Podcast 150 - The Winds of Bolonia.

B1-level short story for learners of English

Story starts at 6:26

windy beach and dunes

I have another story for you today at B1 level. It's a story that I thought of some time ago now, but I've just recently written it down for B1 level, English students. It's a story about nature, the beach, the sea, the sand, the wind. It's called the winds of Bolonia and it's set on a Greek island in the Mediterranean. The language we've got there that I'm going to explain to you first of all, will be language about the island, about the beach and the sea. And there's also language as well to do with studying education. So here we go...

So, as I promised then, I'll start off with just a few expressions, and I suggest you listen to these expressions in the story and try to identify them. That's a good listening task for you. So the expressions to talk about the island, this Greek island in the Mediterranean are the following.

First of all, we have the word to flow. Now flowing can be in water, just moving along with the water. Also, with the wind, the wind blows and it takes something with it. Well, then that thing flows. It all flows along the wind.

There's another word here, which is terrific, which is a bit of a false friend perhaps in other languages. Here, terrific means very powerful. And the expression is a terrific wind, so a terrific wind means a very strong powerful wind.

And on this beach, we have dunes, which is not a B1 word, but I need in there for my story. Dune, which is a small hill of sand.

And then I have cool water. That word in English which means 'cold', but we use it in the context of when it's hot. The cold is something refreshing something we like and we call that cool.

And I've got the word sparkling. Now that's B1 usually when we talk about 'sparkling water'. We're talking about water that we drink which has bubbles or gas, But here, I'm going to talk about sparkling water, referring to seawater, as its moved about it, gives it this sort of bubbly effect, sparkling water*.

Waves, the hills of water, if you'd like, in the sea. They are very large, very big, and they crash onto the beach. Now again, crash in B1 is usually used like a car for example, crashing into a tree, an accident, but in this context, a wave crashing on the beach means it hits the beach very hard.

Now the other words to listen out for are useful words for education for example, we have to prepare for an entry exam, which means a special exam that we have to take. If we go to university for example. And if we pass that exam, well then we get into the university. If we fail, that means we are unsuccessful. We do not pass, well then unfortunately, we won't get a place at the university. So we talk about 'getting a place' at a university.

And other language in the story to listen out for which is connected to the subject of education is to score a mark. So for example, if you score a 10 that means you get a 10 in your test or exam score, and a 'mark' we say is the number that we use to refer to how much you got in the exam. So a mark 10 out of 10. That's a perfect mark, isn't it? Out of 10.

And lastly, there's the word a grant, and a grant is money that a business or company or the government will give you so that you can go to study something at university, a grant.

So please listen out for those words as we go through the story. So I'm going to start now...

*I haven't been very accurate here. 'Sparkling' is really the light that comes from moving water such as the sun shining on the sea.

The audio script of the story is not included here.