Predicting the Future | English Listening Training | English Listening Podcast
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Hi, everybody. This is Amy from Real English Conversations, and I'm here with Curtis. Hi, everybody. And today, we're going to tell you all about how you can predict your future or tell fortunes. So there's four main or common ways that people tell fortunes in American culture. What are they? They are palm reading, tarot cards, tea leaves, and astrology. All right. All right.

And there are some less known ways, which I found today when I was on Wikipedia learning a little bit about fortune telling. And I thought that I would talk about them. So the first one is rooster's pecking grain.

Which I imagine is just a plate maybe in front of the rooster and he eats his food. And then after there's a pattern and it's interpreted somehow. Right. Another one, a little bit more gruesome, is reading the livers of sacrificed animals. Ooh, yeah. Yeah.

That sounds like something from the medieval days. Yeah, definitely. And the last one, which is the most disgusting of all, is reading animal poop.

I don't know whose animal poop they're reading or how you become an expert in that, but it's definitely not a profession that I want. Sounds gross. Yes. So why don't you tell us a little bit about palm reading? Okay. Palm reading is a way of telling your future or your past story.

depending on the lines and designs in the palm of your hand. And there's many of them. There's a lifeline, a loveline, so many of them. I can't remember all of them. But yeah, based on the length or the size or the shape of these patterns, that would explain what has happened in your past or what could be happening in your future. Mm-hmm.

And the next one is tarot cards. Yeah. So with tarot card reading, what happens is if you're having your fortune being told, you have the deck of cards and you shuffle them and mix them up a bit. And then you put the deck together, cut the deck at whatever point you want, which is just separating the deck into two. Yeah. And then you hand it to the person who's reading your cards. Yeah.

They lay out the cards in some sort of order, and they are based on the symbols or the characters that are on these cards. They're going to determine your future or your fortune. Based on the different images. That's right.

And I think the next one is really good for Curtis to explain because it's about tea leaf reading. And this is something that I can remember his mom doing during special occasions like Christmas or Thanksgiving after dinner when we were drinking tea. Yeah. So...

How does it go? Well, it's a special way of preparing tea. Obviously, it's loose leaf tea, so it's not from a tea bag. The tea leaves are floating around in the pot. Yeah. Because you want to make sure that they get into the cup, right? Right. So when it's poured, the leafs

or the leaves will fall into the cup. And you normally leave a bit of tea in the bottom of your cup and swirl it around. And then you turn it over and...

After you turn it over, you turn it three times in a certain direction. Like on the saucer. On the saucer. Turning it with the cup upside down, going one, two, three for turns. Yeah. And then you turn the cup back over again, so it's right side up. Then our famous tea leaf reader, Marilyn. She even had a book.

Yeah, to be able to identify the different shapes. And she knew, I can't remember what it was, but I think if it's close to the rim of the cup, it was happening sooner. Or if it was close to the handle of the cup. Yeah, you look into the cup and you'll see different patterns. And, you know, like I think she saw a rooster or a tree or something like that. Maybe a heart. I don't know. Yeah.

And yeah, your future or things, once again, that have happened in your past are revealed through those patterns. I think the patterns are for the future, though. Because we're talking about, no, all of them. We're talking about predicting your future, not the past. True, true. So anyway, that's about tea leaf reading. Right. And what is astrology about? Astrology.

Okay. Astrology is about different signs that are based on the planets and the stars, the sun, the moon, and your birthday as well. All right. And...

Depending on your birth date particularly, there's something that you'll see. It's called a horoscope, and they're published often in newspapers. And depending on what your zodiac sign is, you have a horoscope, which is a prediction of how your day is going to go. So what are the 12 zodiac signs? There are 12 zodiac signs, and they are Aquarius,

Pisces, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, and Capricorn. And which sign are you? I am a Virgo, but I am on what is called the cusp. So my birthday falls on the last day of Virgo.

but the next day of Libra is the day after my birthday.

So sometimes Curtis's horoscope is more accurate for Libra, and sometimes it's more accurate to Virgo. Because you can imagine if you were born on September 22nd at 11 p.m. at night, you're only one hour away from the next zodiac sign, which is Libra. So in theory, you should have personality tendencies or your personality

Locke, if you pay attention to these things and believe it, would be more of a Libra influence. And you are a Gemini. I am a Gemini, which is supposed to be the dual personality. So I don't know. I think I'm really, really nice most of the time, but I can definitely be mean and evil from time to time. Really? Yeah.

Curtis pretends he never sees it. Anyway, how about you read our forecast or our horoscope for today? Okay, I'm going to start with yours. And yours is, let me just bring this up here. Here we go. Brainstorming with other people could lead to incredible solutions. And if you're a Gemini who is a business person,

That requires a lot of creative energy. It will blossom today. Oh, that sounds like a good day for me to do some business work and hopefully be successful and talk to some people. And what's your horoscope? Mine for today? Is this Virgo or Libra? This is Virgo. Okay, so your real horoscope for today. My real actual horoscope, yeah.

An intense emotional dream could move you so powerfully that you wake with the odd sense that the dream was real. Write it down, Virgo. Efforts to overcome obstacles and advance yourself in your career could finally be paying off.

Wow. That's actually interesting because in that list of ways of predicting the future, there was one that was based on dreams. So maybe you should write down whatever your dream was last night and then we should find a dream reader and then you'll know even more about your future. That's exciting. Yeah. So astrology, I actually had a period of time where I was really interested in astrology and I had this book, which was...

I think it was called The Only Astrology Book You'll Ever Need. And it was pretty thorough. It was like a textbook with 300 pages or something. It was huge. I remember it was a really big book. And it factored all of the aspects of astrology down to the time that you were born.

So if you were born at 11 o'clock on this day and this year, I guess the sun was in this position and the moon was in that position and some planet was flying around the universe. It had different influences on you. And after you had calculated everything, you read a couple of different pages and it described in detail about your character and

your personality, your tendencies, the habits that you have, the things that you like or you don't like.

Really in a lot of detail. And the first time that I seen this book was actually a friend of mine. And I was blown away with its accuracy. I thought it was probably 90% accurate. But not vague like these horoscopes. These could be applicable for anybody. Like you could have a powerful brainstorming day. I could. And I could have had a strange dream that I should write down. Right.

But this book that you're talking about, it was more accurate. It was almost like you wrote about it. Yeah, wrote about myself. And if I gave my horoscope to you and said, this is yours, and just changed the title at the top, you'd be like, well, this isn't like me at all. But his was actually really, really accurate as well, especially because he was on the cusp. It was more of a...

instead of the blend or having to read one and then read the other one because it was down to the day.

Yeah.

But what would be really cool is if you could leave us a comment below telling us what your zodiac sign is. And if you don't know, just type into Google zodiac sign and it'll have a set of dates and you just need to determine which day your birthday falls on. Yeah. And then you'll know what your zodiac sign is. And maybe you can do some English reading practice. Yeah.

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