Meeting an old friend

Listen to the conversation between two old friends to practise and improve your listening skills.

Do the preparation task first. Then listen to the audio and do the exercises.

Preparation

MultipleChoice_MjMzNzM=

Transcript

Selina: Patrick? Is that you?

Patrick: Selina! Hello!

Selina: Well, well. Patrick Eastwood. How have you been?

Patrick: Good. Great, actually. How are you? I haven't seen you for ... how long?

Selina: It's been ages. At least fifteen years. Wow.

Patrick: Yeah. Wow.

Patrick and Selina: So, what are you doing here?

Selina: Sorry, you go first.

Patrick: OK. What are you doing here? I thought you'd moved to London.

Selina: I was in London for a couple of years. But it didn't work out.

Patrick: Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Are you ... OK?

Selina: I'm fine! The dream job wasn't really a dream, you know? Um ... and London is great but it's so expensive. I mean, just the rent on a flat is ... uh … crazy expensive.

Patrick: I see.

Selina: So, I came back. I've been back now for almost five months. Living back home with Mum and Dad. Which is err ... interesting. Um ... but anyway, what about you?

Patrick: Me? Oh, nothing new. You know me – 'Patrick the predictable'. I never left here.

Selina: Oh. And is that ...?

Patrick: Oh, I'm very happy. I'm married now. We've just celebrated our tenth anniversary.

Selina: No way! You? Married? To …?

Patrick: I don't think you know her. Her name's Marigold. And we've got two kids. They're five and eight years old.

Selina: Married and with two kids? Wow!

Patrick: Don't look so surprised!

Selina: No, no … I'm just amazed how time flies! I'm happy for you. I really am.

Patrick: Thanks. You should really come round to the house one day.

Selina: That would be great. Let's swap numbers and ...

Task 1

TrueOrFalse_MjMzNzQ=.xml

Task 2

GapFillTyping_MjMzNzU=.xml

Discussion

Do you keep in touch with old friends?

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Worksheet72.52 KB

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Language level

B1 Intermediate

Topics

family and friends

conversation

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Hi, Fahri. I'm not from the team but I will try to help you. In this sentence "it" means her plans to get something in London: good job, husband, new friends, or find herself in the new place. "it didn't work out" means she didn't succeed at this. So, she had to move back to her home. Her dreams and hopes failed

Hello fahri,

In this sentence, it refers to Selina's time in London. You could rewrite the sentence as follows:

I was in London for a couple of years. But being in London didn't work out.

Work out in this context means to have a good result or to end up the way you hoped. In other words, Selina's time in London did not go the way she had hoped, and so she left. It may be related to her job, or it may be some other aspect of the situation.

Peter

The LearnEnglish Team

Thank you very much sir. Your answer is very very clear. Its really helpful.

As for me,my old friends are just like my second family.I'm the only child and so I've grown up living with my mom and dad at our home,as a result my friends especially old one have become essential for me.

Yes, I do. But the number of my old friends is very small. Maybe it is two or three friends. I used to meet my old friends, but I cannot meet them due to corona virus recently. So I always contact them with using applications. When I talk with them, I can relax, so I would like to see them as soon as possible.

Yes, I do. I love catching up with my friends, even if it hasn't been years since the last time I saw them.

Although I didn't keep in touch with my old friends very much before, I sometimes began to contact with them thanks to social media services recently.

Yes, i do. I have several old friends, we have a many years happy time. They are important for me in my life.

Yes, I do. I have kept in touch with most of them. Friends from school and university and even some of them are from the age of our childhood. We are having in touch, but we slightly see each other. I found them in Facebook and we usually get in touch with. Sometimes we talk on messanger. For example, I and my friends from M.A. degree have a group on messanger and usually share information or greet together via that group. Also I get in touch by email with some of my friends who are not in Facebook and so on. But I know that there are some others and I haven't gotten in touch for ages. I miss all of them. Regards, Tayyebi

yes, I do most of them. i try as i can to meet they but it's very difficult because now everyone has his life and engagement.