You have just read an article in a national newspaper which claims that town centers in your country all look very similar to each other. You don’t fully agree with this opinion. Write a letter to the editor of the newspaper. In your letter •say which points in the article you agree with •explain ways in which your town center is different from most other town centers •offer to give a guided tour of your town to the writer of the article

The Persians, who lived in present-day Iran, were one of the first civilizations to build tunnels that provided a reliable supply of water to human settlements in dry areas. In the early first millennium BCE, they introduced the qanat method of

tunnel

construction, which consisted of placing posts over a hill in a straight line, to ensure that the

tunnel

kept to its route, and

then

digging vertical shafts down into the ground at regular intervals. Underground, workers removed the earth from between the ends of the shafts, creating a

tunnel

. The excavated soil was taken up to the surface using the shafts, which

also

provided ventilation during the work. Once the

tunnel

was completed, it allowed water to flow from the top of a hillside down towards a canal, which supplied water for human use. Remarkably, some qanats built by the Persians 2,700 years ago are still in use today.