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Your Daily English Programme #16 - Remembering Linkin Park's Frontman (Listening B1-C1) |
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Think Before You Listen |
Watch This Short Music Video: Do you know the male singer in the video? Why do you think the song is entitled 'Heavy' (what are the connotations)?
The singer in the above video is Chester Bennington. He was the lead singer of Linkin Park, an American band known for fusing sounds from pop, rock, punk, nu-metal and hip-hop. Chester committed suicide by hanging himself on July 20, 2017 at his home in Los Angeles, just after a concert in Detroit, Michigan. His tragic death came soon after his close friend, Chris Cornell (lead vocalist for the rock bands Soundgarden & Audioslave) killed himself on May 18, 2017 in an eerily similar way.
In the video below, Linkin Park's co-founder and producer, Mike Shinoda, recounts how devastated Chester was when he heard news of Chris' death.
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Watch and Listen |
Listen: According to the speaker (Mike), how did Chester feel when the band was recording the song "One More Light", in remembrance of Chris?
- What does Mike think was "the message" of the song?
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Time to Practice |
I don't exactly know why1, but many learners of English wrongly assume that 'native speakers' speak English without any pauses, or hesitation, or repetition. In fact, sometimes even teachers of English give learners the mistaken impression that ' fluency' is speaking without repeating or hesitating. Nothing could be further from the truth: native and fluent speakers of English, like speakers from any other language, naturally speak with:
- hesitation (saying 'um' or 'uh'),
- pauses (using words such as 'like' or 'you know' or ' kinda'),
- and repetition (see text box below).
These are not only NOT signs of disfluency, but are a useful aid in achieving fluency; that's because these 'strategies' help speakers gain time to think and more room to modify the words/expressions they use as they speak.
- hesitation (saying 'um' or 'uh'),
- pauses (using words such as 'like' or 'you know' or ' kinda'),
- and repetition (see text box below).
These are not only NOT signs of disfluency, but are a useful aid in achieving fluency; that's because these 'strategies' help speakers gain time to think and more room to modify the words/expressions they use as they speak.
Listen to the Speaker (Mike) Again: Fill in the blanks below with ' pause fillers' and ' hesitation devices' that the speaker uses to gain time/fluency while speaking2:
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Mike Shinoda: I
was thinking ______ just yesterday, ______ we played a show, a televised
show, and we were going to play, we were…we were booked to play the show so
that we could promote our single ‘Heavy’, and play that song. And
then, we heard the news about Chris Cornell…and…had a little pow-wow in the
dressing room before we went on, and we said, __________, the thing that’s
good for the band to do is to play ‘Heavy’, but the right thing to do
is to play ‘One More Light’ because it’s about the loss of a friend.
And it’s a…it’s one of the most important songs in the record, and it may
never be a single…____…but it’s just an important song, and it’s the right
song to play. So, that’s what we ended up doing.
When we were…when we were doing a sound check, Chester
couldn’t even make it through the song. He was getting halfway through and
getting choked up…____…and even when we did play the whole song…____…and it
was live on TV…or…taped…____…filmed for TV…um…he ______ just
stopped…_____…towards the end…_____…he missed the last couple lines of
it…just couldn’t finish the song…____…Fans were crying in the audience. And
it was…I think it was cathartic; I think it was good because as we…_____, the
message of the song…I think the reason is…the message of the song is…when
you’re dealing with something so deep as…as…____________…losing a friend
or…this…even in this case, just somebody you admire, somebody you look up
to…____…when we were talking about some of these fans in the
audience…____…one of the things that I think you can do is to reach out to
people and offer them…_____, _____, _____…community; _____, let them know,
_____, we’re…we’re a family, we’re a community, _____, we care about each
other; even, _____________, whether it’s your…it’s the…the…a friend who’s
lost somebody or a family member or whatever, like, to…to…to reach out…and
let them know even that that you’re thinking about them is sometimes,
_____…sometimes that’s enough.
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Your Turn |
Tell us in the comments below:
- Have you ever been saddened by the loss of a good friend? How did you feel? What did you do to overcome the sadness?
- Have you ever been saddened by the loss of a favorite celebrity? Who was it and why was the loss significant to you/fans?
Click HERE to Watch Chester Bennington's last show in Birmingham, the UK...which brings us to the end of this week first post in the Series: English Every Day on Engramme: Your Daily English Programme.
Teahers can download a pdf copy of this lesson HERE
Move your mouse over the underlined words in the post to see their meaning ;)
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1 Of course, one reason might be that most foreign language learners of English listen to the news or watch movies and series that are 'scripted', that is the speech is actually being read from previously written material. This may give learners the wrong impression that English is spoken fast and without much/any hesitation at all.↩
2 You may not be able to fill all the gaps in one go, but the idea is to help the learner see just how often such 'fluency strategies' are employed to help speakers maintain the flow of speech.↩
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