Welcome to our reading of 'The Cutty Sark' from New Concept English. The Cutty Sark was one of the most famous clipper ships of the nineteenth century. These fast sailing vessels were built specifically for the lucrative tea trade between China and Britain. Let's explore the key vocabulary we'll encounter: clipper ship refers to a fast sailing vessel, tea trade means maritime commerce, nineteenth century refers to the eighteen hundreds era, and maritime means related to the sea and shipping.
Let's begin reading the opening paragraphs of 'The Cutty Sark'. One of the most famous sailing ships of the nineteenth century, the Cutty Sark, can still be seen at Greenwich. She stands on dry land and is visited by thousands of people each year. She serves as an impressive reminder of the great age of sail. Notice the pronunciation of key words: Greenwich is pronounced as 'GRIN-itch', nineteenth as 'nine-TEENTH', impressive as 'im-PRESS-iv', and reminder as 're-MIND-er'.
Now let's explore the key vocabulary and phrases from our text. Important maritime terms include: sailing ship, which means a wind-powered vessel; dry land, meaning not in water; age of sail, referring to the era of sailing ships; impressive, meaning remarkable or striking; and reminder, something that helps us remember. Key phrases include 'can still be seen' meaning remains visible, 'stands on dry land' meaning positioned on shore, and 'serves as' meaning functions as. The diagram shows the main parts of a clipper ship like the Cutty Sark, with its hull, main mast, fore mast, and mizzen mast, along with their respective sails.
Let's continue reading the middle section of our text. She was built in eighteen sixty-nine and was designed to carry tea from China to England. The ship was famous for her speed and once made the journey from China to London in only one hundred and seven days. This was a remarkable achievement for those times. Notice the reading focus points: we use past tense verbs like 'was built' and 'was designed', time expressions such as 'in eighteen sixty-nine' and 'for those times', descriptive language like 'remarkable achievement', and connected speech patterns in phrases like 'journey from China to London'.
Now let's analyze the grammatical structures and sentence patterns found in our text. We can identify several important past tense forms: 'was built' and 'was designed' are examples of passive past simple tense, while 'made the journey' uses active past simple. The text contains complex sentences with relative clauses like 'ship that was famous', time clauses such as 'once made the journey', and result clauses like 'This was remarkable'. The descriptive language includes adjectives such as 'famous' and 'remarkable', adverbs like 'once' and 'only', and prepositional phrases such as 'from China to England'. The sentence diagram shows how 'She was built in eighteen sixty-nine' breaks down into subject, passive verb, and time phrase components.