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Apologizing
Apologizing

Learn English with this apologizing English lesson

Date: Feb 20 2019

Themes: Friend

Grammar: Tag Questions

Intro

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

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Do you remember the worst mistake you ever made? Did you lie to your parents? Cheat on a test? Break something expensive? What happened?

Chances are, if you were caught doing something wrong, you had to apologize for your mistake. Maybe you felt so guilty after it happened that you decided to confess even though nobody saw you do it. The truth is, we all screw up sometimes. It’s part of being human.

Whenever you make a mistake, the best thing to do is to say that you’re sorry. It might not be fun to take responsibility for what went wrong, but at least you’ll clear the air. Hopefully, the other person will accept your apology, and everything will be OK in the end.

Lily is apologizing to Jeff a lot. Learn why she’s saying sorry in this English lesson.

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.

Lily

Lily

Jeff

Jeff

Lily:  Hey, Jeff! Oh, I’m sorry.

Jeff:  What? Why? You didn’t do anything.

Lily:  Well, I thought I interrupted something that you were doing. I’m really sorry. Sorry.

Jeff:  You apologize a lot, don’t you?

Lily:  I feel like I’m always in somebody’s way, and it’s better to clear the air and make sure that people like you and that you’re covering all your bases with anything that you could possibly have done wrong.

Jeff:  Yeah, well, it’s just incessant. All the time.

Lily:  I’m sorry.

Jeff:  I don’t know. It makes it sound insincere.

Lily:  No, it’s completely sincere.

Jeff:  You’re paranoid.

Lily:  No, I’m not paranoid. You never apologize. Maybe you’re just too proud.

Jeff:  Well, I’ve got plenty of things to be proud about, so…

Lily:  I guess you’re right. I’m sorry. So then can you forgive me for my incessant apologies?

Jeff:  Three strikes and you’re out. So choose wisely. Speaking of confession, I have something to confess. I don’t really like apologizing.

Lily:  Really?

Jeff:  Yeah.

Lily:  But don’t you find that you have a lot to apologize for, or are you just too proud?

Jeff:  Not really. No, I mean only when I screw up big time.

Lily:  What if you bump into somebody in the street?

Jeff:  They can deal with it.

Lily:  Really?

Jeff:  Yeah.

Lily:  But what if they hate you forever?

Jeff:  I don’t care about them.

 

Grammar Point

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Quizzes

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Lesson MP3

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Discussion

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Lily sees Jeff and tells him “hi,” but then she apologizes right away. She thinks that she interrupted Jeff and she doesn’t want him to be mad at her.

Jeff doesn’t forgive Lily, though. He tells her that her incessant apologizing is actually annoying. It seems like she is making the problem worse by saying she’s sorry over and over and over.

For Lily, apologizing all the time is a way to clear the air. She’s paranoid that she’s going to do something wrong and that she’ll be in somebody’s way. Jeff feels differently, though. He doesn’t like apologizing. In fact, if he accidentally runs into somebody, he doesn’t even care.

Do you think that Lily is apologizing too much? Is Jeff too proud to apologize? Who’s right?

 

Comments

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AryelLanes

AryelLanes

Brazil

Wow! Jeff’s being so cold towards Lily! :O


It’s true that apologizing all the time can become something annoying, but he has to understand that she’s just trying to be polite! She wouldn’t apologize to him for interrupting something if she didn’t really care… But him?


He clearly says that he doesn’t care about people and that her apologies sound insincere. What a douchie! If I were Lily, I’d teach him a good lesson! It seems that no one has ever done it (yet)... .’’

01:25 PM Feb 18 2014 |

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