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  • Welcome back to a rather scary engVid.

  • In today's lesson you are going to learn two things: Firstly, how to tell a scary story

  • full of suspense and tension; and secondly, how to talk about a book as you might be required

  • to do in an IELTS speaking test.

  • So, what I have put up here on the board is different groups of words, so we've got adverbs,

  • nouns, we've got verbs, and then phrases which you could use in a story of this type.

  • So, I'm going to demonstrate how to use these words; and hopefully, you'll feel inspired

  • to go off and write your own short story afterwards.

  • I'd love to hear about it on the engVid Facebook page or just on your comments under this video.

  • Okay.

  • So, we're going to link the verbs with the adverbs.

  • I should first off explain what exactly these types of stories are.

  • So, we're looking at suspense stories.

  • This is a story in which something, something dangerous, something scary remains hidden.

  • We don't quite know what it is, but there's something out there in the dark that may do

  • something scary.

  • Okay?

  • So, in a story like this, people are going to be "holding their breath".

  • Yup.

  • "The boy held his breath", if I was to write that in the past tense.

  • Okay?

  • "Held" in the past tense.

  • "The boy held his breath.

  • He trembled silently because he was on his own.

  • He trembled silently, and shuddered."

  • Okay?

  • So, let's explain these words.

  • "Tremble" means to shake.

  • Okay?

  • "Shudder" basically means the same thing.

  • So, if I say it twice but in a different way, it just adds to the effect.

  • Okay?

  • "He trembled silently and shuddered with the thought of what lay next door."

  • Okay.

  • If I say exactly what is next door; that there's a yellow, spotted lizard, then the story becomes

  • not scary.

  • I need to keep the idea that we don't know exactly what is next door.

  • "He crept", and now let's add another adverb.

  • "He crept"-that would work well-"nervously".

  • So, "nervously", he's full of nerves; he's, like, biting his teeth about what's going

  • to happen when he steps out into the corridor.

  • "He crept nervously out into the corridor."

  • Okay, so I've used my verbs; let's see which other adverbs I could use.

  • Okay.

  • What about "cautiously"?

  • So, "caution" is about taking care.

  • So, if you are being cautious, then you're being very careful.

  • If you're acting cautiously, you're doing the same thing.

  • "He cautiously looked from left to right."

  • Okay, so we've done "cautiously", we've done "silently", now let's do "suddenly".

  • "Suddenly a bat flew past him", so one of those black, nasty, scary bird-like animals

  • flew past him.

  • That's going to be quite scary; we'll have that in there.

  • "Unexpectedly".

  • Okay.

  • So, prefix "un" means not; "expect" - something we think is going to happen.

  • So, suddenly something we don't think is going to happen happens.

  • Unexpectedly what could happen?

  • A door opened.

  • Dunh-dunh-dunh.

  • Okay.

  • So, we've managed to use these adverbs, we've managed to use these verbs.

  • These are the types of nouns that would be good in a story like this; in a scary story.

  • "Unease".

  • Okay?

  • So, "ease", you can see the word "easy".

  • "Everything's cool.

  • Yeah, we can do it.

  • 10 out of 10 in the quiz after the lesson."

  • A feeling of unease is: "Oo, what's happening here?

  • How am I going to get 10 out of 10 in this lesson"?

  • "Unease", it means discomfort.

  • "Distress".

  • Worry is what "distress" means, and you can add an "ed" to turn it into an adjective.

  • "The distressed young girl."

  • Okay?

  • "Fright", this means fear.

  • Obviously if I wanted to turn it into an adjective, I would put: "ened.

  • Frightened".

  • "Panic" is: "Ah!

  • Help!

  • What's going to happen?

  • Ahh"!

  • "Panic" - fear again.

  • "Dread", this is a sense of not liking what is going to happen in the future; being really

  • quite scared.

  • So, you've got lots of different words here to express fear.

  • A "cold sweat".

  • So, that is a physical...

  • That shows on the body how scared the person is that they're starting to sweat; that the

  • sweat is cold.

  • I should have a blue pen for this; a cold sweat.

  • So, "sweat", when we're very, very worried and anxious and stressed, we may start sweating.

  • A "draught", okay?

  • A "draught" is when we have air blowing through under a door, for example.

  • Okay?

  • It's sort of the wind coming through.

  • "A cold draught of air blows through."

  • It just helps to set the scary atmosphere.

  • Phrases.

  • Now, these are all phrases that you would put at the start of a sentence.

  • "Without hesitation, the boy strode into the next door room.

  • He opened the door, and he saw", whatever he saw.

  • "Without hesitation".

  • "From the shadows", when we're going a little bit more slowly.

  • Sorry.

  • I'll just explain this: "Without", so that means no; "hesitation" means waiting.

  • So: "Not waiting anymore, the boy decided to go and find out what was out there".

  • "From the shadows".

  • So, if we have a light, so there's a light there and I'm here, my shadow is that sort

  • of dark thing that's kind of like a reflection of me.

  • Anything in the shadows is something unknown; slightly spooky.

  • "From the shadows, what was happening?"

  • Something unknown.

  • We just don't quite know what is behind the door.

  • "Out of the corner of his eye".

  • So: "Out of the corner of his eye".

  • So, this is the idea that the boy half-sees something, but he's not quite sure exactly

  • what.

  • "All of a suddenly"...

  • "All of a sudden".

  • Okay?

  • "Suddenly", it just means that, but it...

  • "All of a sudden", it's just another way of saying: "Suddenly", but with four words instead

  • of one.

  • "In alarm", okay?

  • This means scared, fear, worried.

  • Yup.

  • "In alarm".

  • You know what an alarm clock is?

  • An alarm, it's like the boy's got an alarm clock going off in his head.

  • Right.

  • Let's work out how to talk about a book that would satisfy the IELTS speaking test, too.

  • Back in a moment.

  • Here we have a sample question for talking about a book.

  • "Speak for 1-2 minutes about a book you have enjoyed reading recently."

  • These are the kinds of things...

  • So, these bullet points are what you must include when you're doing one of these speaking

  • tasks.

  • "What kind of book is it?

  • What is it about?

  • What sort of people would enjoy it?

  • And explain why you liked it."

  • What I've done is I've put up some useful phrases here that you could use if you were

  • talking about a book, and then you could change them slightly if you were talking about a

  • film or television program.

  • "This book is in the genre of"... "genre" means: What type of book is it?

  • So we were, earlier in this lesson, looking at suspense writing.

  • So: "This book is in the genre of suspense", but you could have horror, romance, detective,

  • war, childhood; all sorts of different book genres out there.

  • "It's about..." then roughly say what the book is about.

  • For my story: "It's about a woman who gets fed up with her husband."

  • "The main character is..."

  • Say something about the main character.

  • "The main character is called Mary Maloney.

  • She is a very particular...

  • She is a very careful type of character, but eventually she erupts into violence."

  • Okay?

  • Like a volcano, she erupts.

  • "The plot is as follows"...

  • "Plot" means what happens in the story.

  • "As follows" means I'm about to tell you what the plot is.

  • "Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh-duh".

  • Okay?

  • You put in there the story that you are talking about.

  • "Anyone who likes..."

  • Well, what type of other sort of book genres might someone who likes this book be interested

  • in?

  • Are they going to be people who are interested in detective books?

  • Are they going to be people who read biographies?

  • Maybe you can list a particular book that...