English, baby!

THE RED SEA

Date: Mar 26 2001

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Intro

1. Learn Vocabulary - Learn some new vocabulary before you start the lesson.

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

While in St. Louis, Tanis, John and Zach ate at an Ethiopian restaurant with some other friends.

Dialog

1. Listen and Read - Listen to the audio and read the dialog at the same time.

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

John

Zach

Tanis

John: Well, have you ever eaten Ethiopian food before?

Zach: I’ve eaten other kinds of African foods, but…

John: I had heard that you eat Ethiopian food with your hands and that it tastes kind of like it did. I didn’t know about the flat bread you can wrap the chicken in and eat and…

Zach: That bread was the best part. I liked that.

John: I know. That was so good.

Tanis: Yeah, none of us really got any of the bread that sat near John ‘cause John ate all of the bread.

Zach: Tanis kind of got left out ‘cause she had her tiny little dish of food.

Tanis: Yeah, but that really nice girl from China traded me.

John: Yeah, Tanis did not get left out. Tanis orders a meal and then looks at it and says, “I don’t want this.” The Chinese girl goes, “I’ll just trade with you.” And so, Tanis gets this brand new plate and then, “Oh, look at me. Look I’ve got some food that I like now.”

Zach: But, that dish. I mean, like, everybody had, like, a decent-sized plate. But, Tanis’ was just a little side dish or something.

Tanis: Yeah, you’re all “Tanis happened to get served a really nasty piece of meat so…”

John: It wasn’t nasty.

Tanis: My original stuff was like puke.

John: That Chinese girl took it down.

Tanis: Yeah, and she didn’t want it either. She was just really nice (laughter).

John: You took advantage of it.

Zach: Yeah and you were happy to slough it off on her.

John: That’s even worse. You knew she didn’t want it and you did the trade anyway.

Tanis: I said I’d trade it back with her. No no…

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Discussion

The end of this conversation might be difficult to listen to because all three are talking over each other. If you focus in on each person’s voice, one by one and read the text you might be able to sort it out. It’s very natural when people are excited to interrupt or talk over one another. In this case Tanis is making fun of John for eating all of the bread. John makes fun of Tanis for trading her food that she didn’t like with another girl.
Ethiopian food is very good. Some of it is spicy, some of it is sweet. For most of us it was our first time eating it, so we weren’t sure what to expect.
Is there any kind of food that you would like to try? Anything you’ve had that you couldn’t eat. Tell us about it at the Life Goes On message board!
See you next week!
—John