English, baby!

Snowed In

Date: Jan 13 2004

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Intro

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

a pain
plow

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

Hello!
Portland, Oregon is usually a pretty temperate place. It doesn’t get extremely cold in the winter, or extremely hot in the summer – making it a really nice place to live. The winter in Portland is usually filled with gray, rainy days. However, this year there was a huge snow storm. More than two feet of snow fell within a few days.
For many places, a couple of feet of snow wouldn’t be a big deal. However, in Portland it caused major havoc. Most people in Portland aren’t used to snow, so the white, wet, frozen ground was a problem.
Listen in to a conversation between Zach and Beth to hear how the snow affected them.

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.

Zach

Beth

Zach: Hey Beth, can you believe how much snow was in Portland last week?

Beth: No! It was insane. I could not believe how white and beautiful and also annoying it was.

Zach: Yeah, it was awesome for the first three days or so, um, but then it just kinda stayed and got, yeah, it got pretty annoying.

Beth: I couldn’t believe how the city just shut down. I mean, I’ve never seen anything like that. Have you?

Zach: Never. Not at all. At least we got to work though.

Beth: We did. One thing that happened that was so funny was I drove in to work, which was kind of crazy, but I stopped at a stop sign and yielded to a cross-country skier.

Zach: That’s probably never gonna happen again in Portland.

Beth: I know! It was pretty cool though.

Zach: Definitely.

Quizzes

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Lesson MP3

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Discussion

It seems like Zach felt the same way I did about the winter storm. It was fun at first, but then when it was time to return to real life, it was kind of a pain. The snow made me realize that it really is nice to not have it. Or, at least if it’s going to snow, the city has to be ready for it. The roads need to be plowed and people need to learn how to drive in dangerous conditions.
Anyhow, the storm is over and things have returned to normal in Portland. Now that it’s snowed, I’m ready for winter to be over and for spring to start!
Stay warm!
Beth