Date: March 16, 2005
Level: Intermediate +
Downloads: This Lesson (Word Doc) | Class Handout (Word Doc) | Class Handout (PDF)

THE ARTICLE

Luxembourg retained its rank as the world’s safest city in the annual 215-city survey conducted by the human resources consulting company Mercer*. Helsinki in Finland, and the Swiss cities Bern, Geneva and Zurich came joint second in the safety list. Geneva and Zurich finished top of the quality of living league table. The world’s least safe city, unsurprisingly, is Baghdad. Its low placing is obviously due to the ongoing violence and street fighting that has followed the American-lead invasion of the city. Other cities at the bottom of the safety league include Abidjan (Ivory Coast), Bangui (Central African Republic) and Lagos (Nigeria). These countries remain politically unstable and have low economic growth. Mercer senior researcher Slagin Parakatil said, “The top-ranking cities for personal safety and security are in politically stable countries with good international relations and sustainable economic growth. … Most of the low-scoring cities are in countries with civil unrest, little law enforcement and high levels of crime.” 

Other world city rankings include London, Rome and Athens at positions 69, 74 and 83 respectively, due to high levels of petty crime. Madrid is joint 69th because of the terrorism threat. In Eastern Europe Ljubljana in Slovenia (41), Slovakia’s Bratislava (58) and Prague (58) in the Czech Republic are highest, due to their links with the European Union. Tirana (Albania) comes lowest in Europe. Russian cities are also low, because of high crime rates and economic instability. Canadian cities are the safest in North America, with Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver being in joint 18th position. The American cities Honolulu, Houston, Lexington, San Francisco and Winston Salem rank joint 45th. Cities in Central and South America fared poorly in the rankings, due to unemployment, crime and political instability. In Asia, Singapore and Tokyo are ranked as the top two cities. Sydney ranked highest of the Australian, equal eighth with Auckland in New Zealand.

* http://www.mercerhr.com/

WARM UPS

1. CHAT:  Talk in pairs or groups about safety / your city / quality of living / Luxembourg / Baghdad / crime / economic stability …

To make things more dynamic, try telling your students they only have one minute (or 2) on each chat topic before changing topics / partners. Change topic / partner frequently to increase conversation.

2. SAFE CITY BRAINSTORM: Spend one minute writing down all of the different words you associate with the words ‘safe city’. Share your words with your partner / group and talk about them.

3. LIVING OVERSEAS: In pairs/groups, talk about living overseas. Where would you most / least like to live? On which continent would you most / least like to live? Choose 10 countries at random and assess each country on its attractiveness as a home for one year.

4. MY COUNTRY: Talk about the cities in your country. Which are the safest / most dangerous? Which have the best quality of living? What makes these cities safe/dangerous or good/bad to live in?

5. MERCER’S CATEGORIES: Mercer Human Resource Consulting used the following categories to assess each city in its quality of living table. Rank your hometown on a scale of 1 (perfect) to 10 (total failure) based on these categories. Explain your ranking to your partner / group. If two students are from the same city, rank together.

1. Consumer goods
2. Economic environment
3. Housing
4. Medical and health considerations
5. Natural environment
6. Political and social environment
7. Public services and transport
8. Recreation
9. Schools and education
10. Socio-cultural environment

PRE-READING IDEAS

1. WORD SEARCH: Students look in their dictionaries / computer to find collocates, other meanings, information, synonyms … of the words ‘safe’ and ‘city’.

2. TRUE / FALSE: Look at the headline and guess whether these sentences are true or false:

1. Luxembourg gained top rank as the world’s safest city for the first time.  T / F
2. A survey of the world’s cities includes a total of 652 capitals.   T / F
3. Beirut in Lebanon is the world’s least safe city.  T / F
4. The top cities are in politically stable countries with good international relations and sustainable economic growth.  T / F
5. Prague in the Czech Republic placed better than London, Paris and Athens.  T / F
6. Madrid is the most dangerous city in Europe.  T / F
7. US cities are safer than Canadian cities.  T / F
8. Central and South American cities were low in the rankings, due to unemployment, crime and political instability.  T / F

3. SYNONYM MATCH: Match the following synonyms from the article:

(a)	retained	equal
(b)	conducted	illegality
(c)	joint	community
(d)	obviously	danger
(e)	stable	sound
(f)	civil	did
(g)	petty	carried out
(h)	threat	small
(i)	crime	hung on to
(j)	fared	of course

4. PHRASE MATCH: Match the following phrases from the article (sometimes more than one combination is possible):

(a)	retained its rank	conducted by …
(b)	survey	relations
(c)	came joint	rates
(d)	quality	as the world’s safest city
(e)	good international	instability
(f)	sustainable economic	poorly in the rankings
(g)	high levels of petty	second
(h)	high crime	of living
(i)	fared	crime
(j)	political	growth

 

WHILE READING ACTIVITIES

1. GAP-FILL:  Put the words on the right into the gaps.

Luxembourg the world’s safest city

Luxembourg __________ its rank as the world’s safest city in the annual 215-city survey __________ by the human resources consulting company Mercer. Helsinki in Finland, and the Swiss cities Bern, Geneva and Zurich came joint second in the safety list. Geneva and Zurich finished top of the quality of living league table. The world’s least safe city, __________, is Baghdad. Its low placing is obviously due to the ongoing violence and street fighting that has followed the American-lead invasion of the city. Other cities at the bottom of the safety league include Abidjan (Ivory Coast), Bangui (Central African Republic) and Lagos (Nigeria). These countries __________ politically unstable and have low economic growth. Mercer senior researcher Slagin Parakatil said, “The top-ranking cities for personal safety and security are in politically stable countries with good international relations and sustainable economic growth. … Most of the low-scoring cities are in countries with __________ unrest, little law enforcement and high levels of crime.”		remain unsurprisingly retained civil conducted
Other world city rankings __________ London, Rome and Athens at positions 69, 74 and 83 respectively, due to high levels of petty crime. Madrid is joint 69th because of the terrorism __________. In Eastern Europe Ljubljana in Slovenia (41), Slovakia’s Bratislava (58) and Prague (58) in the Czech Republic are highest, due to their __________ with the European Union. Tirana (Albania) comes lowest in Europe. Russian cities are also low, because of high __________ rates and economic instability. Canadian cities are the safest in North America, with Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver being in joint 18th position. The American cities Honolulu, Houston, Lexington, San Francisco and Winston Salem rank joint 45th. Cities in Central and South America fared __________ in the rankings, due to unemployment, crime and political instability. In Asia, Singapore and Tokyo are ranked as the top two cities. Sydney, Australia, and Auckland in New Zealand were top Australasian cities, in joint eighth position.		links crime threat poorly      include

2. TRUE/FALSE:  Students check their answers to the T/F exercise.

3. SYNONYMS:  Students check their answers to the synonyms exercise.

4. PHRASE MATCH:  Students check their answers to the phrase match exercise.

5. QUESTIONS: Students make notes for questions they would like to ask the class about the article.

6. VOCABULARY:  Students circle any words they do not understand. In groups, pool unknown words and use dictionaries to find the meanings.

POST READING IDEAS

1. GAP-FILL: Check the answers to the gap-fill exercise.

2. QUESTIONS:  Students ask the discussion questions they thought of above to their partner / group / class. Pool the questions for all students to share.

3. VOCABULARY: As a class, go over the vocabulary students circled above.

4. STUDENT-GENERATED SURVEY: Pairs/Groups write down 3 questions based on the article. Conduct their surveys alone. Report back to partners to compare answers. Report to other groups / the whole class.

5. ‘SAFE’/ ‘CITY’: Students make questions based on their findings from pre-reading activity #1.

6. DISCUSSION:

1. What was interesting in this article?
2. Were you surprised by anything in this article?
3. How safe is your city?
4. What are the three best and worst things about your city?
5. Would you like to live in Luxembourg?
6. Would you like to visit or live in Baghdad?
7. On which continent would you like to live for one year?
8. Which city would you love to spend a year in?
9. What is the most important factor you would look at if you moved overseas?
10. What kind of crime exists in your city?
11. Is there any violence in your city?
12. Is it safe to walk alone at midnight where you live?
13. Does your city have good law enforcement?
14. Are the people in your city rich?
15. Would you prefer to live in London or Luxembourg?
16. Would you prefer to live in Ljubljana (Slovenia) or Lagos (Nigeria)?
17. Would you prefer to live in Singapore or Tokyo?
18. Does “safest city” mean “most boring city”?
19. Did you like this discussion?
20. Teacher / Student additional questions.

HOMEWORK

1. VOCABULARY EXTENSION: Choose several of the words from the text. Use a dictionary or Google’s search field (or another search engine) to build up more associations / collocations of each word.

2. INTERNET: Search the Internet and find information on this survey. Share your findings with your class next lesson.

3. MY VILLAGE / TOWN / CITY: Make a poster for where you live highlighting the attraction of coming to live there for a year.

4. MY SURVEY: Create a questionnaire for your own survey of cities. Choose a theme different from “safest city”. E.g. most fun city, best city for photography etc.

ANSWERS

TRUE / FALSE:

1. Luxembourg gained top rank as the world’s safest city for the first time.  F
2. A survey of the world’s cities includes a total of 652 capitals.   F
3. Beirut in Lebanon is the world’s least safe city.  F
4. The top cities are in politically stable countries with good international relations and sustainable economic growth.  T
5. Prague in the Czech Republic placed better than London, Paris and Athens.  T
6. Madrid is the most dangerous city in Europe.  F
7. US cities are safer than Canadian cities.  F
8. Central and South American cities were low in the rankings, due to unemployment, crime and political instability.  T

SYNONYM MATCH:

(a)	retained	hung on to
(b)	conducted	carried out
(c)	joint	equal
(d)	obviously	of course
(e)	stable	sound
(f)	civil	community
(g)	petty	small
(h)	threat	danger
(i)	crime	illegality
(j)	fared	did

PHRASE MATCH:

(a)	retained its rank	as the world’s safest city
(b)	survey	conducted by …
(c)	came joint	second
(d)	quality	of living
(e)	good international	relations
(f)	sustainable economic	growth
(g)	high levels of petty	crime
(h)	high crime	rates
(i)	fared	poorly in the rankings
(j)	political	instability

GAP FILL:

Luxembourg the world’s safest city

Luxembourg retained its rank as the world’s safest city in the annual 215-city survey conducted by the human resources consulting company Mercer. Helsinki in Finland, and the Swiss cities Bern, Geneva and Zurich came joint second in the safety list. Geneva and Zurich finished top of the quality of living league table. The world’s least safe city, unsurprisingly, is Baghdad. Its low placing is obviously due to the ongoing violence and street fighting that has followed the American-lead invasion of the city. Other cities at the bottom of the safety league include Abidjan (Ivory Coast), Bangui (Central African Republic) and Lagos (Nigeria). These countries remain politically unstable and have low economic growth. Mercer senior researcher Slagin Parakatil said, “The top-ranking cities for personal safety and security are in politically stable countries with good international relations and sustainable economic growth. … Most of the low-scoring cities are in countries with civil unrest, little law enforcement and high levels of crime.”

Other world city rankings include London, Rome and Athens at positions 69, 74 and 83 respectively, due to high levels of petty crime. Madrid is joint 69th because of the terrorism threat. In Eastern Europe Ljubljana in Slovenia (41), Slovakia’s Bratislava (58) and Prague (58) in the Czech Republic are highest, due to their links with the European Union. Tirana (Albania) comes lowest in Europe. Russian cities are also low, because of high crime rates and economic instability. Canadian cities are the safest in North America, with Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver being in joint 18th position. The American cities Honolulu, Houston, Lexington, San Francisco and Winston Salem rank joint 45th. Cities in Central and South America fared poorly in the rankings, due to unemployment, crime and political instability. In Asia, Singapore and Tokyo are ranked as the top two cities. Sydney, Australia, and Auckland in New Zealand were top Australasian cities, in joint eighth position.