Escuela Oficial de Idiomas de Motril

Consejera de Educacin

DEPARTAMENTO DE INGLS
C1

Junta de Andaluca

LISTENING COMPREHENSION
E.M. Forster, the author of the story The Road from Colonus, is one of
the great English novelists of the 20th century. This interview with the
BBC was done in 1958. Here you can hear an extract as background
to a little film made in those years, after he had returned to
Cambridge - the university where he had studied in his youth. His
accent is a wonderful example of Public school English
pronunciation. Try to answer the questions. You will watch it three
times.
1. Where, when and how did Forster start writing literature?
2. What regret does he express?
3. What have been his motivations to write?
4. Forster wrote his last and best novel, A Passage to India, in 1924.
Then he stopped writing novels for the rest of his life he died in
1970. Why did he do that?
5. Along with novels, did he stop writing completely?
6. How does he describe his experience of writing?
7. What is his assessment of himself as a novelist? Why?
8. What is his favourite among the novels he wrote, and why?
9. I never preach. If you have a sermon inside you, it quite certain
to come out incidentally What is the point of Forster quoting this
sentence?
10.

What kind of values did he try to convey in his writing?

Escuela Oficial de Idiomas de Motril

Consejera de Educacin
Junta de Andaluca

DEPARTAMENTO DE INGLS
C1