Speaking Workshop 1
B1 · Speaking: Describing experiences · Traditions
🔥 Festivals of Light and Fire — Global Teen Magazine
All over the world, people use light and fire to celebrate. Here are three festivals that are very different — and surprisingly similar.
UP HELLY AA, Shetland, Scotland. On the last Tuesday of January, in the coldest, darkest part of the Scottish winter, the town of Lerwick celebrates its Viking history. Hundreds of people in costumes march through the streets at night, carrying burning torches. At the end of the procession, the torches are thrown into a full-size wooden Viking ship, which is burned in a huge fire. The ship takes months to build and is destroyed in minutes. The modern festival began in the 1880s, and it is organised by local volunteers.
DÍA DE MUERTOS, Mexico. On 1 and 2 November, families in Mexico remember relatives who have died. It sounds sad, but it is a colourful, joyful celebration. Altars are made at home and decorated with photos, candles, sugar skulls and bright orange marigold flowers. The dead person’s favourite foods are placed on the altar, because people believe that the spirits come back to visit. In many towns, graves are cleaned and decorated, and families spend the night there, eating, playing music and telling stories about their ancestors.
MID-AUTUMN FESTIVAL, China. On the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, usually in September, the moon is at its fullest and brightest. Families get together for a reunion dinner, and round mooncakes are eaten, often filled with sweet bean paste and a salted egg yolk. Children carry paper lanterns shaped like rabbits, fish and stars, and in some cities, lanterns are floated on rivers. The round moon is a symbol of a complete family.
Fire in the snow, flowers on graves and lanterns under the moon. Three festivals, three countries — but each one brings people together in the dark and reminds them where they come from.
🎂 Why Do We Blow Out Candles? — Global Teen Magazine
Every year, millions of people sing the same song, make a wish and blow out candles on a cake. But where do these traditions come from? The answers are older, stranger and sometimes more surprising than you might think.
Let’s start with the candles. Nobody knows their exact origin, but some historians think the idea goes back to ancient Greece, where round cakes were made for the goddess of the moon and decorated with candles to make them glow. What we know for sure is that in eighteenth-century Germany, children’s birthday cakes had one candle for each year, plus one extra for the year to come. Blowing them all out in one breath was supposed to make your wish come true. This superstition is still alive today: telling anyone your wish, people say, means it won’t happen.
The song has a more modern story. Its melody was written in 1893 by two American sisters, Mildred and Patty Hill, who were teachers. The original words were “Good morning to all”, and it was sung to children at the start of the school day. Later, someone changed the words to “Happy birthday to you”, and the song spread around the world. For many years, film makers often paid to use it, until a US court decided in 2015 that the company collecting the money didn’t really own the copyright.
Other traditions are local. In Britain, schoolchildren sometimes give their friends the “birthday bumps”: they lift the birthday person up and gently bump them on the ground, once for every year. In Mexico, the birthday person takes the first bite of the cake — and someone usually pushes their face into it. In China, eating very long noodles on your birthday is a wish for a long life, so cutting them is a bad idea.
Some of these customs began as superstitions, others as jokes. However, they all do the same thing: they turn an ordinary day into a day that belongs to one person.
Sample questions (4 questions)
- Describe one of the three festivals to a partner in about 40 seconds without looking at the article. Say when it is, what happens and why. Use list intonation when you name things.
- Explain one birthday tradition from the article to a partner in about 40 seconds. Say where it comes from and what it means. Say the -ed endings clearly.
- You are a steward. Give a 30–40 second safety talk to the people at the start of the parade. Include two must and one mustn’t, and say the final -s sounds clearly.
Answers and hints from Migo appear when you do it online.