4A Urban legends

Lead-in


- Would you ever pick up a hitchhiker? Why?
- If a stranger knocked at your door late at night, what would you do?

BONSAI CATS

Source: http://urbanlegendsonline.com/bonsai-cats/

• What is a legend?
• Where do legends come from? How do they spread?
• Do you know any good urban legends?
• Have you heard any good gossip recently?

What is an urban legend?

An urban legend is any modern, fictional story, told as truth, that reaches a variety of people by being passed from person to person. Urban legends are often false, but not always. A few turn out to be true, and a lot of them were inspired by actual events but have changed from person to person. Urban legends are usually a combination of humor, horror, warning, embarrassment, or morality.

Try to solve these riddles:

• What type of nut has a hole?
• If a rooster laid an egg on a roof, which way would the egg roll?
• What starts with E, ends with E, but usually contains only one letter?
• What starts with P and ends with E and has a thousand letters?
• A cowboy rode into town on Friday, stayed 3 days and then left on Friday. How is this possible?
• What gets wetter and wetter the more it dries?
• What can you catch but not throw?
• Which month has 28 days?

LANGUAGE NOTES: Phrasal verbs

• pass sth on (to sb) or pass on sth (to sb): to tell somebody a piece of information that another person has told you.
• Could you pass this message on to your mother? 
• make sth up or make up sth: to invent an excuse, explanation, a story, etc.
• I forgot to do my part of the task, so I made up an excuse.
• turn out: to happen in a particular way or have a particular result, which is often unexpected.
• I thought the party was going to be a total failure, but it turned out to be quite a success. 

• Turn out is often followed by the infinitive with to or '(that)+ clause': 
• The trip turned out to be quite an adventure. It turns out (that) we had been in the same school in the 80s.
• run sb/sth over or run over sb/sth: to hit somebody or something while you are driving and knock them to the ground.
• I accidentally ran over my son's bike which was lying on the middle of the driveway.
• go off: when a bomb goes off, it explodes.
• The bomb went off in a controled environment thanks to the work of the Bomb disposal unit. 
• run away: to leave a place quickly because you are frightened or don't want to get caught.
• The cat ran away when I turned on the lights.
• work sth out or work out sth: to understand or find the answer to something by thinking about it.
• It took me a while to work out the answer to the riddle.
• Work out is often followed by a question word: I couldn't work out why she reacted the way she did.
• get away with: to avoid punishment for something.
• Some people think they can get away with murder!
• knock sb out or knock out sb: to hit somebody hard so that they become unconscious.
• The boxer knocked his opponent out.
• come round: to become conscious again after being knocked out.
• They helped the young lady come round with the help of smelling salts.

GRAMMAR CORNER: Narrative verb forms; Past perfect continuous

 

Want further practice on narrative tenses? Click on the links below:

1)  Narrative tenses - James Bond (Gap fill exercise)
2)  Narrative tenses - Choose the right answer
3) Past simple, past perfect, past continuous
4) Narrative tenses quiz
5) Narrative tenses past simple, past continuous, past perfect
6) Mixed past tenses choose the right answer
7) Test - narrative tenses