Podcast 138 - The Spaceman (part 2) (by M. A. Bilbrough)

The continuation of a short story for students studying B1 level English

Welcome back to Part Two of the story, which I started last week, called The Spaceman.

Story starts at 4:56

B1 story - the Spaceman

I think the story has a message. And the message is about addiction. It's not about addiction to drugs or addiction to alcohol, or smoking. Listen to the story and think what is the addiction which is referred to here.

So I'm going to continue then, with the exciting part two of the Spaceman. Here we go...

Before I start, I'm just going to go over some vocabulary that I'm going to talk about, or that you'll hear in the story. I start off with a pair of words which you will hear in the story: terrific and terrified.

Now 'terrific', is actually a very positive word, because when we say something is 'terrific', we mean it's wonderful, it's fantastic.

'Wow, that's terrific. I really like it!'

But 'terrified', means that we are very, very afraid of something. For example, a scary film can make us feel terrified.

Then there's another pair here. These are used to and usually. Remember that the auxiliary 'used to',

'I used to do something'

only talks about the past. It can't talk about the present. It talks about things that we did very often in the past. 'Usually' talks about things that we do very often in the present. There is no present tense of 'used to'.

The next word is career, which you'll also hear in the story now. In some languages, the equivalent of the word 'career' refers to your studies, but in fact, 'career' in English refers to your working or your professional life.

'He had a career as an astronaut.'

So he worked as an astronaut.

I've got another word in there which is sometimes confused with another meaning: to 'not be able to stand' something.

'I can't stand something'

so here it doesn't mean 'stand up', but 'not like something' to 'hate something'.

'I can't stand watching old films. I find them so boring.'

Now, there's a few words here which we could call phrasal verbs perhaps and the words are with back. So we have fly back, get back, go back, look back. When you use this word 'back' in this context is often means to repeat something - to do it again. So in the context of the story, The Spaceman, to 'fly back' means to return to where you were before.

To 'get back' means a similar thing to 'get back' to where you were before, and to 'go back' as well. They all have a very similar meaning.

And if I 'look back' at something, it means that I've looked at something and then I've looked away and then I look at that thing again. And that is to 'look back'. And there's another one here as well which is to have somebody back in your life.

So for example, a partner who leaves you and then they come back, so you have them 'back in your life'.

So that's enough of the vocabulary. Part two of the Spaceman...

This story has no transcript.

Read Part 1 of The Spaceman...