Neil Armstrong (American English, A2-B1)

This mini-biography graded ESL lesson is about the American astronaut and first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong. This lesson is designed for students A2 and slightly higher levels of English. Transcript: Neil Armstrong was born in 1930, in Ohio, in the United States. He was always interested in planes and flying. He learned how to fly a plane before he could drive a car! After high school, he went to college and joined the US Navy as a pilot. In the 1950s, the United States and the Soviet Union were in a race to send the first person into space. In 1961, the Soviets were winning when Yuri Gagarin traveled around the Earth. The US space agency NASA wanted to beat that by sending astronauts to the Moon. Neil Armstrong joined NASA in the 1960s and learned how to fly a spacecraft. His first trip into space was in 1966. In 1969, NASA was planning a Moon landing, with three astronauts in the crew: Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. On July 16th, 1969, Neil Armstrong and the other astronauts left Earth in the Apollo 11 spacecraft to travel 236,121 miles (380,000km) to the Moon. It took four days. When they arrived, Michael Collins stayed in the main part of the spacecraft in orbit around the Moon while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin flew a smaller part of the spacecraft to the Moon. Neil left the spacecraft first and stepped onto the Moon, saying "That&one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind." The whole world was watching on television....