BBC 6分钟英语学习 6个单词的故事

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English archive. It was 1st broadcast in April 2008 on the BBC Learning English website.

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Hello. This is Six Minute English.

I'm Jackie Delton. The

focus of today's s program is life stories told in a rather unusual way.

I'm joined by Callum Robertson, who help explain some of the language that comes up today.

Hello, callum. Hi, jackie. And as ever, I'm going to start with a question for you.

The question is, who said happiness and intelligent people is the rarest thing I know?

Was it a William Shakespeare, b Osk Wild or see, ernest Hemingway?

Um, it doesn't sound like Shakespeare.

I don't think it's witty or funny enough to be asked a while, so I would guess it the writer, ernest Hemingway.

That's right, it's the American writer, ernest Hemingway.

And we're going to be talking about him today, because in the 1920s, he bet ten that he could write a complete story in just six words, and he wrote, for sale baby shoes never worn.

But very powerful, isn't powerful six word story?

And he won his bet. And now an American online magazine called Smith is asking its readers to sum up their own lives in just six words, and is putting them all together in a book called Not Quite What I Was Planning.

We're going to hear the magazine's editor, larry Smith.

Listen out for the adjectives he uses to describe the entries.

In a couple of months, we got 15000 entries.

And I was just blown away.

Funny. Poignant. I really believe that everyone has a story.

So people wrote in with their life stories summed up in six words.

It's nice words, though, that we often use when we're describing stories.

Poignant was one of them. Hmm.

Poignant. Yes. If something is moving its touching on an emotional level, it makes you feel some sad emotion.

Usually. What are some other words that we could use, or we often hear used to describe the stories or writing?

Well, there's lunch. You can talk about powerful stories, boring stories, dull stories.

Things can be difficult to get into, although that's perhaps more associated with books or or novels.

Um I suppose a story, I just couldn't put it down as a good phrase to talk about.

You really, really like that. Well, let's hear Larry talking about some of the entries that did actually come in.

Before we hear that. There is one word that it might be helpful to know, which is a bit of an informal word, and that's crack head.

Can you explain what that is?

Crack Head is a common slang term for someone who's addicted to taking crack cocaine.

So drug a drug user. OK, let's listen to Larry now.

So we've got one of my favorites after Harvard, had baby with crack head.

And most of us didn't go to Harvard, didn't have a baby with a crack head.

But we can understand, well, life took a twist in turn for Robin Templeton, that, you know, you could have been you.

Your life took different twists in terms.

Maybe not quite that twist in that turn, but it's quite a powerful story.

In six words, you're listening to BBC, learning English dot com, a twist and turn.

That's a nice phrase. What does that mean?

Um, well, it's, you know, your life goes off in a different direction.

You can think of life as a journey down a straight path, but sometimes you have a twist, you have a turn, and you go in an unexpected direction.

And often, when we are reading a book or watching a film, if a story suddenly takes a very unexpected direction, or something happens, yeah, you think about twists, got a twist, and interesting twist, where something unexpected happens.

Larry also said that many of the entries were quite sad.

I didn't expect that. I thought people would come back with a lot of funny things, some playful things, plays on words.

But those are really interesting reality.

People really told us it's tough out there.

Found true love, married someone else.

Never should have bought that ring.

That's a bit depressing, isn't it?

Found true love Married someone else.

Yeah. Well, I'm bit more at about Never should have bought that ring.

As I said, I just bought, I just bought my wedding ring.

I'm sure that won't apply to you.

Larry said that he had expected to see more playful things, so lighter things.

And also plays on words. What is a play on words?

A play on words is when you use a word which maybe has the same pronunciation, same spelling, but has different meanings.

So, e.g. if I, e.g. if I say, oh, can you give me a ring?

It could either mean I want you to phone me, or it means I want you to give me a little, a little gold band to put on my finger.

So that's a very simple example of the top of my head of a play on words.

OK? Well, BBC, national radio, here, radio Four, decided to do a similar thing and ask its listeners to write in and sum up their lives.

And a lot of them, again, very sad, actually came in,

or slightly bitter. But a couple of my favorites, one from Alex Hanse, who wrote Slow Lane, fast Lane, hard Shoulder, which is referring to different sort of positions on a motorway, and how you start off slow, then go very fast,

and then hard shoulder, because you're broken down.

Is he broken down? Yeah, fish to the side.

Well, one of my favorites was from something called Sunny Taylor, whose six word life story was, any chance I could start again?

Well, kind of, if you had to sum up your life in six words, what would it be?

Too young? Too naive, too old.

And how about you, jack? I think at the moment, mine would be Webcast.

How to people in places they work related at the moment?

Well, that's all we've got time for in this program.

But do join us again next week for more 6 min English.

Goodbye. Goodbye. BBC Learning English dot com.

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