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Presentation Basics VIP – Mini Story

Hello this is AJ. Hello VIP and welcome to this month’s mini story lesson. Some new vocabulary in here, let’s get started.

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Roger the mosquito felt guilty about sucking blood.

So what was Roger?

A mosquito. Roger was a mosquito.

And what did he feel guilty about?

He felt guilty about sucking blood. Of course, mosquitoes suck blood. That’s what they eat.

Did Roger feel guilty about spending too much money?

No, no, he didn’t feel guilty about spending too much money.

So what did he feel guilty about?

He felt guilty about sucking blood.

He felt guilty every time he sucked the blood out of another person, slurp, slurp, slurp. In fact, his conscience bothered him constantly.

Now, that’s conscience spelled c-o-n-s-c-i-e-n-c-e. So we have the word conscious.

That means you’re awake, you’re aware. That’s spelled differently, c-o-n-s-c-i-o-u-s, conscious. This is conscience, which is spelled a little bit differently and you can hear there’s a very subtle difference in pronunciation, conscious and conscience. The two ‘n’ sounds in conscience, the one we’re using in the story, are a little bit stronger, but that’s a very small difference.

Don’t worry about it too much. Don’t get crazy about the pronunciation. They’re very, very close, so don’t worry about it too much. But the point is his conscience bothered him.

Now, conscience, the one we’re using the story, it’s the ability to tell right from wrong.

It’s the part of you that helps you feel what is right, what is good and what is wrong, what is bad or harmful. So if we say my conscience is bothering me, it means the part of my brain that judges right and wrong is bothering me. So we’re feeling guilty because we did something wrong maybe.

So who was feeling guilty in this story?

Roger the mosquito.

And what was bothering him?

His conscience. His conscience was bothering him.

So that phrase ‘his conscience bothered him’, it means he was feeling guilty. He was feeling that he did something wrong, right? Because conscience it’s, again, the part of our mind that tells us when something is right and when something is wrong. So if our conscience bothers us it means it’s bothering us because we feel something is wrong. It means there’s something in our brain tell us that oh, maybe we did something wrong.

So whose conscience was bothering him?

Roger. Roger the mosquito’s conscience bothered him.

Did his left elbow bother him?

No, no, his left elbow was not hurting. It didn’t have a problem.

Was his right eye bothering him?

No, his right eye was not bothering him.

So what was bothering him?

His conscience. His conscience bothered him.

And why did his conscience bother him?

Well, because he felt guilty about sucking people’s blood. He felt that maybe it was wrong, that maybe it was harmful.

So his conscience bothered him about doing what?

His conscience bothered him about sucking blood.

In fact, he couldn’t sleep. Every night he couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned all night.

That’s a common idiom, common phrase ‘to toss and turn all night’. So when we talk about tossing and turning with sleep it’s the idea that you’re not sleeping well. To toss and turn means to roll around during the night. It means you’re constantly moving and turning and rolling around because you can’t sleep well. So the phrase is ‘to toss and turn’ or to ‘toss and turn all night’. If you say oh, I tossed and turned all night it means you had a very restless sleep. You were moving around. You could not sleep deeply.

So in this story, who tossed and turned all night?

Roger the mosquito. Roger the mosquito tossed and turned all night. In fact, he tossed and turned all night every night.

And why was he tossing and turning all night?

Well, because his conscience bothered him.

And why did his conscience bother him?

Because he felt guilty about sucking people’s blood.

So Roger the mosquito had a strong conscience, a strong feeling of right and wrong. He had a strong feeling of guilt and because of this every night he tossed and turned and couldn’t sleep.

Well, finally one day Roger decided to stop sucking blood. He said “I will not suck blood any more. I will not eat people’s blood.” But of course he still needed something to eat. He needed to find something to live off of.

Now, ‘to live off of’, that phrase ‘to live off of’, it means to get your livelihood from something. Now, we can use this to describe a financial situation or we can use it to describe food. So in this story we’re using it to describe food. It means it’s the source of your food, the source of most of your nutrition.

So, for example, Roger tried first to live off of apple juice. He tried to live off of apple juice. Every day all day he drank apple juice and only apple juice. He tried to live completely off of apple juice.

So ‘to live off of apple juice’ means that apple juice is your only source of nutrition. If we ‘to live completely off of apple juice’, it means you’re trying to get all of your nutrition, all of your life energy from only apple juice.

So Roger tried this. He sucked the juice out of applies, slurp, slurp, slurp, slurp.

Now, for a couple days it was okay, but soon he felt that the apples were too sickly sweet for him.

This is another informal phrase ‘sickly sweet’. ‘Sickly sweet’ means something that is too sweet. So normally if something is sweet we think it tastes good, but if something is sickly sweet it means it’s too, too, too sweet so it does not taste good. It’s kind of yucky.

Blah, we don’t like it.

So apple juice for Roger was sickly sweet. He didn’t like it. It was too sweet for him.

So first what did he try to live off of?

He tried to live off of apple juice first.

Did he try to eat anything else?

No, he did not. He tried to completely live off of apple juice and only apple juice.

Did he try to live off of beet juice, b-e-e-t?

No, he did not try to live off of beet juice.

Did he try to live off of orange juice?

No, he did not try to live off of orange juice.

What kind of juice did he try to live off of?

He tried to live off of apple juice.

And who tried to live off of apple juice completely?

Roger the mosquito. Roger the mosquito tried to live off of apple juice.

Did he like apple juice?

No, he did not.

Why not?

Because it was too sickly sweet for him.

Did he enjoy the taste of apple juice?

No, he didn’t.

Did it taste good to him or was it too sweet?

It was too sweet for Roger. He thought it tasted sickly sweet, much too sweet.

Apple juice was sickly sweet to Roger and so next he tried to live off of carrot juice. So he sucked the juice out of carrots. Every time he saw a carrot he sucked the juice out of it. In fact, he tried to live completely off of carrot juice.

So he tried to live off of what kind of juice first?

Apple juice. First he tried to live off of apple juice.

And then second, what kind of juice did he try to live off of?

He tried to live off of carrot juice next.

Did he like carrot juice?

Yeah, he liked carrot juice.

He enjoyed carrot juice, but there was a problem with carrot juice. After five days of living off of carrot juice Roger turned completely orange. His eyes turned orange. His body turned orange. His wings turned orange. He was completely and totally orange.

And why was he orange?

Because he was living off of carrot juice. He was living completely off of carrot juice. He was only drinking carrot juice.

So who was completely living off of carrot juice?

Roger the mosquito.

And what happened?

He turned orange. Roger turned completely orange because of the carrot juice.

Well, he had to stop drinking carrot juice. He didn’t want to be orange and so he just stopped eating completely. He became hungrier and hungrier and he began craving blood.

Of course, the verb ‘to crave’ means to want something very, very, very, very, very strongly and to want something almost irrationally. Very emotionally you want it. You crave it. You need it. You must have it.

So what did Roger crave?

He craved blood.

When did he begin craving blood?

Well, when he stopped drinking the carrot juice. He stopped drinking the carrot juice, he stopped eating completely and after several days he began craving blood.

Did he want blood a little bit or did he want blood a lot?

Ah, he wanted it a lot. He wanted it very strongly. He craved it.

What did he crave?

Blood. He craved blood. He wanted blood. He needed blood.

In fact, seeing veins enflamed his desire for blood, any time he saw a person’s veins. He was flying around and he saw a person, a human and he saw their veins, the blood vessels, the veins, when he saw their veins he became enflamed with desire for blood.

Now, that’s a common phrase in English, ‘to be enflamed with desire.’ ‘Enflamed’, the verb enflame, to be enflamed, means to be on fire. That’s actually the direct meaning, to be on fire, to catch on fire, to be enflamed, but when we use it with emotion it means that a sudden strong emotion comes up in us. So, seeing veins enflamed his desire. It means it caused a sudden desire as if he was on fire suddenly. So this is the feeling of that phrase.

There are two phrases here. ‘To be enflamed with desire’ means it’s like your on fire because you desire something so much. We can use this romantically. You could say this to your girlfriend or boyfriend, husband or wife. “I am enflamed with desire for you!” It means you’re on fire because you want them so much. Woo, very sexy!

In this case, in this story, seeing veins enflamed Roger’s desire for blood. His emotion, his desire for blood was so strong it felt like he was on fire, like he was burning, that he needed blood so much. He was so hungry. He wanted it to much.

So Roger was enflamed with desire for what?

For blood. He wanted blood. He craved blood. He was enflamed with desire for blood.

And what enflamed his desire? What caused it?

Seeing veins. Seeing the blood vessels in people. Seeing people’s veins enflamed his desire for blood.

And who was enflamed with desire for blood?

Roger was enflamed with desire for blood.

And why was he enflamed with desire for blood?

Because he was super hungry, he was a mosquito and so he wanted blood. He was enflamed with desire for blood. He wanted it so much. He felt like he was on fire with desire.

He dreamed about blood whenever he went to bed. All he could think about was blood, blood, sucking blood. He craved it. He needed it. He was enflamed with desire for blood. Well, one day he was famished, totally famished.

To be ‘famished’ means to be very, very, very, very, very hungry. So if you’re super hungry one day you could say oh man, I’m famished, famished. It means I’m super hungry.

So who was famished one day in our story?

Of course, Roger the mosquito was famished one day. He was flying along and he was famished, so hungry.

He was still not drinking blood and he saw a tomato, a nice, ripe, red tomato and it looked like fresh blood to him. It looked so good so he flew over to the tomato and he sucked it dry, slurp, slurp, slurp, slurp, slurp.

Now, ‘to suck something dry’ means you suck all the juice out of it until it’s totally dry.

So what did he suck dry?

He sucked a tomato dry.

Who sucked a tomato dry?

Roger the mosquito.

Did he suck some of the juice out of the tomato?

No, he sucked it dry. He sucked it completely dry. He sucked all the juice out of it and he loved it.

He loved tomato juice. He felt fantastic after he drank it. He felt wonderful and from that day on he lived off of tomatoes. He never drank blood again and he felt fantastic.

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And that is the end of our mini story about Roger the mosquito. Just listen to this story each day at least once. Answer the questions with a loud voice. They’re easy questions just shout your answers and that’s all you need to do.

All right, I’ll see you again next time, bye-bye.