Talk about English - The Reading Group - Part 7 | Текст песни

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• Talk about English
• The Reading Group - Part 7

This is not an accurate word-for-word transcript of the programme.
Группа Learning English
http://vkontakte.ru/club17650165
Продолжение транскрипта:
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/webcast/readinggroup_prog7.pdf

ANNOUNCER:
You’re listening to The Reading Group from the BBC World Service. In this series we bring
together listeners, students of English, literature teachers and other contributors from the
world of books to share their enthusiasm for reading. We hope that following this series will
encourage your own interest in reading books in English as a foreign language.
Gary: Hello. Today we open the covers of a book that has been written especially for
learners of English.
Insert 1 – Extract from Jojo's Story by A. Moses
The soldiers find two books on the floor. They have a few pages which aren't
burnt. They give the books to me. The fire has eaten the village. There is
nothing here now. Only me, and dog, and Whitetail, and two books with black
pages.
Gary: Jojo’s Story is an example of what’s sometimes known as a simplified reader.
We’ll be meeting the woman who wrote it.
And we visit The British Library to see a special manuscript of a poem by the
American writer Sylvia Plath.
But we begin with the first of a series of talks written especially for this series
by teacher and author Martin Parrott. Today, he celebrates the “simplified
reader”.
Insert 2 – Martin Parrott on Jojo's Story by A. Moses
How good is your English? Good or bad, if you like reading, then simplified
readers are there to help you. If you are still in the early stages of learning, then
simplified readers can be a wonderful alternative to a difficult book. And even if
your English is really good, simplified readers can provide a crutch, a way to get
over initial problems and to get started.
So what are simplified readers? Simplified readers are books which use common
words and straightforward sentences. They avoid making references to aspects
of culture which might baffle foreign learners. Some simplified readers are
original works, specially written for learners of English. For example, I was
recently very moved reading a book called Jo-Jo's Story by Antoinette Moses
and published by Cambridge University Press. This is a novel in 40 pages, told
almost entirely in the present tense. Other readers are adaptations of popular
modern works or even the classics.
All the major publishers produce simplified readers and they are available at
different clearly indicated levels of difficulty from elementary to advanced.
Elementary simplified readers are normally written with a very restricted
vocabulary of 400 head-words. When you begin to find these readers too easy
you can go on to the higher levels, 800 head-words, 1400 or even 2000 headwords.
As I've said, what kind of reader you choose and how you use it will
depend on your own level of English.
If you're still not too confident about reading in English, then why not forget
original works until you build up your knowledge of the language. With
simplified readers you can enjoy that buzz of success that comes with
understanding most or everything you read. And of course, the very act of
reading builds up your fluency and expands your vocabulary.
And for really advanced learners, simplified readers can still have a use. Getting
started is often the most difficult part of reading a book, even in our first
language. Typically, the first page is so full of new information that we struggle
to make sense of it. How many times do we have to read it before we feel
confident enough to turn the page, before we have an idea of where and when
the story is taking place, who the characters are and what is going on?
So, if you want to get to grips with an original text then why not start off with a
simplified version just until you feel comfortable with who and when and where
and...

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