30 Years of Stuff | English listening lesson 23 – EnglishTeacherMelanie.com

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Listen to a story about cleaning out all my stuff from my parents basement!

You’ll also learn how to link same consonant sounds in spoken English.

Welcome to the English Teacher Melanie Podcast, a podcast for intermediate to advanced English learners who want to improve their English listening and speaking skills!

Each episode includes a story and a pronunciation tip. In the story, I use core vocabulary, the most common words in English, to tell a real world story. The pronunciation tip will help you understand natural spoken English.

You’ll hear the story twice. The first time, the story is a little slower than normal. It sounds funny because I used editing software to change the speed of the story and make it slower. After the pronunciation tip, you’ll hear the story again, but at a regular speed.

 

THE STORY

My parents have lived in the same house for 30 years. For 30 years I’ve had a place to store my stuff. I’ve been very fortunate. All through university and coming & going from my travels overseas, my parents let me put boxes of my stuff in their basement. It’s stuff that I wanted to keep but didn’t need immediately. I had planned to sort through everything someday, but I never got around to it.

Now my parents have decided to sell their house, and I have to clean out 30 years of my stuff from the basement! This is such bad timing for me, because I don’t have time right now to go through every box and decide what to keep and what to toss! The boxes are full of things like books, old clothes, souvenirs, school memorabilia, photos, scrapbooks, and toys my mom kept from my childhood. I don’t even know why I’ve kept some of that stuff. So, I’ve rented a storage locker to store all my stuff for the time being.

A storage locker (or a storage unit, which is the same thing), is a temporary storage space. The space can be as small as a closet or as big as a garage. My locker is a 5×10-foot space inside a building. It has walls on three sides and a large metal roll-up door that is secured with a lock. I pay monthly to rent that space, and I’m the only person who can access that space because I have the key for the lock. The building is very secure, so I feel safe storing my stuff there.

I’ve removed about two-thirds of my stuff from the basement so far. I’m running out of space in my locker, but a bigger locker is too expensive. I’ll have to start going through the boxes that are still in the basement. Whatever doesn’t fit into the storage locker, I’ll either donate it to charity, or throw it out.

 

 

PRONUNCIATION TIP

HOW TO LINK SAME CONSONANT SOUNDS IN SPOKEN ENGLISH

This transcript uses IPA symbols to represent sounds and teach pronunciation. Learn more about the IPA here.

One of the main features of natural spoken English is linking.

In English, words flow together in a natural rhythm.

Part of that flow includes linking words together so that there is no pause between words.

Listen to part of a sentence from the story:

… coming and going from my travels overseas …

Listen carefully to the way I say FROM and MY:

… coming and going from my travels overseas …

The word FROM ends with an M sound, and the next word MY begins with an M sound. When one word ends with the same sound that the next word starts with, you only need to say that sound once.

With the words FROM and MY, you only need to say the M sound once, so that there is no stop or pause between the two words.

Listen carefully:

… from my … / frəmaɪ/
… coming and going from my travels overseas …

I connected the two words together by only saying the M sound once.

Linking is a very common feature of natural spoken English. Here are some easy phrases that you can practice to get used to linking same consonant sounds.

some money
a bad day
this Saturday
a fun night

 

QUESTIONS

• Do you have a lot of stuff?
• What do you do with stuff you don’t need right away but you want to keep? Do you store it anywhere?

Leave me a comment below!