IN-CLASS WORK – WEEK 4

LISTENING
PART 1:
In my presentation, I’m going to talk about coffee, and its importance both in economic and social
terms. We think it was first drunk in the Arab world, but there’s hardly any documentary evidence of it
before the 1500s, although of course that doesn’t mean that people didn’t know about it before then.

However, there is evidence that coffee was originally gathered from bushes growing wild in Ethiopia, in
the northeast of Africa. In the early sixteenth century, it was being bought by traders, and gradually its
use as a drink spread throughout the Middle East. It’s also known that in 1522, in the Turkish city of
Constantinople, which was the centre of the Ottoman Empire, the court physician approved its use as a
medicine.

By the mid-1500s, coffee bushes were being cultivated in the Yemen and for the next hundred years
this region produced most of the coffee drunk in Africa and the Arab world.

What’s particularly interesting about coffee is its effect on social life. It was rarely drunk at home, but
instead people went to coffee houses to drink it. These people, usually men, would meet to drink coffee
and chat about issues of the day.

But at the time, this chance to share ideas and opinions was seen as something that was potentially
dangerous, and in 1623 the ruler of Constantinople demanded the destruction of all the coffee houses
in the city, although after his death many new ones opened, and coffee consumption continued.

In the seventeenth century, coffee drinking spread to Europe, and here too coffee shops became
places where ordinary people, nearly always men, could meet to exchange ideas. Because of this,
some people said that these places performed a similar function to universities.

The opportunity they provided for people to meet together outside their own homes and to discuss the
topics of the day had an enormous impact on social life, and many social movements and political
developments had their origins in coffee house discussions.

In the late 1600s, the Yemeni monopoly on coffee production broke down and coffee production started
to spread around the world, helped by European colonization. Europeans set up coffee plantations in
Indonesia and the Caribbean and production of coffee in the colonies skyrocketed.

Different types of coffee were produced in different areas, and it’s interesting that the names given to
these different types, like Mocha or Java coffee, were often taken from the port they were shipped to
Europe from. But if you look at the labour system in the different colonies, there were some significant
differences.

In Brazil and the various Caribbean colonies, coffee was grown in huge plantations and the workers
there were almost all slaves. But this wasn’t the same in all colonies; for example in Java, which had
been colonized by the Dutch, the peasants grew coffee and passed a proportion of this on to the Dutch,
so it was used as a means of taxation.

But whatever system was used, under the European powers of the eighteenth century, coffee
production was very closely linked to colonisation. Coffee was grown in ever-increasing quantities to
satisfy the growing demand from Europe, and it became nearly as important as sugar production, which
was grown under very similar conditions.

However, coffee prices were not yet low enough for people to drink it regularly at home, so most coffee
consumption still took place in public coffee houses and it still remained something of a luxury item.

In Britain, however, a new drink was introduced from China, and started to become popular, gradually
taking over from coffee, although at first it was so expensive that only the upper classes could afford it.
This was tea, and by the late 1700s it was being widely drunk.
However, when the USA gained independence from Britain in 1766, they identified this drink with
Britain, and coffee remained the preferred drink in the USA, as it still is today.

So, by the early nineteenth century, coffee was already being widely produced and consumed. But
during this century, production boomed and coffee prices started to fall. This was partly because new
types of transportation had been developed which were cheaper and more efficient.

So now, working people could afford to buy coffee – it wasn’t just a drink for the middle classes. And
this was at a time when large parts of Europe were starting to work in industries. And sometimes this
meant their work didn’t stop when it got dark; they might have to continue throughout the night.

So, the use of coffee as a stimulant became important – it wasn’t just a drink people drank in the
morning, for breakfast. There were also changes in cultivation …

PART 2:
Brad Mitchell: When you go extreme snowboarding, you head for the highest peaks and the steepest
slopes, taking little more than a map and some basic survival equipment with you. Unlike in ski
resorts, you won’t see any signs telling you there are rocks, or trees around [1], so it’s up to you
and your guide to make sure your route is as safe as possible. Of course, you should never attempt to
go down a slope on your own. It’s essential to be accompanied by a guide [2], who must go first
every time as there may be no clear route down through the rocks and other dangers. They’ll also show
you the way up to your starting point, which may involve a long, difficult climb, and may wear a
backpack containing supplies. I know some snowboarders like to take a helicopter up to the top, and
that’s quick and easy – though expensive – but I always prefer to go on foot, with a helmet on [3], of
course. When you finally get up there, the view is always completely different from the way it looked
from below. People say to me it must take a lot of courage to start going down such a steep slope, but if
you’ve reached that point then you must be a pretty experienced snowboarder and what’s really
required is a tremendous amount of confidence [4]. You never know exactly which way you’re
going to go or what you’re going to encounter on your way down, and you often find yourself having to
make split-second decisions, but that’s part of the fun. There’s nothing quite as exciting as
suddenly having to perform a series of jumps as you descend [5], and then managing to stay on
your feet afterwards. The ability to do that is obviously something that takes those new to extreme
snowboarding quite some time to learn. And whereas doing a reasonably good take-off seems to come
fairly naturally to most of us, landing is a more complex skill to acquire [6], as I found in my early
days out on the mountain side.

Falling correctly is also something you need to practise, initially at low speed and on gentle slopes, and
later in conditions more similar to those you’ll encounter on the mountain. Rule one when you lose
your balance is not to panic [7], or else you’ll get tense and be far more likely to injure yourself than if
you’re relaxed and just let yourself go with the fall. Often the best thing to do is roll out of the fall, but it’s
natural to try to use your arms to try to slow yourself down and if you do so remember that elbows, if
you fall on them, are much stronger and less likely to be injured than wrists [8]. Following a high-
speed fall, you might find yourself covered by some of the white stuff that has fallen with you. There
may be just a few feet of it and you can usually pull yourself up to the surface, but if you can’t you’re in
big trouble and that’s why I’d never go down a slope without a small device fastened to my
body [9] that sends out a signal to the rescue services if I get buried. I know some safety experts
recommend also taking a medical kit, but somehow I think that if I were buried under ice, my priority
would be to get out or get rescued. I’m always looking for new challenges. Competition snowboarding
was something I looked at, but there were just too many guys showing off. Teaching snowboarding is
certainly something I might do one day, but what I really dream about is parachute
snowboarding [10]: going straight down a mountain, flying off a cliff and then floating down to the
valley below. Now that’s what I call extreme.