Podcast 142 - B1 The story of Bishop Hatto

Stories for students at B1 level English

Story starts at 4:38

B1 - the rats

I'm going to tell you a story. It's a story based on a poem. And that's a poem which I read to you some weeks ago at podcast 126. The poem was called Bishop Hatto. And I did that podcast for B2-level students. What I've done is to rewrite the story for B1-level students. So a lot of this language or all the language really is B1 or below. There are some words which I had to bring in, which are higher than B1, and I'll explain those words before I start. Just a mention before I start explaining the vocabulary. The poem was written by an English poet called Robert Southey. who lived in the 18th century [music introduction].

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So words in the story which are not B1 are, well, the word Bishop for example, which is a member of the church, a senior member of the church, someone who is quite high up in the church. And in the story, there are people who work for this bishop, he lives in a palace and the people who work for him are the servants and maids who are females who work in the house, for example, preparing the food. And also the guards, and guards are people who protect somebody, in this case, the bishop, from any sort of violent interaction from people outside the palace.

It's important to understand some words, for example, the word corn. Now, this is the word used in the poem and I've used it again in the story that I've written. Corn has two slightly different meanings. Corn in British English is a cereal. But in the United States, corn has a large fruit at the end, which is yellow with lots of little yellow seeds, and is often eaten, perhaps boiled and eaten with salt - is called corn.

And the final word is harvest. The harvest is the time of year usually around autumn, September, October when we cut the corn in the fields, other cereals and pick the fruit and take the vegetables to the farm for eating. That is called the harvest.

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