The USA – Geography and Places of Interest

The specific part of maturita topic 5 (Lifestyle, health and body care), at B2 level: the geography, people and political system of the USA and its natural wonders. The big cities are in Washington, D.C., New York and Other Places of Interest.

Basic facts

The USA is a federal republic of 50 states and the District of Columbia, where the capital lies. Forty-eight states form one block of land between Canada in the north and Mexico in the south; Alaska lies in the north-west of the continent, and Hawaii is a group of volcanic islands in the Pacific Ocean.

Geography

The country stretches from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and the Gulf of Mexico lies to the south. It is often divided into regions – New England in the north-east, the South, the Midwest, the Southwest and the West.

• Mountains: the old and low Appalachians run along the east coast. Almost the whole western half is covered by the Rocky Mountains and other ranges such as the Sierra Nevada. The highest peak, Denali in Alaska (6,190 m), was renamed Mount McKinley again by the federal government in 2025. Between the mountains lie deserts and plateaus, and Death Valley in California is the lowest, hottest and driest place in North America.
• Plains: between the Appalachians and the Rockies lie the huge Great Plains and the Central Lowlands – the “breadbasket” of America, where wheat and corn are grown.
• Rivers: the Mississippi and its tributary the Missouri form one of the longest river systems in the world. Other important rivers are the Colorado, which created the Grand Canyon, the Rio Grande on the border with Mexico, and the Hudson, which flows into the Atlantic in New York.
• Lakes: the five Great Lakes – Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario – lie on the border with Canada and form the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth. The Niagara Falls are on the river between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. The Great Salt Lake in Utah is saltier than the ocean.

Climate

Because the country is so large, it has almost every type of climate: arctic in Alaska, continental in the Midwest with hot summers and very cold winters, desert in the Southwest, mild and rainy in the north-west and subtropical to tropical in Florida and Hawaii. The USA often suffers from natural disasters – hurricanes on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, tornadoes in the Great Plains (“Tornado Alley”), earthquakes and wildfires in California, and floods along the big rivers.

People

The USA is a nation of immigrants, often described as a melting pot or, more recently, a “salad bowl”, because different groups keep their own cultures. The original inhabitants were Native Americans; then came European settlers, Africans brought as slaves, and later immigrants from all over the world. Today about a fifth of Americans are Hispanic (of Latin American origin), and there are large African American and Asian American communities.

Political system

The Constitution of 1787 is the oldest written national constitution still in use. It divides power into three branches:

• Legislative – Congress in the Capitol has two chambers: the Senate (100 senators, two for each state, elected for six years) and the House of Representatives (435 members, elected for two years; bigger states have more of them).
• Executive – the President, who is both head of state and head of government, commander-in-chief and can veto laws. He or she is elected for four years by the Electoral College and can serve only two terms. The President lives and works in the White House.
• Judicial – the Supreme Court with nine judges appointed for life, who decide whether laws agree with the Constitution.

The two main parties are the Democrats (symbol: the donkey) and the Republicans (symbol: the elephant). Each state also has its own government, laws and taxes.

Symbols: the flag, the Stars and Stripes, has 13 stripes for the original colonies and 50 stars for today’s states; the national anthem is The Star-Spangled Banner; the national bird is the bald eagle.

Natural wonders

The USA has more than 60 national parks. The best known are:

• Yellowstone (Wyoming) – the first national park in the world (1872), with hot springs, bison, bears and the geyser Old Faithful, which erupts regularly.
• The Grand Canyon (Arizona) – a canyon about 1.8 km deep, cut by the Colorado River over millions of years.
• Yosemite (California) – granite rocks such as El Capitan, waterfalls and giant sequoias.
• Sequoia National Park – home of the General Sherman Tree, the largest living tree on Earth by volume.
• The Everglades (Florida) – a huge wetland with alligators and crocodiles.
• Monument Valley and Arches – red rock formations known from westerns.
• Mount Rushmore (South Dakota) – the faces of four presidents – Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Lincoln – carved into a mountain.

Key vocabulary

Useful phrases

• The USA is so large that…
• It stretches from… to…
• It is often described as…
• What fascinates me most about America is…
• If I travelled to the USA, I would definitely visit…
• Compared with Europe, distances in the USA are…

Questions the examiner may ask

Try to answer each question in two or three sentences, then click on the hint to compare.