Name: Study English - Series 1, Episode 26: Archaeology
Uploaded: 2018-06-24T23:08:39.000Z
Duration: 9 min 59 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hello and welcome again to Study English, IELTS Preparation. I'm Margot Politis.

Basic passive voice

Today we're going to look at classification - how things are sorted into classes or groups.

We'll listen to an archaeologist talking about artefacts, things left behind from the past,

And we'll finish by doing some pronunciation practice on final 's' sounds.

Well, these are all artefacts from the cesspits at Casseldon Place and there's a real assortment

Some of the artefacts we've got relate to, I guess, the leisure time activity, the pastimes,

There are some gaming tokens. This is a lead disc with a horse figurine on it as well.

It would've been used as some sort of betting token.

The dice there, the bone dice as well. There's a couple of dominoes - one's made out of bone,

Some of the other pieces, we've got a lead rifle that would've been part of a child's

Yeah, these bones, again, from the cesspits of Casseldon, and quite clearly, it's been

cut. These aren't natural breaks at all. These are what we refer to as butchering marks.

So we're not just learning what sort of animals were eaten at Casseldon, we're also learning

about the cuts of meat being provided, whether it's been done locally by individual house

owners, or whether they're going to a local butcher.

I think the artefacts from Casseldon Place and the other results of the archaeological

process are important because they give us a really rare insight into the way Melbourne

The speaker, Jeremy Smith, is discussing the artefacts he's found in Melbourne. Let's look

at how he classifies or sorts out these artefacts for us.

First, the 'opening statement' tells us what is being classified. This is an orientation.

Then the things are classified according to certain criteria. They're put into groups.

Finally, at the end of the classification, there's a summary, or a comment on the groups

Let's listen to Jeremy's opening statement or orientation.

So the topic of this classification is the artefacts from Casseldon Place.

We are told that there is a real assortment of different types.

From this opening statement, we would expect the rest of the passage to be about the different

types of artefacts found there, and that's exactly what's given.

Listen to how the first type is introduced.

The first category is of artefacts relating to leisure time activity, or pastimes.

This is the first group or class of the classification.

To make this clearer to the reader or listener, he could have used signals to show this was

Firstly, we have artefacts that relate to leisure time activities.

So the second category is children's toys.

Again, he could have introduced this by saying second, or secondly.

And what about the third, or final category?

The third category is to do with bones, evidence of what people ate.

So after describing the different classes or groups, Jeremy summarises by saying why

This is a summary statement. He finishes by giving a comment on the importance of the

Here he is saying the artefacts are important because of the rare insight they give us.

They show what life was like in Melbourne many years ago.

OK, now we're going to look at something completely different- the pronunciation of the letter

But first, let's look at when you'll find an 's' on the end of words.

Well firstly, there's the natural 's'. Some words are always spelt with a final 's'.

Secondly, the letter 's' is added to plural nouns,

thirdly, it's added to 3rd person singular verbs in the present tense,

Finally, it's added to the possessive pronoun it, and possessive nouns.

OK, so there are lots of times when you'll see and 's' on the end of words. For words

where it's added on, it has three different pronunciations. Let's classify them!

The first pronunciation of the final -s is 'uz'.

It's pronounced this way after sounds such as s, z, sh, ch and j.

Did you hear it? The example was pieces, pieces.

The 's' on the end is pronounced 'uz' because it followed an 'ess' sound.

The second way 's' is pronounced at the end of a word is 'sss'. It's pronounced this way

after voiceless consonants 'puh', 'tuh', 'kuh', 'ff' and 'th'.

The rest of the time, that is after voiced consonants such as 'buh' 'duh' 'guh' 'lll',

'r', 'v', 'th' [hard] 'm', 'n' and after 'vowels and diphthongs', the final 's' is pronounced