learnenglish_magazinearticle_black sheep and the mysterious uncle bob

8/11/2019 LearnEnglish_MagazineArticle_Black Sheep and the Mysterious Uncle Bob

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Magazine Article - Black sheep and the mysterious Uncle Bob

http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/magazine/black-sheep-and-mysterious-uncle-bob

The British Council, 2011 Page 1 of 4

The United Kingdoms international organisation for educational opportunities and cultural relations. We are registered in England as a charity.

Introduction

This support pack accompanies the magazine article:

Black sheep and the mys terious Uncle Bob.

To read or listen to the article online, go to:


This support pack contains the following materials:

a pre-watching vocabulary activity;

the article;

a comprehension task

Before you read / listen

Match the words and phrases in the table to their definitions.

1. adventuroussoul

2. affectionately 3. exotic 4. fortune 5. genealogist

6. heirloom 7. mystery 8. nickname 9. nut 10. personality

11. relations 12. siege 13. talent 14. turn into 15. unique

Definitions:

a. An object kept in a family and passed down from parents to children.

b. Different, special, not like anything else.

c. Family members.

d. Something interesting that you cant find out all the facts about.

e. Character.

f. Become.

g. A person who likes adventure.

h. A name given to someone which is not their real name.

i. (slang)A mad person.

j. Something which you a good at, e.g. playing a musical instrument or a particular sport.

k. In a friendly or loving way.

l. A person who researches family history.

m. Unusual and romantic.

n. A lot of money or something worth a lot of money.

o. A situation in war when an army surrounds a city and stays there for a long time.
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/magazine/black-sheep-and-mysterious-uncle-bobhttp://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/magazine/black-sheep-and-mysterious-uncle-bobhttp://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/magazine/black-sheep-and-mysterious-uncle-bobhttp://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/magazine/black-sheep-and-mysterious-uncle-bobhttp://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/magazine/black-sheep-and-mysterious-uncle-bob


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Article: Black sheep and the mysterious Uncle Bob by Keith Sands

Im an English teacher working in Russia,

and for some reason I really dont like thatclassroom topic - Talk About Your Family.Perhaps its because everyone studiedEnglish from the same book at school. Soall the students say, My family consists offive members. Me, my mother, my father,my brother and my dog And so on. As ifall families are exactly the same.

Its such a shame, because our families areunique. All families have their stories, theirdramas, their private jokes, nicknames andphrases. Theyre the place where ourpersonalities were made. How often haveyou heard someone with young childrencomplain Oh no, I think Im turning into myparents?

The other day I found myself turning intoone of my grandparents. I was trying to getmy daughter (1 year and 8 months old) to

eat her dinner and I said Thatll make yourhair curl. Now, I dont think that greenvegetables give you curly hair, or even thatcurly hair is a great thing to have. Its just aphrase I heard from my Granddad ahundred times when I was small. It hadstayed in my mind, half-forgotten, until thetime I could use it myself. I wonder if heheard it from his own grandparents? Howmany other old-fashioned phrases like thisstay inside families, when the rest of the

world has forgotten them?

Shaking the family tree

Talk about your family? Welltheyre justthere, we say. Our families are so ordinaryto us that we even think theyre boring. Nota bit of it! Families are the most exoticthings on earth. If you dig enough in yourown family, youre sure to come up with allthe stuff you could want for a great novel.Surprising characters, dramatic or funnystories passed down for generations, or aface from the past you recognise maybe

in your own. Someone or something unique

to your family. Or, as genealogists like tosay, Shake your family tree - and watch thenuts fall out.

My mother started tracing our family tree afew years ago, not expecting to get far. But,digging in old records and libraries she gotback three hundred years. She turned upold stories and a few mysteries. Whathappened to the big family farm? Where didthe family fortune go in the 1870s? More tothe pointwhere is it now?

Im the traveller in my family, and I like tothink I got it from a great-grandfather on myDads side. He was an adventurous soul.My two favourite family heirlooms are aphoto of him on a horse in a desertlandscape (1897 in Patagonia) and apostcard home from Portugal complainingthat his boat was late because of the

Revolution in Lisbon. Dreadful business,they seem to have arrested the King... hesays. If you look at your family, you open awindow on the past.

History in miniature

Start someone talking about their familystories and they might never stop. Youllfind the whole history of your country there,too. When my mother, still putting the family

tree together, asked me for a few namesfrom my Russian wifes family, my wife goton the phone to her own mother. Just tocheck a name or two. But they were stilltalking an hour later, and shed filled 5pages of A4 paper. And so I was introducedto: someone who lived through the siege ofLeningrad (but forgot how to read in theprocess), a high official in the CommunistParty, and some rich relations who used togo to Switzerland for their holidays before

the Revolution. There was also a blacksheep of the family (or white crow as theysay in Russian) who left his wife and


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children and disappeared in the Civil Warthough nobody in the family knows whichside he fought on. All these people seemedimpossibly exotic to me.

Who wears the trousers?

To go back to that English class then, letsget rid of the phrase my family consistsof and look at some more interestingways to talk about families. English is rich inidioms to talk about family life. Wevementioned the black sheep of the family

thats someone who didnt fit in, or caused afamily scandal. If youre loyal to your family,you can say blood is thicker than water orkeep it in the family. If you share a talentwith another family member, you can say itruns in the family. You might have yourfathers eyes or your mothers nose. Ifyoure like one of your parents, you can saylike father, like son or you can be a chip offthe old block.

Who wears the trousers in your family?(Whos the head of your family?) You mightaffectionately talk about your bro, your sisor your folks (parents). Or if you likeCockney slang, what about her indoors orthe missus to talk about your wife? Thoughboth these phrases make feminists reachfor their guns.

If you want to get more technical, you candiscuss the benefits of the nuclear family : asmall family, just parents and children livingin the same house. If grandparents or otherrelatives live there too, then you have anextended family. In English we talk aboutthe average nuclear family with the phrase2.4 children.

Then there are idioms that have left thefamily (flown the nest) and gone on to havea life of their own. You cant teach yourgrandmother to suck eggs. It means you

cant tell your elders anything they dontknow already. But why would anyone wantto suck eggs anyway? Now heres a reallystrange one. A Londoner is telling someonehow to get a new passport. Get fourpictures taken, pick up a form in the postoffice, hand it in with your old passportand Bobs your uncle. It means theproblem is solved. But Id love to know whothe original Bob was, and why he was sucha useful uncle to have.


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Comprehension task

True or false

Read the following sentences and decide if they are true or false.

1. The writer likes the way his students talk about their families.

2. He used a phrase he heard when he was a child.

3. He thinks families are boring.

4. His Mum found out everything she wanted to know about the family history.

5. The writer takes after his great-grandfather.

6. He was surprised at how much his mother-in-law remembered.

7. A chip off the old block means the same as black sheep of the family.

8. Only men wear the trousers in families.

9. You should be careful if you use the phrase her indoors.

10. The writer has an uncle called Bob.

Answers

learnenglish_magazinearticle_black sheep and the mysterious uncle bob

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