A reporter waited somewhere near each wallet to see what happened. Another reporter answered the phone when people called to report the lost wallet, and then met the people and asked them why they returned the wallet.

b Look at the 16 cities from the experiment. Which do you think was the most honest? Which do you think was the least?

Ranking things in order
Things are normally ranked from first to last. If two things have the same ranking, e.g. if they are both second, they are called joint second, etc. USA won the most Olympic medals. China and Germany were joint second (= they won the same number of medals).

c 5.13 Listen to a reporter talking about the results of the experiment. Rank the nine cities he mentions in the correct order in b.

d Listen again for more details. Answer the questions.

1 In which city did someone say...?

a his wife once lost her wallet

b people in his country were very honest

c people need to help each other

d she teaches her children to be honest

e you can never know if the wallet belongs to a poor person

2 What percentage of the wallets were returned? Did the people who gave them back have anything in common?

e Think about your city or the nearest big city to where you live. In this experiment, do you think it would come in the top three, in the bottom three, or somewhere in the middle? Why?