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Chicken Little

Date: Nov 21 2005

Intro

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2. Read and Prepare - Read the introduction and prepare to hear the audio.

The movie Chicken Little is a spin off of the classic children’s story about a young chicken who thinks the sky is falling. One day, as Chicken Little is walking in the forest, an acorn falls on his head. He panics and thinks that the world is coming to an end. He runs off to tell the king, and has lots of adventures on the way.
Listen to Taylor and I chat about the movie.

Dialog

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2. Study - Read the dialog again to see how the vocab words are used.

Dave

Taylor

Dave: That movie Chicken Little has been a real hit in the box office the past week and a half.

Taylor: You know, it’s, it’s interesting how many folk tales in the past couple of months have, have made the transition to, ah, the movie theaters, like The Brothers Grimm recently…

Dave: Yeah.

Taylor: ...and now we have this, Chicken Little.

Dave: Yeah. I haven’t seen it. Ah, I heard, I hear it’s really good. The response has been really good to it, but I don’t know how much it resembles the original children’s folk tale.

Taylor: Yeah. The original story, you know, was a story about courage, you know, and even though, you know, the sky could be falling, you don’t want to freak out about it.

Dave: Right, right.

Taylor: You just want to stand up and let it fall on your damn head.

Dave: Well, yeah, that’s the moral. That’s what they’re telling you.

Taylor: Right.

Dave: Um, this is supposed to have a new twist to it. I don’t know what it is, but apparently the audiences like it.

Taylor: Yeah. Do you, do you know if they’ve added some sort of villainous creature that might, you know, be trying to gobble up Chicken Little?

Dave: I don’t know. Like the fox in the, ah, original?

Taylor: Yeah.

Dave: I’m sure there is. Every story has got a villain.

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Discussion

People use the expression the sky is falling to talk about serious problems. For example, the president of company that is struggling to make a profit might say to his employees, “The sky is falling on us, people! We need to start making money.”
Or, if someone is freaking out over a small problem, you can say: “Relax! It’s not like the sky is falling.”