Learn English #8 Intermediate | •Advanced

Read the newspaper story below, and then answer the questions that follow it.

2B OR NT 2B?

Literary classics have been condensed into text messages as a study aid for students.

The Complete Works of Shakespeare – including Hamlet's "To be or not to be" speech – Milton's Paradise Lost and Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales have all been abbreviated.

Charles Dickens' Bleak House and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice have also been cut down to size.

Milton's Paradise Lost becomes: "Devl kikd outa hevn coz jelus of jesus&strts war. pd'off wiv god so corupts man(md by god) wiv apel. devl stays serpnt 4hole life&man ruind. Woe un2mnkind."

The translation, approved by Professor John Sutherland, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, read: "The devil is kicked out of heaven because he is jealous of Jesus, and starts a war. He is angry with God and so corrupts man (who is made by God) with an apple. The devil remains as a serpent for the whole of his life and man is ruined. Woe unto mankind."

Professor Sutherland, chairman of this year's Man Booker Prize, says the service "amply demonstrates text's ability to fillet out the important elements in a plot".

He went on: "Take the ending to Jane Eyre, 'MadwyfSetsFyr2Haus'. Was ever a climax better compressed?

"You can shrink the whole five-act text of Hamlet into a few thousand characters serving as an aide-memoire, enabling you to back-translate into the original's golden syllables.

"Some may argue Dickens is too big a morsel to be swallowed by text, but he started work as a shorthand writer and would, I suspect, have approved of the brevity if nothing else."


• Text from Ananova.com

Reading comprehension

True or false?

    true false
1. The texts are intended to help students remember the stories.
2. Milton wrote The Canterbury Tales and Jane Austen wrote Bleak House.
3. In the text message translations, a is an abbreviation of of.
4. Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice has not been condensed.
5. Professor Sutherland is happy with the result of the abbreviations.
       

 

Exercises

1. Phrasal verbs with 'cut' Use the words below to complete the phrasal verbs in these sentences.

across, back, down, in, through, off, out, up

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2. More exercises
You will find more exercises relating to this text in the Intermediate section:

What do you think?

Do you think that condensing literary classics into text messages is a useful aid to students? Do you ever use summaries or abbreviations to help you remember things? What other ways are there of helping you to remember texts or information? What about condensed novels? Would you ever read one?

 

More exercises

 


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