WRITTEN TRANSCRIPTION OF THE PODCAST:

Hello and welcome to my podcast My Life and Other Funny Stories. My name is Dagmar Tomášková, I am an English tutor and coach and I created this podcast for English students who want to get better in their oral comprehension. As always you can find the transcription of this episode and vocabulary list in the notes of the podcast. 

Today I have for you a shorter episode but from the feedback I got during the Advent edition, I know that it is better for some of you. So let’s get into it.

I will tell you about the only time I broke a bone in my body. It is not a super exciting story but I find it a bit funny. Also, try to pay attention to the structure and tenses I am using when I am telling that story – it can help you to tell your own stories in English. I will comment on it a little bit at the end of the episode.

Before I start, let me give you some context: I am the youngest of three children. I have two brothers who are much older than me. One of them is eight years older and the other one is eleven years older. Maybe some of you can imagine what it means to be a small sister with much older brothers. They were teasing me. A lot. When someone teases you, it means that they provoke you and make fun of you in a playful way.

I still see in my mind the old photos of me being a baby and sleeping with a balloon placed on my forehead. Or I can still see myself screaming from the bottom of my lungs at my brothers to get out of my room and them laughing and sitting on my bed, refusing to leave just because they knew I hated it. Or I remember the playful fighting where I had no chance because …what seven-year-old girl is stronger than her fifteen-year-old brother? Memories…

So, with that bit of context let’s move to the story. I was about ten or eleven. It was a normal day of life. I was just chilling, playing with my toys or I was doing whatever eleven-year-old girls used to do 15 years ago. 

Then it came. By it, I mean my brother. Playfully teasing me about some things I don’t even remember. You see, when they had nothing to do, they just came to my room to see if they can annoy me in some way. And then the fight started. Usually, it was harmful – we would hit each other just slightly and they of course knew that they could only be very gentle. But I, on the other hand,… when I got angry, it got serious. I was screaming and fighting with all my power. So, our normal fight started. But as we were running through the rooms trying to be the last ones to hit the other one – if you have siblings, then you understand that you only win when you are the last one to hit – my rage was escalating. Rage is a synonym for anger. And it got to a point where I basically used all my strength to hit, slap or kick my oldest brother. 

Well, in an attempt to give him his fatal hit, I was planning to kick him so hard in his leg that he would stop. So I lifted my leg, got into the motion and then…he moved to the side so I missed him. What I didn’t miss was the heating behind him. Yeah, I hit our apartment heating with my right foot with all my power. What came next is quite self-explanatory. A lot of screaming, a lot of cold water and eventually a journey to hospital to find out that one of the toes on my foot was broken. 

But you know, at least I knew that if I hadn’t missed, I would have kicked him really hard.

Okay, so that is the end of the story, as I said, shorter than usual but now let’s go back to the storytelling. Everytime I was talking about the situation, trying to describe to you what was happening “in the background”, I was using past continuous. And then, when something significant and quick happened, I used past simple. That is how you do it. Just to remind you of an example, I said: “ I was just chilling, playing with my toys or I was doing whatever eleven-year-old girls used to do 15 years ago. Then it came.”

When it comes to structure, I gave some introduction in the form of a context of my family situation and then I told you when it happened, where it happened, and who was there so you knew what to imagine. Then I went on telling the whole story and at the end gave you one sentence that was basically a conclusion.

Was that helpful for you? Let me know.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode and don’t forget that you can find the transcription and vocabulary list in the notes. Please give it a five-star rating if you liked it and I will see you next time, bye-bye.