full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Madhavi Venkatesan: The life cycle of a pair of jeans

Unscramble the Blue Letters


Every pair of jeans begins its life in a cototn field. It takes about 0.7 kilograms of cotton to produce a single pair of pants. Growing this much cotton requires ruhlgoy 10,000 liters of water, not to mention various herbicides and pesticides, which can contaminate groundwater. The cotton is harvested by hand or industrial maehnics and transported to tlxiete factories where it’s spun into yarn. At this point, it’s typically combined with plastic fbiers like spandex to increase the yarn’s elasticity. These plastic threads make modern jnaes more coabolrfmte and flexible, but also much less durable.

Open Cloze


Every pair of jeans begins its life in a ______ field. It takes about 0.7 kilograms of cotton to produce a single pair of pants. Growing this much cotton requires _______ 10,000 liters of water, not to mention various herbicides and pesticides, which can contaminate groundwater. The cotton is harvested by hand or industrial ________ and transported to _______ factories where it’s spun into yarn. At this point, it’s typically combined with plastic ______ like spandex to increase the yarn’s elasticity. These plastic threads make modern _____ more ___________ and flexible, but also much less durable.

Solution


  1. roughly
  2. machines
  3. fibers
  4. cotton
  5. textile
  6. jeans
  7. comfortable

Original Text


Every pair of jeans begins its life in a cotton field. It takes about 0.7 kilograms of cotton to produce a single pair of pants. Growing this much cotton requires roughly 10,000 liters of water, not to mention various herbicides and pesticides, which can contaminate groundwater. The cotton is harvested by hand or industrial machines and transported to textile factories where it’s spun into yarn. At this point, it’s typically combined with plastic fibers like spandex to increase the yarn’s elasticity. These plastic threads make modern jeans more comfortable and flexible, but also much less durable.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
single pair 2
toxic chemicals 2


Important Words


  1. begins
  2. combined
  3. comfortable
  4. contaminate
  5. cotton
  6. durable
  7. elasticity
  8. factories
  9. fibers
  10. field
  11. flexible
  12. groundwater
  13. growing
  14. hand
  15. harvested
  16. herbicides
  17. increase
  18. industrial
  19. jeans
  20. kilograms
  21. life
  22. liters
  23. machines
  24. mention
  25. modern
  26. pair
  27. pants
  28. pesticides
  29. plastic
  30. point
  31. produce
  32. requires
  33. roughly
  34. single
  35. spandex
  36. spun
  37. takes
  38. textile
  39. threads
  40. transported
  41. typically
  42. water
  43. yarn