Practical Work: “Urban legends”- Listening and Speaking

DEADLINE: AUGUST 25th. Hand in the paperwork in class.

1-Watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYd37yd7P4Q “freakystories”.

A- Do you like this story? Do you know what an urban legend is? Explain in few words what you know. Retell
the story from the video.
B- How is the girl from the previous story described? And the house?
C- Who is calling her? Who did she think it was on the phone? Who did she call? What did she do at the end?

2- Read the next stories and complete the activities.

The hook (told by a student from Sydney, Australia, 1998)

A boy and a girl were sitting on a parked car late one evening listening to the
radio. Over the radio came an announcement that a crazed killer with a hook
in place of a hand had escaped from the local insane asylum. The girl got
scared, she felt uneasy for some reason, but she couldn’t explain why, and
begged the boy to tale her home. He got angry because he really had plans for
this girl and thought she was making excuses. He got mad and stepped on the
gas and roared off. When they got to her house, he got out and went around
to the other side of the car to let her out. There on the door handle was a
bloody hook.

1. What were the boy and girl doing when the story took place?
2. What had the killer in place of a hand?
3. Where had he escaped from?
4. What was there on the door handle?

The vanishing hitch-hiker (told by a teenager in Toronto, Canada, 1999)

Well, this happened to one of my girlfriend’s best friends and her father. They
were driving along a country road on their way home from the cottage when
they saw a young girl hitch-hiking. She told the girl and her father that she just
lived in the house about five miles up the road. She didn’t say anything after
that but just turned to watch out of the window. When the father saw the
house, he drove up to it and turned around to tell the girl they had arrived –
but she wasn’t there! The seat was empty. Both he and his daughter were
really mystified and decided to knock on the door and tell the people what
had happened. They told them they had once had a daughter who answered
the description of the girl they supposedly had picked up, but she had
disappeared some years before and had last been seen hitch-hiking on that
very road. That day would have been her birthday.

look for synonyms of the following words or expressions:

1. Country house
2. Look through
3. Puzzled
 4. Formerly
5. Allegedly

The mouse in the bottle (told by a student from Tennessee, USA)

Two old ladies stopped at a restaurant to have lunch. They ordered their lunch, and asked for two bottles of a well-
known soft drink while they were waiting. The bottles were made of green glass, and they each poured themselves a
glass. They were chatting away and drinking and one of them finished the first glass and poured another. She noticed
something in the bottom of the bottle, but couldn’t make out what it was. She tried to get it out and finally
succeeded. It was a decomposed mouse. They both fainted and had to be revived. Anyway they sued the soft drink
company and got thousands of dollars.

True or False? Correct the false sentences:

1. The old ladies stopped to have dinner

2. They ordered two bottles of beer
3. The old lady couldn’t see the inside of the bottle clearly.
4. She couldn’t take the mouse out of the bottle.
5. The two ladies lost consciousness.
6. They didn’t get any money from the soft drink company.

In the backseat

One night a woman went out for drinks with her girlfriends. She left the bar fairly late at night, got in her car and
onto the deserted highway. After a few miles, she notices she was low on gas and pulled into a gas station.
She was frightened by the odd behaviour of the attendant, who kept trying to get her to leave the car and join him in
the office. She refused and drove off as fast as she could.
As she drove, she noticed a lone pair of headlights in her rearview mirror, approaching fast. As the car pulled up
behind her, dangerously close to her tailgate and the brights flashed.
Now she was getting nervous. The car behind her kept flashing the lights off and on and the driver seemed to be
shouting and making signs with his hands.
Through every stoplight and turn, it followed her until she reached home and pulled into her driveway. Terrified, she
made a mad dash into her house to call the police. As she was running from the car, the driver of the car behind
screamed, “Lock the door and call the police! Call 911!”
When the police arrived, the horrible truth was finally revealed to the woman. The man in the car behind had been
trying to sabe her. As he had pulled up behind her and his headlights had illuminated her car, he had seen the
silhouette of a man with an axe rising up from the back seat behind her, so he had flashed his brights to warm her.
The police arrested the crazed killer in the backseat who turned out to be an escaped mental patient. It was an
extremely scary night and the woman had a lucky escape.
Read the text and mark the sentences as true (T) or false (F).

1. The woman stayed in the bar till the small hours.

2. The road she was driving along went through the desert.
3. The attendant of the gas station wanted her to come inside.
4. She was being followed by a car flashing its headlights.
5. The car behind bumped into her tailgate
6. The woman thought the driver of the car behind was after her.
7. The driver was shouting at her in rage.
8. The police arrived to arrest the driver.
9. The driver had realised what may happen to the woman.
10. The arrested man had run away from the asylum.
Baby in the chair

A young couple were waiting impatiently to leave on their first vacation since the baby was born. The young
mother’s aunt had promised to babysit but was thirty minutes lat. The young woman called her elderly aunt to find
out what was going on, the old woman apologized for her forgetfulness, and said she’d speed right over. Since the
aunt was only a couple miles away, the couple decided they’d go ahead and go rather than wait for her and risk
missing their flight.

Two weeks later when the couple returned, they were horrified to find the baby still sitting in the high-chair where
they’d left it, except now it was dead and bloated and covered with flies. The aunt really had sped, and unfortunately
crashed and died before she made it over.

1. Why were the young parents impatient?

2. Who was supposed to take care of the baby?
3. What did the elderly aunt say when the young woman called her?
4. What did they decide?
5. What happened two weeks later?
6. What happened to the elderly aunt?