2019-10-15
7 分钟Hi there, this is Harry and welcome back to my English learning podcast. Here I help you improve English speaking, grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation through the use of short sentences. The sentence that I have for you for today is - The collapse of Thomas Cook, the world's oldest travel agency, has left thousands of passengers stranded and put 21 thousand jobs at risk. 9 thousand of which are in the UK. Enrol in Harry's English Club at www.englishlessonviaskype.com for €9 per month,...
Hi there, and welcome back to the podcast.
And here's the fourth and final podcast of this week.
And again, we're looking at some sentences of recent news, things that have been in the news that you might find of interest, and we'll have a look at the grammar in and around that particular sentence.
This sentence is to do with the not surprising, I don't think, but quite sudden collapse of the travel company, Thomas Cook, the UK and european travel company that went into liquidation, forced liquidation on Monday of this week.
And there's been quite a problem with the number of people stranded in different countries, unable to get back under their own steam.
And also, obviously, the unfortunate loss of many, many jobs.
Okay, so here's the sentence.
The collapse of Thomas Cook, the world's oldest travel agency, has left thousands of passengers stranded and put 21,000 jobs at risk, 9000 of which are in the UK.
Okay, let me give you the second reading of that.
It's a long sentence.
The collapse of Thomas Cook, the world's oldest travel agency, has left thousands of passengers stranded and put 21,000 jobs at risk, 9000 of which are in the UK.
Okay, so what grammar do we have there, apart from just the facts and the information, which, as I said, is a little bit sad, but not unexpected in light of how people book holidays these days.
I wasn't aware that so many people still used a travel agency, however, what have we got?
So we've got some nice language, as always.
We've got use of the definite article, the collapse, the world's oldest and the United Kingdom.
Okay, so we're using the definite article quite a lot in this sentence, and we use it in a number of occasions.
The definite article is obviously used at the beginning of a sentence.
The.
So what we're talking about here is the collapse.
Not a collapse, the collapse, because it's very specific to the collapse of Thomas coke.