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This page has the online practice materials for:
LearnEnglish Elementary Podcast Magazine No. 09
Section 4 -Our Person in...
You can listen online or download the podcast at Podcast 09 Home
You can also get print versions of the practice materials below in our Podcast 09 Support Pack (pdf file - 351 KB)
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This section begins when the counter on your audio player is on (approximately) 09mins.58secs
Section 4 is based on 'Our Person in...'. It helps you to listen to other people speaking for a little longer than they speak in a conversation, like a radio or television news report. When people prepare written reports, they are often a little more formal, and use more complex words and structures.
Suggestion: The notes here are to help you to think of things to say, and the best order to say them. Make notes and then join these together to make a paragraph. Why not send it to us?
You listened to Bridget talking about the film industry in India.
Can you write something about films and cinema in your country?
Think about these questions:
• Do people go to the cinema a lot in your country?
• What kinds of films do they go to see? Cartoons? Musicals? Adventure?
• When do they go?
• How many cinemas are there? What are they like?
• How much does it cost to go to the cinema?
• Do people watch films in English?
• What kinds of films are most popular? American films? Bollywood films?
• Does your country have its own film industry? What films does it make?
• How often do you go to the cinema?
• What kinds of films do you like?
Now put your ideas together to write a paragraph about films and cinema in your country. Go to the bottom of the page to do this.
Transcript
Bridget Keenan is Our Woman in India.
Bridget: India is a nation of cinema-lovers – almost 40 million people go to the cinema each month and India produces almost twice as many films each year as the USA. The Indian film industry is known as Bollywood and you never feel like you are far from its influence. In cities, giant hand-painted images of Bollywood stars look down at the passing traffic and in parts of India film stars have used their popularity to start careers as politicians.
Bollywood films are quite different to Hollywood films. Although the plots can be similar, the Indian films feature a lot more singing and dancing – there are usually six songs and at least two huge dance scenes. In fact, the stories are often very predictable and always have a happy ending – but that doesn’t stop people going to see them.
And going to see films is a special experience too - much noisier and livelier than British cinemas. The crowd will cheer on the hero through all the action scenes, whistle through the songs and offer advice and support throughout the film. The audience can be as much fun as the film.
That audience seems to be almost everyone in India – from the very old to the very young. In the countryside there are touring cinemas – a lorry travelling with all the equipment to make a temporary cinema in a village for one night before moving on to the next place. It’s a love of cinema shared by the whole, huge country unlike anywhere else in the world.
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