The Rock in San Francisco Bay — the prison no one was supposed to be able to leave.
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Each new word is hidden in a sentence. Read it aloud and say what you think the bold word means from the rest of the sentence — then reveal it and see how close you were.
Read each part. After it, there's a quick comprehension check (try the questions from memory first), then one thing to discuss.
A mile and a half off the shore of San Francisco sits a small, rocky island the Spanish named for its pelicans: Alcatraz. Cold water surrounds it on every side, and the currents that sweep through the bay are strong, treacherous and bitterly cold. First it held a fort, then a military prison. Then, in 1934, the United States government turned it into something new — a federal penitentiary built for one purpose: to hold the men no other prison could control.
This was the age of the notorious American gangster, and the authorities wanted a place from which escape was simply unimaginable. Alcatraz would be that place. There was one guard for roughly every three prisoners — an extraordinary ratio. The men were counted more than a dozen times a day. Talking was, at first, forbidden. And beyond the walls lay the island's greatest guard of all: the freezing, churning water that everyone reckoned no swimmer could survive.
To fill its cells, the government shipped in its most incorrigible inmates — the escape artists, the troublemakers, the famous. Al Capone, the most powerful gangster in America, arrived in 1934, his empire already broken by a conviction for tax evasion. On The Rock he was just another number, scrubbing floors and, in time, quietly declining. Alcatraz was designed not to reform men but to break the will to resist. For nearly thirty years, its reputation held: no one, the warders insisted, had ever escaped and lived.
1. Why did the US government choose this particular island, and what made it so hard to escape from?
2. Who was the most famous prisoner sent there, and what had brought him down?
1. It sits a mile and a half offshore, ringed by freezing, treacherous currents; it had heavy security, constant head-counts and a very high guard-to-prisoner ratio, so escape seemed impossible.
2. Al Capone, the powerful Chicago gangster, whose empire had already collapsed after he was convicted of tax evasion.
In 1960, a bank robber named Frank Morris arrived at Alcatraz. He was quiet, exceptionally intelligent, and utterly determined never to stay. In a nearby cell block he met two brothers, John and Clarence Anglin, and a fourth man, Allen West. Slowly, patiently, over many months, the four of them built one of the most ingenious escape plans in criminal history.
The weakness they found was the concrete. The walls around the small ventilation grille at the back of each cell had grown damp and soft over the years. Night after night, hidden by the noise of the music hour, the men scraped away at the concrete with spoons stolen from the dining hall and a crude drill made from a stolen vacuum-cleaner motor. Behind the cells ran an unguarded utility corridor, and above it, an open roof space they could use as a secret workshop.
What they built up there was remarkable. From more than fifty stolen raincoats they stitched and glued an inflatable raft and life-vests, using the hot pipes to seal the rubberised seams. They fashioned a pump from a concertina-style musical instrument. And, most famously of all, they made lifelike dummy heads — moulded from soap, toilet paper and cement, painted with flesh tones from the prison art kit, and topped with real human hair collected from the barbershop floor. Each night, a dummy on the pillow would tell the guards, at a glance, that all was well.
1. What weakness in the building did the men exploit, and how did they work at it without being caught?
2. What were the dummy heads made from, and what were they for?
1. The concrete around the ventilation grille at the back of each cell had softened; they scraped it away with spoons and a home-made drill during the noisy music hour, working in a hidden roof space above an unguarded corridor.
2. Soap, toilet paper, cement, paint and real human hair from the barbershop; placed on the pillow, they made the guards believe the men were asleep in their bunks.
On the night of 11 June 1962, the moment finally came. Morris and the two Anglin brothers slipped their dummy heads onto their pillows, squeezed through the widened grilles at the backs of their cells, and climbed to the roof. Allen West, the fourth man, could not free his own grille in time and was left behind — he would later tell investigators everything. The three others lowered themselves down a drainpipe, crossed to the water's edge, inflated their raincoat raft, and pushed off into the black, freezing bay.
And there the trail goes cold. The men were never seen again. In the morning, the fake heads fooled the count just long enough; by the time the alarm was raised, the three were long gone. One of the largest manhunts in the country's history followed, but it found nothing conclusive — no raft on the far shore, no confession, no arrests. Some paddles and a few sealed bags with personal effects were recovered from the water. The FBI concluded that the men had almost certainly drowned in the merciless currents.
But no bodies were ever found, and doubt has never quite gone away. Over the decades, there have been reported sightings, an unsigned letter claiming to be from Morris, and family members who swear the brothers survived. The FBI closed its file in 1979; the US Marshals, remarkably, keep the case open to this day. Alcatraz itself closed in 1963 — too expensive, too crumbling to maintain — leaving behind an empty fortress and a question no one has ever answered: did three desperate men beat the escape-proof prison, or did the water win after all?
1. What happened to the fourth man, and how did the escape unfold on the night of 11 June 1962?
2. Why is the fate of the three escapers still a mystery, and what happened to the prison afterwards?
1. Allen West could not free his grille in time and was left behind. The other three left dummy heads on their pillows, climbed out through the widened grilles to the roof, went down a drainpipe and launched their raincoat raft into the bay.
2. They were never seen again and no bodies were found; the FBI thinks they drowned, but sightings, a disputed letter and family claims keep the doubt alive. The prison closed in 1963 because it was too costly and run-down.
The Alcatraz story lives in its details: how the men worked, how hard the water pulled, and the narrator's judgement that it was all remarkable. That's the work of adverbs and adverbials — the words and phrases that tell us how, how much, and what the speaker thinks. Control them and you control the colour of every sentence.
Read each sentence and name the type of the bold adverb.
1. The concrete was almost soft enough to break with a spoon. →
2. Night after night, they scraped the wall silently. →
3. Remarkably, the fake heads fooled the guards for hours. →
1. degree (how much soft — it modifies "soft enough")
2. manner (how they scraped)
3. comment (the speaker's judgement on the whole idea; note the comma)
Rewrite each sentence, dropping the adverb in brackets into its most natural place. Write the whole corrected sentence.
1. They built the raft from stolen raincoats. (patiently) →
2. The currents were cold and dangerous. (bitterly) →
3. No bodies were ever found. (astonishingly) →
1. They patiently built the raft from stolen raincoats. (or: They built the raft from stolen raincoats patiently — manner adverb after the verb/object)
2. The currents were bitterly cold and dangerous. (degree adverb right before the adjective it strengthens)
3. Astonishingly, no bodies were ever found. (comment adverb at the front, with a comma)
Fill each gap with a suitable adverb of the type named in brackets. Read it aloud once you're done.
Over many months, the men worked (manner) at the softening concrete. The water around the island was (degree) cold, so the swim looked impossible. (comment), three of them slipped away into the dark — and were never seen again.
Sample answers: patiently / quietly / carefully (manner) · bitterly / dangerously / extremely (degree) · Remarkably / Astonishingly / Incredibly (comment).
Any well-chosen adverb of the right type works — check the position: manner after the verb, degree before the adjective, comment at the front with a comma.
Hold on to all three types — you'll need them in the Speak tab, where the right adverb is what turns "they escaped" into "against all odds, they escaped almost silently into the freezing dark."
You've read the story and you have the words — so now the real thing is within reach. There's a full podcast episode that tells this story in much greater depth, in natural, real-speed English. It's optional: the lesson stands on its own without it.
From the Noiser podcast network. Hosted by historians, roughly 50 minutes. It plays in the page on the Noiser site, or search "Short History Of Alcatraz" on Spotify.
Play on Noiser →This is the heart of the lesson — do all of it out loud. The timer is there to keep you going: fill the time with detail rather than escaping it.
Tell the story of Alcatraz in your own words, as if to someone who has never heard of it. Move through the arc: the cold island fortress and its "escape-proof" reputation → the notorious inmates, including Al Capone → Frank Morris, the Anglin brothers and their patient, ingenious plan → the dummy heads and the raincoat raft → the night of the escape and the mystery that has never been solved.
Colour the story with adverbs: use at least one of manner ("they worked patiently"), one of degree ("bitterly cold"), and one comment adverb ("remarkably…"), and work in at least five key words (penitentiary, incorrigible, cell, tunnel, dummy, raft, current, ingenious, mystery).
Alcatraz was built to be impossible to escape — and its whole legend rests on the fact that it may not have been. Should a society try to build a prison no one can ever leave? Build an argument: think about security, cost, human dignity and the purpose of prison itself, and decide where you stand.
The 1962 escape worked because of patience and cleverness, not force. Tell a story — real or well-known — where someone solved an "impossible" problem through slow, ingenious effort. Lean on your adverbs: how they worked (manner), how hard the obstacle was (degree), and your verdict on the outcome (comment).
Stuck for an idea? Pick one of these and run with it: