Story starts at 9:07
What is a miracle? This is the definition in my Oxford Learner's Dictionary: "an act or event that does not follow the laws of nature and is believed to be caused by God". Miracle. This is a story about a miracle and it's a B1 story. B1-level English with lots and lots of good B1 words in there - B1 or below.
There are some words in the story, which are not B1 which would be B2 and I'll explain those - miracle is one of them. That is not a B1 word in fact. And I'm also going to explain some language which comes in there which is about calculating, making calculations. For example, addition, subtraction, multiplication, very useful words, which we need to explain some type of calculations for example. So here we go...
Okay, as I said in the introduction, I'm going to explain some calculation words. The first one is PLUS. So for example, two plus two EQUALS four. Equals - the same as. So we say PLUS usually - two plus two.
And then obviously the opposite is when you take something away. Four MINUS one equals three. Or four TAKE AWAY one equals three.
And then another one is DIVIDED BY, so four divided by two equals two.
The podcast is about MULTIPLYING. So, in the podcast, there are some quite complicated calculations, multiplication. So we say then, two MULTIPLIED BY two equals four, you can just say BY. Two BY two equals four. In fact, what we're multiplying and calculating in part of the story is volume. So we're talking about litres or millilitres or cubic metres. So cubic is the three dimensions of a cube. So a cube for example, which measures 10 centimetres by 10 centimetres by 10 centimetres equals 1000 centimetres cubed or cubic centimetres. And that is the same as one litre.
I don't want to get too boring with this, but there is a calculation in there, so you'll need the language to understand it.
Now let's just talk about that volume again. So we'll go back to our litre which is 10 centimetres by 10 centimetres by 10 centimetres and the three dimensions are LONG - 10 centimetres long. By 10 centimetres WIDE and 10 centimetres DEEP. And those are the adjectives and the nouns: LONG, LENGTH; WIDE WIDTH and DEEP, DEPTH. So they end in these TH letters.
Okay, so I think that's probably enough actually. We've got numbers, HUNDREDS. A THOUSAND, which is 10 by 100 and a million, which is 1000 x 1000. In British English 1000 x 1000 is one million.
So we talk about those measures in the story. Right? Okay. All I need to do now is just to let you know about those words which are not B1, for example, the MIRACLE that I spoke of, in the introduction - an act an event that does not follow the laws of nature.
And then I also have a VILLA. Now, this is the name given, especially in places like Spain, to holiday homes for people abroad. So really, it's just a house, they may have a swimming pool, a garden, even a wall around the house, so it's usually something quite spectacular. And that is called a villa. You find a lot of villas on the Costa del Sol, which is the southern part of Spain, or the southern part of Andalusia, which is a region.
A lot of holiday makers from Britain. Go to the Costa del Sol, to spend the summer or even to retire and live there and they often live together, especially the British in what we call RESIDENTIAL ESTATES, and that is a group of houses together.
Perhaps they might share a swimming pool, or they might be separate villas. There will be probably lots of SECURITY there - it's very safe. It's all got lots of nice trees and green and it all looks very lovely.
Another word here which is not B2, but it appeared in my last podcast about climate change, which is DROUGHT, which is when there is no water in the land, and therefore, there is a problem of drinking water. The crops don't grow. Well, what this climate change is bringing about at the moment, a lot of drought in especially dry countries, for example, like Spain, where I live.
So here we go. The story is called: Who was Sidney Peabody?
The audio script of the story is not included here.
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