A Valentine’s Day Surprise.
It’s Valentine’s Day, you are on the train on your way home from work and the woman sitting opposite you is making a phone call.
Can you work out what the phone call is about? You can only hear one-side of the phone call and there is background noise of the train as well.
Listen to the sound file write down everything that you can hear.
Remember – this is natural conversational speed English. It is fast. You will not hear all the words, as I don’t say them all fully. What is important is to work out what the gist of the message is.
Did Paul send the flowers?
Write down all the words you can hear. After listening a few times, look at the transcript and work out which words you could not hear. Listen again with the transcript.
Hey Jane, guess what I got delivered to me today in work…..no…, no…. a massive bunch of red roses, they’re gorgeous!
Yea…. I can’t believe it, I’ve never had such lovely flowers sent to me before…..
no no I don’t know who sent them… what? you think it’s Paul?…..No..don’t be daft we’ve been married twenty years, there’s no way he’d send me such, you know, gorgeous roses, they are far too expensive…. No it’s not Paul….. I know… I don’t know it just says question mark….I think it’s the new guy in the office, he just started last week, he doesn’t know I am married………they are absolutely lovely, I can smell them, they are gorgeous.
….oh I hadn’t thought of that…. oh, yes..what’s Paul going to say when he sees them? oh oh what if they are from him? If I go home without them and they are from him… oh no … what am I going to do…..
Look at the transcript and work out which words you did not hear.
Listen again whilst reading the transcript and look out for the words that end in T.
Do we pronounce the T at the end of words?
Read this blog post about the missing T in spoken English.
Let me know in the comments which parts were difficult.
Do you want to know what happens when she gets home from work? Listen to part 2
We hate SPAM and protect your data in accordance with our privacy policy.
