dateline: 09 May 2018
NB! For WEEKLY audio stories check out LISTEN & LEARN 🔈
California Mandates Solar Power on New Homes
Pre-Listening Vocabulary
- solar panel: a device that absorbs the sun’s rays and converts it to energy, such as heat and electricity
- reduce: to use less
- greenhouse gases: types of gases that trap heat and make Earth warmer (e.g., fossil fuels)
- mandate: an official order
- shade: out of the sunlight
- mortgage: a loan for the purchase of a home that one pays back with interest
- take initiative: to make a change independently
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California Mandates Solar Power on New Homes
Comprehension Questions
- What is this report mainly about?
- When does this change come into effect?
- How does this mandate affect future home buyers in California?
Discussion Question
Do you think solar panels should also be mandated on existing homes and apartment buildings in California? Why or why not?
show Answers
6 comments
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Julianus says:
Thank you for the news you sent. It can improve our listening skill, reading skill and improve our vocabulary
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Lara Vanessa says:
Hi, I am new here and I liked a lot this text and the method.
About solar energy, I think all initiatives to save the planet is a good idea. I live in Brazil in a particular sunny area and I have plans to install solar panels on my roof house, but it’s too expensive and because of this it’s not commom to see it on the roofs.
Please, correct my mistakes. I’ll be glad.
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Editor says:
@ Sang Phan
Tara publishes the news reports weekly. Each month, she also publishes a News Quiz which covers all the news reports for the previous month. Sometimes I include the News Quiz in our weekly newsletter ESL Progress! But whether the news reports or the news quiz are in the newsletter or not, they all appear on the website as usual at https://www.englishclub.com/efl/category/listening-news/.
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Sang Phan says:
Hi Tara and everybody,
Thank you so much for this week’s news report.
Greenhouse gases are not only making Earth warmer, but also creating climate change. So many awesome natural disasters have been destroying many places around the world. Thus, California, the first state of the US, taking the saving-energy initiative is very significant.
In my country, solar panels are just installed in some remote areas because of the very high costs.
Dear Tara,
Could you help me with a problem? Sometimes like last month, I didn’t know why I had had the whole four audio news reports together at the end of the month, not weekly on Wednesdays as website said each audio news report is published every week. Where is the mistake? This makes me hard to learn.
Thank you a lot.
Blessings,
Sang Phan from VN
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Bijan says:
Hi Tara,
First, thank you for this week’s audio news report.
Second, I could understand the audio news report without seeing it, but couldn’t fill in the blanks two words (apartment and individual).
Third, you have said about the word “mandate” that it means:
“an official order” that seems to be a noun while I think “mandate” is a verb in the following sentence:“California mandates solar power on new homes.”
Fourth, my country can also use solar energy because it has been located where has so much solar energy.
Thus, the ministry of power declared several years ago that the owners of buildings in capital of Iran can get a loan for installing solar panel on their roofs and the ministry help them too.
Because of it was optional, I didn’t see people act for using it.
Now, I see in the US, California is the first state that acts for this important subject.
Teacher Tara,
Thank you for presenting a new subject about using solar panels.
Best wishes and have a great weekend in nice Canada,
Bijan from the Persian Gulf -
Alberto says:
I don´t think so. In my humble opinion it would be better to give grants to owners in order to install one of these systems at home. This is the way some regions in Spain are fostering Solar Energy.
So, basically, both ideas aim to the same target: to cover most of the roof with solar panels.