NA Listening Practice - BBC Podcasts: The five-second rule

Dear students & readers of this blog,

As listening practice for the exam, last week we watched a podcast from the BBC on the so-called 'Five-second rule'. But what is it about?

According to the wikipedia, 'the five-second rule' states that food dropped on the ground will not be significantly contaminated with bacteria if it is picked up within five seconds of being dropped.'

A BBC correspondent gets to work to show how this is a myth. Here's the video. You'll find its corresponding exercise for practice below:

Listening practice. Fill in the gaps:

• We all have been there. You _______    _________late, you are cooking a meal, your child is hungry.
• The five second rule is if they ___________their food I think you’ve got about five seconds  to sort of ________it __________
• I’m gonna ______________the five second rule
• We are gonna drop them on different ___________and see what different types of _________ we can actually detect
• Back on the lab we’ve got three ___________ ready to put them under the microscope
• It’s covered in bacteria and some are __________ bacteria and some of them are not. I _____________ wouldn't eat it.
• Nice fresh fruit no real ___________ surface but still picks up lots of bacteria
• So the moral of the story is if you drop it, __________  it
• So no matter how quickly you pick it up, still going to be ______________

Deeply grateful to my colleague and friend Laura Parrilla, an English teacher at the EOI Constantina (Sevilla), for passing this on to me. Cheers!