This week's our Madrid Teacher series is devoted to intermediate students, and it deals with the topic of rage, traffic rage, pedestrian rage and airport rage.
Watch the video through and find out what the four Madrid teachers understand by 'traffic rage', 'pedestrian rage' and 'airport rage'.
Now, let's pay attention to the way they discuss the topic. First of all, let me remind you of some of the strategies the speakers use and that we have already touched on in this series:
- the use of 'you know' by the speaker to gain thinking time.
- the listeners short comments ('yeah', 'that's right', 'absolutely') to sow they are paying attention to the speaker.
- checking understanding ('is that clear?', 'yeah?'), which the speaker uses to check that the audience if following him/her.
Try to spot the above-mentioned features in the video. Also, pay attention to the second girl who takes part in the conversation, the one who is from Montreal. In her short speech, she uses four times the word like. This is a word native speakers use in their colloquial speech when they want to sound vague. Like in this usage is used to introduce an idea which is just an approximation of what really happened.
If you want to fully understand everything that is being said, just activate the CC subtitles on the lower side of the video player in YouTube. They will give you a very accurate transcription of the conversation.
Now, it's over to you. What's your experience of traffic (or road) rage?
Have you ever been involved in or witnessed an episode of pedestrian rage?
And what about airport rage?
Remember to use some of the strategies native speakers use in conversation.
I was walking down the, er, down the street in London just before I came out here and, you know, London is very, very busy, there’s a lot of traffic, there’s a lot of buses, there a lot of cars, there are a lot of cyclists and there are a lot of motorbike users and I was walking down the road, and there was a girl cycling and all of a sudden a car driven by someone who was clearly in a rush, pulled out, nearly knocked her over and started beeping her horn right behind her. The poor girl on the bike got such a fright she went like this on the bike, thankfully she was OK and she didn’t fall off, and the driver continued and sped off. I was horrified. Have you ever been involved in, or experienced such acts of road rage, or travel rage you could say in general, not only, not only on the roads?
Yeah. People intimidate you. I cycle a lot around Montreal and, erm, I’ve had people, like, come up really close to me, and it’s like I’m thinking you’re, you’re closer and closer and closer to the car and you realise they’re just laughing, like they’re just trying to intimidate you… And I’ve kicked cars, and then they get really upset, but it’s like, well, sorry, you’re not giving me the space that I need so…
Yeah, I think no matter where you are cars think they own the roads… Car drivers think they own the roads…
Yeah.
And it’s, it’s not the case but I think the mentality is still changing… The acceptance of cyclists on the road is still…
I get pedestrian rage…
I nearly get knocked over about three times a day. You know, for cars that don’t stop when the green man’s there, especially taxis for some reason. Taxis are worse than your average drivers, in my opinion.
Well, they, they, they really feel like they own the road because they’re on it all day, so I think, you know, taxi drivers are special, you know, in that sense yeah.
Yeah and I think, erm, the bigger the vehicle the more important the driver thinks they are as well, so, you see people in their 4x4s and they think well, I’ve got more rights than your little car…It’s like the poor cyclist at the bottom, the bottom of the chain…
That’s right, absolutely.
Lot’s of suffering.
Have you ever had cyclist superiority because you’re being kind to the environment? Sometimes I feel very, you know, superior… I’m not burning precious, precious resources.
What about on airplanes? Have you ever seen anything…
I mean like…
difficult, any difficult situations?
I think, I think any, you’re so, you’re so powerless when you travel on airplanes and when there’s bad weather and this kind of thing, people are at their worse sometimes…
Oh, yeah.
I’ve seen lots of airport rage when it’s snowing, and, you know, everyone’s stranded and…
They’ve been at the airport for 8 hours…
8 hours…
And no one will give them a sandwich or something.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, some bad behaviour.
Yeah, it’s difficult because in an aeroplane, at an airport, the airline completely reserves the right to refuse you passage so, for example, if you’re angry with easyJet because they’ve delayed your flight for hours and hours and hours and informed you badly if you shout at the woman or the man, the attendant and you become aggressive, then they can just not let you on the flight…
Yeah.
…even when it does come.
