The SoBe Interviews
"SoBe" is short for "South Beach' which is at the southern part of Miami Beach, Florida. It's a great place to videotape and meet people. It's one of those special places where you can feel the creativity in the air: Sobe Clip # 1:
"Usually on Saturday" vs "Last Saturday":
practice for pre-intermediate and also for more advanced students, featuring the simple present and the simple past.
What kinds of videos do you find in the Real English lessons? There are several types of video edits.
First, the general presentation videos, and also the basic edit.
We also make video edits with insertion of extra pictures or "stills", in order to help give meaning to what the students hear.
Finally, after doing the interactive exercises, the student can watch a closed caption version of a video.
"Usually on Saturday" vs "Last Saturday"
Real Media Downloads only:
Real English Errors -CCC - Closed Captions Corrected : Here's a new type of closed caption edit, with corrections of mistakes. Both the interviewer and the interviewees make mistakes when they speak. This is all part of real English!
Our very good friends invited us to their home on the island of Nantucket where they live from June to October, so we combined work with pleasure, videotaping in downtown Nantucket and at the island's charter ship docks. On the far right our gracious host, part of his family in between, and on the far left, Paul Hower, the interviewer, with his wife Ann Kellan.
Ann took us right to town hall upon arrival where we obtained a videotaping permit. The local authorities were most cooperative and friendly.
This aerial map shows an extreme eastern part of the state of Massachusetts, USA, the island of Nantucket encircled, with the island of Martha's Vineyard to the west and Cape Cod to the north. The town in yellow is Hyannis, showing the general direction of the ferry boats to Nantucket.
As usual, we did two general types of videotaping:
1 - Grammatical (usually for beginner and intermediate students) and 2 - Topical (usually for intermediate and advanced levels - see examples below).
These are not strict distinctions. All Real English videos are both topical and grammatical. It's simply a question of emphasis.
In this first case, the emphasis is on the grammatical content.
Click on the picture of Hillary to stream the 4-minute " What have you got...?" clip, an example of a "grammatical video". This is the short version.
There is also a long, complete version (almost 9 minutes) of "What have you got...?". Stream or Download it.Double your fun and learning experience! So far, this is the most popular Real English clip (the most downloads).
Or download the short version instead of streaming, in case you want to save it on your hard drive.
And here's a a longer version (6 min 30 sec) of
"What have you got in the bag?":
2 - A few topical videos from Nantucket
Interactive online exercises will be made for these new videos and they will enter the Real English learning library. There are presently
70 main videos for 70 interactive lessons, approx. 70% "grammatical" and 30% "topical".
1 - Our first topical example from Nantucket includes 2 speakers of English from Brazil, Roberta and Maira, the "Culture Collectors" (Real Media downloads)
As you will see, they first came to Nantucket directly from Brazil, but now they take the ferry. The interviewer has called Roberta and Maira "Culture Collectors". Why? Click on the picture of Roberta and Maira to find out.
Roberta and Maira
2 - Our first born in the USA interviewee is Kelly. We met her while she was working at the docks where private boats and ships are chartered.
Kelly's from Idaho Falls, Idaho, USA, and spends 3 months per year on the island, promoting and booking reservations for fishing and pleasure tours on large boats and ships. We were lucky to have a long "interruption" during this interview, as we watch Kelly doing her job on the phone, booking real reservations for a group of 8 people who will be fishing all day at the time you read this. What is the customer saying?
Kelly
4 - Interviews of Emily, Dane, Heather, Kelly (long version) and Monica from Jamaica are available via our subscription service.
Note that it is not necessary to download and install the invasive Real Player. There is an alternative Real Player, called "Real Alternative", stripped of all the adware. It is available at many sites, such as: http://tinyurl.com/5mcv8 http://tinyurl.com/22sgc
If you use a Mac, you will have to search for the official version of the completely free Real Player at www.real.com
