General Listening Quiz

Listen to the recording on zoo animals and read along with the conversation. Review the key vocabulary and the sample sentences.

Father: Mikey. Time for bed [Why?] Why? It’s getting dark out. Well, do you want to talk before you go to bed? [Yeah] Uh, what do you want to talk about?

Mikey: Um, the zoo.

Father: The zoo? Oh, that was so fun when we went to the zoo. What did you like best about the zoo?

Mikey: Um, the porcupines.

Father: They were big, weren’t they. And what [Yeah] else . . . yeah. What else do you remember?

Boy: Um, the two giraffes.

Father: The two giraffes? And were they taller than me or shorter than me?

Mikey: Over your head.

Father: They were over my head. They were pretty tall. And what else do you remember? [Um] I remember . . . didn’t you see a . . . an elephant? [Yeah] What about the elephant do you remember? [Um] What was he . . . was he eating? [Yeah] He was eating. And then, mommy said something happened with the elephant. That he . . . he did something.

Mikey: He throwed dirt on us.

Father: He did? [Yeah] Oh, how did he do that? With his foot?

Mikey: No, his trunk.

Father: And then you fed some ducks. What color were the ducks?

Boy: White.

Father: And what other animals do you remember?[Um] Wasn’t there some type of show?

Mikey: Yeah. A bird show.

Father: A bird show? What did the birds do?

Mikey: Um, flied.

Father: Oh, they flew around!

Boy: One flied. One.

Father: One flew. Were they good birds? [Yeah] Were they naughty at all?

Mikey: One was naughty.

Father: What did it do?

Mikey: Um, did, to, thing, what you . . . it the . . . the man what it could not do. [Translation: It did something it wasn’t supposed to do.]

Father: Uhh, okay. And then you saw some butterflies, didn’t you? [Yeah] What colors were they?

Mikey: After the bird show.

Father: After the bird show you saw them. And were the butterflies flying around all over the zoo?

Mikey: Uh, well, they’re inside.

Father: They were inside, what, a little building? [Yeah] What was the building made of? Was it made of wood? [No] What was it made of? [Glass] Oh, made of glass. And couldn’t the butterflies fly out of the glass? [No] No, oh, what stopped them from flying out?

Mikey: Um, the air.

Father: Oh, the air. Oh, there was air coming down? [Yeah] Oh, well that’s great. Well, it’s time to go to bed now. Sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite. Good night.

Mikey: Good night.

• porcupines (noun): a land animal with long, sharp needles used to protect itself 
  – You don’t want to touch the porcupines unless you want to get hurt.
• trunk (noun): the long nose or snout of an elephant 
  – The elephant used its trunk to move that big tree.
• naughty (adjective): badly behaved 
  – The monkeys were really naughty and stole my hat right off my head.