My Wedding: An Audio Story

Today is Tuesday, January 9th, 2007, and we'd like to welcome you to the ESL Help Desk, your home page for questions and comments about English grammar and writing.  We are podcasting from beautiful and historic Boston.  If you are in our listening audience today, welcome to www.ESLHelpDesk.com!   And please feel free to use the online resources to email us your questions and comments because here, your feedback is our feed.

  Today we are going to treat you to the audio of an essay written by Sonia Diaz, in which Sonia describes her wedding day in Puerto Rico.

The essay you are about to listen to, "My Wedding", was written by Sonia in her  college ESL class.  If you would like to read along while listening to the audio, please click on the Easy Writer CD-ROM image to the left to find out how you can obtain a copy of the software.

 After you listen to the essay once, perhaps you would like to listen to it a second time and write what you hear on a piece of paper.  Then you can listen to it a third time and change and edit what you have written. Dictations are great activities for listening comprehension and to check your grammar, punctuation, and spelling.
 

Below you will see a vocabulary list to aid you in your listening comprehension and vocabulary building.
 

Ideas for Discussion or Writing

Here are many images of weddings from various cultures and religions. Which of these weddings is most familiar to you? Which is very foreign to your experience?  Which would you like to attend?  Do you have a wedding you would like to write about? Why do you think it is that people love to write about their wedding, and share that experience with others?
 

Vocabulary

Below is a list of vocabulary items to help you with your listening comprehension.
of the audio story.   

(to) remember
(to be) married
(the) beauty parlour/(the beauty parlor)
(the) church
full
relative(s)
future
nervous
(the) maid of honor
(the) ringbearer(s)
alongside
stepfather
(the) altar
godparent(s)
(the) priest
(to) bless
(to) shake
(the) ceremony
(the) clubhouse
(the) beach
picture(s)
waltz
guest(s)
(the) reception
country
(the) single women
(to)  throw
(the) bouquet of flowers
(to be) supposed to
(the) garter belt
(to) celebrate