Hello, it's me again here at Practicing English and I've come back with the second part of The Black Cat, my story by Edgar Allan Poe, part two and the final part of the story.
First, before I start, I would just like to say check out my book called for passing your B1 exam or, if you really want to improve your intermediate level English.
One of my students came up to me today and said, what do I have to do to pass the exam?
I said, you've already bought my book, right?
Yes.
Have you read it?
I've read two stories.
Two stories.
There are 22 stories in this book. and over 30,000 words.
I know it's a lot to read, but they're great stories, some of my best stories and they're full of B1 language.
I wrote this book because I really feel that reading these stories and doing the vocabulary exercises is practically all you need to be able to pass B1 a B1 level exam.
So that's a little plug for me and my book.
You can find the link to it from the podcast notes and from my website, practicingenglish.com.
It's called B1 English Vocabulary Builder.
22 short stories for learning the words and phrases students need to pass the B1 exams.
I really don't think you'll regret it if you are serious about passing a B1 exam or you just really want to improve your language to a B1 level.
OK, let's get on with the story.
It's a B2 story, actually.
It's a B2 level story today.
I'm going to bring out 10 what we could call perhaps collocations.
And collocations are those words which go together.
Like some food dishes, they go together.
Like ice cream and jelly.
Or roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.
These are words that go together, not recipes.
But they're important to learn because...
They are the natural English which native speakers use.
So if you use those expressions well, then you're going to be recognized as someone who has a good level of English.
If you're doing an exam, for example, the ones I'm going to use today.
Some of them are quite strong, as it were, because we're talking about a horror story here.
So here are the expressions that you're going to hear in the story, the collocations you're going to hear.
And I've got an example of each of them.
The first one, number one, is to fall into hopeless despair.
To fall into hopeless despair.
So to fall into meaning and what happens to you. is a sadness.
And this sadness, a deep sadness, we call despair.
It's a V2 word, despair.
And this is a hopeless despair.
And that's the collocation.
You fall into hopeless despair.
Hopeless, the opposite of hopeful, which means there is no hope.
So everything sounds really negative and really terrible.
So my example after losing his job and the apartment in the same week, he fell into hopeless despair.
Number two, draw their attention to.
Okay, to draw somebody's attention to something, which means to...
Point out to say, look at this or listen to this.
All right.
To draw somebody's attention to something.
The example sentence is the teacher pointed to the board to draw the student's attention to the solution of the maths problem.
So she said, here it is.
She drew their attention to it.
She made them look at it.
Next one, number three, fill somebody with shock and terror.
All right.
So there's a typical phrase there from Edgar Allan Poe.
Fill someone with shock and terror.
Terror is something horrific, horrible.
And shock is when they've received some bad news about something or something happens to us which is terrible.
Very powerful in a negative way.
The sudden crash in the middle of the night filled her with shock and terror.
So to fill somebody with shock and terror, it means inside them they felt this feeling.
You get filled with it.
F-I-double-L.
Next one, number four, a growing dislike for something.
So this means then that as time goes by, you like something less and less.
So it is a growing dislike and the preposition is for something.
After months of working late with no thanks, Mary developed a growing dislike for her boss.
Okay, so she liked him less and less.
Number five, be ashamed to admit.
So this is something that we do.
We regret it so much. that we don't want to tell other people what we've done.
We feel bad about it.
We don't want anybody to know.
My example sentence is, I'm ashamed to admit that I forgot my best friend's birthday.
I'm ashamed to admit it.
He feels so bad that he forgot.
The next one is beyond control.
Beyond control, which means that a situation gets out of hand, which is another collocation or another set phrase to get out of hand, meaning that the situation is no longer easy to control.
We can't control it.
We've lost control.
The situation quickly became beyond control once people started arguing in the meeting.
So the situation quickly became beyond control.
Nobody could control it anymore.
It was just getting out of hand.
People shouting at each other in the meeting.
The next one, a violent rage.
So rage is really anger.
When you feel angry, the noun is anger.
And another word which is stronger than anger is rage, R-A-G-E.
And a violent rage is a nice collocation that goes with that one.
And there's a verb as well.
Which is to fly into a violent rage.
Fly.
F-L-Y.
My example phrase is, he flew into a violent rage when he realized his car had been stolen.
He flew into a violent rage.
The next one is completely untouched.
Okay, so it's really just an emphatic adverb which goes with the adjective completely untouched.
Meaning that nobody has touched it.
Nobody has done anything to it.
The cake was still completely untouched at the end of the party.
So nobody ate the cake.
The next one is Again, I've got fill again, all right, to fill somebody with some emotion.
And the emotion this time is great relief.
So relief is something we feel when the bad news we are expecting does not happen, does not happen.
We feel relief, R-E-L-I-E-F.
So to fill somebody with great relief, great just being an emphatic word there, meaning a lot.
Example sentence, hearing that her family was safe Filled Jenny with great relief.
So she heard the good news because she was worrying so much about her family and she felt this great relief.
She was filled with great relief.
My last one, number 10. to sleep peacefully.
So it's just a nice little adverb to explain or to describe somebody who is sleeping very well.
We often say, for example, like when we sleep very well, to sleep like a log.
I slept like a log last night.
L-O-G, a log, which is a piece of wood.
Or here, to sleep peacefully.
After the storm passed, The children finally slept peacefully.
Okay, so during the storm, there was thunder and lightning and they were frightened.
And then when the storm passed, the children finally slept peacefully.
Right, so.
There are 10 phrases there, so that's quite a lot to listen for, isn't it?
You can actually look at these phrases at your podcast app notes, right?
The show notes or go to my podcast, Practicing English Podcast 290.
And you'll see the phrases there.
And you'll also see the story there, which I'm going to read now.
So just listen for the phrases in the story.
So this is part two of The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe.
Here we go.
That same night, the sound of fire woke me up.
The curtains around my bed were burning and the whole house was soon in flames.
With great difficulty, my wife, a servant, and I escaped.
Everything we owned was destroyed and I fell into hopeless despair.
The next day after the fire, I visited the ruins of my home.
The walls had almost completely collapsed, except for one section.
This wall stood near the center of the house, exactly where the head of my bed had been.
The plaster on it had resisted the fire. probably because it had been recently repaired.
A large crowd had gathered around it and many people were staring at one specific part of the wall that had drawn their attention.
Hearing words like bizarre and unusual, I felt curious and moved closer.
What I saw filled me with shock and terror.
Clearly marked on the white plaster was the image of a huge black cat with a rope around its neck.
The shape was incredibly accurate. as if it had been carefully drawn.
At first I could hardly breathe, but after some time, common sense began to work again.
I remember that I had hung the cat in the garden next to the house.
When the fire started, people had rushed into the garden in an attempt to put out the fire.
Someone, for some reason, must have cut the body down and thrown it through the window.
Later, as the walls collapsed, the cat's body was pressed into the soft plaster.
The heat, the chemicals in the wall and the fire itself had created and preserved the image.
Although this explanation satisfied my logic, it did not calm my imagination.
For months afterwards, I could not forget the picture of the cat.
During this time, I felt something like regret.
I missed the cat and even began looking for another cat like Pluto to replace him.
One night, while sitting in a dirty bar, half drunk, I noticed a large black object resting on a barrel.
When I touched it, I realized it was a black cat.
Almost exactly the same size and shape as Pluto.
There was only one difference.
This cat had a large white part on its chest.
The cat reacted warmly to my touch.
It purred, rubbed against me and seemed happy to receive attention.
I offered to buy it, but the bar owner said it did not belong to him.
When I left, the cat followed me home.
Once inside the house, the cat made itself comfortable. and became my wife's favourite.
At first I expected to feel affection, but instead I felt a growing dislike.
I could not explain it, but the animal's constant attention annoyed me deeply.
Slowly my annoyance turned into hate.
I avoided the cat and felt ashamed of my feelings, especially because of what I had done before.
I did not hurt it, but I felt uncomfortable and disturbed whenever it was near.
One morning I noticed something that increased my fear.
The cat, like Pluto, had only one eye.
This made my wife love it even more, but for me, it created a sense of uneasy recognition.
The cat followed me everywhere.
When I sat, it climbed onto my legs.
When I walked, it moved between my feet and nearly caused me to fall.
Sometimes it pushed its claws into my clothes and climbed up my chest.
I often wanted to kill it, but I was stopped by fear and guilt.
That fear was not just physical.
I was ashamed to admit it, but the white mark on its chest slowly began to change shape.
At first it was unclear, but eventually...
I could see it clearly.
It looked like the gallows, the symbol of death.
This image filled me with constant fear.
I slept badly.
The cat never left me alone.
During the day it followed me everywhere, and at night it lay on my chest like a living nightmare.
Under this pressure, The last good part of my nature disappeared.
My thoughts became dark and violent.
I hated the world and everyone in it.
My wife who never complained suffered the most from my sudden anger.
One day my wife followed me into the cellar of the building where we now lived.
The cat came with us.
As we went down the narrow stairs, the cat ran between my feet and almost caused me to fall.
This moment pushed my anger beyond control.
I lifted an axe to kill the animal.
My wife caught my arm and tried to stop me.
Her interference filled me with a violent rage.
And without thinking, I turned the axe on her.
She died instantly.
After the murder, I calmly began to plan how to hide the body.
I knew I could not remove it without being seen.
I considered many options, including burning it or throwing it into a well.
Finally, I decided to hide it inside the cellar wall.
The wall was weak and recently plastered, which made my task easier.
I removed the bricks, placed my wife's body inside and carefully rebuilt the wall so it looked completely untouched.
When I finished, I admired my work proudly.
I then searched for the cat. determined to kill it.
However, it had disappeared.
Its absence filled me with great relief.
That night, for the first time in a long while, I slept peacefully, even with murder on my mind.
Several days passed.
The police came and questioned me, but I answered calmly.
They searched the house, including the cellar, and found nothing.
I felt confident and safe.
As the officers prepared to leave, I felt a need to show my self-confidence.
I praised the strength of the house and knocked on the wall behind which my wife's body was hidden.
Immediately, a terrible sound came from inside the wall.
It began as a low cry and grew into a loud scream.
The police froze and then rushed to pull the wall down.
When the bricks fell, my wife's body stood before them.
Sitting on her head was the black cat, alive with its single burning eye and mouth open in a scream.
I had trapped the animal inside the wall along with the body.
Its cry had revealed my crime.
That moment had exposed me and I knew it was all over.
Right, so that is the end of The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe.
I'm just very quickly going to read you those collocations.
I will leave off the last word or another word in the collocation and you will hear a bleep.
What is the word which is missing?
I will tell you immediately afterwards.
Here we go.
Number one, to fall into hopeless despair.
Number two, to their attention to something.
Draw.
Number three, fill somebody with shock and Terror.
Number four.
A growing for something.
Dislike.
Number five.
Be to admit something.
Ashamed.
Number six.
Beyond shame.
Control.
Number seven.
A violent... Rage.
Number eight.
Completely... Think of the cake.
Untouched.
Number nine.
Somebody, with great relief, fill number 10.
Sleep peacefully.
There we are.
Those are very useful collocations that you can use in your writing or when you're speaking, if possible, as well.
That's the end of my story.
It was pretty horrifying, wasn't it?
So I hope you have a good night tonight and you sleep very peacefully.
Goodbye for now.
