Written Practice

A. Listen to the fairy tale once again. Choose the words and word-combinations expressing actions in progress. Write them down.

Started boasting, on hearing this, went chuckling, started to plod away, kept lumbering, kept putting, as he plodded along, as the hare ran along, kept stopping, kept plodding on, was sleeping, as he ambled quietly past, saw the tortoise plodding towards them, kept waking.

B. Listen to the following sentences. Paraphrase them.

a) “Let’s start at sunrise”, said tortoise.

b) The first one back into this clearing will be the winner”.

c) “Agreed”, said the hare. (Settled)

d) The hare fell over with laughter. (bust out with)

e) You’ll never beat me in a race!”. (to defeat smb, to win a victory over smb)

f) Most of the other animals also thought the idea of tortoise beating hare was quite funny and went chuckling to themselves. (giggle)

g) At sunrise all the animals had turned out to see the race. (came to see)

h) He lay down and very soon fell asleep.

i) Tortoise smiled gently to himself as he ambled quietly past the Hare.

j) But tortoise didn’t waste his breath by calling back to them.

C. Go over the fairy tale and summarise its content in several sentences. Use the adequate proverbs or sayings expressing the main idea of the text.

D. Write down your own fairy tale. Use one of the following proverbs as its main idea. Make use of the words and word-combinations mentioned in Task A.

a) A drowning man will clutch at a straw.

b) In every beginning think of the end.

c) Constant dropping wears away a stone.

d) There is a time to speak and time to be silent.

e) Sometimes the best gain is to lose.