고등학교 공통영어2 (미래엔 김성연) 연계 글

March 8

Today I began volunteering at our neighborhood library, where volunteers read books into a microphone for neighbors who have trouble seeing print. The librarian asked me to record the third chapter of a mystery novel for a neighbor named Mr. Gil. When she handed me the book, a college student had already recorded the first two chapters during the winter vacation. She advised me to read each page aloud once before recording it. However, I was eager to finish, so I skipped that step and stumbled over almost every name.

March 22

When I played my first recording, I hardly recognized my rushed, nervous voice. This time I practiced first and recorded the whole chapter again. Near the end, the detective joked about his own terrible cooking, and I burst out laughing. I was too tired to record that page a third time, so I left my laugh in the file.

April 5

When I arrived, a card with my name on it was waiting on the desk. Mr. Gil had called the librarian and asked her to write it for him. "Your third chapter was a gift," it said, "and my favorite moment in it was not in the book." He also encouraged me to give each character a different voice, so I practiced a low, slow voice for the detective.

April 19

Today I finally met Mr. Gil, who came to the library with his grown daughter. He told me that he had read the same novel aloud to her when she was a child. That meant he already knew the whole plot. When I asked why he wanted a new recording, he explained that he had always been the reader in his family and that this time he wanted to be the listener.

May 3

This afternoon I recorded the last chapter, in which the detective caught the thief. When I told my mother, she confessed that she had expected me to quit within a month. In March, I thought my job was to deliver a story to someone who could not read it. However, my listener already knew the story; what he wanted was someone to share it with. By the last page, I wanted the same thing.