Punxsutawney Phil

Intro

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

• unique
• holiday
• groundhog
• weird

• dunno
• use your head
• Pennsylvania
• kitschy

• predicting

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

Every culture has holidays that are unique and that no other culture shares.
In America, we have a holiday called Groundhog Day that takes place on February 2nd. On this holiday, we wait for a well-known groundhog to come out of his hole. If he sees his shadow, we will have 6 more weeks of winter.

Dialog

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

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

Steph

Derek

Steph:  I had a friend when I was living in Germany and I told her about Punxsutawney Phil. And she totally laughed. She didn’t believe that it was a true story.

Derek:  Oh, really? They don’t have that type of thing there?

Steph:  No. They don’t even know what Groundhog Day is.

Derek:  Well, that’s interesting. I’ve always known what Groundhog Day was but actually I never knew that the groundhog had a name.

Steph:  Right. I know. It’s such a weird name, too, Punxsutawney Phil. I mean, where does that come from?

Derek:  I dunno. I guess they figure nobody else would be named that so they could safely use that name forever.

Steph:  That’s true. Is that the name of the town that he lives in Pennsylvania?

Derek:  Probably.

Steph:  I think it could be, actually. I think I read that somewhere.

Derek:  I wonder why it’s Pennsylvania.

Steph:  I dunno. Gosh. There’s all these things that we just need to find out about Groundhog Day. I mean, you’d think we’d know. It happens every year. We know a lot about the other holidays – Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc.

Derek:  Well, it’ll give us something to learn.

Steph:  Let’s just go look it up on the internet. And we’ll be able to talk about it next week.

Derek:  Sounds good.

Steph:  Or next year.

Derek:  Ok.

 

Quizzes

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Lesson MP3

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