B1 · 5 minutes · History

John Adams: Second

John Adams was the second U.S. president. He was smart and honest, but he also had a quick temper. A VOA Learning English report.

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What you’ll practise

Understand contrasts and past habits in a biography.

Words to know

temper: The tendency to become angry.
unrest: Anger and protest in a country.
attend: To go to a school or an event.

Words at this lesson’s level (B1)

At B1, you probably know about 97% of the words in this lesson.

The other words of this lesson are at B1 or below.

Word levels from the CEFR-J Wordlist 1.5 (Yukio Tono, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies); words not in it count as above B2. Your level is the one you chose in the level guide, otherwise the lesson’s.

Source

Text and audio from “John Adams: Second”, America's Presidents, VOA Learning English, published 2023-03-04. Anne Ball and Kelly Jean Kelly wrote this story. Public domain.

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Five sentences selected from the report and cut into clips. Explanations and vocabulary are original.

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