Practice listening and speaking English for daily communication – Halloween

Improve your ability to speak English

Halloween (1)

Ghosts, goblins, witches, princes and princesses, kings, queens, skeletons!

So may of these “things” are walking down my street.

“Oh, no! They are coming to my door!”

The doorbell chimes, and I slowly open the door.

There standing on my front porch, is a little ghost and a cute little witch.

They hold up a bag and say, “trick or treat.” I put candy into their bags and they smile and say, “Thank you.” 

Every October 31 is Halloween.

That is when children dress up as different things (not just funny people, but things like animals or fruits or vegetables, etc).

They go from door to door and get different candies or little toys from the people in the houses.

Some children, who are not very nice, will do naughty things to houses where people are not home, like throwing eggs at their windows.

I think that is bad. 

Sometimes people decorate their houses for this day.

Some of the houses can be pretty scary.

They’ll have scary noises coming from a tape recorder, too.

However, it’s only for a few days out of the year, so we may as well have fun with it. 

This year my brother is dressing up as a skeleton, and I’m dressing up as a bride.

I am wearing my mom’s wedding dress.

It is fun dressing up in costumes and putting on lots of makeup.

Sometimes our friends don’t even know who we really are! 

The best part of Halloween is the candy, of course.

I once got an entire garbage bag full of candy.

Mom and Dad took it away because I was eating too much.

Mom gave me a piece of candy every day, though.

If you eat too much candy, you can get a stomach ache.

You need to remember to brush your teeth often, too, so you don’t get cavities.

Still, that candy sure does taste good! 

Well, it’s time to go “trick or treating.”

So off I go, door to door, getting yummy candy and hearing people say, “Oh, aren’t you pretty!”

Halloween (2)

The holiday called Halloween is celebrated on October 31st of each year.

Halloween is not an official holiday.

Everyone goes to work or to school on Halloween, just as on any other day.

But Halloween is still one of the holidays that children like the most. 

Why do children like Halloween so much?

There are two reasons: costumes and candy.

On the evening of October 31st, children dress up in strange and unusual costumes.

They wear costumes that may look like a witch, a monster, or many other weird things.

Putting on these scary costumes is a lot of fun for children. 

After the children put on their costumes, they walk from house to house during the evening.

The children carry large bags with them.

At each house, they stop and knock at the door.

When an adult opens the door, the children shout “trick or treat.”

The adult who opens the door pretends to be frightened, and then puts pieces of candy into each child’s open bag. 

At the end of the evening, the children have visited many houses and have collected much candy.

During the next several days, they can feast upon the sweet candies that they have received. 

Another Halloween tradition is very unusual.

In each house, a family gets a very large, round orange vegetable called a pumpkin.

They cut a hole in the top of the pumpkin, and empty out the flesh and seeds of the vegetable.

Then, they cut holes in the side of the pumpkin, so that it appears to have eyes, a nose, and a mouth.

When the carving is finished, the pumpkin looks almost like a person’s face! 

When the pumpkin has been carved to look like a face, people place a light inside the pumpkin, so that the vegetable seems to glow in the dark.

This strange-looking face is called a “jack-o-lantern.”

On Halloween evening, one can see many of these jack-o-lanterns, some of which are very beautifully carved. 

Halloween is truly a fun and interesting holiday, especially for children!