Ó 3wk74a Telling a story Read the information about Melissa Plaut, a writer and former New York taxi driver, and answer the questions: 1 How did Melissa become a taxi driver? 3 What did she like about becoming a taxi driver? 2 Where can you read about her experiences as a driver? 4 What did she decide to do in 2018? Work in pairs. Use an online dictionary to find words that are similar to those highlighted in the text about Melissa Plaut. Go to Melissa’s blog at http://newyorkhack.blogspot.com or find another taxi driver’s blog e. g. in the UK and read one of the entries. Get into pairs and tell each other about the blog entry. Use as many adjectives as you can to make it interesting. You’re going to read Jessica’s story of an unusual taxi ride in San Francisco. Look at these words and expressions from the story and guess what happened. 1 Reading Hack Melissa Plaut was born in New York in 1975. Working as an author and doing various jobs on the side, she became one of only 400 women among New York’s 40,000 taxi drivers in 2004. “I started driving a cab after losing my boring office job,” says Melissa. “I didn’t want to work in an office again, so I went through the process of getting my hack license. This involved many steps, but my favorite part of it was going to taxi school. It was both educational and highly entertaining. The teachers were brilliant and hilarious, and the students were from all over the world, with all different backgrounds.” She started a blog about her experiences as a taxi driver, newyorkhack.blogspot.com, which quickly became very popular with about 140,000 hits each month. Based on her blog, Melissa wrote Hack: How I Stopped Worrying about What to Do with My Life and Started Driving a Yellow Cab, which was published in 2007. In New York, ‘hack’ is slang for taxi, or taxi driver. Her book is partly the story of an adventurous New York woman seeking a meaningful career, and partly a story of the people who live (and ride) in the city. In the meantime Melissa has written for several famous magazines. In 2018 she moved to rural Georgia, which was quite a change from life in busy New York. She shared her experiences on Twitter. 2 a Vocabulary Synonyms b 3 Grammar Past progressive a step on the brakes cover expenses Bair Island under the seat young business people dog broken leg hurry a mobile phone the airport 82 7 Unit Safe and healthy Goals describe past events tell a story talk about accidents and injuries talk about present habits explain how something happened write a blog entry Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv
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