1.2 Paco is not like Mr. Scrooge

Icono IDevice Reading activity
As we now know, the present simple is frequently used to describe people's personality. It is also used to describe people's appearance. We are going to concentrate on the former. The barman has reminded Paco of how different people are. Undoubtedly, the barman is completely different from a famous character Paco is thinking of at the moment, Ebenezer Scrooge.
By SassyPanda! C. Commons
Ebenezer Scrooge is the main character in Charles Dickens' 1843 novel, A Christmas Carol. He is a cold-hearted, tight fisted, selfish man, who despises Christmas and all things which engender happiness. A quote from the book reads "The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue, and he spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice ..." His last name has come into the English language as a byword for miserliness and misanthropy, traits displayed by Scrooge in the exaggerated manner for which Dickens is well-known. The story of his transformation by the three Ghosts of Christmas (Ghost of Christmas Past, Ghost of Christmas Present, and Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come) has become a defining tale of the Christmas holiday. Scrooge's catchphrase, "Bah, humbug!" is often used to express disgust with many of the modern Christmas traditions.1
1 From wikipedia.org

Read and listen to the passage carefully paying special attention to the adjectives used to describe the character. Click below if you have problems with some other words.


Icono IDevice Listening activity

Here we can listen to another way of describing Mr. Scrooge.

 


Listen to the song paying attention to the adjectives the muppets use to describe the mean Scrooge. Click below if you need the lyrics of the song!


Icono de iDevice Self-assessment

Read the definitions to complete the crossword puzzle with adjectives from the song. Use a dictionary if necessary.

  1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
1         S
2          
3                
4              
5        
6        
     
7
  S  
8                
9
                  

Across:

1. Hateful, abominable (6 letters).

2. Unwilling to give or share money (4 letters).

5. Isolated and lonely (5 letters).

7. Lacking or failing to conform to moral virtue (3 letters) / (Of a speaker) Intending to hurt (5 letters).

Down:

3. Not showing any signs of weakness (4 letters).

5. Affected by unhappiness or grief (3 letters).

6. Lacking in kindness (6 letters).

8. Without companions (8 letters).

  

Icono IDevice Further knowledge

To improve your vocabulary on the topic, here you can find two different lists of adjectives. The one on the left are positive aspects of people's personality. The one on the right, not so positive.

 



 

Did you like it? Too much vocabulary? Maybe, but vocabulary is essential to improve your level of English. However, let's do another activity related to personality. On this occasion, if you click here, you'll be able to do a listening activity about personality types. Come on, try it!


Icono IDevice Curiosity
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
By Anne E. Keeling. Public domain
By kwbridge. C. Commons
Charles John Huffam Dickens is an English novelist whose high reputation rests on his creation of a range of memorable and often odd characters (eg Scrooge and Mr Pickwick), on his descriptions of the bad conditions in which poor people lived in 19th-century Britain (which helped to bring about social reforms), and perhaps above all on his ability as a story-teller to make his readers laugh and cry. His novels (which were originally published in installments) include Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, Hard Times, A Tale of Two Cities and A Christmas Carol. Dickens was very popular during his lifetime, and frequently gave public readings from his books.1

Dickens's The Old Curiosity Shop probably commanded greater interest among the reading public than any novel ever had up to that time. In New York City, for example, 6,000 people crowded the wharf where the ship carrying the magazine with the last installment of the novel was to dock. Finally, the ship approached, but the crowd could not wait. Spying the captain on deck, all cried out as one the burning question: "Did little Nell die?"2

 

1 From Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (Oxford: OUP, 1992).
2 From Robert Hendrickson, The Wordsworth Book of Literary Anecdotes (Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Ltd., 1997, p. 85).


Now that we have studied some vocabulary to be able to talk about ourselves and other people's personality, it's time for us to go on to the next section in which we will remember the form and main uses of the Present Continuous tense.
« Anterior | Siguiente »