Love and New Year’s resolutions
Do you remember?
Bridget Jones’ Diary” (2001). At the start of the New Year, 32-year-old “singleton” Bridget (Renée Zellweger) decides it’s time to take control of her life — and start keeping a diary. Now, the most provocative, erotic and hysterical book on her bedside table is the one she’s writing. With a taste for adventure and an opinion on every subject – from exercise to men to food to sex and everything in between – she’s turning the page on a whole new life… Despite her efforts to get her act together, she finds herself caught between two men – a man who’s too good to be true, Daniel Cleaver and a man who’s so wrong he could be right, Mark Darcy. Bridget Jones’s Diary is a British cult-classic romantic comedy, and the first film of the iconic trilogy about the misadventures of Bridget Jones: a larger than life, unconventional and utterly endearing heroine.
Watch an official trailer to get the right mood and get used to the accent. This will help you do the tasks better.
When answering the questions
In this part of the Pro Listener challenge, you will have to answer the questions about the videos below. Here are some tips they give for Cambridge exam takers. They can help you deal with the questions better:
- Read the questions and the answers before. This will make you focus on the subject of a conversation and help to make you think in the right direction.
- Pay attention to the keywords in the questions and in the answers. “His family” differs from “her family”.
- Take into consideration that it is a conversation. So, important words might be both in the interviewer’s questions and interviewee’s answers. That is to say, if there’s a question about feelings, focus on what a person explains concerning feelings, not his actions, for example.
- You might hear all the keywords mentioned in the questions and answers. Be careful! You must understand up to what degree each idea in the answer refers to the question. I mean, try to get which is the main one and which is the secondary. If the answers seem similar to you, try to understand which one is wider and includes the rest of the options. It is usually the correct answer. For example, in the sentence “He was a kind person with no bad habits as he neither smoked nor drank alcohol”, the more general idea is that he’s a kind person with no bad habits. The fact he didn’t smoke or drank alcohol is just kind of evidence of it.
Some examples and analyses of how to answer the questions are in my podcast here.
SO WHAT ABOUT BRIDGET?
Task 1
As the film kicks off, Bridget goes to her mother’s, gets acquainted with Mark Darcy and makes the New Year resolutions. Let’s have a closer look at this episode and answer the questions afterwards.
Now it’s time to answer the questions. Don’t haste. Choose the best from similar answers.
Task 2
You are going to watch the episode in which one more time, Bridget is getting ready to go home feeling like an idiot after a night surrounded by married couples questioning her life choices. However, this time Mark Darcy has something to say to her…
Let’s peep into and eavesdrop on their conversation. For the first time, just relax and try to get the keywords.
Now let’s see if you understand well their conversation. Answer the questions below.
You can enjoy the entire film on this website for free.