What's best, a morning shower or an evening shower?
What can magic teach us about the brain?
Making friends as you get older.
These are all topics you'll discover in The Reading Room, our new series of magazine-style articles on our website.
They each come with highlighted vocabulary, comprehension questions and an audio download.
Hello and welcome to the Learning English Stories podcast.
I'm Beth.
And I'm Pippa.
Over the last few weeks, we've been sharing some true stories.
Listen back if you missed them.
And today, we're going to look at some of the methods we use to tell better stories in English.
Head to our website to find Right.
Let's start with a story we heard from Neil about something very silly he did.
Ah, I remember this one.
So Neil was meeting up with his parents at a park after a long time of not seeing them.
He sees his parents arrive and decides to help them get into a tight parking space.
Let's have a listen.
I started sort of waving my arms around to direct my parents into this parking space that was free.
And my parents have got quite a good sense of humor.
So I thought I'd be a bit funny.
And I started directing in a very kind of exaggerated way.
Like, you know, you see people directing planes on a runway into a space.
So with big movements of my arms and sort of crouching down to my knees to guide them into this space.
And...
As they got into the space, I realized that these people were not my parents.
They were just some other old couple.
This is a great story.
Neil gives us a lot of description of the movements he's making to help his parents.
He makes a comparison to people on a runway at an airport.
And then he describes it in even more detail.
He says he made big movements with his arms.
He crouched down on his knees.
And that really helps us imagine and be able to see what happened.
And then, of course, he reveals that these are not his parents at all.
You'll often hear stories where people add lots of detail and build up a picture before revealing a mistake.
Neil could have just said I directed my parents into a parking space and then I realised it wasn't them and felt silly.
Yes, but the way he tells it makes it funnier, because he has described how silly he looked in lots of detail.
He also holds back the important piece of information that makes a story funny as long as possible.
Yes, and you can try adding more description in your stories like this.
You don't need to use complicated language, but think about what the thing you were doing or saw reminded you of.
Like with Neil, the way he was acting reminded him of people directing planes on runways.
OK, let's look at another story.
Georgie told a story about meeting a very famous boy band called One Direction.
Let's hear some of what she said.
And as One Direction, the boys, were going inside, Harry Styles hugged me.
Well, I hugged him.
He received my hug and he took my poster and he said, see you love.
And then I cried for the rest of the day.
And that is not an exaggeration.
I promise you, as soon as he let go of me, I started crying and I didn't stop for the rest of the day.
How did it feel the day afterwards when you got back home when you were It felt like a dream.
It felt like it didn't happen, but I knew it had.
The one thing that makes me very, very upset is that there's no photographic evidence of it.
But I promise you this is true.
I'm not lying.
It happened.
OK, this is another great, funny story, isn't it?
Yeah, I really liked this one.
What I noticed as well is that Georgie repeats the phrase, I promise you, a lot during this story.
Yeah, this is quite common when a story might sound unbelievable.
So Georgie is telling us that her story might sound untrue, but she promises that it is true.
Yes.
When she's talking about crying all day after meeting the band, Georgie says.
This is not an exaggeration, I promise you.
Yeah, sometimes stories seem like they are exaggerated.
This means that they might be partly true, but someone has changed the story to make it more dramatic.
But Georgie says this story really was that dramatic.
She's not exaggerating.
Right, let's look at one final story.
And Beth, this one's from you.
You told a story about travelling around the world and running into someone you knew.
Not once, not twice, but three times.
Let's listen.
I was in Alaska.
Alaska really is not a very common place to visit, I would say.
And I was on a ship And I saw a guy that I thought I knew.
And I thought, no way, this is not happening again.
I'm not seeing someone I know, surely.
And the man I knew was called Ben.
And he played the piano.
And I convinced myself that it wasn't him.
But the last night of the ship there was a man playing the piano on the stage and there was a singer and she said take it away, Ben.
And it was Ben and it was absolutely him playing the piano.
And I went up to him at the end of the performance and he said.
Beth, what are you doing here?
I said, what are you doing here in Alaska?
Yeah, it's quite common for people to tell stories about groups of three.
So this was the third time that I met someone I knew.
Yeah, and there's lots of language here to emphasise how unlikely that situation is and your disbelief that it's happened for the third time.
Yeah.
For example, I said, no way, this is not happening again.
It's showing that disbelief.
And you say that you convince yourself that it wasn't Ben you saw in Alaska.
And then we have the drama that I waited until the last night of the trip.
I didn't go and speak to him.
And then the singer revealed that it actually was Ben.
Yeah, and you can try and add this drama to your story by revealing your thoughts and feelings about a situation.
And we have a few ways to introduce what you are thinking to a story.
So, for example, you could just say, I thought, or I was like.
And another way is to say, and I'm thinking...
Yes, then generally we share the thought in the present tense, even if we're telling the story in the past tense.
So, for example, here you said, I thought, no way, this is not happening again.
That's it for this episode of Learning English Stories.
Keep emailing us your stories because If you've enjoyed this series, try the other dramas and stories on our website at bbclearningenglishcom.
Thanks for joining us and goodbye.
Goodbye.
