Unit 9 Page 87 Lesson A3B

Page 87

1. Speaking and listening

What do you know about the Internet?

B. Listen again. Write one more piece of information about the answer to each question.

Did you read this article about the Internet? It has some interesting information.

No, I didn’t.

Well, let’s find out what you know. Do you have any idea what percent of e-mail is spam?

I have no idea …. Maybe 50 percent?

Oh, it’s much more than that.

OK, 75 percent.

Actually, it’s about 85 percent.

That much?

Yeah. It says spam is one of the biggest problems on the Internet.

Well, my e-mail is usually full of spam. I don’t know what to do about it.

Yeah, I know what you mean. OK, here’s an easy one. Do you know what the biggest search engine is? You use it all the time.

Google!

Yeah. Google can search over 8 billion Web pages.

That’s amazing! I wonder how it does that.

I have no idea. Here’s another question. Do you know what the three most common languages on the Internet are?

Oh. Well, probably English. And, um, Chinese. And… maybe Spanish?

Almost. English, Chinese, and Japanese are most common. But Spanish is the fourth most common Internet language.

I see.

All right. Try this one. Can you guess which continent has the most Internet users?

Hmm. I wonder if it’s North America …. Um, no. I think it’s Asia.

Right. Asia has about one-third of the world’s Internet users. OK, this is interesting. Can you guess how long the average Internet user spends online each week?

Oh, I don’t know. I mean, I spend about 10 hours online each week.

Well, that’s close. The average user spends about 13 hours per week online. The most popular online activities are e-mail and instant messaging.

Really! Well, I definitely spend a lot of time answering e-mail.

Yeah, I know. Me too.