Joy English · Level C1 · Short storiesjoy-english.com
The lighthouse keeper's ledger
Name:Date:
Follow a story with relative clauses, reduced clauses and past perfect verbs.
Listen to each sentence and write what you hear.
Audio and answer checking: https://joy-english.com/listening-lessons/the-lighthouse-keepers-ledger
Words to know
- ledger
- A book in which records are written.
- automated
- Changed so that a machine does the work.
- migration
- Regular movement of animals from one place to another.
- battered
- Old and damaged through long use.
Answer key
- For decades, Tomas had logged every passing ship, and every whale, in a battered ledger nobody ever asked to read.The d of 'logged' joins 'every', and 'ledger nobody' has no 'that': the relative pronoun is left out.
- When the port authority finally automated the light, he was told his notes were no longer necessary.'Told his' also leaves out 'that'. 'Authority' stresses the second syllable: au-THO-ri-ty.
- Disappointed but unwilling to complain, he packed the ledger into a crate and carried it down to the village.The opening adjectives describe 'he'. 'Packed' ends in a t sound that runs into 'the': 'pakt-the'.
- Within a week, a young researcher had written to ask whether those entries might explain the changing migration of whales.'Written to' links as 'writ-n-to'. 'Whether' sounds the same as 'weather'; here it introduces an indirect question.
- It turned out that his patient habit of writing things down was worth more than the light itself.'Turned out' means proved to be. 'Habit of writing' links the t and the o: 'habi-tov-writing'.