Shownotes
I'm doing a little survey to find out more about ALE listeners. There are just four tiny questions. It will only take a minute or two, and will help me a LOT! Please check it out. Thanks, Cooper
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Season 1 Episode 9Thank you for downloading this episode.
👉The story begins at 02:00 and the tiny lessons begin at 15:30
👉You can find the transcript after the Credits!
👉Visit our website to download the Podcast User's Manual and find out more! https://alittleenglish.com/
A Little English is written, produced, recorded, edited, mixed, mastered and scored by Edward Cooper Howland.
All stories are either in the public domain, or written by me.
Copyright 2024 Edward Cooper Howland
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TRANSCRIPT:
ALE S01E09
Hi. My name is Cooper, and this is…A Little English. Every episode, I read a short story. After the story, there are three tiny lessons.
If you’re really serious about studying using this podcast, please go to my website, www.alittleenglish.com. You can get the Podcast User’s Manual, with lots of ideas for self-study. If you just want to listen, then relax and enjoy.
So, let’s read a story. Today we are reading Chapter Nine of Winnie-the-Pooh. I asked some of my students for feedback on the show so far, and they said that the episodes are kind of long. So we are gonna try splitting this story into two episodes. After all, it is supposed to be…a LITTLE English. Since Christopher Robin is a character in this episode, I have invited Tabatha to join me. Are you ready, Tabatha? (Let’s DO this).
IX
In Which Piglet Is Entirely Surrounded by Water
It rained and it rained and it rained. Piglet told himself that never in all his life, and he was goodness knows how old—three, was it, or four?—never had he seen so much rain. Days and days and days.
“If only,” he thought, as he looked out of the window, “I had been in Pooh’s house, or Christopher Robin’s house, or Rabbit’s house when it began to rain, then I should have had Company all this time, instead of being here all alone, with nothing to do except wonder when it will stop.” And he imagined himself with Pooh, saying, “Did you ever see such rain, Pooh?” and Pooh saying, “Isn’t it awful, Piglet?” and Piglet saying, “I wonder how it is over Christopher Robin’s way” and Pooh saying, “I should think poor old Rabbit is about flooded out by this time.” It would have been jolly to talk like this, and really, it wasn’t much good having anything exciting like floods, if you couldn’t share them with somebody.
For it was rather exciting. The little dry ditches in which Piglet had nosed about so often had become streams, the little streams across which he had splashed were rivers, and the river, between whose steep banks they had played so happily, had sprawled out of its own bed and was taking up so much room everywhere, that Piglet was beginning to wonder whether it would be coming into his bed soon.
“It’s a little Anxious,” he said to himself, “to be a Very Small Animal Entirely Surrounded by Water. Christopher Robin and Pooh could escape by Climbing Trees, and Kanga could escape by Jumping, and Rabbit could escape by Burrowing, and Owl could escape by Flying, and Eeyore could escape by—by Making a Loud Noise Until Rescued, and here am I, surrounded by water and I can’t do anything.”
It went on raining, and every day the water got a little higher, until now it was nearly up to Piglet’s window … and still he hadn’t done anything.
“There’s Pooh,” he thought to himself. “Pooh hasn’t much Brain, but he never comes to any harm. He does silly things and they turn out right. There’s Owl. Owl hasn’t exactly got Brain, but he Knows Things. He would know the Right Thing to Do when Surrounded by Water. There’s Rabbit. He hasn’t Learnt in Books, but he can always Think of a Clever Plan. There’s Kanga. She isn’t Clever, Kanga isn’t, but she would be so anxious about Roo that she would do a Good Thing to Do without thinking about It. And then there’s Eeyore. And Eeyore is so miserable anyhow that he wouldn’t mind about this. But I wonder what Christopher Robin would do?”
Then suddenly he remembered a story which Christopher Robin had told him about a man on a desert island who had written something in a bottle and thrown it in the sea; and Piglet thought that if he wrote something in a bottle and threw it in the water, perhaps somebody would come and rescue him!
He left the window and began to search his house, all of it that wasn’t under water, and at last he found a pencil and a small piece of dry paper, and a bottle with a cork to it. And he wrote on one side of the paper:
help!
piglet (me)
and on the other side:
it’s me piglet, help help.
Then he put the paper in the bottle, and he corked the bottle up as tightly as he could, and he leant out of his window as far as he could lean without falling in, and he threw the bottle as far as he could throw—splash!—and in a little while it bobbed up again on the water; and he watched it floating slowly away in the distance, until his eyes ached with looking, and sometimes he thought it was the bottle, and sometimes he thought it was just a ripple on the water which he was following, and then suddenly he knew that he would never see it again and that he had done all that he could do to save himself.
“So now,” he thought, “somebody else will have to do something, and I hope they will do it soon, because if they don’t I shall have to swim, which I can’t, so I hope they do it soon.” And then he gave a very long sigh and said, “I wish Pooh were here. It’s so much more friendly with two.”
When the rain began Pooh was asleep. It rained, and it rained, and it rained, and he slept and he slept and he slept. He had had a tiring day. You remember how he discovered the North Pole; well, he was so proud of this that he asked Christopher Robin if there were any other Poles such as a Bear of Little Brain might discover.
“There’s a South Pole,” said Christopher Robin, “and I expect there’s an East Pole and a West Pole, though people don’t like talking about them.”
Pooh was very excited when he heard this, and suggested that they should have an Expotition to discover the East Pole, but Christopher Robin had thought of something else to do with Kanga; so Pooh went out to discover the East Pole by himself. Whether he discovered it or not, I forget; but he was so tired when he got home that, in the very middle of his supper, after he had been eating for little more than half-an-hour, he fell fast asleep in his chair, and slept and slept and slept.
Then suddenly he was dreaming. He was at the East Pole, and it was a very cold pole with the coldest sort of snow and ice all over it. He had found a beehive to sleep in, but there wasn’t room for his legs, so he had left them outside. And Wild Woozles, such as inhabit the East Pole, came and nibbled all the fur off his legs to make nests for their Young. And the more they nibbled, the colder his legs got, until suddenly he woke up with an Ow!—and there he was, sitting in his chair with his feet in the water, and water all round him!
He splashed to his door and looked out. …
“This is Serious,” said Pooh. “I must have an Escape.”
So he took his largest pot of honey and escaped with it to a broad branch of his tree, well above the water, and then he climbed down again and escaped with another pot … and when the whole Escape was finished, there was Pooh sitting on his branch, dangling his legs, and there, beside him, were ten pots of honey. …
Two days later, there was Pooh, sitting on his branch, dangling his legs, and there, beside him, were four pots of honey. …
Three days later, there was Pooh, sitting on his branch, dangling his legs, and there beside him, was one pot of honey.
Four days later, there was Pooh …
And it was on the morning of the fourth day that Piglet’s bottle came floating past him, and with one loud cry of “Honey!” Pooh plunged into the water, seized the bottle, and struggled back to his tree again.
“Bother!” said Pooh, as he opened it. “All that wet for nothing. What’s that bit of paper doing?”
He took it out and looked at it.
“It’s a Missage,” he said to himself, “that’s what it is. And that letter is a P, and so is that, and so is that, and P means ‘Pooh,’ so it’s a very important Missage to me, and I can’t read it. I must find Christopher Robin or Owl or Piglet, one of those Clever Readers who can read things, and they will tell me what this missage means. Only I can’t swim. Bother!”
Then he had an idea, and I think that for a Bear of Very Little Brain, it was a good idea. He said to himself:
“If a bottle can float, then a jar can float, and if a jar floats, I can sit on the top of it, if it’s a very big jar.”
So he took his biggest jar, and corked it up. “All boats have to have a name,” he said, “so I shall call mine The Floating Bear.” And with these words he dropped his boat into the water and jumped in after it.
For a little while Pooh and The Floating Bear were uncertain as to which of them was meant to be on the top, but after trying one or two different positions, they settled down with The Floating Bear underneath and Pooh triumphantly astride it, paddling vigorously with his feet.
And that is where we will pause the story until next week.
Well…
There is some real danger and scary stuff happening in this Children’s story.
This is kinda exciting.
Let’s do some tiny lessons
First, let’s see what we can see in the Big Picture
Since this is the first two-part story, let me ask you to make a prediction. What’s going to happen to piglet? Who do YOU think will rescue him, and how? Will he even BE rescued?
How about a boogie at the Dctionary Disco?
This week’s two words are right next to each other. Right at the end of the story. They’re…”Trimphantly astride.” Just a great phrase. Trimphantly….astride.
So Triumphantly means, like the winner. A triumph is a victory. So, sitting as though he had just won a battle. Which…..he had.
Astride. Tough one. Well, “Stride” is an old word for “step” and “A” means, like “On,” or “In” something. So it’s IN his step. Because he’s sitting on it. Like a horse. Except it’s a honey pot in the middle of a flood.
Finally, let’s share a Melody Moment.
There’s one thing I say that I think is really important. The sentence was, “and in a little while it bobbed up again on the water” Listen to how I say the first four words. un dinuh liddul. Undinnuh. Schwas again, right? And it almost sounds like the word un dinnuh. Like two words that don’t make any sense. But that’s english. Those words aren’t really important. They’re just little tiny grammar things. They’re not important for the STORY. So we kinda…push them away. That’s the secret to English Melody. The stuff that’s not important, it just gets smushed away.
Thank you for listening to Season 1 Episode 9 of A Little English.
Every episode is produced entirely by me, Edward Cooper Howland, here in Hiroshima, Japan.
For more information on how to study using this podcast, please go to www.alittleenglish.com, where you can get the Podcast User’s Manual.
You can follow me on social media, @alelearning on instagram and twitter.
To join the conversation and the community around A Little English, please go to our discord. There’s a link in the show notes.
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The stories I read are in the public domain, and I get them from standardebooks.org, which is a really good website and you should check it out.
Again, thank you so much for listening.
For now, be kind to yourselves, and to each other.
Mentioned in this episode:
