English for R&Dcourse

English for R&Dcourse

Content

English for R&Dcourse

Home

❯

B2 Upper intermediate

❯

lesson 01

❯

Production

Production

Student A
Read your story below, then retell it to your partner without looking at the text.

A friend of one of my cousins told me this story.

Outside the zoo in his city there's this big car park. It must hold something like 150 cars and maybe ten or fifteen coaches. They charge cars £2 to park and coaches £5. Anyway, there was this really nice parking attendant working there who used to make jokes and smile and everyone loved him. This guy must have been there for something like 25 years all in all. And then one day he just didn't turn up for work. It was like he'd vanished.

The zoo called the local council to let them know and to request a new parking attendant, but you can imagine their surprise when they were told that the parking area was their responsibility. They queried this and said surely the council employed the attendant. 'No,' came the answer, 'we'd always assumed you did!'

Somewhere, in a far-off distant land, there must be a retired man who'd been taking around £400 a day, seven days a week, for the last two decades. He must have taken well over two million pounds!

And no-one even knows his name!

Student B
Read your story below, then retell it to your partner without looking at the text.

A friend of a friend of mine heard this story from a guy he met in Ireland.

Apparently, there was a student who was trying to get home from a party one night. He'd missed the last bus and so decided to hitchhike. It was pouring with rain and he'd been waiting for ages so when he saw a car coming slowly towards him, he just jumped in.

He soon realised, though, that there was nobody behind the wheel and the engine wasn't running. The car carried on moving slowly and as they neared a curve in the road, a hand appeared through the window and turned the wheel. By this point, the student was terrified so when he saw the lights of a café come into view, he leapt out and ran to safety. He rushed inside and started telling everybody about the horrible experience he had just had.

Then the door opened again and two more men walked in from the dark and stormy night. Looking around and seeing the shaking student, one said to the other, 'Look, James … there's that idiot that got in the car while we were pushing it!'

Created by Alisa Chernikova © 2026