English Listening - School Events | Listening Time: English Practice

Welcome to the Listening Time podcast.

Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 158 of the Listening Time podcast.

Thank you all for listening.

I hope that your English learning is going well.

I hope that you're enjoying these episodes and that this podcast has Really helped you get into a routine of listening to English consistently every day hopefully, because it's really helpful to repeat these episodes multiple times so that you can better understand all of the phrases and words that I'm saying, and So, with these episodes, you have a lot of material to work with.

So you should be doing some listening practice every day.

That should be your goal.

And in today's episode, we're going to talk about school events.

This will be a fun one, because people all around the world uh know something about the high school experience in the US based on the movies that they've seen or the TV shows that they've watched.

And people are always curious about about this.

They're curious to know about some of these things that they see in the movies, and so i want to talk about some different events that happen during high school in the US at public schools, and particularly how some of these events went for me when I was in high school, during my high school career.

So I'm sure that you'll enjoy this episode today.

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And as always, remember that you have the transcript for this episode down below as well.

Alright, let's get started.

Are your ears ready?

You know what time it is.

It's listening time.

Okay, let's talk about some different school events in public schools in the United States.

And particularly I'm talking about high school, because that's the most significant school period for most of us.

And this is what you often see in movies and on TV and things like that high school movies or scenes that take place at high schools in the US, when you watch movies and TV shows.

It's an interesting topic, I think.

And one of the most interesting things that students ask me about sometimes is is a particular event, or I should say a particular series of events throughout the year, which are the school dances.

In other countries you probably don't have school dances, or Maybe you do, but they're probably not that similar to our dances.

So you might have seen these in movies before.

The two most famous dances.

The most important dances during the school year are Homecoming, which takes place at the beginning of the school year, and prom, which takes place at the end of the school year.

And there are other dances throughout the year as well, but those are the two really big ones.

So let me talk a little bit about homecoming.

So homecoming happens towards the beginning of of the school year and it's a big deal and it's not just a dance.

It's also a sporting event, particularly for football.

So there is a homecoming game, a homecoming football game.

If I remember correctly, I think there are also homecoming games for other sports.

I played basketball, but I can't really remember if we had a homecoming game.

Maybe not because I don't think the season had started yet, but I don't remember really.

But the one that's big is football.

So there's a football game. homecoming game, which is one of the biggest games of the year.

And it's a really exciting event for many people.

And not only is there this football game, but there's also the election of a homecoming king and queen.

So this is a big deal.

The students elect who they want to be their king and their queen.

And, if I remember correctly, each class class of students, meaning freshmen sophomores, juniors and seniors, like people in the first year, second year, third year and fourth year of high school they all get to elect the king and queen for their year, and you can imagine that it's usually the really popular kids that get elected king and queen, So it's kind of like a popularity contest.

And if you are elected king or queen, that's a big honor that you'll probably remember for the rest of your life.

And in that moment when it happens, you feel like you're on top of the world, like you're the most important person ever.

It really is a popularity contest, I would say.

And so all of that happens, and then there's a dance event.

And this dance often takes place at a venue off of the school campus.

A venue is a place where an event takes place.

So, for example, I remember going to one homecoming once that was at a hotel, in this kind of big room inside of a hotel.

But other years, homecoming was just at our school.

So it depends on the year and it depends on the school.

But homecoming is a big deal.

It's a dance that people look forward to.

It's an important event.

And of course, there's prom, like I mentioned.

And this is kind of similar, except it happens at the end of the year.

And there isn't a corresponding football game because football season is already over by then.

But there's the same type of election for prom king and prom queen.

So the same type of popularity contest takes place during this prom time.

And at my school prom was a dance that was for seniors, for people in their last year of high school, except for if you were invited by a senior.

So if a boy who was a senior asked a girl who was a junior, let's say she could go because she was the date of that senior.

So that's how it worked at my school.

But I think this is different depending on the school.

And there are other dances as well.

This one really depends on the school.

They might have different themed dances.

One other one I can think of at my school was Morp, which is prom spelled backwards.

And so it was supposed to be like the opposite of prom dance.

It was a really informal dance with informal attire.

It was a silly dance, really.

By the way, attire refers to the clothes that you wear to some event.

And another event.

It's related to homecoming, but it's also just its own event, and that is Spirit Week.

So this usually happens the week leading up to homecoming, and what happens is that on each day of that week There's a different theme.

So maybe there's 70s day or pajama day or whatever.

And people dress up according to the theme of that day.

So if it's 70s day, people come to school dressed up as if it were the 70s, that decade.

So that's kind of a fun thing that gets people excited and it adds something fun for them an extra reason to get excited about going to school that week.

I don't really remember Spirit Week that much at my school.

That's probably because I didn't participate in it.

I was that type of person who would kind of just reject some of these things, some of the things we were supposed to do.

So maybe that's why I don't really remember it anymore.

Because I assume we had it because it's a big thing at many schools.

But I just don't really remember it from my school time.

And another event that we have is... is pep rallies.

So you might have seen these in movies before.

Pep rallies are these events that take place before certain sporting events and they're meant to get people fired up for that sporting event.

When you get someone fired up, this means that you get them really excited and passionate and ready to go for that event.

So at my school these rallies would take place in the middle of the school day and we were only allowed to go in If we were wearing some type of shirt or sweatshirt that had our school's name and colors on it.

So we all tried to remember to wear our school clothes on those pep rally days so that we could leave class in the middle of the day and not have class for an hour or whatever, and go to these really exciting pep rallies.

And at these pep rallies, Everyone is yelling and cheering.

When you cheer, this means that you yell in support of someone, right?

If you cheer for a football team, you're yelling in support of them, right?

And there are different activities at these pep rallies.

Someone is hosting them.

Usually people from the football team or whatever.

And the cheerleaders are there.

And one thing I remember from our pep rallies was that they would always do a roll call.

A roll call is... what people do when they are trying to see who is present somewhere.

So maybe in class they call every person's name and that person has to raise their hand or say here, that's a roll call.

But at these pep rallies they would do a roll call for each class of students, like freshmen, sophomore juniors and seniors.

And so the person would always start with the freshmen and say, are the freshmen here?

And then all the freshmen would scream and yell.

But then the other classes would boo them.

That's what would always happen with the freshmen.

And even with the sophomores and juniors, the seniors would always really try to boo them when it was their turn.

And then when it was the seniors turn at the end, it would be really, really loud.

The seniors would go crazy and try to make it sound like they were the most important people, and there were more of them at the rally.

So that's a memory that I have.

So all in all, those pep rallies were really exciting.

They got people really fired up for different sporting events that would happen afterwards.

And it was a great way to skip class for a little while.

And another event that's really important is Grad Night.

This is only for seniors and it happens at the end of the school year, so when they're about to graduate.

That's why it's called Grad Night.

These seniors get to go somewhere, usually to some amusement park, to have fun all night at that park.

When I went to this Grad Night celebration it was at Six Flags Magic Mountain, which is a big amusement park here in Southern California.

And we got to spend all night at this amusement park with some other schools, other seniors from other schools.

But we got to like rent out that park for that night and stay all night there.

And there's music and it's really fun.

It's kind of like the last big fun thing people get to do before they graduate.

So that's a big thing and different schools go to different places.

And I have some great memories from that night, from staying up all night with my friends at this amusement park riding the roller coasters.

It was cool.

And another event this is not a formal event, but it usually happens every year is Senior Skip Day.

So this day is the day when seniors, people in their last year of high school...

Don't go to school that day.

So a huge percentage of seniors just stay home on that particular day.

Again, this is not a formal day and this is something that schools and the teachers hate.

They try to prevent this from happening regularly.

They sometimes say that there will be a punishment if you participate in this, but people still do it.

Not everyone, obviously.

A lot of people still go, especially the people that really care about getting good grades and are really good students.

They tend to still go that day, but Other people stay home.

I don't really remember this day for me because I assume that I still went to school.

I was that type of person too.

I didn't stay home if people told me that it was senior skip day.

I would just go to school because it wasn't a big deal for me.

But for other people, it is.

And that's a tradition that's been going on for decades at different schools.

So that's one particularly for the seniors.

And one other one I wanted to mention, particularly for the seniors, which is another problematic one.

The most problematic one is, And that is the senior prank day.

So a prank is like a joke that you play on someone else.

It kind of has them as the victim of your joke.

So some of the seniors, at some point during the school year, think of what they're going to do as their prank.

And again, schools hate this.

Teachers hate this because these pranks can sometimes be very problematic.

And I remember before I was in high school, I think a few years before.

My sister was in high school at that time.

And that year, the seniors for the senior prank day, They glued all of the doors shut.

So they put glue on all of the doors at night or something like that.

And then in the morning... nobody could open the doors to any of the classrooms at the school.

And that was a big deal.

I think it was even on the news.

It was this huge thing and they were punished for doing that, of course.

And it was a big fiasco, uh, A fiasco is kind of like this big series of problems that happen.

So it can get really serious and there can be serious consequences if the prank is really over the top.

Over the top means that it's kind of over the limit of what is normally expected.

And so these senior pranks can get pretty serious.

But the only senior prank that I remember really well when I was in high school was a pretty lame one, to be honest.

The word lame is used to describe something that's not cool.

It's kind of dumb.

So it was pretty lame.

The seniors just ran through the hallways during class time with these blowhorns and these noisemakers and things like that to make a bunch of noise and disrupt people's classes.

It wasn't that creative and they didn't do it for that long.

And Like I said, it wasn't that cool.

It wasn't that creative.

But sometimes people get too creative and things can get a little bit out of control.

Right.

So that's not a formal event, but it's a tradition that seniors have been doing for many years and decades.

So I wanted to mention that.

And of course there are other school events as well, but I'm going to stop there for today because I'm out of time.

But I hope you enjoyed hearing about these different events and I hope it was good practice for your listening.

And I encourage you to join my membership.

If you want my training to help you understand native speakers when they speak fast, I'll leave the link down below.

That's patreon.com slash listening time.

And you can also sign up for my US conversations podcast to practice with my conversations that I have with other English speakers from around the country.

And I give you the transcript for that.

And you also have the definitions of key words and phrases that we use.

So the link is also down below.

That's patreon.com slash us conversations.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode.

And I'll talk to you on the next episode of listening time.

[Exploring Typical American High School Events]-[English Listening - School Events]

📋 Summary

Insights into American High School Traditions

Formal Dances: Homecoming and Prom

Building School Spirit

Senior-Specific Milestones

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript