Hello everone!

 

I �m posting a special request today.

My colleague and I are preparing a common TEST (LISTENING COMPREHENSION)

in our 4 classes to end the year.(A2+)

We have already listened to many "introduction" mp3 documents but we found it difficult to find the" ideal" one, so we have prepared a text ready to be recorded. We are now looking for some volonteer  to record the text and send it as soon as possible.(with an  English accent- mother tongue if possible) as our text will take place on Friday 2nd June.

I �ll be very happy if someone could spend 15 minutes of his/her time to record with his / her own voice and send it  and

  I �ll upload the listening grid for everbody  and send it to you too.

 

Many thanks in advance. HAVE A NICE DAY EVERYBODY !!

 

HERE IS THE TEXT TO BE RECORDED:

 

Hello everyone,

Let me introduce myself. My name’s Betty stratford, S.T.R.A.T.F.O.R.D and I’m 19 years old.

I was born on April, 21st in 1998 in Liverpool. I live in a small house in Manchester and I’m English of course.

I have a twin sister called Jenny. She is the funniest but I am the most generous in the family.

I have 3 pets : a rabbit called bunny, a guinea-pig that my sister named beauty and coco the parrot.

I am a student at Manchester College, second year in litterary studies. I’d like to be a teacher when I finish.

My phone number is 076889125 and my email adress is [email protected]

I have a boyfriend named William, aged 21. He‘s so good-looking!

I’m quite tall, I’m about 5 foot 9. I’m very fit because I practise gymnatics on Mondays and modern dance on weekends.

I have long dark curly hair, green eyes and I wear glasses. I am very slim.

Today, I’m wearing blue jeans, a green tee-shirt and black shoes.

I certainly have qualities to be a good teacher. I am quite patient and hardworking. Obviously, I like kids. However, I can be a bit messy and extremely absent-minded and talkative.

I’m keen on reading, I love Jane Austen novels for example, but also love detective stories like in Agatha Christie’s. I’m crazy about pizza and carrots. My favourite drink is water but I hate sodas.

What I dislike the most is playing football or watching it on TV. It’s weird because normally all English people like soccer but I really can’ t stand it.

Next holidays, I’m going on a great trip to Australia. My uncle moved there 5 years ago. I’m going to visit him from july, 20th to August 3rd.

Bye for now !

 

 

I would be happy to do the recording for you, although I am not English I have lived in England for 6 years, and could try to do that for you. Please feel comfortable to not use my recording and choose someone else �s, no hard feelings!

However, I would like to point out a few things I �ve noticed: 1) Soda is an American word, as in British English they use carbonated drinks. 2)Soccer is another example of an American word, in England they say football.
 

Mari is perfectly correct!

 

Here, in the UK, you will rarely hear, �soda �.

 

Specifically for carbonated water, we say: �soda water �. Or, as Mari says, generally: �carbonated drinks �. Many people say: �fizzy drinks �.

 

Again, Mari is correct: in the UK we rarely say �soccer �. The word we use is �football �.

 

Thank you, Mari.

 

Les Douglas

P.S. Hello, loic,

" ... on weekends", should be: "... at the weekends".

Les

Hello Lynne,

 

Lovely to talk to you. We must meet up again, like last time!

 

Yes! You are right, we do say, �Pop � for fizzy drinks, but I think that it �s considered by some people to be a bit dated ... although children do still ask for it. The reason they do this is possibly because it �s onomatopoeic, and children think that anything that sounds vaguely like the Toilet is screamingly funny! For the same reason, �fizzy drinks �.

 

I don �t drink alcohol, so I �m not up on these things. But, I think drinkers say, "Whisky and soda!". And I �ve heard friends order "Soda water, please!" ... as a diet-type drink.

 

Do you know, a beautiful thought has just come to me.

 

Lynne, today is the first time for ages that I have had a chat with a lovely lady, over drinks!

 

What a delightful pleasure!

 

From your Dear Friend, 

 

Les 

 

 

 

 

Since you �ve brought up "pop", I �ll tell you where the name came from. When fizzy drinks were first put into bottles, the bottles had glass stoppers in the tops. When opened, they would produce a popping sound, so they were called "pop bottles". After the name caught on, people came to think that they were called pop bottles because they were containers for "pop" (after all, milk bottles are containers for milk, aren �t they?), so the fizzy drinks inside came to be called "pop". This is known as a back formation in etymological circles.

 

Bruce