Exercise
Tap all the highlighted words in the transcript below to see their definition. ⇩We were not used to these strange times we are living in, just two months ago. First of all, I want to make clear this is not a statement to make you believe that the COVID-19 crisis is a positive situation. I truly believe we are in a very sad and dangerous crisis from which I expect we will soon recover and go back to our normal lives.
But what if we could gather some important lessons from it and use it as an opportunity to start being wiser again and to create a more sustainable future? This could be the warning we all needed to really change things from now on.
Several experts in climatology, pollution and environment, are astonished by the ability that our planet and nature has shown when faced with rapid changes, recovering at an accelerated velocity while CO2 emissions have been reduced between 20% and 40% from what they used to be a couple of months ago.
Experts believe that the dramatic drops in air pollution in China alone could have saved around 77,000 lives in the coming future.
From social distancing to social solidarity: People are used to quickly creating habits to connect and help each other remotely. This could turn into more sustained long-term remote virtual activities that would slow down our day-to day and the negative impact that it has on our planet. Also, this could turn into a higher degree of awareness regarding the importance of helping others at group level and have a major impact on social inequality. Will we be able to get used to this new situation with our environment?
Let’s check some examples of amazing pictures seen recently:
We are becoming used to a situation that is hard, but will for sure improve soon. Being optimistic, I really believe this crisis will be gone soon and I hope we can all take important learnings from it and live a better and more sustainable life.
Grammar – Habits: “Used to” 
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To express “habits”, we apply “used to”, being the past tense of the verb “to use”. This expression has a different meaning from the verb. We use it to talk about something that frequently happened in the past. It is always followed by an infinitive without “to”.
…….
- We used to live in Cambodia, until we left.
- I didn’t use to like jazz, but now I do.
- Did you use to eat at that pizzeria?
- I can’t get used to the new change.
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I don’t think that we will soon recover and go back to our normal lives because the economy will be destroy. I also think that we won’t be more diligent about
sustainability because of the lack of money.
On the other hand we had see how in only a few days pollution is drop so I hope we have a future, a hard one but we have a future and we have to prepare ourselves to fight.
Thanks for your feedback, Benedetta! Take care. 🙂
I’m not a businesswoman, I’m not involved in any business, I can’t imagine consequences after world brake caused by covid-19. Everyone is in the stuck what it would be after covid-19 crisis will end. The world economy has suffered a lot. But I agree with Marc that this brake is a breath of the fresh air for our flora and fauna. The world is fed up by us, by our involves in air, water, ground areas…we’re everywhere, we just use our nature and give nothing in exchange. I’m happy for dolphin returns! And hope the covid-19 will end soon and… Read more »
Thanks for your feedback, Olga!
Hi, I’m agree with this text. Covid-19 is a real healty problema now, but It has proved that the world needs that we fly down. I know that the economy of my country Will have a lot of problems to improve itself after this crisis but I know that we can do the things better if we want and work togheter. The problem of our economy is the model that we have and the people that only think in to be more rich. In my opinión we can find an economy and ecology strategy, but we have to think in… Read more »
Thanks for your feedback, Anna!
I have read some comments below, very interesting point of view and at the same time I think that I would like write as clear and complete as some of them. Wow!
About the topic I think this virus will cost a lot in economic terms to the whole world, even though I hope everyone has the opportunity to learn something good for their lives.
Hi Yohanna, thanks for sharing your thoughts with us.
I am agree with this theme that has surrounded us. But I don’t know why all of the people think about the economy. Is it important to think about it now while this virus exists?
We have to think about dispelling it. The way of dispelling it is to go back to Allah. We must seek forgiveness from him for our sins that we did.
Thanks for your feedback. 🙂