Podcast 136 - Bully! (by M. A. Bilbrough)

A short story for students learning B1 level English

Story starts at 5:31

B1 short story - Bully!

You know, they say that bullies are cowards, and bullies are stupid. I'm not sure if that's always true. Ok, so first of all what is a bully? A bully is somebody who uses their strength or power to frighten or hurt weaker people. It's also a regular verb 'to bully someone'. Now, what is a coward? Well, the Oxford English dictionary says it's a person who is not brave enough to do the things most people don't find difficult. So, are bullies cowards? Are bullies stupid, unintelligent? If that were always true, then when somebody is bullied at school, he or she just needs to get their big brother and the bully will run home crying to his mother! Just like in so many stories in comics. If it were that simple, then bullying in schools today wouldn't be the huge problem it is. I've written a story about a school bully, who probably doesn't fall into that category of coward or stupid, or does he? Listen and you decide.

This is a B1 level podcast but good for B2 level students too. In fact, some of these words I'm going to explain at the beginning are B2 words. Here we go...

The first word to explain is 'form', for example, first form or second form. This refers to the year a child is in at school in British English. In American English the word is grade. So we say 'first form' meaning the first year of secondary school in British English or High School in American English. We have the expression 'to make fun of somebody', which means to laugh at somebody and make them look stupid. The word 'fear' again (as in my Vampire story, podcast 135), which, we could say, is the noun of frightened. There is the word 'mate', which is a colloquial word for friend in British English. Teacher's pet, which is a child at school who always tries to impress the teacher and so he or she is the teacher's favourite. The word 'cruel', a cruel person likes to hurt other people, to cause pain. The verb 'fight' (past tense, fought), which here means to hit each other by using punches, and a punch is when you hit somebody using your hand closed into a fist. The verb 'punish' means to make somebody suffer because they have done something wrong. And finally, the word 'stick', which is a long, thin piece of wood.

There is one expression that will help you understand this story better. It's: To have a good head on your shoulders. This is used to describe somebody who is clever and good at his/her studies.

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