Middle School
This American Life

Middle School

B2Upper-intermediateSeptember 7, 20261 hr 1 min

As the new school year begins, we have stories from all over the country about people lurching their way through their middle school years – the years when you're figuring out so much. We go to school dances, classrooms, and down to the Mexican border. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription. (00:00:00) Prologue: Host Ira Glass interviews a 14-year-old named Annie, who emailed us asking if we would do a show about middle school. She explains why exactly the middle school years can be so daunting. (4 minutes) (00:05:42) Act One: In an e...

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So we got this email at our radio show near the end of the school year from a 14 year

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B2 · Upper-intermediate

Comfortable if you already follow TV news

A1 46%A2 32%B1 16%B2 5%C1 1%
  • 94% of the words are B1 or easier.
  • 173 words a minute: natural, fairly fast speech.
  • 215 harder words (B2 and up) in the whole episode.

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0:00

Hey everybody, Ira Glass here. So we got this email at our radio show near the end of the school year from a 14 year old. Hello.

0:09

Here's this Annie. Yeah. I called her up at her house in California and asked her to read it. It says, due to this American life, I just escaped the whitewashed, brick walled, iron-gated

0:20

prison that is commonly known as middle school. And I'm finally out for good. But in all the time I have listened to your show, I have never heard an episode devoted to what goes on inside the walls of the middle school.

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