English Listening Practice Lesson! Which Story is True? Learn English Through Story!

Hi, Bob the Canadian here, during this past weekend's

live English lesson someone asked again if I could

tell more stories about my life,

so I thought this would be a great time to do another video

where I tell you two stories,

but where only one story is true and the other story

is a lie.

So stick around, this will be a great little English lesson

where you will have some great English listening practice

and I will tell you at the end

which of the two stories was true.

(lively music)

Hi, Bob the Canadian here welcome to this

little English lesson and if you are new here

you should click that little red subscribe button

down there and give me a thumbs up at some point

during this video if it helps you learn

just a little bit of English.

So, I'm going to tell you two stories,

as I tell those two stories,

I'm going to try and tell you when it happened,

where it happened, who it happened with, what happened

during the story, and then how it ended,

and this is a great structure that you can use

when you tell stories yourself.

But let's get to the first story.

When I was a little kid, when I was about eight

or nine years old, my mom and I went to the local

grocery store and we went up and down the aisles

of the grocery store and we got to the snack aisle,

and in the snack aisle they had all kinds of pop,

or soda, and they had all kinds of potato chips.

And there was a certain kind of potato chip

that I really liked,

and I asked my mom if she could buy it for me,

and she said no,

she said that I couldn't have those potato chips.

So as we went to the next aisle in the store

I kinda walked backwards into the previous aisle

and I went back to the chips that I liked,

the potato chips I liked,

and I secretly opened the bag in the store,

without paying for them, and I started eating them.

No, no sooner had I eaten a few chips and my mom

was standing over me,

and what she did out I will remember for my whole life.

We took the chips to the front of the store

and she made me apologize to the store manager,

then she put the chips in our grocery cart

and we went through the checkout and we bought the chips.

And then we took the chips home and she threw them

in the garbage and she made me pay for the chips

with my own money.

So that was story number one,

I'm not going to tell you if that story was true or not,

instead I'm going to tell you story number two,

which you might find is eerily similar story number one.

So here we go.

When I was a kid about nine or 10 years old

my mom and I went to the grocery store to buy groceries.

Does this sound familiar?

While we are at the grocery store we went up and down

the aisles until we got to the aisle where they had Coke,

and I really like Coca-Cola,

it is one of my favorite soda pops,

one of my favorite pops, one of my favorite sodas.

Notice there's a bunch of different words for that.

Anyways I asked my mom if she would buy me a can of Coke

and she said no, she wouldn't buy me a can of Coke.

So we walked to the end of that aisle

and we walked into the next aisle,

and then I kinda walked backwards and I went back

to the aisle that had the Coca-Cola,

and then I took a can and I kind of crawled right

onto the lower shelf of the grocery store,

because I was so little I could fit there,

and I remember opening the can of pop and it went ka-chhhhh,

and as it went ka-chhhhh I started to take a couple sips

of the Coca-Cola, and I think I drank about half the can

before my mom found me.

My mom grabbed me and pulled me out from under that shelf

and she said, "you will never, ever, do that again,

"come with me," and she took me to the front of the store

and we apologized to the store owner,

then she made me buy the can of pop with my own money,

and then we went home and she took the can of pop

and she dumped all of it down the sink,

the entire can of pop she dumped down the sink.

So I had to pay for the pop,

and she dumped it down the sink.

I will never forget that lesson,

that was a very important lesson for me.

Anyways, I told you two stories.

Notice, before I tell you which story was true,

notice the format of the two stories.

I like to start my little stories in English,

and if you speak other languages you'd do the same,

by talking about when and where something happened.

So in my stories you knew that they happened

when I was a little kid,

and you knew that they happened at a store.

So you knew the when and you knew the where.

The next thing I did was introduce who the story was about.

So the story was about me,

but it was also about my mom.

Then I described the what of the stories.

The first story, the what is that I snuck away from my mom,

so that's what happened, I opened a bag of chips.

In the second story I stuck with my mom,

I opened a can of pop,

I almost said bag of chips there,

and then you kind of know how both stories end as well.

So it's a great structure,

as you are learning English,

this is more than an English listening lesson,

this is a lesson on how to tell a good story in English.

Maybe write down a few stories in English

of something that happened to you when you were younger

so that you're ready to tell those stories

if you're ever in a social situation.

Anyways, I should tell you which story was true shouldn't I?

Well I told both stories, and I was trying to not give away

any hints as to which story was true,

so instead of telling two completely different stories

I told a story that was true and then a story where I just

changed some of the details in the story.

So here we go, the first story is a lie,

the first story did not happen.

I did not sneak away from my mom,

I did not open a bag of potato chips,

but the second story is definitely true

and I do remember that story very, very, well.

It happened as I said when I was a little kid

we were at the local little grocery store

in our town,

and I guess I was a rebellious little kid

and I didn't listen to my mum and I went

and I took a can of pop, without paying,

and I hid in the store and I drank half of it.

And I do remember my mom making me pay

for it, and I remember her dumping it all

down the sink at our house

so that I would learn a valuable lesson.

And I do remember apologizing to the store owner.

So anyways this was just a little English lesson

to help you with some of your English listening.

This was good English listening practice,

but also remember that structure of the story.

Talk about the when and where, talk about the who,

talk about what happened, and tell people

when you tell a story, tell people how it ended.

Anyways, I'm Bob the Canadian,

this was just a little English lesson for you.

I hope you are having a good week

and while you're here why don't you stick around

and watch another video, I would really appreciate it.

Anyways, see you later.

Live lesson this Friday morning,

live lesson this Saturday evening,

I hope to see you there.

(lively music)