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Nov 16

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Madonna performs ‘Like a Prayer’ in tribute to Paris at Stockholm concert

At her Stockholm concert, Madonna paid an emotional tribute to the victims of the terror attacks in Paris and sang one of her classic hits, ‘Just Like a Prayer’. Let’s listen to the song and what she had to say, and do an interactive quiz to practice listening.

 

For A2/B1 and lower B2 levels: Scroll down and print the the script. Read it as you listen to the video. Mark the words that were hard for you to understand and listen again to train your ears to ‘hear’ those words better.

 

INTERACTIVE LISTENING QUIZMadonna: Just Like a Prayer

When you are done, click “View Questions” to see the correct answers.

Here it goes!

 

Here is the script of what Madonna said in tribute to the victims of the attack:

 

“So, we have been, … obviously this whole show is about celebrating life and standing up for (= fight for) your rights, fighting for what you believe in. We, yeah actually, I don’t need my guitar for this, because it’s been very hard for me to get through this show up to this point and not forget about what happened last night so I need to take this moment to acknowledge the tragedy, the tragic killings, assassinations (=killings) and the senseless ending of precious (=very valuable) lives (= noun: life, lives) that occurred last night in Paris. I know it’s disturbed me all day and it’s been really hard actually to get through the show because in many ways I feel I feel torn (=very sad). Like why am i up here and dancing and having fun when people are crying over the loss of their loved ones.

However, that is exactly what these people want to do, they want to shut us up, they want to silence us, and we won’t let them we will never let them! Because there is power in unity and I do believe that as much chaos and senseless violence and terrorism that occurs around this world, not just in Paris, as much as that does occur, there is more goodness in this world (=there is a lot of violence, but there is still more goodness than bad). We are here to prove it. I was going to cancel my show tonight but then I thought to myself why should I give that to them? Why should I allow them to stop me and to stop us from enjoying freedom? All of the places where people were killed were places where people were having fun, people were enjoying themselves eating in restaurants, dancing, singing, watching a soccer match. These are freedoms that we take for granted (=think that they are normal), of course, and we must not, but they’re freedoms that we deserve. We work hard and we deserve (=should have the chance to do something) to have fun and there’s no one in this world that should have the right to stop us from doing what we love!

Another important point that I want to make is that yes, there are people who have no respect for human life and there are people that do atrocious (= horrible), degrading, unforgivable things to other human beings, but we will never ever ever change this world that we live in if we do not change ourselves, if we do not change the way we treat one another on a daily basis (= every day). Yes, the way we change the world is not is not to elect another president, not to kill a hundred more people. The way we change the world is that we change the way we treat one another on a daily basis in the simplest ways. Ok, we must start treating every human being with dignity and respect and this is the only thing that will change the world this is the only thing. Only love will change the world but it’s very hard to love unconditionally, and it’s very hard to love that which we do not understand, that which is different than we are but we have to or this will go on and on forever now before we do go on. I would like to have a moment of silence we’re all of us for just one minute bow our heads in respect and say a prayer (=talk to God) for the victims who died last night in Paris and for the families of those victims, please a moment of silence.”

 

Image credit: Madonna/Wikipedia

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Permanent link to this article: http://www.euenglish.hu/2015/11/madonna-performs-like-a-prayer-in-tribute-to-paris-at-stockholm-concert/

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