In this lesson, we are going to use an interesting video about a very dangerous job which is called ice road trucking. We are going to show you how to improve English speaking skills with this practice activity.
Step 1: Watch the video about how to improve your English speaking skills using this lesson.
Step 2: Watch the interesting and suspenseful video about ice road truckers and see what their dilemma is.
Step 3: Watch the last video which has questions for you to answer and practice using the new vocabulary about this interesting topic. You will also hear how a native speaker would answer the questions so you can learn some new phrases and additional words.
Related Vocabulary
- Semi-truck: A commercial truck that is designed to pull a trailer with a heavy load
- Current: Flowing or moving water
- Trucker: The person who drives large trucks that transport or haul prodcuts
- Crack: To break without complete separation of the parts. A crack in a glass, looks like a line.
- Loader: A machine that is used to move dirt or other materials.
- Stuck: Not being able to move. Unstuck: When you are able to move after being stuck.
Questions to Answer:
- Why is the ice weak?
- Why did the truck get stuck?
- How thick to you think the ice has to be in order to support a semi truck and it’s trailer?
- What did they do to get the truck unstuck?
- Why do you think that these trucks are driving across frozen lakes and rivers?
- How would you feel if you were driving a semi truck and it started to break through the ice?
- How much would someone have to pay you to do this job?
- What aspects of truck driving are dangerous in winter conditions?
Hello it s a New way to learn english for me I need time to analyse it thanks
Hi Mouahhidi! Yes this is a very different way to learn English, very different that what you will find in the classroom 😉 This type of activity will help you to use the language and learn how to practice speaking. Trust me when I say that they traditional ways of teaching a language do not work very well. We are trying to give you some new techniques to help you use the rules and vocabulary that you have been learning in school with real life stories.
The skill that most people want to improve is speaking and that is because very few students practice enough. I hope that you try this technique and see that it is challenging, but very helpful to show you exactly where you need to build vocabulary and how to practice speaking more 🙂
hello I’m From Brasil I think this job is pretty dangerous
Hi Aline1. Yes I agree, it looks like a very dangerous job… but it is really interesting to watch and learn about 😉
The video is about how two truckers are trying to cross a freezing river. Due to the winter temperatures, the river becomes invisible and they cannot notice the current. They notice it and they try to cross it without the river will start to crack. However, the girl hears how the ice is cracking because one of the wheels of the semi-truck goes through the ice. The semi-truck stucks into it. Finally, her companion helps her.
If I were one of them, I will feel very scared. In my opinion, they have a difficult job which requires a lot of courage.
Nice summary Tamara! Here is the version with a few corrections to your writing for you to learn from:
The video is about how two truckers are trying to cross a freezing river. Due to the winter temperatures, the river is frozen and can’t see the current. After they notice it, they try to cross it without but it starts to crack. However, the girl hears the ice is cracking as one of the wheels of the semi-truck goes through the ice. The semi-truck is stuck. Finally, her companion helps her.
If I were one of them, I would feel very scared. In my opinion, they have a difficult job that requires a lot of courage.
Hi
thanks for this video I think it is a good way to learn real English but to make it more interesting you should write what the truckers are saying on the video that way the learner listen and read at the same time.
Hi Ali. Thanks for your suggestion. Yes the slang is interesting that is true. Next time I will try to find a video that at least has automatic subtitles. May I ask if you tried to answer the questions and what your level of English is?
I think it is very interesting but it also very difficult to listen. I always see subtitle to understand what they said. I think I should begin with easy video. It very difficult for me so that I can’t study. However I realy want to thank you for this lesson. Thank you so much
Hi Nguyen! Thanks for letting me know how we can make the lesson better. May I ask what level of English you currently have?
What is cool about videos is that you can still understand a lot by watching the video. In this video, the words that the people are using do not explain very much. The basic concept of the video is: There are 2 trucks that need to cross a section of ice, the ice does not look very strong, they are worried about the ice breaking. Later you can see the truck is stuck and they use a machine to push the truck.
Even at an intermediate level, you can still give answers to the questions. You may have to look up some new words, but it is possible. Try to keep your answers simple in the beginning and later, try to give more detail. I hope that will help you to understand you can use this activity to practice speaking even if you do not understand everything perfectly.
The truth is that in a conversation, many times you will not understand perfectly. So this is a good activity to try to give an answer based on what you understood. It might not be correct, but you are still speaking 🙂
Hi
i would like to thank you for creating such helpful teaching aids.I’ve been looking for short videos to practice English with for a long time and i couldn’t find any.these are of great help although it seems to be more appropriate for advanced learners.please keep it up and if you could make simpler versions for learners on lower levels ,that would be awesome.
Hi Marjan. Thanks for the feedback about the lesson. Yes you are right, this seems like an advanced exercise; however, to make it easier you only need to give a simple answer. The idea with the activity is that you look up the new words you need in order to say what you need to say.
For example, to answer the question: Why is the ice weak? You can say: The ice is weak because there is a current under the ice and the temperature is too warm.
That answer contains normal everyday words that an intermediate student should learn if they don’t know that vocabulary yet. That is the the goal of this activity! To discover new words that you should know to start learning how to building your vocabulary to an advanced level.
An advanced student can give a more complicated answer, but they should also be trying to use the exact words they want to answer the question. For an advanced student, this activity is best if they provide a very detailed and long answer.
Does that explanation make sense?
Hi guys, til now you gave us a lot of interesting ideas and some very useful methods how to improve our fluency, but today technique it is something very special. It is helps us to think much easier in English, which is one of the most important goals when we are training to learn a foreign language!
Thanks so much
Hi Victor. Thanks for the helpful feedback. It seems that everyone is really enjoying this lesson. It definitely helps to be learning and practicing when the topic is super interesting. We will be creating new lessons like this in the future 🙂
Thanks so much, it’s really great invention.
Hi Jamal. Awesome to hear that you like the lesson. We are looking forward to making more lessons in this style 🙂
Wow! it’s dangerous job.
Yes Samer, it is a crazy job!
i really enjoy the lesson. it really helps in practicing and answering the questions. i learned a lot of vocabulary .i think real English conversations is the best choice for me. thank you
Hi Omilef. This is great to hear that you did the lesson! You are right, you will learn a lot of vocabulary when you are trying to speak the answers.
An easy way to review the vocabulary again, it to try to say the summary the next day 🙂
We are super excited to hear that you think Real English Conversations is a good choice to learn from!
Oh …it is to scary. ? It is too dangerous . Anyway, the way is to helpful and it helps a lot thank you .In actual fact it uses a lot of time to do all of this .Thank you
Hi Saga. Yes this is a very dangerous job and I agree, it would be scary.
Yes this type of activity takes a lot of time but the idea is to give you lots of time to practice speaking and learning to talk about new topics with new vocabulary. You can make the answers short or long depending on your level and how much detail you want to discuss.
Hi.
I think this lesson style is so useful and helpful.
Just after I tried to answer to your questions, I could learn the relevant, more natural English expression from your answers. It’s easier for me to remember the new expressions and vocabularies. This lesson was really exciting. I like it. I’m looking forward to the next lesson.
Thanks for taking the time to give us the feedback! We are definitely going to be doing more lessons like this in the future 🙂 It sounds like you are going to have excellent progress with your English because you are doing the exercises!
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good quality writing like yours nowadays. I seriously appreciate
individuals like you! Take care!!
Thanks! We are very happy to hear you are enjoying our website and lessons 🙂
It’s a great activity now i feel much comfortable speaking but what do i need to do after finishing this?
Hi Abir! Great to hear that you did the activity 🙂 Many students just read about it and do not experience the progress you can make by doing activities like this.
If you found this helpful and you’d like to get access to more, I’d suggest checking out our speaking course at this link: https://realenglishconversations.com/courses/lp/speaking-course/
There’s a sample lesson you can download for free to try on that page.
Greetings dear Amy.
What an interesting way of learning English? Thanks for that.
I did watch the videos and reached the following summary.
The video is about two trucks which are crossing through a ice road in order to reach a remote place.While going so,one trucker (the lady) heard a crack noise and therefore informed her colleague.They got down and noticed that there is a soft or weak part of the ice road. Therefore if they would insist to pass through, the truck and them would have collapsed.The Lady trucker insist a bit to move the truck but unfortunaly one of the wheels of her truck has blocked in the soft part of the ice road .As a result, they called for a loader which helped them to remove the truck by pushing it from back.
It’s worthwhile to notice that this job is quite scatty and can jeopardize you.
It is what I got from the video.
Thank you a lot.
Hi Modeste! Great to hear you tried the lesson. This is a great summary of the short video clip.
If you liked this lesson, you might enjoy the sample lesson from our Speaking Course too: https://realenglishconversations.com/courses/lp/speaking-course/#sample-lesson/
Talk to you soon,
Amy
Actually, a fast pace of speaking though understandable by me, at least, the majority of what is said.
The following questions to answer together with the sample answers are great! VERY HELPFUL!!!
Thanks a million!!!
Hi Anastasia! Great to hear you enjoyed this lesson and found it helpful. This style of ‘speaking practice’ is what we use for our Speaking Course. It is very effective to challenge you to explain something in a lot of detail and overcome the doubts you have about being able to talk about a complicated topic 🙂
It’s great help me to understand.
Hi Preethy! Did you see the transcription of the video? That can make it easier to understand. The idea is to try to talk about the video even if you don’t understand it perfectly. As long as you are practicing your speaking skills, you are doing this exercise correctly 🙂