Heathrow – answers to the dictation exercise
Heathrow’s fifth terminal opened on Friday 28th March 2008, increasing the airport’s capacity by 30 / thirty million passengers to more than 100 million / a hundred million a year.
At the start of a new series about feats of engineering, tonight’s programme talks to the architects and builders about what was involved.
Because it needed a new air traffic control tower, a 1,000-tonne / a one-thousand-tonne glass-and-steel superstructure was built outside the airport perimeter, lifted onto transporters and moved 2km / two kilometres into position while the airport continued operating.
The 40-m-tall / 40m-tall / forty-metre-tall skyscraper terminal has a single-span roof the size of 5 / five football fields using 18,000 / eighteen thousand tonnes of steel. And there’s an innovative, fully automated baggage system, capable of storing, sorting and losing 100,000 / a hundred thousand bags a day.
Notes
Did you notice the singular measurements within an overall number, when the measurements precede the noun they are qualifying? Eg A 3-hundred-mile journey.Eg A 75-year-old woman, a four-hour operation. By contrast – the operation lasted four hours. The woman is 75 years old.
Did you recognise the word ‘feat‘, i.e. an achievement requiring great skill, strength or courage?
Did you notice the apostrophe after tonight, meaning ‘of / from tonight’? More examples: yesterday’s newspaper, tomorrow’s world.
Did you notice the hyphens in the measurements used adjectivally before the noun? If you didn’t – many British people aren’t very good at this either!
Did you spell ‘losing‘ correctly? There are many stories told about people’s luggage getting lost at airports – hence the use of this word!
In the UK we usually use the word luggage for general purposes. Baggage is used only in connection with travelling, or in an emotional sense, such as when someone is carrying past experiences or personal history which affects them in a negative way, weighing them down.
Eg He seems to be carrying a lot of baggage about his divorce.