Joy English · Level C2 · Short storiesjoy-english.com
The cartographer who erased the sea
Name:Date:
Follow a literary narrative with long, balanced sentences.
Listen to each sentence and write what you hear.
Audio and answer checking: https://joy-english.com/listening-lessons/the-cartographer-who-erased-the-sea
Words to know
- cartographer
- A person who draws maps.
- distrust
- To not trust something.
- consoling
- Comforting someone who is sad.
- hovered
- Stayed in the air without touching anything.
Answer key
- The old cartographer had spent so many decades charting coastlines that he had come to distrust anything he could not measure.Hear the weak forms in “had come to”. The phrase “so many decades that” links a cause to its result.
- Only when a storm swallowed his final survey did he admit that the sea had never once consented to being drawn.“Only when” at the start forces inversion: “did he admit”, not “he admitted”.
- His apprentice, far from consoling him, simply handed him a blank sheet and a pencil worn down to a stub.“Far from consoling him” means the opposite of consoling. The commas mark a pause around it.
- Not a single line did he commit to the page for an entire week, though his hand hovered more than once.Another inversion after “not a single line”. “Commit to the page” means to actually write or draw.
- On the eighth morning he sketched a wave, smudged it with his thumb, and, for the first time in years, laughed.“Eighth” ends in a t followed by th, a tricky cluster before “morning”. Listen for the three actions: sketched, smudged and laughed.