The sounds a listener makes
Say your first and last sentences from The Moth to your partner. Their only job is to react with the right noise.
English does a lot of this work with intonation rather than words. The same three letters can mean four different things.
Eight things listeners say. Match each to the message it sends the speaker.
A story from a stage
Deniz · told to about three hundred people
I was twenty-two and I had been in the city for about a month, and I did not know a single person in it.
So one Sunday I was sitting in a laundrette on Green Lanes, watching my clothes go round, and an old woman came in with a bag almost as big as she was. She started loading a machine, and then she stopped and looked at it, and she said something to me in a language I did not speak.
I said, in my terrible English, I am sorry, I do not understand. And she took my hand — she just took it — and she put it on the coin slot and she said, in English, this one is broken.
And then she sat down next to me and we watched our clothes go round together for forty minutes and neither of us said anything else.
I have lived in that city for eleven years now. I have a job and friends and a flat I like. And when people ask me when I stopped feeling like a stranger there, I always tell them about the laundrette.
Five questions about how Deniz built this. None of them is about laundry.
1. The first paragraph gives an age, a length of time, and a fact about not knowing anyone. What is it for?
2. I was sitting… watching my clothes go round… Why the continuous?
3. an old woman came in — why does this switch to past simple?
4. Deniz repeats she took my hand — she just took it. What is the repetition for?
5. The last paragraph jumps forward eleven years. Why end there instead of at the laundrette?
Listen for the stress. Read the fourth paragraph aloud and put the weight on neither: and NEITHER of us said anything else.
Now put it on anything. The sentence means something slightly different. English lets you point at one word with your voice, and in a story that is how you tell people what to care about.
Five moves, in order
Five moves. Put them in the order Deniz used them.
Openings and closings you can borrow
| Move | What people actually say |
|---|---|
| Open, placing the time | This was about six years ago. · I was twenty-two at the time. · Back when I was still at university… |
| Open, warning of the kind of story | I have never told anyone this. · This still makes me laugh. · It was not funny then. |
| Hand to the scene | So one Sunday I was… · It was a normal Tuesday and I was… |
| Mark the turn | And then. · And this is the bit I still do not understand. · She just took it. |
| Close, on meaning | And that was that. · I still think about it. · When people ask me… I always tell them about… |
| Close, handing back | Anyway. That is the story. · So. Yes. That happened. |
Scene and event
One to three words per gap. Scene verbs take the continuous; the events that break them take the simple.
It was about eight in the evening and I at the bus stop outside the station. It hard, the kind of rain that gets into your shoes. Two men behind me about a football match. Then a car right in front of me, and the window down, and it was my old geography teacher.
Six real story openings. Match each to what the listener now expects.
Somebody else’s story
Task card · Speaking · Groups of three · 3 minutes each
Tell your partner’s Lesson 1 story — the one you heard yesterday — to a third person who was not there.
Retell it with the five moves, in order, and see how much survived.
- Open by placing it in time, then set the scene before the event.
- Include the one detail you wrote down as memorable. If you cannot remember it, say so — that is data.
- Mark the turn with your voice, not with the word important.
- Close on meaning: and the reason she still tells it is…
The owner listens without speaking. When the retelling ends, say one sentence: what they got wrong, or what they left out that you would not have.
What survives a retelling is what you actually made land. It is the most honest feedback available.
What went missing
Four sentences from retellings. Fix each — three are tense, one is structure.
1. She was losing her passport on the second day.
2. While he waited, an old woman was coming in.
3. And after that they went home. The end.
4. I don’t remember what was happening next.
The two tenses, one line
Two questions.
1. I was walking home when I saw her. Which verb is the scene?
2. A listener says Really. with a falling voice. What have they told you?
Before next lesson. Take your Lesson 1 story and write only the scene — two sentences of what was going on before anything happened. Nothing else.
Next lesson we put the event into it, and that join is the hardest thing in the unit.