Learn English with another short story. This time it’s Parson’s Pleasure by Roald Dahl, which is an intriguing tale of a dodgy antiques dealer, with a nasty twist at the end. Learn vocabulary while you enjoy a fascinating story.
Category Archives: Reading
815. A River Avon Year: The Wildlife & History of Shakespeare’s Avon, by Rick Thompson (Dad’s New Book!)
My dad has written a new book and he’s come on the podcast to tell us about it. The book follows the path of the river Avon as it flows through the middle of England, telling stories of key moments in British history, nature and the current condition of Britain’s rivers.
A River Avon Year: The Wildlife and History of Shakespeare’s Avon by Rick Thompson is available now! 👇
📖 Amazon
📖 Book Depository
📖 Goodreads
808. James Harris returns to talk about his book 📖🗣
James Harris is a writer, comedian, English teacher and language learner (French, German, Chinese) from England. In this funny chat, we talk about learning Chinese, being married to a Chinese woman and his semi-autobiographical book, “Midlands” which tells several funny and touching stories about two ex-pats living in Germany; Stuart, who is a stand-up comedian trying to understand the Germans, and Doug who gets involved in a love affair. James reads several passages from the book during the episode.
👉 Get James’ book ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ https://www.amazon.co.uk/Midlands-James-Harris/dp/B0B38CX11P
👉 Sign up to James’ email newsletter “Stiff Upper Quip” for regular short articles in English & more https://stiffupperquip.substack.com/
👇 Listen to James’ first episode on LEP
Extracts from “Midlands” by James Harris 📖
From Chapter 2
Stuart describes his early days in Germany, learning German.
Then a chance meeting in a pub had earned him an invitation to Berlin. Laura, Danish and short, was staying there for the summer, rummaging around in the archives for information about a particular Jewish family who had gone on to achieve cultural success in post-war Denmark;
Laura, a snub-nosed Danish girl with glasses who loved Israel and wheat beer. Stuart didn’t care much about her interests but did enjoy spending the days reading on her balcony and socializing with university friends at night;
by the end of the summer his hair had lengthened and his German increased fifty-fold, meaning he now knew about a hundred words. ‘Hallo!’ he would say, then ‘Weltschmerz’ and following a further pause ‘Auf Wiedersehen,’ saying a final farewell to people he would see again the next day.
He also hadn’t yet learnt to ask whether something was sugar or salt, leading to an evening eating some very sweet chips. But even speechless he wasn’t, at last, uneasy in Berlin – it seemed to him a gentle city, where the trains slid in and out and the open spaces pacified tourists drunker and rowdier elsewhere.
It was like the Germans had become one of the peaceful races in Star Trek, the ones introduced by an insert screen of their orderly, verdant planet, Bajorans, say, or some other species permanently threatened by obliteration; and what a change after the tiny cubicles and traffic-jam living of the English, who could only ever be the Borg.
Surrounded by pacifists, Stuart revelled in the license of Englishness, his ability to voice the odd mildly aggressive opinion or wildly over-celebrate during that summer’s football tournament, until England lost. He swam in lakes, and bought a bicycle, and gradually stopped thinking of England and the ashes it had fed him.
In Oxford, where he had been President of the University sketch revue, people had printed gossip about him in the student newspapers, asked him to leave parties, dealt with him as the man who had committed that deepest and most unforgivable of Oxford crimes: failure.
He had failed, as a comedian and a young man, and now publicly; his country had rejected him. He had been humiliated in front of an audience of his contemporaries and sent into an internal exile.
Afterwards, many of these young dilettantes, at the time apparently picturing future lives as bereft of unforeseen distress as possible, lives composed of simply an endless procession of success, successes occurring within a network of contacts which they had built up at University and which would continue to provide them with unstinting support throughout their adult lives, never violating the simple and essential principle that all was permissible as long as it did well – did not want his name on their social CV.
From Chapter 14
Stuart is on-stage doing stand up in Germany.
‘Don’t you sometimes get the feeling,’ said Stuart, years before on the stage in Heidelberg, ‘that if Barack Obama had been German it wouldn’t have been “Yes We Can” but ”Nein das geht nicht”? No you can’t.
‘Everyone would have been chanting it – No you can’t! No you can’t! Of course in this version Obama would not have been black.’
Stuart was closing in on the kill. ‘And this very lack of optimism,’ he said, treading across the stage, limbering, into the really good stuff now, ‘is actually built into the German language itself.
Like for example, when you’re really happy in English, you say “I’m on Cloud Nine.” But in Germany you say, “I’m on Cloud Seven.”
Does this mean that even in their happiest moments the Germans are two clouds less happy than English-speaking people?’
And after developing that bit, which meant moving into a depiction of an exemplary German, Hannes, in his German heaven, with an allotment, board games, juice and an Autobahn heading directly to Mallorca, he noting, somewhat wistfully, the celebratory Anglophones on Cloud Nine who were dancing to ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’, which was an excuse to sing it, following which they – the Anglophones – called down to Cloud Eight “Hey Hannes man! Come and join us here on Cloud Nine” and Hannes replying “No thank you. Everything on Cloud Seven is perfectly satisfactory” then moving on to speculation as to the occupants of the other clouds, the French on Cloud Eight living it up, their motor scooters floating off the cloud and down to Cloud Zero where the Greeks were and below them the Cypriots who’d had to sell the cloud, and were just falling – after all these and other jokes, Stuart had them where he wanted them.
‘Isn’t it funny that, since the Second World War, the Germans have been like’, change voice, German accent, ‘”We Germans. We have done so many things wrong and there is no way we can ever put them right.”
And now Greece is like,’ pause, turn of the head, “Well, actually…”’
They laughed, and laughed, and laughed. They got it.
👇 Follow James on Twitter
802. The Unopened Safe (Learn English with a Text Adventure Story) by Peter Carlson
Let’s do another text adventure mystery story by Peter Carlson. Listen to me read the story and make choices to solve the mystery. You can read the story with me (link below) or do the game yourself later. This is the first in a series of 3 stories from Peter’s “Victorian Detective Interlude” game on textadventures.co.uk
Click here to play Victorian Detective Interlude by Peter Carlson on textadventures.co.uk
👉 Part 2 – The Wraith
👉 Part 3 – The Missing Masaccio
A message from Luke – 2022, A Year in Podcasting
Hello website visitors! I hope you’re doing ok. Did you have a good Christmas (if you celebrate it)?
These three “Victorian Detective Interlude” episodes will be the last episodes of 2022. What a year it’s been! For me, the year started in our new apartment, and everything was a disorganised mess! I had no pod-room where I could record episodes in peace, and our apartment was so noisy that I even had to record a podcast outside in the street. I talked about it in episode 759. Then I managed to set up my new studio/office in a tiny room in a nearby building. I was quite proud of myself because I put up all the shelves (more difficult than you might think!), painted the room, fitted a desk, procured a free office chair and then carried all my books, equipment and other stuff to the room (up 6 flights of stairs, no less). I talked about all that “DIY” in episode 757. After a looooong time the room finally got electricity and an internet connection, I got a new computer (the old one was kaput) and was able to get back to normal podcasting.
Oh yes, then I changed podcast host in June and everything got incredibly complicated again, especially for premium subscribers! But thankfully we all survived all the stress and I was able to record some episodes that I am very happy with, and LEP Premium continued on Acast+ with more and more new episodes.
If you have recently subscribed to LEP Premium – www.teacherluke.co.uk/premium
The best way to use LEP Premium is to add the episodes to a normal podcast app on your phone (not the LEP App, it’s not updating any more 😢, and not Spotify because it isn’t “normal”). Read this page for some important information to help you get started https://teacherluke.co.uk/premium/how-to-add-lep-premium-to-a-podcast-app-on-your-phone-with-acast/
Luke’s English Podcast continues to be the thing I love doing, and I’m lucky to get some income from this work now. I’m happy to say that the podcast continues to go from strength to strength. This year the audio podcast hit 800 episodes, 100,000,000+ downloads in total (incredible), 100+ premium episodes, and my YouTube channel passed 400,000 subscribers (wow!). But maybe the most satisfying thing is that I have received so many messages from listeners with positive things to say about their experiences of learning English with my content.
Thank you for choosing LEP in 2022. Thank you if you left your comments on my episodes. Thank you if you sent me messages of encouragement. Thank you if you sent donations to support this project. Thank you if you signed up to LEP Premium.
I hope you have enjoyed learning English with me in 2022. Here’s to more episodes in 2023! I have lots of plans for more content on a variety of topics – some serious, some funny, but all designed to help you to get more English into your life.
Happy New Year everyone!! 🥂
Luke
Episode 803 “The Wraith” will be published tomorrow, probably!
795. DOPPELGANGER (Learn English with a Short Story)
Learn English with another short story. In fact, this episode contains two stories. Listen until the end for the 2nd one. Repeat after me to practise your pronunciation. Learn some vocabulary & grammar in the second half of the episode, with an explanation of modal verbs of deduction in the past and present. Video version available.
Video Version (with on-screen text)
Sign up to LEP Premium for a premium series with another story (P41)
Download the episode transcript here
Episode Transcript
Hello everyone,
Welcome back to the podcast. How are you doing out there in podcast land? Surviving?
Here’s a new episode. It’s time to do some more English learning with a story.
In this episode, I’m going to read another short story to you, and use it to teach you some English.
I recommend that as well as listening to me read the story out loud to you today, that you read this story out loud too, and I will give you a chance to do that by repeating after me.
We’ll also look at some vocabulary and grammar from the story during the episode. And if you listen until the end, I will tell you another story too.
That’s all going to come later in the episode. If you’re watching the video version – hello. Don’t forget to like & subscribe.
If you are listening to the audio version. Click the link in the description to visit the page for this episode where you will be able to read a transcript for the whole things. You’re welcome.
100-Word Stories
Recently I have been looking for short stories to help me teach English, the shorter the better, and I found lots of 100-word stories on several websites. A 100-word story is a story with no more than 100 words.
There are a couple of sites where you can find a lot of these. One site is called https://100wordstory.org/ and the other is https://www.fridayflashfiction.com/
Anyone can submit a story to these sites. The stories are then checked by the website editors and then published for everyone to read.
The only rule for the writers, is that the stories have a 100-word limit. I think the minimum is 75 words, but the maximum is 100. So, a story with no more than 100 words.
That’s quite a challenge.
The writers need to be very disciplined. They have to choose their words carefully, and as a result these stories are very minimal and manage to convey descriptions and emotions using only a few words.
As a teacher of English, I think these stories are great because it gives us compelling and concise samples of English to work with.
Get the book
I want to just point out that there is a book full of these very short stories, which you could buy.
It’s called Nothing Short of 100: Selected tales from 100 Word Story
It is a collection of stories from the https://100wordstory.org/ website.
There’s a Kindle version or a print version.
It is published by OUTPOST 19 and it was put together by the team behind the website, including Grant Faulkner, Lynn Mundell and Joshua Michael Stewart.
It is available for you to purchase and I recommend it if you are looking for bite size stories to use for learning or teaching English.
I also recommend visiting https://100wordstory.org/ and www.fridayflashfiction.com where you can find absolutely loads of stories like this with new ones arriving each week.
Today’s story
OK so let’s start with a story which I’ve selected from the Nothing Short of 100 book.
This story is called DOPPELGÄNGER
By the way, we don’t usually use an umlaut in English → ä
What is a doppleganger?
A doppelganger is someone who looks exactly like someone else, but it’s creepy and scary, like a ghostly copy of someone.
I think the word has its origins in German (hence the umlaut in the title), and translates directly as “double goer”. So your doppelganger is your double, a copy of you, who looks exactly like you and who goes around, walking the earth.
In my case, that would be Luka Modric, the Croatian footballer. That’s what people say anyway, that Luka Modric is my doppelganger.
Yes, he is my doppelganger. I’m not his doppelganger, ok? He’s my doppelganger. I was here first!
We do use the word in conversational English.
We say things like “Oh, I saw your doppelganger in the street today!” (meaning, “I saw someone who looked just like you”)
or “It’s amazing, he’s your complete doppelganger!” etc.
I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced that. Has it ever happened to you? Have you ever seen someone who looks exactly like someone you know? Have you ever done a double take and been confused for a split second? Has anyone told you that they’d seen your doppelganger?
OK, I’m now going to read the story
Just one question 👇
- How did the person feel at the end of the story? Why?
Answer: She felt shocked, upset, sad, surprised and possibly heartbroken. Maybe she couldn’t believe her eyes, because she saw her lover with another woman, or she saw someone who looked exactly like her lover with another woman.
Listen to the episode to hear me summarise and explain the story.
Let me give my comments and explanations, line by line (listen to get my comments)
DOPPELGÄNGER I almost didn’t see the you who wasn’t you. I was walking past the outdoor tables of the French café, and just at the last second, I caught a familiar hand gesture, and looked again. It couldn’t have been you though, my love, because your other hand was clasping the hand of the woman opposite. Your heads were too close. She was laughing, that abandoned laughing you do when you’re totally in the moment, totally in love. I walked on, heels tapping out a staccato rhythm, as I no longer wanted to look at the you who wasn’t you. |
Possible interpretations
- It was her husband/boyfriend, cheating on her, having an affair with another woman.
- It wasn’t her husband/boyfriend. It was just someone who looked like him, but it still disturbed her because she’s terrified that he could cheat on her.
- It was her ex, someone she is still in love with. They’re not together any more. He’s moved on, but she hasn’t.
- It was a guy who she loves but they’re not together and she can’t bear the fact that he’s with someone else.
- Perhaps she lost her husband (he died) and she just saw someone who reminded her of him.
- Something else?
Language Analysis
Vocabulary & Grammar
- The you who wasn’t you
(Although you normally takes are/were, it is not plural, and so the relative pronoun who is singular) - Just at the last second
- on time
- in time
- Familiar
- A gesture
- To catch (a look at) something (to get a glimpse of something)
- …though
- Clasping her hand
- Abandoned laughing
- To be totally in the moment
- To walk on
- Heels
- Tapping
- A staccato rhythm
- It couldn’t have been you, my love 👇
Modal Verbs of Deduction
Present
Who is that?
I’m sure/certain it’s Dave | It must be Dave |
It’s possible (that) it’s Dave-not sure | It could be DaveIt might be DaveIt may be Dave |
It’s impossible (that) it’s Dave | It can’t be DaveIt couldn’t be Dave |
Past
Who was that?
I’m sure/certain it was Dave | It must have been Dave |
It’s possible (that) it was Dave-not sure | It could have been DaveIt might have been DaveIt may have been Dave |
It’s impossible (that) it was Dave | It can’t have been DaveIt couldn’t have been Dave |
Pronunciation
- Repeat the story after me, line by line.
- Try to say each line with no pauses between words.
- Notice which word has the main emphasis (stress) in each line.
- Don’t sound like a robot! 🤖
DOPPELGÄNGER
I almost didn’t see the you who wasn’t you.
I was walking past the outdoor tables of the French café,
and just at the last second,
I caught a familiar hand gesture,
and looked again.
It couldn’t have been you though, my love,
because your other hand
was clasping the hand of the woman opposite.
Your heads were too close.
She was laughing,
that abandoned laughing you do when you’re totally in the moment,
totally in love.
I walked on,
heels
tapping out a staccato rhythm,
as I no longer wanted to look
at the you
who wasn’t you.
Do you want more of this kind of thing?
Sign up to LEP Premium www.teacherluke.co.uk/premium
I do language analysis, vocab & grammar explanations and pronunciation practice.
There are stories and language reviews for conversations which have appeared in episodes of LEP.
If you sign up you can add all the premium episodes to your podcast app of choice, and also get links for video versions and PDF worksheets.
🔗 Link in the description 🔗
How about another story?
We’re not finished yet.
I’m going to read you another story. This one is also about a doppelganger.
I’ll just read the story to you, and then I’m going to do language work in a premium episode which is coming soon to the premium subscription.
OK, I am trying to persuade you to sign up to my premium subscription, but I think it’s worth it, and if you do you’ll be supporting the podcast. No pressure though.
If you don’t want to sign up or you can’t, no worries.
I’m still going to read the story to you in this free episode, now.
I hope you enjoy it.
I’ll quickly summarise it at the end (in case you don’t understand), but I’ll do the detailed language teaching in premium series, coming soon.
Story 2
Doppelganger, by Sue Clayton From → www.FridayFlashFiction.com and adapted slightly by me. “This book says everyone has a doppelganger, a mirror image, and if you meet yours face to face, you’ll die.” Janice, my flatmate, closed the book, finished her tea and toast, and slammed out of the door for her A&E shift at St. Margaret’s hospital just down the road. She loved any kind of fantasy literature, always immersed in some supernatural genre book. Not my cup of tea at all. Give me a good Nordic Noir mystery anytime. After taking a shower I went to brush my teeth. If you meet your doppelganger face to face you’ll die, my reflection in the bathroom mirror laughed as I recited the words, but they’d begun to worm their subliminal way into my subconscious, waiting to claw their way to the surface and pounce. One day, a couple of weeks later, I headed for the front door ready to set off into town where I worked at a music store. Doppelganger, I froze as my mind hissed the insidious word. What if I saw me on the train? Or stood behind me in the line at the coffee place? What if I came into the shop to buy a record and had to serve myself? The words shot through my mind. I let go of the door handle as if I had been electrocuted, and phoned in sick. “Do you fancy a night out at that new wine bar down the street?” Janice bounced through the front door one afternoon, chirpy as a blue bird, her shift trauma-free for once. “Not tonight, Janice, I’m still not feeling very good.” The image of my other self perched on a stool at the far end of the bar, possibly raising a toast, was too hard to stomach. ‘You haven’t been outside for ages, Natalie, not even for work…you’ll end up getting fired. What’s going on with you?” Janice pressed. “I’ll meet my doppelganger and die if I go outside,” I burst into tears, knowing how ridiculous I sounded. “You know there’s no such thing. You need to get help, Natalie. I’ve got a therapist friend who works at the hospital. I’ll fix you up an appointment.” She wrapped me in a comfort hug. “You’re booked in for ten o’clock this morning.” Two days later Janice grabbed my arm and pulled me through the front door; I didn’t stand a chance. “You won’t meet yourself between here and St. Margaret’s.” She smiled reassuringly and we set off down the street. “Excuse me,” a hand tapped my shoulder as we waited to cross the busy main road. I turned around and my shriek froze the blood of everyone close by, before I stepped backwards off the footpath into the path of an articulated lorry. “I didn’t mean to frighten her,” tears ran down the anguished face of one of the two men who’d been standing behind me. He was holding a large six-feet square mirror which they were carrying across to the framing workshop across the road. “I just wanted to ask her to step to one side.” |
Summary of Story 2
The narrator, let’s call her Sue (although I realised after recording this that she’s actually called Nathalie in the story!) lives with her flatmate Janice.
One day Janice reads a line from a scary book she’s reading. It says that if you ever meet your doppelganger, you’ll die.
Sue doesn’t usually believe that kind of thing, but the idea gets into her head and as she is leaving the house one day, she suddenly gets scared that she might meet her doppelganger, and die.
So she decides to stay at home.
In fact she keeps staying at home, every day. The idea of meeting her doppelganger has made her too terrified to leave the house.
Janice gets worried about Sue and arranges for her to meet a therapist, and assures Sue that nothing can happen to her on the way.
Sue agrees to leave the house, but at the main road someone taps her on the shoulder.
Sue turns around and sees her own reflection.
The man who tapped her on the shoulder was trying to carry a mirror across the road.
He wanted to ask her to step to one side, to make space.
But Sue turned around and saw her doppelganger – her reflection in the mirror and screamed!
Then she stepped back, into the road, and was hit by a large lorry.
That’s the end of the episode, but check out LEP Premium.
I’m going to do a premium episode all about this second doppelganger story.
All the vocabulary (with a memory test), some grammar, some pronunciation practice.
I’ll go through the vocabulary and some grammar and I’ll do some pronunciation practice with it too, just like I did with the 100-word story.
794. The Surprising Power of Reading Aloud (Article) 📖🗣️
Reading out loud can have lots of surprising benefits for our memory and our mental health. How can it also help with your English? In this episode I read an article to you, help you understand it and give comments on the importance of reading, both quietly in your head, and out loud. Video version and full transcript available.
Video Version (with on-screen text)
Read the article on the BBC Future website here https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200917-the-surprising-power-of-reading-aloud
Download the full PDF transcript for this episode
Full Episode Transcript 👇
Hello listeners,
Welcome to this new episode. This one is about reading and the power of reading aloud (reading out loud) and I think it can definitely help you with your English in various ways. Stick with me, there’s a lot to discover here.
I found an article the other day on the BBC’s website and I thought it was really interesting and definitely something I could turn into an episode of this podcast.
I am going to read the article to you in this episode. You can read it with me if you like. The link for the article is in the description, or if you are watching the video version you will see the text on the screen.
I’ll help you understand it all, we’ll consider the main points being made by the writer, I’ll give my thoughts on how this all relates to learning English and I’ll point out some bits of vocabulary for you to learn along the way.
Reading out loud ← what does this mean?
Normally when we read, we read silently. We read in our heads. 📖👀
But when we read out loud we actually say the words we are reading with our voice so that other people can hear you. 🗣️ That’s what out loud means.
Aloud and out loud are synonyms.
- To read out loud (I had to read out loud in front of my class during my French lesson and it was a bit embarrassing)
- To say something out loud (Don’t say that out loud, it’s supposed be a secret!)
- To think out loud (What are you talking about? Oh, sorry, never mind, I’m just thinking out loud really)
- To laugh out loud (LOL)
The Article
The title of the article I found is The Surprising Power of Reading Aloud, and I found it in the “Future” section of the BBC’s website.
BBC Future https://www.bbc.com/future/
BBC Future is a section of the BBC website where you can read some really interesting articles about lots of different subjects.
The articles are written in an academic style (so we are looking at academic English here to an extent), but these articles are very readable and they are exactly the type of reading text that you might find in an IELTS reading test. You often find academic texts about scientific subjects, or history, or psychology in IELTS tests.
So, it would be really good practice for you to read articles like this on a regular basis, whether you are preparing for IELTS or you’re just interested in developing your English generally. The articles on BBC Future are quite advanced – they are for native English speakers, but with a good dictionary and a bit of motivation, they could really help your English.
I’m going to help you do that in this episode with this particular article. I’ll take you through it and will explain things.
Let’s get started.
Before we start reading, I’ve got two tasks for you (and they’re important)
1st task: Consider some questions
Here are some questions to get you thinking 🧐🤔💭
I want you to consider these questions because this will get you in the right mental space to understand the article we’re going to read. It’s important to do this because this is how you get your mind ready before you read. So, consider these questions (below).
If you like you can pause this episode after I say these questions in order to actually answer them, in your own head or out loud.
Saying your answers out loud would be the best thing to do – to practise your speaking and putting your thoughts into words. So, if you can do that, do that, right now, with these questions.
Questions to consider before reading
- When was the last time you read something in English? What was it, and why did you read it?
- When you read in English or in your first language, do you usually read silently in your head or do you read out loud? Why?
- In what situations do people sometimes read out loud?
- Do you think reading out loud is more or less common these days than it used to be?
Do people read out loud more these days, or did they do that more in the past?
Why could this be? - Can you remember a time when someone read something out loud to you?
What was the situation? How did it make you feel? - How about when you were a child? Can you remember any moments when someone read out loud to you? How do you feel about those memories?
- What do you think is better for your English – reading texts silently in your head, reading texts out loud, or listening to other people read out loud to you? Why?
2nd task: Read the text 📖
Here’s a reading task for you
Before I read this article to you, I want you to read it yourself. Twice.
🔗 link in the description 🔗
First, read the text silently, then try reading it out loud.
You don’t have to read the whole thing. Maybe just do the first few paragraphs if you prefer.
But try it. Go on.
Read it silently first, then read it out loud.
Try not to sound like a robot 🤖
Put some life into the reading ❤️🔥
If/When you read it out loud, consider these questions. you .
- Where are the pauses? Where should you pause when you read?
- Which words in each line should be stressed (emphasised)?
- Where does the voice go up and where does the voice go down?
- How would you read it out like a TV presenter or a university lecturer?
Imagine you are reading this out for an audience.
It might affect the way you read it. 🗣️
You can do that now. The link to the article is in the description.
Read it – first silently, and then out loud like a presenter.
I’ll let you pause the episode right now and do that. I’ll continue speaking to you again in a moment.
– – – –
This is where you pause to read the article
– – – –
OK, welcome back. I know some of you didn’t pause the episode and read the text, which is totally fine.
But some of you did. Nice one.
I wonder how it was for you.
Was difficult or not?
Was it difficult to read the text?
It’s a different experience isn’t it, reading it out loud.
It has its own challenges.
Unknown vocabulary, difficult pronunciation, understanding the overall flow and structure of the text.
Now, let me read the article to you. You can read it with me too, or just listen. It’s up to you.
I’ve broken the text into sections. I’ll read a section of the article, then paraphrase what I read, add my comments and explain some words. Then we’ll move to the next section.
Whenever there’s a break in the text like this, it’s the end of a section.
– – – – – – – – –
When that happens, I’ll stop and explain things, then we’ll move on to the next section.
You’ll see some words highlighted in bold. These are words that you might not know, so I’ll explain them as we go.
Try reading aloud with me to work on your pronunciation if you like.
BBC FUTURE: NEUROSCIENCE
Why you should read this out loud
By Sophie Hardach /ˈhædək/ – 18th September 2020
Most adults retreat into a personal, quiet world inside their heads when they are reading, but we may be missing out on some vital benefits when we do this.
For much of history, reading was a fairly noisy activity. On clay tablets written in ancient Iraq and Syria some 4,000 years ago, the commonly used words for “to read” literally meant “to cry out” or “to listen”.
“I am sending a very urgent message,” says one letter from this period. “Listen to this tablet. If it is appropriate, have the king listen to it.”
Only occasionally, a different technique was mentioned: to “see” a tablet – to read it silently.
Today, silent reading is the norm. The majority of us bottle the words in our heads as if sitting in the hushed confines of a library. Reading out loud is largely reserved for bedtime stories and performances.
But a growing body of research suggests that we may be missing out by reading only with the voices inside our minds. The ancient art of reading aloud has a number of benefits for adults, from helping improve our memories and understand complex texts, to strengthening emotional bonds between people. And far from being a rare or bygone activity, it is still surprisingly common in modern life. Many of us intuitively use it as a convenient tool for making sense of the written word, and are just not aware of it.
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Colin MacLeod, a psychologist at the University of Waterloo in Canada, has extensively researched the impact of reading aloud on memory. He and his collaborators have shown that people consistently remember words and texts better if they read them aloud than if they read them silently. This memory-boosting effect of reading aloud is particularly strong in children, but it works for older people, too. “It’s beneficial throughout the age range,” he says.
MacLeod has named this phenomenon the “production effect”. It means that producing written words – that’s to say, reading them out loud – improves our memory of them.
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The production effect has been replicated in numerous studies spanning more than a decade.
In one study in Australia, a group of seven-to-10-year-olds were presented with a list of words and asked to read some silently, and others aloud. Afterwards, they correctly recognised 87% of the words they’d read aloud, but only 70% of the silent ones.
In another study, adults aged 67 to 88 were given the same task – reading words either silently or aloud – before then writing down all those they could remember. They were able to recall 27% of the words they had read aloud, but only 10% of those they’d read silently. When asked which ones they recognised, they were able to correctly identify 80% of the words they had read aloud, but only 60% of the silent ones. MacLeod and his team have found the effect can last up to a week after the reading task.
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Even just silently mouthing the words makes them more memorable, though to a lesser extent.
Researchers at Ariel University in the occupied West Bank discovered that the memory-enhancing effect also works if the readers have speech difficulties, and cannot fully articulate the words they read aloud.
MacLeod says one reason why people remember the spoken words is that “they stand out, they’re distinctive, because they were done aloud, and this gives you an additional basis for memory”.
We are generally better at recalling distinct, unusual events, and also, events that require active involvement.
For instance, generating a word in response to a question makes it more memorable, a phenomenon known as the generation effect.
Similarly, if someone prompts you with the clue “a tiny infant, sleeps in a cradle, begins with b”, and you answer baby, you’re going to remember it better than if you simply read it, MacLeod says.
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Another way of making words stick is to enact them, for instance by bouncing a ball (or imagining bouncing a ball) while saying “bounce a ball”.
This is called the enactment effect. Both of these effects are closely related to the production effect: they allow our memory to associate the word with a distinct event, and thereby make it easier to retrieve later.
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The production effect is strongest if we read aloud ourselves. But listening to someone else read can benefit memory in other ways. In a study led by researchers at the University of Perugia in Italy, students read extracts from novels to a group of elderly people with dementia over a total of 60 sessions. The listeners performed better in memory tests after the sessions than before, possibly because the stories made them draw on their own memories and imagination, and helped them sort past experiences into sequences. “It seems that actively listening to a story leads to more intense and deeper information processing,” the researchers concluded.
Reading aloud can also make certain memory problems more obvious, and could be helpful in detecting such issues early on.
In one study, people with early Alzheimer’s disease were found to be more likely than others to make certain errors when reading aloud.
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There is some evidence that many of us are intuitively aware of the benefits of reading aloud, and use the technique more than we might realise.
Sam Duncan, an adult literacy researcher at University College London, conducted a two-year study of more than 500 people all over Britain during 2017-2019 to find out if, when and how they read aloud. Often, her participants would start out by saying they didn’t read aloud – but then realised that actually, they did.
“Adult reading aloud is widespread,” she says. “It’s not something we only do with children, or something that only happened in the past.”
Some said they read out funny emails or messages to entertain others. Others read aloud prayers and blessings for spiritual reasons. Writers and translators read drafts to themselves to hear the rhythm and flow. People also read aloud to make sense of recipes, contracts and densely written texts.
“Some find it helps them unpack complicated, difficult texts, whether it’s legal, academic, or Ikea-style instructions,” Duncan says. “Maybe it’s about slowing down, saying it and hearing it.”
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For many respondents, reading aloud brought joy, comfort and a sense of belonging. Some read to friends who were sick or dying, as “a way of escaping together somewhere”, Duncan says. One woman recalled her mother reading poems to her, and talking to her, in Welsh. After her mother died, the woman began reading Welsh poetry aloud to recreate those shared moments. A Tamil speaker living in London said he read Christian texts in Tamil to his wife. On Shetland, a poet read aloud poetry in the local dialect to herself and others.
“There were participants who talked about how when someone is reading aloud to you, you feel a bit like you’re given a gift of their time, of their attention, of their voice,” Duncan recalls. “We see this in the reading to children, that sense of closeness and bonding, but I don’t think we talk about it as much with adults.”
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If reading aloud delivers such benefits, why did humans ever switch to silent reading? One clue may lie in those clay tablets from the ancient Near East, written by professional scribes in a script called cuneiform /ˈkjuːnɪˌfɔːm/.
Over time, the scribes developed an ever faster and more efficient way of writing this script. Such fast scribbling has a crucial advantage, according to Karenleigh Overmann, a cognitive archaeologist at the University of Bergen, Norway who studies how writing affected human brains and behaviour in the past. “It keeps up with the speed of thought much better,” she says.
Reading aloud, on the other hand, is relatively slow due to the extra step of producing a sound.
“The ability to read silently, while confined to highly proficient scribes, would have had distinct advantages, especially, speed,” says Overmann. “Reading aloud is a behaviour that would slow down your ability to read quickly.”
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In his book on ancient literacy, Reading and Writing in Babylon, the French assyriologist Dominique Charpin quotes a letter by a scribe called Hulalum that hints at silent reading in a hurry. Apparently, Hulalum switched between “seeing” (ie, silent reading) and “saying/listening” (loud reading), depending on the situation. In his letter, he writes that he cracked open a clay envelope – Mesopotamian tablets came encased inside a thin casing of clay to prevent prying eyes from reading them – thinking it contained a tablet for the king.
“I saw that it was written to [someone else] and therefore did not have the king listen to it,” writes Hulalum.
Perhaps the ancient scribes, just like us today, enjoyed having two reading modes at their disposal: one fast, convenient, silent and personal; the other slower, noisier, and at times more memorable.
In a time when our interactions with others and the barrage of information we take in are all too transient, perhaps it is worth making a bit more time for reading out loud. Perhaps you even gave it a try with this article, and enjoyed hearing it in your own voice?
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Conclusion
As a language practice exercise, try reading texts out loud.
You don’t have to do it all the time, but simply trying to read a text out loud as if you are reading it to some people, can be a good exercise.
Research suggests that it could help you remember words more effectively. The production effect means – producing words (saying them out loud) makes a difference to your ability to remember them later. Even just mouthing words when you read them helps them to go into your brain.
So, read aloud and mouth words when you read them.
Also, being prompted with a clue helps you remember words. This is called the generation effect. This encourages me a lot, because it confirms things I have been doing as a teacher, including in LEP Premium episodes when I use little prompts to help you recall words. For you, you could always create your own clues to help you remember words or phrases, or play word games in English in which you define words and then have to guess which words they are. Do this with new vocabulary. Of course, you would need friends or language partners to play with.
Acting words out, or linking them to physical movements also helps you remember words. So, when trying to remember words, add a physical element somehow, even if it means imagining yourself doing the word or being in a certain physical space when thinking of new words. For example if the expression is “to be wary of doing something” – put your hand to your chin and pretend you are being nervous about something or reluctant to do it. Make a sound like “Naaaaaaah, I’m a bit wary of doing that”. Perhaps imagine yourself at the end of a dark street and say “I’m a bit wary of going down there on my own. I think I’ll take the main road.”
Listening to other people read to you also helps a lot. So, the conclusion here is just keep listening to LEP of course! I am sure this works when someone is just speaking to you as well, especially if you are involved and caught up in what they are saying. That’s what I’ve always thought and I am sure scientific research would suggest that it’s true. My hypothesis is that people will remember more L2 words when they are presented in a meaningful context. It’s pretty obvious really.
Reading aloud might be good for your mental health. It seems that the exercise can reveal signs of dementia. Maybe reading aloud does require quite a lot of brain work – not only are you reading and decoding the words, but your brain is involved in some motor exercise too – meaning, muscle work, movement work. Surely, making your brain multi-task like this can only be good as a way of keeping it active. Brain training, basically.
It’s a good way to keep your brain young.
Reading aloud also makes you feel quite good, especially if you do it with others. It could be a good exercise with other learners of English, or with your English teacher. Of course, don’t only read aloud, but include it as part of your regular English practice. It’s especially enjoyable if you are reading out some interesting texts, and try to mix it up – some non-fiction stuff and also some stories and so on.
When you read aloud, consider where you need to chunk the text, pause, emphasise and use intonation.
Reading texts out loud is something I often do with my students in class. I ask my students to work out where the pauses should be, which words to emphasise and where the voice goes up or down.
This exercise reveals things about the text, including the structure and the real meanings and intentions of the writer.
Try reading aloud from time to time. Also try reading out loud with me, at the same time as me sometimes (if there is a transcript with the episode). It might help you notice more aspects of the language in the text, help you remember it more, and help you practice your pronunciation as well as your reading. It might also just make you feel good.
What do you think?
- Leave your comments below.
- What have you been thinking while listening to this?
- Has it given you any ideas about learning English?
- Do you have anything to add?
Put your thoughts into English in the comment section.
A Premium Series
I’m also publishing a 3-part premium series all about the language in this episode. It’ll be available soon or maybe it’s already available now. I’m going to record them right away in fact. They are the next things I’m going to record.
In those premium episodes I will go through the vocabulary which I highlighted in the text again, and I’ll expand things with slightly more detailed explanations and examples, then I’ll test your memory of those words and phrases (with some prompts and some sentences with missing words) and give you a chance to practise pronouncing all the words in sentences.
There will also be an episode where we practise reading aloud some of the paragraphs from the text, with advice about where to pause, which words to emphasise and so on, with sentences to repeat after me.
To get those episodes, sign up to LEP Premium on Acast+. You can add the premium episodes to your podcasting app, and also access PDFs and video versions that way. www.teacherluke.co.uk/premium for the premium series focusing on the language in this episode.
That’s it for this episode, but I will be back soon with more things for you to listen to, including more stories which I would like to read to you, and conversations with guests, and all the other types of episode I like to present to you on my show.
Thanks for listening, but for now – good bye bye bye!
779. [2/2] Poetry Reading: Sir Gawain and The Green Knight (by Simon Armitage)
Luke reads verses from a modernised version of this medieval poem, considered one of the masterpieces of Middle English literature. Listen to hear the rhyme and rhythm of the poetry, the descriptive vocabulary and details of the story, with vocabulary explanations and comments from Luke. This is part 2 of a double episode about this story. Video version available with on-screen text.
Video Version with on-screen text 👇
Part 1 with Rick Thompson 👇
Book Title
Sir Gawain and The Green Knight by Simon Armitage, published by W. W. Norton & Company (available in all good bookshops)
Introduction Transcript
Hello listeners,
Welcome to episode 779 of my podcast for learners of English. This is in fact part 2 of a 2-part episode.
In part 1 of this (episode 778), I talked to my dad about an old poem from the medieval period in Britain.
The poem is basically a really mysterious and wonderfully descriptive adventure about a knight from King Arthur’s table at Camelot.
King Arthur was a mythical king of Britain who people told and wrote stories about, many centuries ago.
We’re not sure if he really existed, if the stories about him are all fictional, or some combination of those two things.
Anyway, the Arthurian legends, or stories of King Arthur and his Knights from Camelot are full of magic, chivalry and adventure.
Chivalry means the rules that all honourable knights had to follow – a code of honour.
Anyway, the poem I talked about with my dad in the last episode is about one of Arthur’s knights who accepts a strange and dangerous challenge. The poem is called Sir Gawain and The Green Knight.
If you listened to episode 778, you heard my dad describing the story of the poem, the linguistic style and how it fits into British history and the history of the English language.
At the end of that episode I read some verses from a modernised version of the poem, by Simon Armitage.
In this episode I’d like to read some more verses from the poem, but this time I’d like to explain some of the vocabulary and other aspects of the language while I am doing it.
So here you will be able to hear part of a medieval poem written in middle English, which has been updated into modern English, with explanations and comments from me.
Again, the poem is called Sir Gawain and The Green Knight.
It was probably written in England in the 14th century (probably around the year 1370).
Since this text was discovered it has been studied and translated and is now considered one of the greatest works of medieval English literature.
Modernised versions have been published, including one by JRR Tolkein and another one more recently by Simon Armitage.
The one I’m going to read from here is the modernised version by Simon Armitage, which is available as a book from W. W. Norton & Company – you can get it in any good bookshop.
I do recommend it. It has a really interesting introduction and it presents both the modernised version and the original text, side by side.
In terms of language, there are three main things to notice.
These linguistic features or poetic devices were all present in the original version and Simon Armitage has done a great job of replicating them in this modern version.
- Alliteration
This is when the same sounds are used at the beginnings of words.
It creates a kind of rhythm or music to the lines.
Examples:
a fearful form appeared, framed in the door
a mountain of a man, immeasurably high,
a hulk of a human from head to hips,
so long and thick in his loins and his limbs
I should genuinely judge him to be a half giant,
or a most massive man, the mightiest of mortals.
- The “Bob and Wheel”.
This is a poetic device which can be found in poems from this era.
Each “stanza” (group of lines) ends with two syllables (the bob) and then four flowing lines which follow (the wheel)
So listen a little while to my tale if you will
and I’ll tell it as it’s told in the town where it trips from
the tongue;
and as it has been inked
in stories bold and strong,
through letters which, once linked,
have lasted loud and long.
- Descriptive vocabulary
The poem is full of vivid descriptions, and Simon Armitage has managed to modernise the vocabulary so most of the language used here is up-to-date and still used by people today.
So, let’s get into the poem.
I’ll read each verse one by one, and then I’ll go back through and explain the language.
You could try to repeat the lines of the poem after me. That would be a good way to practise your pronunciation.
I’m going to start reading from line 130.
Just to bring you up to speed with the story, here’s what happens between lines 1 and 129.
The poem begins by referring to Greek mythology. It briefly describes the fall of Troy and the foundation of Rome, and it makes a clear connection between King Arthur of Britain and those heroes from Greek and Roman mythology.
It’s Christmas in Camelot and King Arthur is celebrating with a big feast (a big meal which lasts for a long time).
The poem describes the celebrations, the food, the games they’ve been playing, the decorations, the seating arrangement with all the knights, ladies and their guests. King Arthur’s wife Guinevere is there, and the poem describes how beautiful she is.
They are just about to start eating, when the celebration is interrupted by something extraordinary.
Luke reads lines 130 – 466 from the Simon Armitage version of the poem.
What do you think? Leave your comments below 👇
778. [1/2] Sir Gawain and The Green Knight (with Dad)
A conversation with my dad about a great medieval adventure story originally written in middle English and updated and translated into modern English by Simon Armitage. Dad talks about the origin of this story, its connection to the history of the English language, and the poetic devices used in the writing. In the second half I read a summarised version of the story and some verses from Armitage’s modernised version.
[DOWNLOAD]
Introduction Script
Hello there, how are you? Hope you’re well. Just before we start – a quick bit of news.
So, my full time teaching schedule at school has ended now and I have about 1 week to work on LEP content, and upload it before the August summer holiday begins. I’m not sure if I will be able to work during August, because “hello” it’s holiday season – my daughter is off school, we’re going on holiday in France and in the UK, and I might not bring my computer with me and so on. So I might upload loads of content this week, which you can listen to during the summer. I don’t want to overload you, but also I don’t want to underload you (is that a word).
In any case, it’ll be like waiting for a bus again – you wait ages and then 3 come at the same time. This includes premium content. An update about LEP Premium: New episodes will be arriving very soon, including P35 part 2, which is full of pronunciation practice. As you may know, LEP Premimum is still in a transition from Libsyn to Acast and during this time I can’t upload episodes because of a slight issue relating to transferring 6 and 12 month subscriptions, but this is going to be solved very soon, and as soon as it is solved, new premium content will arrive. If you are a premium subscriber on Libsyn (the old system) with a 6 or 12 month subscription, and you’re keen to move to Acast – I will be contacting you soon with a solution to the situation. Just hold on. If you don’t understand what’s happening, check my website for updates. But mainly – just hold on.
If you are new to LEP Premium, you can go ahead and and sign up through Acast+ – it’s www.teacherluke.co.uk/premium or click the link in the description. If you do that you will be supporting this whole project and in return you will get access to all the LEP Premium episodes (well over 100 vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar practice lessons) PDFs, videos and also you get ad-free episodes of LEP. If you’re wondering how it all works, have a look at my website where you will find all the information you need, including how to access the PDFs and how to add LEP Premium episodes to your podcasting app of choice.
— Jingle —
Hello everyone,
In this episode, my dad is back, but it’s not the Rick Thompson Report, so no politics this time. Instead we’re doing an episode that we have been hoping to do since Christmas last year.
In this one, Dad is going to tell us about an old story from the Arthurian legends – that’s a set of stories about the mythical King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. British legends and folklore.
The story we’re talking about is in the form of a poem called Sir Gawain & The Green Knight. This long poem was probably first written down in the 14th century by an unknown poet, but the story is probably much older than that, and part of a long oral storytelling tradition.
What Dad is going to do is describe the significance of this story, give us a summary of the plot and also he will make some comments about the history of the English language, and the rhythmic and rhyming style used in the original 14th century version, which was written in what we now call middle English. My dad studied English literature at university in the 1960s and this was one of the texts that he studied, and so he knows it quite well.
Recently the old 14th century version of this poem was updated by a modern poet called Simon Armitage (the current poet laureate in the UK). Armitage has managed to write a modern version of this poem using modern English vocabulary, but it retains many of the linguistic and poetic devices of the original, including certain forms of rhyme and rhythm that made the poem so effective.
My dad got that version for Christmas and that’s what inspired us to do this episode.
It should be interesting for you to hear the story, hear my dad’s comments about it and learn how this fits into the history of the English language.
In the second half of the episode I will read you a summarised version of the full story just to make sure you get to hear an uninterrupted version, plus I will read out a few verses of the Simon Armitage version of them poem, again, to give you a good chance to hear some the rhythm and rhyme of it uninterrupted.
So, if you are sitting comfortably, let’s begin.
Ending Script
Well, how was that?
You might be keen to hear more of the story and to hear more samples of the poem. That’s what I’d like to do in this ending part.
I’m going to do a couple of readings for you now.
I thought it would be useful for you to hear a brief version of the whole story, just to give you an overview and to make sure you’ve understood the whole thing. Then I’ll read a few of verses from the Simon Armitage version, in order to give you a flavour of the poetry with its distinctive style: wonderfully descriptive language and a particular rhythm, which was originally used in the 14th century version, as my dad described.
A Summary of the Story
This is a version of the story, from a TED Ed video by Dan Kwartler.
Credit for this version goes to Dan Kwartler and there’s an animated version of it here https://youtu.be/SaQImmPev2o I have adapted this version slightly.
This doesn’t have the rhythmic style of the original poem, or the richly descriptive language.
But it does tell the story quite briefly. I’m not going to explain all the words here. I might do that in part 2 (If there is a part 2).
It was Christmas time in Camelot
and King Arthur was throwing a party.
The entire court was invited,
except for the evil sorceress Morgan le Fay.
The food and drink flowed freely.
But in the midst of all the revelry,
the castle doors suddenly split open.
A tall knight riding an emerald horse
burst into the room,
stunning the court into silence.
He was green from head to toe,
including his skin, hair and clothes.
Even his horse was green.
Then, in a deep bellowing voice, he proposed a game.
The Green Knight declared that he would allow
the bravest warrior present
to attack him with his own axe.
If they could strike him down, they would win his powerful weapon.
However, the knight would be allowed to return that blow
in one year and one day.
Arthur and his knights were baffled.
No man could survive such a strike.
How would the Green Knight be able to return the blow in a year’s time?
The Green Knight began to mock their leader’s hesitance,
and Arthur stood up to defend his honour.
But as soon as he gripped the axe,
another person leapt up to take his place.
It was Arthur’s nephew,
Sir Gawain,
who decided he could not let the king be drawn into such a macabre game.
Keen to prove himself as a worthy hero,
Sir Gawain took the weapon instead.
The Green Knight knelt down to receive the blow from the axe,
even moving his hair away to expose the naked green skin of his neck.
With one swift strike, Sir Gawain beheaded the knight.
But the moment his skull hit the ground, it began to laugh.
The Green Knight bent down,
collected his head
and mounted his horse.
As he rode off,
his severed head reminded Gawain of their contract
and told him to seek the Green Chapel
one year and one day from that moment.
In the months that followed, Gawain tried to forget this bizarre vision.
But despite the strangeness of the knight’s game,
Sir Gawain was determined to act honourably and fulfil his promise.
When the following winter approached,
he set out —
enduring foul weather
and encounters with dangerous beasts
in his quest to find the mysterious Green Chapel.
Finally, on Christmas Eve, he saw a shimmering castle on the horizon.
The castle’s lord and lady were thrilled to help such an honourable guest,
and informed him that the Green Chapel was only a short ride away.
They implored Gawain to rest at their home until his meeting with the Green Knight.
Thrilled at this news, Gawain happily accepted their offer.
However, in exchange for this hospitality,
the lord made a strange request.
Over the next three days, he would go hunting
and every night he would share whatever he caught with Gawain.
In return, Gawain must give him whatever he’d gained during his day at the castle.
At first, Gawain was perplexed by these strange terms.
But the lord’s meaning became quite clear the next day,
when his wife tried to seduce Gawain.
To rebuff the lady’s advances without offending her honour,
Gawain allowed one kiss —
which he then passed on to her husband in exchange for a slain deer.
The next day, Gawain allowed two kisses,
which he gave to the lord for a dead boar.
But on the third day,
the lady offered more than just three kisses.
She presented a magical sash that would protect Gawain
from the Green Knight’s blade.
Gawain accepted immediately,
but that evening,
when the lord returned,
Gawain offered only three kisses and did not mention the enchanted gift which he had received.
The next morning,
Gawain rode out to the Green Chapel—
a simple mound of earth
where the Green Knight was waiting and ominously sharpening his axe.
With the sash’s protection,
Gawain approached stoically —
determined to honour his agreement.
He bowed his head for the deadly blow.
He flinched twice,
but then with a massive swing,
the Green Knight cut Gawain’s neck —
but inflicted nothing more than a flesh wound.
Once more, Gawain was bewildered.
Why hadn’t the sash protected him?
And why hadn’t the knight killed him?
Bursting into laughter,
the Green Knight revealed himself to be the castle’s lord,
and that he’d been working with the sorcoress Morgan Le Fay
to test the honour and bravery of Arthur’s knights.
He was impressed with Gawain’s behavior,
and he’d planned to spare his neck entirely —
until Gawain concealed the sash,
and this is when the Green Knight chose to inflict the fleshwound upon him.
Filled with shame, Gawain returned to Camelot.
But to his surprise, his companions absolved him of blame
and celebrated his valor.
Struggling to understand this strange journey,
it seemed to Gawain that perhaps the whole world was playing a game —
with rules more wild and bewildering than any man could understand.
Ok, so that’s the story.
It’s a bit confusing and mysterious.
(Luke gives a quick summary again)
Reading Verses from the Simon Armitage version of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight
What you don’t get from that story summary (above) is the beautiful language.
- Wonderfully descriptive vocabulary
- Alliteration (the repetition of rhyming consonant sounds at the start of words)
- The “Bob and Wheel” (a rhythmic device which ends each verse)
There are some extracts from the Simon Armitage version available in the preview of the book on Amazon (other bookshops are available)
Let me read a couple of those initial pages.
The way the Armitage version of this poem is presented is that it gives one page of the modernised version, and then on the next page you have the equivalent original text, so you can compare them side by side.
I won’t read any of the original text because the English is so old fashioned that I frankly wouldn’t be able to pronounce it all. And before you fall out of your chair in disbelief that I don’t know my own language – hardly anyone is able to pronounce sentences written in middle English. Only academic experts can do that, and a lot of them disagree about how middle English should be pronounced. So, that’s not for us. Middle English is almost like another language, so there’s no need for me to read it to you.
The modern version of this poem on the other hand, is much more appropriate for us, and Simon Armitage has done a fantastic job because as my dad said, his version of the poem manages to keep the same alliteration, the same rhythm, and the bob & wheel – that structural device where after a few lines the verse comes to an end with a distinctive two syllable break (the bob) and then four lines which follow it (the wheel). You’ll have a chance to listen to examples of that again in a moment.
Simon Armitage, while managing to keep a lot of these literary and poetic devices from the original poem, has updated it using normal modern English words. So this is still written in a literary and poetic style, but these are words that are still regularly used by people today, more or less.
Listen carefully to the rhythm and sounds of this and you’ll see what I mean.
I’m now going to read the first few verses to you. This is very rich in terms of language. Again, I am not going to stop and explain everything here, or analyse the text. I’m just going to read it to you.
I do plan to do another separate episode in which I just read out some of these verses again and then break them down for language. Hopefully I will be able to make a video version of that too. Perhaps it will be the next episode. We will see. If not, I will do my best to get it done at a later date.
But now, for your listening pleasure, have a listen to this.
Extracts from Sir Gawain & The Green Knight, by Simon Armitage.
There is no script for the verses, but you can check the Amazon page for this book, where you can preview the first pages of the book, including many of the lines I’m reading here.
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P35 [1/2] StoryTime: Learn English with Stories (free LEP Premium Sample) THE BEAR STORY
This is a free sample of LEP Premium, available for everyone. In this episode I’ll tell you about my technique for learning English with stories and transcripts, with full details about how to improve your English with my stories. Then I’ll tell you a story about a time I had an encounter with a bear, and then I’ll give you some language practice exercises for your grammar and vocabulary, and some pronunciation drills to let you repeat after me. Full PDF transcript available + video version available too.
Video Version with on-screen transcript
Links, PDFS & Notes
🏆 LEP Premium is a series of bonus episodes from Luke’s English Podcast in which I teach you vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. LEP Premium is now available on Acast+ Episodes are usually in audio format (with some bonus videos), and you can listen to them in any normal podcast app.
👉 Sign up to LEP Premium on Acast+ https://www.teacherluke.co.uk/premium
👉 Click here for more information about LEP Premium on Acast+ https://www.teacherluke.co.uk/premiuminfo
👉 Already subscribed to LEP Premium on Libsyn/LEP App? Click here for important information about moving your subscription https://www.teacherluke.co.uk/premium/moving
👇 Get the full PDF transcript/worksheet for this episode
📄 PDF in normal size https://teacherluke.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/P35-1_1-StoryTime_-Learn-English-with-Stories-free-LEP-Premium-Sample-THE-BEAR-STORY-COMPUTER-VERSION.pdf
📄 PDF with large text for your phone https://teacherluke.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/P35-1_1-StoryTime_-Learn-English-with-Stories-free-LEP-Premium-Sample-THE-BEAR-STORY-PHONE-VERSION.pdf
📄 PDF Bear Story Transcript https://teacherluke.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/P35-The-Bear-Story-Transcript-COMPUTER-VERSION.pdf
📄 PDF Bear Story Transcript for your phone https://teacherluke.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/P35-The-Bear-Story-Transcript-PHONE-VERSION.pdf