Lettura e ascolto intermediate in inglese: Dead or alive

Piccole letture in chiave umoristica e/o filosofica

Dead or alive

Perché non provi inizialmente ad ascoltare l’audio senza leggere il testo?

Per sapere il significato delle parole evidenziate, passaci sopra con il mouse senza cliccare.

One day at school, a science teacher took four glasses out of the cupboard and placed them on the table in front of him. He then proceeded to fill the first glass with beer, the second glass with wine, the third glass with whisky and the fourth glass with water. When he had finished doing this, he took four worms out of his bag and dropped one into each glass. He then put the glasses back in the cupboard.

The following day, he took the glasses back out of the cupboard and once again placed them on the table in front of him. The worm in the glass of beer was clearly dead and so was the worm in the glass of wine and the worm in the glass of whisky. Instead, the worm in the glass of water was wriggling around quite happily.

The teacher then turned to the class and asked, “What have you learnt from this experiment?”

One of the schoolchildren raised his hand and replied, “If you drink beer, wine or whisky, you’ll never have worms.”



Your comments are always very welcome.


Unknown's avatar

Author: Tony

Born and raised in Malaysia between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. Educated at Wycliffe College in Stonehouse, Gloucestershire, England. Living in the foothills of Mount Etna since 1982 and teaching English at Catania University since 1987.

8 thoughts on “Lettura e ascolto intermediate in inglese: Dead or alive”

    1. My impression here, Dany, is that you are giving a little too much attention to each individual word and consequently slowing down the overall flow of the sentences. This would also explain why your readings take more time than mine. Once you’ve pinpointed the key words, you need to let the other words flow into each other more freely.

      The only other point is the pronunciation of WORM. Don’t let yourself be bamboozled by that ‘O’!
      The pronunciation should be more like WERM (think of how you pronounce FIRST – that’s the vowel sound you need).

      Liked by 1 person

Leave a reply to Tony Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.