IEC: May 4th, Unit 6: "It's absolutely true" Script

A: So, where did you go on your vacation.
B: To Brazil - Rio de Janeiro.
A: Wow, sounds great!
B:Yeah, I went just in time for Carnaval and well, you know what Brazil can be like in February.
A: Very hot, I imagine.
B: Hot! It's absolutely boiling.
A:Huh!
B: Well, it was hot, but this year it was also raining - a very heavy rain - something like two feet of water an hour. It was really, really wet - in fact , the Sambadrome was totally flooded.
A: What's the Sambadrome?
B: Oh, you know, it's that enormous stadium where the incredible smaba parade is held. And everyone was getting very worried taht they might cancel Carnaval or something.
A: That would have been really awful.
B: Yeah, Just imagine all the thousands of people involved in Carnaval, and the 300,000 tourists or so, all waiting and then it's cancelled!
A: Incredible.
B: But, then the weather changed and the rain stopped.
A; That was lucky.
B: Yeah, so the Carnaval parade started on time after all, and the schools did their Samba - it was so colorful! Did you know there are over 70,000 dancers?
A: It must have been very crowded!
B: Not just crowded - really, really packed!
A: Hmm!
B: ... and so I stayed out and danced all night, and all the next night.
A: I guess you were tired.
B: Absolutely exhausted! But, I didn't mind.
A: No?
B: ...because I was in Brazil... and it was Carnaval.
A: Yeah.
B: It was fantastic! Absolutely fantastic.
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Intensifiers
They are used to intensify the meaning and particularly the emotional content. Intensifiers include: quite, such, so, very, really, quite, totally, completely, extremely, remarkably, fantastically, absolutely, incredibly, etc.
That is very/really interesting. (basic intensifier)
That is very, very interesting./ She's really, really beautiful. (repetition to increase effect)
That is extremely interesting.
That is an absolutely interesting story. (suggests being amazed)
That is quite interesting. (reducing intensity)
That is a bit interesting. (reducing intensity)
Sometimes, intensifiers are used too much:

The REALLY terrible storm ripped across the bay and TOTALLY destroyed business buildings and homes when it hit shore. The result was VERY disastrous: SO MUCH wreckage, SO MANY helpless people, SO MANY lost dreams. To see it was REALLY disturbing.

It's much better to say:
Too many intensifiers:
The terrible storm ripped across the bay and destroyed business buildings and homes when it hit shore. The result was disastrous: much wreckage, many helpless people, many lost dreams. To see it was disturbing.
Specifically in Korea, people say: "That experience was very fantastic." You should not use "very" with adjectives that express something extreme. You can say: "That experience was absolutely fantastic" or 'really fantastic'. 'Very' is used for ordinary adjectives: She was very pretty. The movie was very good. Don't say: "It was very fabulous."
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Grammar:
Simple Past vs. Past Continuous (otherwise called Past Progressive)
The simple rules of how to use these tenses are explained in your student books on page 144. Please, read!

To learn in more detail about Simple Past and Past Continuous, visit:
http://a4esl.org/q/h/vm/pastpastcont.html
http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/simplepast.html

To practice you may wish to follow the links below. These pages offer quizzes with answer key:
http://www.pacificnet.net/~sperling/quiz/past1.html
http://a4esl.org/q/h/vm/pastpastcont.html
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HOMEWORK: Student book page 29, Exercise 6 Writing: Write a 1/2 or 1 page story about yourself and describe what happened using the simple past and past continuous, as well as intensifiers from this unit.
E.g. "Three years ago I met Brad Pitt. We had dinner together. When I arrived to an extremely expensive restaurant, he was sitting at our table, sipping fabulously red wine. When I saw him I thought that he was incredibly handsome. His eyes were absolutey amazing, and his lips were very red. His hair was fantastically blonde. For about four hours we were eating absolutely delicious food, having amazingly interesting conversation... etc., etc.