N15 : Fifteenth lesson S00-TITLE : The United Kingdom in profile (From An Introduction to the UK) S01 : The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, otherwise known as the UK, S02 : constitutes the greater part of the group of islands known as the British Isles, S03 : the largest of which is Great Britain, made up of England, Wales and Scotland. S04 : The six counties in the northern part of the island of Ireland are also part of the UK. S05 : There are several other islands, including the Isle of Wight and the Scilly Isles. S06 : England is the largest of the three countries, covering two-thirds of the total land-mass. S07 : It goes from the tip of Cornwall, up through the Cotswolds and the Midlands, S08 : to the Peak District, the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District, S09 : across the Pennines - the so-called Backbone of England - and right up to the Cheviot Hills. S10 : This, and the remains of Hadrian's Wall, mark the ninety-six-mile Anglo-Scottish border. S11 : Scotland is composed of the Lowlands in the south and the Highlands in the north. S12 : It also has around eight hundred islands, of which some one hundred and fifty are inhabited. S13 : To the south-west of England lies Wales, made up of the mountainous north and the valleys and coastal plain of the south. S14 : It should be noted that neither the Isle of Man nor the Channel Islands are part of the UK. S15 : For administrative purposes, England is divided into regions and counties, many of which end in "shire" (Hampshire, for example). S16 : Scotland and Wales both have their own parliaments, but neither country is fully independent. S17 : In terms of population, there are five times more people in England than there are in the rest of the nation. S18 : The climate is generally mild and temperate, with frequent changes of weather but no extreme temperatures. S19 : The mean duration of sunshine varies from five hours a day in the far north to eight hours in the south. S20 : Despite the UK's reputation for wet weather, average rainfall is fairly low and heavy rain is comparatively rare. T00-TRANSLATE : Exercise: Translate T01 : Women make up forty per cent of the workforce in the UK. T02 : We watched the movie right through to the end. T03 : A profile of the new defence secretary was published in yesterday's Times. T04 : Services are the backbone of Britain's economy. T05 : There are about a thousand more people in the north of the county than in the south.