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ENGLISH
Stephen E. Brown and Ceil Lucas
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Note: Views expressed in the DVD are those of the interviewees and do not
necessarily reflect the views of the authors/ editors or the publisher.
Also in this series:
Improve Your English: English in the Workplace
Improve Your American English Accent
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
CONTENTS
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Introduction Vll
CHAPTER 1 LIFE IN AMERICA 1
1. Driving Across America 1
2. What Do You Like
About America?· 2
3. An Island in Maine 4
4. West vs. East 5
5. Canada vs. the U.S. 6
6. Living in Washington 8
7. Coming from Spain 9
8. Time in Egypt and America 10
9. American Memories 11
10. Coming from India 12
11. Changing Times 14
12. Small-Town Life 14
CHAPTER2 THE FAMILY 19
1. A Family in Maryland 19
2. Italian Roots 21
3. A Family Sabbatical 22
4. Changing Families 23
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5. Siblings 23
6. Family in New Zealand 24
7. Mothers and Daughters 27
8. Fathers and Daughters 28
CHAPTER 3 THE HOME 33
1. Row Houses 33
2. A Log House 34
3. Walking Through the House 36
4. A Favorite Room 37
5. Lincoln Logs 38
6. Living at the Drop Zone 41
CHAPTER4 THE ROLE OF WOMEN 47
1. A Good Wife 47
2. Options 48
3. Working Moms 50
4. Changing Perspectives 51
5. Balancing Work and Family 52
6. Cultural Differences 53
CHAPTER 5 EDUCATION 57
1. School in Philadelphia 57
2. Getting Recruited 59
3. A Liberal Arts Education 60
4. The School Newspaper 61
5. An Indian Perspective 62
CHAPTERS RECRE ATION AND ENTERTAINMENT 67
1. RVs and Horses 67
2. Computer Games 69
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3. Stopper and Sweeper 70
4. Running 71
5. Climbing Mountains 72
6 . The Soccer League 73
7. Flying 74
8. Outdoors in New Zealand 76
9. Wallyball 76
10. Making Movies 77
11. Life-Work Balance 78
12. Playing the Piano 79
13. The Performing Arts 80
14. Books on Tape 81
15. Reading 82
16. Opera 82
17. Playing Pool 83
18. Hobbies 85
CHAPTER 1 THE USE OF LANGUAGE: PART I 93
1. Sounding American 93
2. Linguistic Chameleon 95
3. Speaking Spanish 96
4. Listening 97
5. Color Commentary 98
6. Growing Up Bilingually 99
7. Getting Comfortable 100
CHAPTER 8 THE USE OF LANGUAGE: PART II 105
1. American English/
British English 105
2. Baltimore 108
V
3. A French-Canadian Perspective 110
4. Where Are You From? 112
5. Change over Time 113
6. A Caribbean Perspective 113
7. A Southern Accent 115
8. Language and Culture 116
CHAPTER 9 FOOD 121
1. Cooking Vacations 121
2. A Wide Range 124
3. Midwestern Cooking 125
4. Noodles and Sausages 126
5. Cameroonian Cuisine 127
6. Cooking in Guyana 128
7. Food Phases 129
CHAPTER 10 SPORTS 133
1. Minor League Baseball 133
2. Second Baseman 134
3. Football Tryouts 136
4. Watching Sports 137
5. Hockey 138
6. A Common Ground 139
7. Baseball Strategy 141
vi.
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INTRODUCTION
English in Everyday Life consists of eighty-four interview
segments with everyday people, not actors, speaking Eng
lish in the United States. The interviews are organized
into ten chapters. Each chapter focuses on a different
aspect of everyday life, from the family and the home to
free time, sports, food, and the use of language. The goal
in using an interview format was to elicit natural speech
and to allow the speakers to express themselves as freely
and naturally as possible. In these interviews, you will
hear the vocabulary and sentence structures that real
speakers use to talk about their everyday lives.
Because we wanted to provide learners of English with
natural models. of spoken English in the United States,
those being interviewed did not memorize or rehearse their
remarks. You will meet people of all ages and nationalities,
from all walks of life: a policeman, a nurse, accountants,
a paramedic, students, teachers, a librarian, a mechanic,
a government worker, an IT professional, a travel agent, a
sign language interpreter, musicians, and others.
Each chapter includes the complete transcript of
each interview segment as well as definitions of vocabu
lary words, idioms, and constructions whose meanings
or cultural references may not be immediately obvious
to a nonnative English speaker. You will find questions
and exercises at the end of each chapter that are relevant
to both the text of the interview and your own personal
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experiences. We recommend that you consult a com
prehensive American English dictionary in conjunction
with the use of the DVD and workbook.
ABOUT THE TRANSCRIPTS
What you will hear on the DVD and see in the transcripts
are examples of actual speech. Our goal is to provide
examples of English as it is spoken by a wide range of
people in the United States today. You will hear speakers
from many states-Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts,
Arkansas, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, and Michigan-as
well as speakers from Canada, India, Guyana, England,
New Zealand, Cameroon, Egypt, and Spain. Also, you
will hear one speaker whose speech has many features of
what is known as African-American Vernacular English
(AAVE). So you will hear English spoken with many dif
ferent accents. You will also see a deaf user of American
Sign Language (ASL) with her interpreter.
You will notice that while all of the speakers are flu
ent, they sometimes use what some consider nonstan
dard or even ungrammatical forms of English. And you
will see that not only do the nonnative speakers use these
forms but native speakers of American English frequently
use them as well. Some of these speakers are very fluent
users of varieties of English used in other countries, such
as India, varieties that have been referred to as "World
Englishes" and that differ from American or British Eng
lish in very systematic and nonrandom ways.
You will notice that when people speak, it is not at
all like a newscast being read by an anchorperson on the
evening news or like the written language that you might
see in textbooks. You will see that people don't always
speak in complete sentences-they hesitate; they inter
rupt themselves; they correct themselves; they start one
sentence, give it up, and go on with another one. While
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the speakers clearly knew that they were being filmed,
what you see and hear is, for the most part, very natural
speech. Our goal was to reflect this naturalness in the
transcripts. Interjections and discourse markers such as
um, uh, or er appear throughout the interviews and are
transcribed exactly as they are spoken. Sometimes peo
ple talk at the same time, which is indicated in the tran
scripts by brackets around the simultaneous speech.
The transcripts also reflect the use of many custom
ary and idiomatic constructions found in American Eng
lish: take it up a notch, so-and-so, such and such, like,
y'know, c'mon, gonna, wanna, and many others. Notes
explaining such constructions appear at the end of each
chapter.
It is our hope that you will find these materials inno
vative and useful for learning English as it is used in
America today.
How TO USE THESE MATERIALS IN
THE CLASSROOM
The DVD and workbook of English in Everyday Life have
been designed for use in any classroom, laboratory, or
home setting. These materials, which are suitable for
high school classes, university courses, and adult educa
tion programs, can be used as the second semester of an
elementary course.
The way that language is used by speakers in these
materials can serve as the basis both for in-class discus
sions and for homework assignments.
The DVD and the workbook provide eighty-four seg
ments, which should be used as follows:
1. Select the segment to be used and simply listen to
it, before reading the transcript of the segment. The
student can do this on his or her own or as part of a
class activity.
IX
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2. After listening to the segment, read and discuss
the transcript carefully, making sure that all of the
vocabulary words and structures are understood.
3. Then, listen to the segment again, this time using
the transcript. Students may want to listen to the
segment several times at this point.
4. In the classroom, answer and discuss the questions
about both the segment and the students' experi
ences. And, of course, these questions and exercises
can be assigned for homework.
Outlining a Course by DVD Segment
The instructor can decide how many segments to cover
per week. Eighty-four DVD segments allow you to use
the DVD and the workbook for an entire academic year.
And the flexibility of the materials allows you to pick and
choose the order in which to present the material. Each
segment on the DVD is numbered on the menu and in
the text so that you can pick exactly which one you want
to focus on.
Sample Lesson Plan: One Week
First Day: Listen to the selected segments perhaps
two or three times in class (do not read the tran
script at this point).
Second Day: Read the transcripts out loud, making
sure that the students understand all of the gram
matical constructions, vocabulary words, and
cultural references.
Third Day: Listen to the segments again, first with
out the transcript and then with the transcript.
Fourth Day: Discuss the transcript and the DVD
segment and answer the questions pertaining to
the segment. Assign as homework the questions
and exercises that pertain to the students.
X
Fifth Day: Go over the questions and exercises
pertaining to the students. Ask them to read their
answers aloud, and have the class ask additional
questions.
The DVD segments and their transcripts can very
easily be supplemented with materials that relate to
the topic of the segment. For example, the segments on
Food can be supplemented with menus or recipes. The
important thing is to be creative and to get the students
involved.
Additional Activities
1. Ask the students to summarize in writing and also
aloud what is said in a given segment.
2. Ask the students to write the question that leads to
the speaker's response. Also, ask them to write addi
tional questions to be asked.
3. Have the students interview one another on the
topic of the segment in front of the class:
• Help the students write their interview
questions.
• If possible, record these interviews on audiotape
or miniDV. Listen to or view the interviews and
discuss them as a group.
• Have the students transcribe these interviews,
complete with hesitations, self-corrections, and
so forth. Make copies of the transcript for the
other students. The teacher may review the tran
script but should make corrections only to errors
in transcription-in other words, if the speaker
uses a nonstandard form and the student tran
scribes it accurately, you should not note it as an
error. This is a good opportunity to point out the
differences between spoken language and written
language.
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• Have the students write questions about their
transcripts, similar to the ones in the text.
• Have the students record an interview with a
native or fluent speaker, based on one of the
DVD topics, and follow the same procedures just
listed. Help the students prepare their questions,
review the transcripts, and share them with the
class. Also, ask the students to write questions to
accompany their transcripts.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We are very grateful to Patrick Harris for his excellent
work filming and editing the DVDs. We thank all of the
people who were willing to be interviewed and Holly
McGuire, Christopher Brown, and Julia Anderson Bauer
of McGraw-Hill Professional; Jim Dellon, Ivey Wallace,
and Jayne McKenzie of Gallaudet University; Kevin
Keegan of Hubert Blake High School in Silver Spring,
Maryland; Mike Solano and Merchant's Tire in Laurel,
Maryland; and Jim Smith, Kim MacKenzie Smith, and
The Skydivin' Place in Kingsdale, Pennsylvania .
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LANGUAGE/ESL �.
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Build your English-speaking skills
by simply watching and listening
People do not talk like language-learning books are written. They pause, say "um"
and "er," and even forget to finish their sentences! This can be confusing for new
speakers of English, but Improve Your English: English in Everyday Life helps you
understand what your friends and neighbors are saying and gives you confidence
to talk with them naturally and easily.
The DVD shows speakers of English talking about their families, their homes,
what they do for fun, and other everyday topics. These chats are unscripted and
unrehearsed, so you'll hear how people in your community really talk.
You will gain confidence in your English skills with help from:
• A workbook that features a transcript of the DVD, definitions of
unfamiliar vocabulary and phrases, and skill-building questions at the
end of each chapter to help you remember what you have learned
• English speakers from different regions who will expose you to accents
and language specific to their areas
Stephen E. Brown is an experienced developer of multimedia language programs in
a variety of languages.
Ceil Lucas is a sociolinguist and professor of linguistics at Gallaudet University in
Washington, D.C.
Learn more .• Do more.
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Cover design: Handel Low
Cover photo: Manchan/Digital Vision