You can download the transcript with a glossary so you can follow as you listen. After you have watched the video, use the quiz to test your understanding.
In chapter five, Simon explained how biologist Edward Wilson and his companions Bowers and Garrard carried three precious penguin eggs 108 kilometres back through the Antarctic winter and arrived safety at their base camp. Although it was the end of the ‘worst Journey in the world’, it wasn’t quite the end of the story. In chapter six, Simon tells what happened next.
Chapter Six – Bringing the Story Up-To-Date
Quiz
How well did you understand the story so far?
Try and answer these questions. You can watch the video again.
1. Only one person survived the “worst journey” and returned safely to Britain. Who was it?
Cherry Garrard
Roald Amundsen
Edward Wilson
Henry Bowers
2. Cherry Garrard reached the South Pole.
True
False
3. Penguins are the evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds.
True
False
4. Emperor Penguins are safe because they live a long way from humans.
You can download the transcript with a glossary so you can follow as you listen. After you have watched the video, use the quiz to test your understanding.
At the end of chapter four, biologist Edward Wilson and his companions Bowers and Garrard had completed their 108 kilometre trek through the Antarctic winter to visit an Emperor Penguin colony. They had collected five penguin eggs for scientific study but, as they climbed back to their camp, Garrard slipped and fell. Watch chapter five to find out what happened next.
As always, you can download the transcript with a glossary so you can follow as you listen. After you have watched the video, use the quiz to test your understanding.
Chapter three concluded with biologist Edward Wilson and his two companions standing on the edge a huge crevasse. How can they get past in order to continue their journey to the Emperor Penguin colony? Watch chapter four to find out.
We are halfway through Simon and Penguin’s Fireside Tales. That means we have arrived at chapter three.
Have you seen the first two chapters? If you haven’t, why not watch them now; they are only three minutes long. You can find chapter one here and chapter two here.
As always, you can download the transcript with a glossary so you can follow as you listen. After you have watched the video, use the quiz to test your understanding.
At the end of chapter two, we left biologist Edward Wilson and his two companions shivering in their tent trying to decide whether or not to continue their journey. Watch chapter three to find out what happened next.
Don’t forget, you can also download the transcript with a glossary so you can follow as you listen. After you have watched the video, use the quiz to test your understanding.
In chapter one, we learned the background to the ‘worst journey in the world’. In chapter two, Simon and Penguin begin the story of how the three explorers walked across Antarctica in the winter of 1911.
Welcome to our new series of videos: Fireside Tales.
It’s the middle of winter here in Europe. The days are dark and cold so it’s a perfect time to sit around the fire and tell stories.
Here, on the Stratford Teachers blog, you can watch the videos and test your listening comprehension. You can also download the transcript with a glossary so you can follow as you listen.
There are six videos in this series. We will release a new one every few weeks. If you want to know when each new video is ready to watch, subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Here is Chapter One of Fireside Tales. Simon tells the story of the events of another winter far away and a long time ago.
2017 has been a good year for us. As well as teaching hundreds of online lessons, we’ve also delivered face-to-face courses here in Stratford upon Avon, proof-read an academic thesis, and helped people in China to practise their English pronunciation.
Next year we will continue to provide our popular and flexible online lessons and adding to our blog. We are currently planning a new pronunciation course which wil combine online, face-to-face learning with specially designed videos and interactive exercises.
Is there anyway we can help you to improve your English? Contact us to talk about it.
Here’s a little Christmas present from us to you. Test your knowledge of English prepositions by decorating our Christmas tree .
Imagine this situation. You are visiting a friend. It is your first visit to this town. You want to send a package home but how do you find the post office?
You ask your friend for directions, of course.
Try our new interactive exercise and see if you can follow his directions to the post office.
We are creating more and more interactive materials for our blog and to support our language courses. If there is a particular area of language you think we should focus on, please use the comment box below or contact us with your ideas.
a) Helping a seaman push a boat into the water was an act of generosity or kindness.
b) Naval ships sometimes used foreign flags to disguise their identity at sea. Just before a battle, ships would show their own flag (also known as colours).
d) Relates to the practice of whipping with a cat-o’-nine-tails (a kind of whip with several ‘tails’).
e) Early navigators could easily become lost when out of sight of land as it was hard to work out their exact position.
Answers
1 c 2 e 3 d 4 a 5 b
Royal Naval College in Greenwich, London
Exercise 2
Today, these idioms are no longer associated with ships and the sea.
Read these sentences and choose the correct modern meaning for the idiom.
1) Congratulations! You’ve done a first rate job setting up the new order system.
a) useful
b) high quality
c) quick
2) When I first started here, I felt all at sea, but everyone was so friendly I soon settled in.
a) confused
b) excited
c) unhappy
3) She’s just bought a flat in London, but considering it cost £250,000 there’s no room to swing a cat!
a) it’s luxurious
b) it’s very small
c) it’s expensive
4) Don’t worry about the cost – you only get married once – let’s push the boat out!
a) have a party on a boat
b) invite a lot of people
c) spend a lot of money
5) Although I’d met him before, it was only when we started working together that he showed his true colours.
a) saw his real personality
b) saw he was a nice person
c) saw he didn’t like me
Answers
1 b 2 a 3 b 4 c 5 a
Yinka Shonibare’s Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle. On display outside the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London.
If you’ve never been to Greenwich, it’s definitely worth a visit – we met up with one of our ‘old’ students from Switzerland there. The National Maritime Museum has many fascinating exhibits, including Nelson’s uniform from the Battle of Trafalgar, with the hole made by the bullet that killed him!
If you have visited Greenwich, we would love to hear about your experience. Leave a reply below.
On the Wednesday this week, we published a second article about Stratford upon Avon, the home of Stratford Teachers and the birthplace of William Shakespeare. The text of the article contained eight phrases that come from Shakespeare’s plays but are still used as idioms in modern English.
This article will reveal the eight phrases, explain their meaning, tell you which plays they came from, and give some modern examples of their use.
If you didn’t see the first article and want to test yourself, click here to read it then come back here.
Ready?
Here’s the second paragraph of the very short biography of Shakespeare. It contains two phrases.
In 1623, Shakespeare’s colleagues John Heminges and Henry Condell collected many of the plays collected into a book called the First Folio. However, by this time, William was as dead as a doornail. He died on his fifty-second birthday in 1616. Nobody knows for sure why he died so young. There are many theories including murder most foul.
This is the paragraph about Shakespeare’s birthplace.
The house became a pub called The Swan Maidenhead. By the nineteenth century, the building had seen better days. When the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust bought it in 1856 it was a sorry sight. They renovated and opened it; so Shakespeare’s Birthplace has been a tourist attraction for more than 150 years.
3. seen better days means something is old and in a bad condition.
Philip got caught in that rain storm yesterday. He was a sorry sight when he got here.
There are three more phrases in the story of New Place.
When it became several tourists every day, he was in a pickle. He asked the local government for money to pay a tour guide but they sent him packing. He went back and said that if they didn’t give him any money he would demolish the house. The men of the local government wouldn’t budge an inch.
5. in a pickle means to be in a difficult situation.
law. I’ll not budge an inch, boy. Let him come, and
kindly.
Unlike the character in The Taming of the Shrew, this phrase is usually used to talk about other people.
A: Did you persuade the boss to change his mind?
B: No. he wouldn’t budge an inch.
The final phrase is from the paragraph about the theatre’s tower.
When the theatre was renovated at the start of this century the design came full circle. Today, you can go to the top of the tower and look out at the countryside around Stratford.
8. to come full circle is to return to the place where you started or the opinion you had in the past.
At the beginning we sold our products online. Last year we tried selling in shops but that didn’t work. So, we’ve come full circle and now we only sell through the website.
All these phrase are idioms.
Using idioms well is an advanced skill in any language. You should:
It’s here! We’ve arrived at the sixth and final part of Simon and Penguin’s Fireside Tales.
stratfordteachers.com 