500 Days of Summer

Intro

1. Learn Vocabulary - Learn some new vocabulary before you start the lesson.

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• play that card
• fear of commitment
• dead inside
• bright-eyed and bushy-tailed

• cheesy
• hopeless romantic
• connect with
• genetically engineered

• roll
• weapons-grade

2. Read and Prepare - Read the introduction and prepare to hear the audio.

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Most romantic comedies begin with a couple meeting, go on to show them falling in love, and end with a wedding. It’s an old formula that some find perfectly adorable and others consider cheesy and unrealistic.

But the new movie 500 Days of Summer isn’t a typical romantic comedy. It begins with a break up, and then goes back in time to show what went wrong in the couple’s relationship. The male lead in the film is a hopeless romantic, but the girl is skeptical about love. She doesn’t think that true love really exists. For her, typical romantic comedies are just fantasies.

Some people think 500 Days of Summer is a realistic look at modern relationships. Find out if Mason and Ella think the movie does a good job of portraying love in the 21st century.

Dialog

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2. Study - Read the dialog again to see how the vocab words are used.

Ella

Mason

Ella:  So, 500 Days of Summer, it looks like something you can really connect with now.

Mason:  That movie was basically genetically engineered to be lovable. Right? You take Zooey Deschanel, who’s like weapons-grade cuteness.

Ella:  Yeah, it’s true.

Mason:  And Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who is pretty adored. But he’s also a really serious actor, you know. But you can kind of tell he was just gonna play that likable card.

Ella:  And it talks about, you know, love in the 21st century. How there’s fear of commitment.

Mason:  Right. You know, it’s this typical thing, like guy who’s way sentimental, and he fell in love with someone and then got his heart broken. And he’s kinda trying to figure things out after that. It’s one of the universal tales.

Ella:  I mean, do you think it’s right to be skeptical about love, like the female character that Zooey plays?

Mason:  I’m dead on the inside, so yeah. Generally that’s my first instinct. But there was a time when I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

Ella:  A hopeless romantic?

Mason:  Hopeless. Very, very hopeless. I wrote poetry. You know, I did that. I rolled that way. It’s not a proud moment for me.

 

Grammar Point

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Quizzes

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Lesson MP3

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