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GENERAL ENGLISH · ENGLISH IN VIDEO · UPPER-INTERMEDIATE (B2-C1)

PET
TALK
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1 Warm up
Look at the pictures and match the words with how the animals are feeling.

1. Do you think pets have more complicated feelings and ideas than these to tell us?
2. How can we learn to communicate with our cats and dogs?

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PET TALK

2 Watch a video

Dog owner Alexis Devine communicates with her dog Bunny in a surprising way. Watch the video
(00:00-02:05) and then answer the questions.

1. How long has Devine had Bunny?

2. What was Devine’s goal when she got Bunny?

3. How does Bunny communicate with Devine?

4. How old was Bunny when she began to learn how to do this?

5. What are three types of things that Bunny can talk about?

6. Is Devine sure that Bunny can really use language? Why/not?

3 Language in context

Read these sentences from the video and put the words in bold in the right order to make common
informal expressions. Explain what these expressions mean.

1. My goal before bringing Bunny home was to have the most connected relationship possible with
her, and dream / of / that’s / the / sort for us to be able to communicate
with our animals in that way.

2. I think a lot of it feels like ego, be / honest / perfectly / to . We

want to hear our dogs say things that we know they’re feeling or that we assume they’re feeling,
but we want to hear it in our language.

3. for / greatest / I / would love / takeaway / the to be not that our

dogs can talk, but that they’ve already been saying it all along and we just haven’t been listening.

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4 Vocabulary

Complete these sentences from the video with the correct form of the word in brackets. You may
need to add suffixes.

1. Bunny is a very (think) dog, talking constantly with her (express).

2. My sense is that it’s (enrich) for her, just another way to (strong)
and (deep) our bond.

3. I’ve always considered myself a (hope) sceptic ...

4. ... a lot of the experts that I’m talking to now are saying that it does seem to be
(receive) and (express) language.

What do you think sceptic means?

Are you sceptical about Bunny’s abilities or do you think Bunny is really communicating with Devine?

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PET TALK
5 Reading
Read more about the project that Bunny and Devine are taking part in. Choose the best form of the
words 1-10 to complete the article.
If only they could talk
The project that’s helping pets and owners to communicate
1. Many people have been following the Sheepadoodle
Bunny and her owner Alexis Devine on social media
and (1) marvellous / marvelling at the bond they
share, but these people may not realise that the
pair are just one of several thousand taking part
in a serious large-scale research project at the
Comparative Cognition Lab at the University of
California San Diego. The They Can Talk research
project was inspired by the work of speech and
language (2) specialist / speciality Christine Hunger,
who first designed a set of speaking buttons for
her own dog in 2018, based on her professional
experience of using these devices to help human
patients with language problems.
2. (3) Participaters / Participants in the They Can Talk
project receive detailed instructions about how to
use the buttons and are requested to film their pets
interacting with them. Researchers also visit them at
home to (4) authentic / authenticate the data. Pets
start off with one or two buttons and gradually build
up their "vocabulary" - Bunny uses 78 buttons. The
buttons are organised into categories which include
social words like Love you and Hi, verbs like play and
help, places like outside and bed and descriptors like
more or later.
3. Researchers are interested in seeing how many
animals can go beyond merely asking for food or
attention. They are hopeful of finding evidence that
pets are using language in a similar way to humans,
ie sharing emotions and referring to memories of
previous events. Some of Bunny’s videos on social
media would convince even a (5) hardened / hardly
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sceptic that she is really using language. She seems
to be as expressive as a human toddler - she has
requested play dates with other dogs and asked
for help when she hurt her paw. Even more (6)
remarkable / remarkably is that Bunny has told
Devine about a dream, or "night talk sleep" where she
saw a "stranger animal."
4. Most of the animals taking part in They Can Talk are
dogs, but a small number of horses and cats are
also involved. Cat owner Kendra Baker decided to
(7) enrolment / enrol her thirteen-year-old cat Billi
after watching online videos of dogs "speaking." Cats
certainly have a (8) reputation / reputable for being
less sociable than dogs, but they are receptive to the
idea of using the buttons to share their thoughts and
feelings. Billi uses fifty buttons, but her messages
are mostly single words. Baker says that if Billi does
put words together, she is very thoughtful about her
(9) selection / selective of buttons. Baker reports
that Billi has been much happier since they joined
the project and suggests that this is because many
housecats are bored and depressed and enjoy the
(10) stimulant / stimulation.
5. Some people are attracted to taking part in the
project because they are keen to deepen scientific
understanding of animal psychology. Others are
seeking to strengthen their emotional connection
with their pets or enrich their animals’ day-to-day
lives. However, considering that this project really
started to take off during the pandemic, the takeaway
here may be that it’s the owners who were bored and
depressed in lockdown, rather than the pets.
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PET TALK

6 Reading comprehension
Answer these questions according to the information in the article. Explain in your own words as
much as possible.

1. What’s the history behind the project that Devine and Bunny are part of?

2. How do researchers make sure that the information they receive from pet owners is accurate?

3. What are two ways to use language that researchers consider “human-like”?

4. How well do you think Bunny’s use of language fits this definition?

5. How do Bunny and Billi use the buttons differently?

6. How many reasons are given for people wanting to take part in the They Can Talk project? In your
opinion, which do you think explains why most people signed up?

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PET TALK

7 Final activity

Choose one of these activities.

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PET TALK

8 Optional extension

What do you think these animals are thinking or saying? Write a caption for each picture. Share your
ideas with the class to find the best one.

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