In questo nuovo tipo di risorsa, realizzata da Misterduncan, assistiamo ad una vera e propria lezione di inglese britannico ma con una novità: la presenza dei sottotitoli inglesi (se dovessero essere coperti da una striscia di pubblicità, rimuovete prima la striscia cliccando sul simbolo X) oppure della trascrizione del testo inglese. In questo modo sarà possibile fare un utile esercizio di listening con la certezza di poter verificare se abbiamo capito correttamente. In alternativa, possiamo scegliere di vedere il video in modo da beneficiare dell’effetto positivo sulla comprensione e sulla memorizzazione determinato dalla contemporanea visione dei sottotitoli o della trascrizione. Così l’inglese diventa davvero godibile e divertente (e se non capite qualche parola, indicatecelo nei commenti e ve ne forniremo la traduzione italiana!).
LISTENING CON I SOTTOTITOLI – Learning English 5 • Giving News
Lesson five
Oh Hi everybody this is Mr Duncan, how are you today? Welcome to my latest teaching video. I hope I find you in a good mood and a happy mood.
Today we are gonna talk about words; the English language is made up of literally millions of words.
They all come together to make up the English language that we all know and love but there’s also something else very special about English and that is the fact that new words keep appearing
all the time.
Many people write to me and ask me about slang, words that are used nowadays by young people and many new words that appear due to the changing technology, for example computers.
>>> With computers you have a whole new vocabolary to learn because computers are a technical thing
and of course technical things normally have their own special words.
So the English language is quite special in the fact that the words can develop over time and words are appearing constantly as things around us change.
Here in my hand I have a mobile phone. These are great things, I love mobile phones. I love making phone calls, and I love receiving phone calls. Oh I’ve got one now, let’s have a look.
Who is it. “Yes hello, hi. Yes this is Mr Duncan. Ah ah… yes, what’s that? what? I’ve won a competition? I’ve come first in a contest? Really? That’s amazing! Oh my God I can’t believe it, that’s such good news! Oh thank you so much. Yeah, oh, that’s amazing! What have I won? I’ve won a trip to Birmingham? Ohhh thank you so much. I’m so happy about that! Yeah, I’m really excited I can’t believe it. Oh thank you so much, thank you, thank you, thank you okay goodbye”.
Oh that was nice? I’ve just had some good news. I love receiving good news. I hate receiving bad news. The way we break news to people is very important. If you are telling somebody good news
then it’s very easy to explain it to them. Normally we are very excited about it.
“Hey guess what, you’ll never believe it. Oh my goodness, something incredible has happened! You won’t believe it! It’s amazing!”
Of course breaking bad news is not quite so easy. We have to prepare a person for bad news. We have to make sure they are ready to receive the bad news. So normally we begin the sentence by explaining the fact and something is about to be said that may make them unhappy.
For example: “I have some news for you, ehm and I think you should prepare yourself for this before I tell you. Or, maybe “There’s something that I really have to tell you, please, sit down.”
We like to make sure the person is relaxed, we can offer them a chair, we can use our voice, we can speak to them in a certain way: normally our voice will be very serious, and very somber.
So, make sure that if you you’re going to give somebody some bad news, maybe you don’t like your boyfriend anymore or your girlriend anymore… maybe you’ve decided to say goodbye to them. Don’t just say, “I don’t like you, go away!” That’s not very nice. Break the news to them gently, break to them slowly, break it to them kindly.
This is Mr Duncan in England saying bye for now and thanks for watching.