First, watch the video through to get the gist of the conversation.
Now, watch the video more carefully and pay attention to the following features of spoken English:
- Fillers to gain thinking time or when the speaker doesn't know what to say or how to continue a sentence: er; you know
- Reacting to what we have just heard: Reply questions (Have they?; Have there?)
- Using really to give emphasis.
- Using vague language: and things like that; or something; sort of
- Showing agreement: Yeah; That’s true; That’s a good point; I think so, definitely
- Use of hedging to introduce ideas and not to sound too categorical: I think
- Using I mean to paraphrase what you have just said and make yourself clear
So it's over to you now. What's your take on the use of animals in circuses? Do you agree with the Madrid Teachers? Get together with a friend or relative and discuss the issue. And don't forget to use some of the features of spoken English we have seen in the video.
Have you heard that, er, Bolivia, er… you know, the country from South America, have decided to join the long list of countries that have banned animals being used in circuses.
Have they?
Which I think is really good. Yeah. I think you know, as a, as a kid I used to go to the circus and it was great to see the, you know, tiger jumping through hoops with fire, and things like that. But if, you know, if you think about it, you know, those poor animals… they don’t do that in, in, in the wild, do they? You know, they don’t balance on balls.
They don’t do much of anything in the wild anymore.
Yeah but, to force, you know, in order to get an animal to do something like, you know, riding a bicycle, they get bears to ride bicycles and things like that. They’ve got to, you know, there’s a lot of mal… mistreatment going on there, you know, hitting them… they use electric prods…
Wait a second, I, I think you’ve got a bit of, er, an arcane idea of what goes on in the circus these days.
Well, you know, there’s been quite a few undercover investigations.
Have there?
Yeah, you know, they show… these animals they spend most of their lives in cages, you know, like little boxcars, and they…
That’s true.
You know, when they’re on the road, they’re travelling. You know, they can be up to twenty-four hours in a little box.
Mm-hm.
Imagine spending… it’s like… you spending the rest of your life in the, in the bathroom or something, you know.
Yeah.
But, prohibiting all of it because of the… er, crimes of a few is, is a little absurd to me. I mean this is going too far, I think. What they should do is regulate it, not prohibit it.
There seems to be a middle ground that we can, er, achieve here. I mean, if you consider the advances in human rights or animal rights that have happened in the last couple of years, if we can just… make a regulatory body that sort of, er, instills that in the circus culture… remove the cattle prods and the small boxes. I mean, you can see that there, that there are plenty of situations where man and animals get along well, and the animals… I mean, I’m sure they’re having a lot more fun playing with a ball than… scrounging for food in the tundra.
That’s a good point.
What, what are you going to do, prohibit horses?
[You could probably make…]
You could probably… you could probably argue that certain animals like, certain… that we have domesticated like horses, dogs, things like that, but, you know…
Dolphins.
Yeah, dolphins, you know…
You’ve got to close down that zoo with [a] dolphin show.
Oh, I think so, definitely. I, there’s another… oh anyway I’ll talk about that later but… you know, animals like bears and, and, and… you know, they use kangaroos for boxing and… those sort of animals, they’re… they don’t do that. They don’t… you know, bears don’t ride bikes and, I think it’s wrong. And tigers and lions. I think you can probably argue about dogs, because dogs seem to enjoy being with humans, but… I would say animals like bears and lions and tigers, keep them out of circuses.
