← All listening lessons B2 · 5 minutes · Short stories
The Masque of the Red Death A terrible sickness spreads through the land. Prince Prospero and his friends hide inside his palace and hold a great party. A story by Edgar Allan Poe, adapted for learners.
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What you’ll practise Follow formal descriptions and the past perfect continuous.
Words to know masque A formal party where guests wear masks. feed on To use something as food; here, to destroy slowly. Words at this lesson’s level (B2) At B2, you probably know about 100% of the words in this lesson.
The other words of this lesson are at B2 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 “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe, adapted for VOA Learning English American Stories. Public domain.
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Five sentences selected from the opening and cut into clips. Explanations and vocabulary are original.
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