Reading Aloud: Reading a personal story aloud

Reading aloud is shown to improve confidence and understanding. These activities have been designed to help you practise your reading and speaking skills in an authentic way.

Instructions and downloads

Take a few minutes to think about the following questions:

When did you move to the UK?
Why did you move to the UK?
Have you ever told the story of your life in the UK to anyone?

Jogita has written about her life in the UK – maybe she has had similar experiences to you, or maybe your stories are very different.

Download the transcript of Jogita’s story and read it as you listen to it being read aloud.

Reading aloud - Jogita's story by ESOL Nexus

If you would like more practice to improve how you read aloud, do activities 1 – 6.

You can also print and do the activities on paper

Transcript

Printable worksheet

Task 1 - synonyms

In this activity, you will focus on vocabulary taken from Jogita’s story.

A synonym is a word which means the same as another word.

e.g. A synonym of ‘sad’ is ‘unhappy’

For this activity, identify synonyms for some of the words Jogita used.

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Task 2 - pronunciation of -ed endings

Next, you will focus on past simple verbs from Jogita’s story which have an –ed ending.

-ed endings are pronounced /d/, /t/ or /Id/, depending on the sound that comes before them.

/d/

e.g. The –ed ending in ‘turned’ is pronounced /d/

/t/

The –ed ending in ‘helped’ is pronounced /t/

/Id/

The –ed ending in ‘shouted’ is pronounced /Id/

Listen to the examples:

Reading aloud - Jogita's story - ed endings by ESOL Nexus

In this activity, you will identify the pronunciation of –ed endings of some of Jogita’s verbs and group them accordingly.

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Task 3 - word stress

In natural spoken English, we don’t pronounce each syllable with the same emphasis (word stress).

For example, the word ‘student’ has two syllables, and the stress pattern is:

O o

student

The word ‘studying’ has three syllables, and the stress pattern is:

O o o

studying

Listen to the examples:

Reading aloud - Jogita's story - word stress by ESOL Nexus

Listen to some words taken from Jogita’s story and match them to the correct stress pattern.

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Task 4 - linking sounds

In spoken English, we often add extra sounds between words to link our words together.

As a result, when you listen to a continuous stream of sound in English, it can be very difficult to identify the individual words.

These extra linking sounds are:

/r/ e.g. Where^/r/are you?

/j/ e.g. My^/j/eyes are blue.

/w/ e.g. I'm going to^/w/Africa.

Listen to the example:

Linking sounds by ESOL Nexus

Listen to some phrases and sentences taken from Jogita’s story and identify the linking sounds between the words.

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Task 5 - word order

In this activity, you will put words in the right order to make phrases and sentences from Jogita’s story.

Practise saying the phrases and sentences aloud at the same time.

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Task 6 - paragraph organisation

Finally, you will match the paragraphs from Jogita’s story to the correct paragraph heading.

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Transcript

Jogita’s story.

I moved to England last year in March because my mum wanted a better life for the family. My mum had already been living in England for three months when she went back for my brother, my sister and me. We were waiting for her while she prepared a new home for us in England.

When I arrived in England I was excited and happy, because this was my first time in the country, but, at the same time, I was very sad. On the outside I was happy, but inside I was not, because I didn’t want to leave all my friends. I wanted to cry but I tried to stay calm for my mum because she wanted to see me happy.

I liked everything I saw when I came to England – the buildings, the parks and the houses. I thought the people were friendly and always polite and smiling. People I didn’t even know smiled and said, “Hi, is everything okay?” I really loved it here in England.

I found people my age a bit rude. I thought that teenagers felt that they were the best because they were British and had already lived here a long time. But, I decided to stay positive and, after a while, everything was fine.

The difference between England and Latvia is huge. England is much bigger and there are more beautiful places than in my country, although, of course, in Latvia we have beautiful places as well. English people are more considerate about other people, and this is why so many people move here from other countries.

Now, I feel very good about living here. I’m used to it and I feel at home here. I like going back to visit Latvia and see old friends, but I don’t want to live there.

I see my future in England. Now I live in a town, but one day I might like to move to a bigger city. Like lots of my friends, I want to be a policewoman. But I will see what happens – this is just how I feel now.

Discussion

How about writing your own story about moving to the UK. You can use the headings in Task 6 to help you.

You could then read your story to someone you know.

Recording and listening to yourself speaking is a really powerful way to improve your speech.

You can record yourself reading your story aloud at www.vocaroo.com and you can do this as many times as you want until you are happy with what you say.

When you are ready, email your recording to yourself or to a friend to listen to.

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Comments

EchoXu

Submitted by EchoXu on Wed, 04/10/2013 - 03:24.

Great! I love England as well !!~~ ^_^

Reading Aloud: Reading a personal story aloud

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