[speaker001:] You are here, still going out?
[speaker002:] No
[speaker001:] You're not now, oh right okay that's fine, the er, what I want you to do instead of writing, I mean two hundred words is, is probably feel nothing, but in fact because we want er it to be absolutely right, what I'd like you to do this time is just write an appraisal, the contents thing er that we had last time we had if you like, content and appraisal and audience, but audience was only er, a sentence or two, I'd simply like a, an appraisal, what your view of this is, if you're writing that part of the review, so we're only thinking in terms of a hundred words now, er what I'd like you to do is to distribute yourselves over the laboratory, erm go wherever you want but don't start talking with people, it's not the, not the Cribben thing I just want to get on with the exercise that I'm concerned with and write your appraisal, but obviously put your name on it and er... if we meet back here... thirty five minutes is that long enough for under a hundred words of excellent quality?... Between er, er the best, the best end of the scale ones which I would of thought if they'd been submitted to something like a general were almost erm okay... just like that, I mean there were one or two very good ones, I think there was one that was just about like that with the odd word and when an editor receives something like you, you know, it's usually going to be something he wants to change very slightly, erm that, those were the best ones, there were in general however you haven't yet got used to the idea of editing. I, when I took them back and looked at them, there were lots and lots of, of re er, errors if you like that if you had really looked at them you could of picked out yourself. I mean if you're honest a lot of these were really first or second draft erm manuscripts I think and er... er you really got to get, if you're going to submit something like this it has to be er... it has to be absolutely watertight and you have to say exactly what it is that you want to say, erm some of the criticism I've, I'm not gonna mention people's names, but I'm just remind myself er, a whole lot of you for some reason erm,con construct things in sort of note form I suppose this being undergraduates that helps this and, and, but you construct things with single sentence paragraphs so that actually you get a whole list of sentences without any linking between them and that is terribly disjointed reading and with an account like that, when you've finished reading it, you sort of have to shake your head and think well what did the person actually say, and when it's actually looking for er a little bit of prose, the in addition some of your con your sentences are in, extraordinarily complex, you start off in a sentence and you actually lose your way in the middle of it, I mean the simple sentence's much the better thing, I mean I seem to remember being told by subject, object verb, in a sentence, they must have those, those, those things, well very often you'll have a sentence which starts with er a particular noun and as, as a subject and then finishes up with the same no noun or, or, or subject or, or maybe it's become the object of the sentence at the very end or maybe the sentence has totally lost it's way. And these are the kind of things really that you should be able to pick out because they just, if you like, they just sound wrong forgetting about how poor our knowledge of grammar may become over, over the years. Er use of slang erm often comes into these, er these things, the, the sort of well footage er referring to the video isn't such a bad one because it's, it's in quite common use, but an awful lot of slang words, erm that people introduce er maybe I'll come across some in a moment. Erm, thank goodness for er modern technology I got them... please don't, don't all fax them up to the department, er these faxes are very hard to read
[speaker002:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker001:] Some of the sentences there are extremely long, some of you use capital letters indiscriminately, every sort of fourth word, they're in capitals, I don't understand why that should be. One or two of the excellent ones was spent, was spoiled by a little bit of er need to erm edit very carefully... introdu introduction of concepts you must be careful not to, if you've got a couple of hundred words only, but don't introduce er concepts diversity of design must of been er a phrase picked up from the video itself because it appeared in two or three of them, but it's no use talking about diversity and divine is it,de design as if, as if it's a concept which everybody else is going to understand. The teacher that reads your review that wants to know shall I buy that review,hi hire that video rather or, or what, am I going to use it for my class, they are going to er want that information and they don't want er concepts introduced which they don't understand what is meant by it, so be careful in that... er... erm, we have species of bird, the brambling, which I, I think is a pub in
[speaker002:] [LAUGHTER] Rare bird
[speaker001:] this is very swift, some of us when er
[speaker002:] [LAUGHTER]...
[speaker001:] I put on, on large number of them more editing is needed I, I think probably now going back, oh change of tenses obviously something you have to watch out for. Anyway since editing is the main problem, what we're going to do this afternoon is, actually, I'm going to show you another video and again it's a very controversial one, again it's used in, in teaching situations, again it has a biased point of view in the sense that it's produced by National Power, er clearly as a P R job for introduction into schools erm and I want you to do the same exercise, but this time I want us to edit them among ourselves and... what I'm going to do is to get you to wri write your reviews and then we'll divide into small groups, while you're watching it I'll co I'll count how, however many people we've got here, we'll copy the reviews and in the same groups I want you to edit one another 's reviews and then er discuss them within the groups once you've, once you've marked them so we'll get into the small, we'll do the review... we'll write the review and then we will er, I distribute the, you can go and have a cup of coffee while we copy them, then we'll distribute them, you can mark them, er individually on your own and then we'll get into a group and you can criticize one another 's reviews, we'll take them one at a time, we'll probably be in groups of four, okay, but I'll see, I'll see how many, what the most suitable number is, okay so, if you, would you be kind enough to... that It's the brambling
[speaker002:] The brambling
[speaker001:] rambling is the word ramble Well if you'd put the sound quality was poor, I thought it better than rambling when it was, when it should of said brambling.
[speaker002:] Rambling isn't that what old fogeys did in the weekend? Yeah [LAUGHTER] It didn't work very well did it Stuart?
[speaker001:] What's that?
[speaker002:] That, didn't come out.
[speaker001:] The faxing?
[speaker002:] Er?
[speaker001:] The faxing?
[speaker002:] No, it didn't work that well
[speaker001:] No, and er, I mean I can do, I could read it so er... but I did
[speaker002:] It's a bit poor.
[speaker001:] It's a bit blurred, yeah... Sorry you were given
[speaker002:] What, what are you carry on doing today? I mean do you want us to hand another one in?
[speaker001:] No, well you founded the, the projects, but apart from anything which are
[speaker002:] Right, right, right.
[speaker001:] Yeah, I realized that er, my handwriting may not be desirable, but er, pardon
[speaker002:] [LAUGHTER]...
[speaker001:] Okay, are, are you ready then with whatever notes you want to take?
[speaker002:] What's, what's the video called?
[speaker001:] Okay the video's called Electric Ecology... it was actually produced by er the Cen er Central Electricity Generating Board which doesn't actually now exist... it's become the National Power and Nuclear Electric hasn't it? Erm and what it says on the blurb on the cover is that the power stations of England and Wales are surrounded by larg large areas of land which are often remote, uncultivated and undisturbed by man. Electric Ecology looks at the surprising variety of plants and animals that have co colonized this land and that the efforts that are made to monitor and foster this wild life. The running time is twenty six minutes, we might as well get that right, we had er, er several people commenting on the running time of the other video, but er people had different of estimates, anything from fifteen to twenty five minutes. Sorry you
[speaker002:] No I was about to ask how long it was.
[speaker001:] Yeah, er right...
[speaker002:] [video titled electrical ecology] Power stations produce electricity for our homes and industry, they're surrounded by thousands of acres of wild land... [music] This wild land has developed into some of the nation's most remarkable nature reserves... [music] For seven days a week, twenty four hour a day routine at the power station can provide unique and also surprising cover for all kinds of wild life. Power station fitter Bill They're, they're built in remote places so you've got all the, the er wild life around them and then you've got er farmland which uses pesticide and stuff like, which kills off the insect life and to birds all young and stuff like that. Erm, by having know that the land grows the weeds and no pesticides not disturbed, there's no shooting, they're never shot around here, the birds can come in sheltered, you know, they, they're just like a little nature reserve, protected area, game park you know, nothing shot at just left and er they like it obviously, I mean it's like anything once it learns that er it's gonna be left alone it comes again and again. It's, it's living in harmony I suppose will be the word you know the, the environment sort of moves in to the power station and doesn't get attacked, everywhere else gets attacked you know, people scrub up the weeds in the garden and things like that, here they're allowed to grow, the butterflies come in, insects, great you know just, just love it.... And Bill loves the wildlife, he's a dedicated bird- watcher although he hardly looks like it when servicing the huge polarizers that turn coal into a fine powder for burning. This powderized coal is the fuel for the power station. Like great coffee beans these machines must wind fifteen thousand tons of coal each day.... Seventy five per cent of Britain's electricity is generated by coal fired power stations
[speaker001:] Not for much longer.
[speaker002:] Ash is produced when the coal is burnt and has proved to be something for the salvation for many plants and animals... the ash is so fine that it has to be turned into a slurry and put into the to settle out... these can be up to eight years during which time it becomes none the less but an artificial mud flat quickly colonized by weeds, pioneers crucial to the complex way of life in our natural world... But for bird-watchers it is the bird that attracted to these artificial mud flats that are the most exciting development within the boundaries of these power station nature reserves.... It'll soon be better for the power station management Bill has built a hide to monitor the bird population The reason we built it on this particular spot is this is the ash flurry from the boilers from the bottom there of the er power station and er it's contents of slurry dried out, dried out and graded, well once nice and flat like this it gives the bird an ideal opportunity to at high tide and they can see around, there's no vegetation, it's very bad ground, and er, that is load of ducks, a good numbers of er oystercatchers, they don't sometimes, which is really nice and so easy to count them now cos when the tide is out and you've got the, the mud flats of course they're spread out, now they're nicely condensed down here, so it's great, great little position for us you know, that's all courtesy of the bottom of the boiler, you know, you know, give us this nice... Hardly the oystercatcher isn't all that fussy about its nesting site. This one has found a cosy hole in an insulation, covering a disused pipe to an oil fired power centre. Such oddities can often been spotted, because to the birds and animals a power station is simply a secluded often borne refuge from a hostile world... When, one, one of the changes I'm trying to do at night is, is to make the nature reserve more attractive to all species. If I, if I get another species next year nesting, that hasn't nested before and I know it's because of the effort of putting in reeds, trees, whatever I've put in there, we're, we're trying to get to nest here, if they nest that'll be really, er that'll be a great thing because er they feed on the apple erm I thought somebody said er who said there was a hundred a seventy five here er a week ago and that'd be great to get them to nest, be really good.... As the ash dries hard it is dug out for sale for the construction industry, yet another habitat is created... With the layers of rock compacted over millions of years, this soft ash forms perfect artificial gifts for burrowing animals like rabbits... For this young fox, what better place to practise digging than a soft cliff of ash, watched nervously by potential lunch... Another predator not necessarily fond of the ash, but very keen on the animals that it attracts, is the polecat ferret... Once used by poachers many of these agile hunters are now wild and range freely over the rough ground near power stations in search of prey... Round at the top of the ash are the nest borrows of one of Britain's rarest bird, the sand martin... the monitor of this power station has ensured special in there so the birds can find ideal nest sites. He's even arranged for holes to be drilled into the ash to give the sand martins a head start... These days secured nest sites for these beautiful birds are increasingly rare. This artificial ash cliff is perhaps one of their last strongholds... have also found refuge around our fire stations, protected from tramping feet and sheltered from chemical sprays these rare plants thrive in the damp salty margins alongside the ash lagoons... all this within the boundaries with just a few of the country's coal fired power stations... but the need for sea walls of other coastal stations merely intake pipes to the coaling system, another world teams... this is not a plant, fan worms have flowerlike mouth parts used to filter food from the sea water... other worms use just two sticky tentacles to catch food... shrimps forage over closely packed sea the delicate bodies of these printed vertebrates work as tiny water pumps, pulling water in one hole and pumping it through the other... here two barnacles feed in the gentle flow of water over the cooling pipes from the station... Marine life quickly packs the underwater structures and is about to become too thick and sometimes affect the performance of the machinery... barnacles belong to the same family as crabs and lobsters, but being in their adult life standing on their head which is fixed to the concrete... they use their feet to filter the water and kick food into their mouths... but if they can't move, how do they get there so quickly in the first place? The answer is that after mating they produce a tiny mobile larvae totally different to the adult... this might drift for miles on ocean current before settling into the fixed adult form... Down Norwick power station in North Wales, generates the electricity by pump storage, in off peak hours thousands of gallons of water are pumped from a lower lake to an upper lake, when the demand for electricity is high bowels are opened and water falls back through turbine to the lower lake again, this generates the power... To ensure that the lower lake would never flood the was diverted through mile long tunnel in the mountain side, no one knew for certain how the salmon, the trout and even rarer that used to migrate up the old river would cope with the tunnels, pitch darkness and slow flowing water. To find out a new research programme was started, fresh water biologist Doctor Alistair. A lot of people, some, some people well you should of and... and er many other people say that this wouldn't go through, particularly them the going through the tunnel. The research team have travelled two kilometres into the tunnel to net the fish close to the intake... checking the catch is an exciting moment... Oh there's a char, there's a lovely char here, these lovely chars er actually spend most of the time in big cold lakes and they're a, they're a population in they normally respond in December from about December the second to the fifteenth and they've probably been isolated since fourteen thousand years ago, with that every population has gone slightly different to, to the next one. Later the catches are surveyed in detail Well here, here are char for example, this is a female, you see the, the white line on the fins and the very pale pink spots, this will actually get gradually more highly coloured until about December when they will be quite bright red, and, and in my opinion not a question really, but might be that some of these other ones are pretty nice as well here's quite a, quite a dark little trout, probably been in the light for quite a long time, right now nevertheless... that's a female as well just a couple more famous small ones here, that's a young salmon, that's really a beauty. These little thumb print things along the, along the sides are called the marks and the down to the sea those marks disappear and you get this silvery appearance, so it's very plain if you've got these that the salmon has been up there just in the upper which is exactly we had, hope we had happened... Female shark and then thirty ... As part of Doctor 's research the char is painlessly tagged before being released back into the lake. When in the future later recaptured the tab will help scientists piece together the life history of these ice age relics... Doctor is to find out whether the migrating salmon are actually producing young in the upper reaches of the river Nantpose. To do this Doctor and his team use specially made apparatus that momentarily stuns the young fish... the research programme is continuing, but the results so far are revealing just how well the salmon co-exist with the high tech world of electricity production There's some that are going up at the moment to this pond, they develop them for the next three years to spend their life in the fresh water feeding, and what we're trying to do here is to see just how many there are in, in the river er as a total. Well what we do is we patch up all we can't a hundred yard stretch. We then mark them and release them again because we, the electro thing doesn't harm them in any way... This deluge of warm water produced by the cooling towers of the power station is as close as we'd come in Britain to a tropical monsoon. It's a vital part of the process of generating electricity. The water is nearly gone from a local river and of course is filtered before it passes through the tower, fish as fry or eggs inevitably get through, craving in the warm oxygen rich pond under the tower.... On the rare occasions when the cooling towers are for maintenance, the staff wait eagerly to see what the pond reveals.... Today the catch includes chub and fish associated with clear oxygen rich water now moving towards the maintenance. Eventually a time of fish will be landed... so the intricate work of life moves itself into the most unlikely corners of our power stations. But when the time comes to close, this delicate balance between gleaming efficient machinery and the secret world of nature can relent the man made, now nature takes over, unfettered by schedules or the relentless hurry into the night shift, it creeps into the bare workings of the place and then it's not the rest of the world within a world. Now echoes of the great turbines has faded and new a workforce starts to earn its living. soon find their way into the building and settle down to rear their young within the of pipes.... The droppings they create will need to contact flies which in turn will be to the spiders whose garden of webs will soon bale the windows.... The flat roof becomes like any piece of bad a potential home for pioneering weeds and grasses. More weed and a seed quickly becomes established in cracks on the asphalt... In future years even willow trees will be in a foothold... to these doomed power stations stands firm and proud as it slips and silently into decay That's them go in there. But the circular life is the start of natural history As the years turn towards migrating birds will give a clue to the success of the fledglings hatched earlier in the year. This nest set up on the flat lands beyond the power stations on the south east coast will provide the evidence to Bill and his bird watching colleagues...... It's not only the owls that fly at night, waders will feed at any time, but the rising tide will force them to leave the mud flats day or night Bird in the bag, a hundred and nine... take her out... right ring plummer, time? Time now, time is Ten, ten past two, what is it two at ten? Ring number Er, O five [LAUGHTER] Yeah, it's been there for quite a while. His job is so delicate that to ring birds like this Bill has had to train for two years under the watchful eye of a certified ringer. Well er a possibility innit? Oh yeah Quite possible... a wedding ring for the bird...... A hundred and thirty. This is quite a nice bird Yeah and er a nice white belly on it, on the wing, we'll put him back into the marsh shall we? With that we'll see if we've got any more [LAUGHTER]... it's er, have to go down here which has got a bit of light, still some birds moving around and the birds calling, go and check the nests now. We're gonna let this one go down the slide, until it runs off, there he goes [LAUGHTER], the light's gone... [music] It was only now that appreciate what nature has known all along. The plants, birds and animals, here in solitude and stable environmental conditions to fly. do not care whether the pipes, in our power stations help generate power to support human civilization. As far as they're concerned these places are a home, safe and free of danger. [video ends]... [music]
[speaker001:] Okay, well now, what I would like you to do please er because we've only got a limited amount of time, er incidentally some of you still haven't divide collecting er a small group going with Peter I
[speaker002:] We are still going.