Your English Five a Day #4.4

E101: Five a Day 4.4: Let's unravel the mystery of five unique English terms - "advantage", "jump the gun", "rival", "over and above", and "ambitious" in another fantastic episode of Your English Five a Day. With each term woven into a gripping story, the power of these words will come alive, and before you know it, you're not just learning, but living English.

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Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

Hello, welcome to the English Like a Native podcast. I'm your host, anna, and you're listening to the series your English Five a Day. We are currently on week four, day four. So this series is all about expanding our vocabulary, whether that's becoming more familiar with words and phrases we already know or learning new words and phrases. So I'll give you five new pieces today and then I'll bring everything together at the end in a story so that you get all the vocabulary in context. So let's have a listen to our list. Number one is a verb, and it is to advantage someone or something. So if you advantage someone or something, then you make it more likely to be successful by creating a situation that helps them. Equally, you could disadvantage someone or something by making it harder for them to succeed. So here's an example sentence I'm hoping to advantage my daughter and her language skills by getting her some private lessons. Now, have you recently been advantaged by something? I hope so. Next on our list is an idiom, and it is to jump the gun. To jump the gun it's not a good thing to jump the gun, but I do like the idiom. It always makes me think of athletics. Looking at a racetrack, all the runners on the start line waiting to go, and then the man who's going to start the race with his starting pistol about to fire. But someone quickly starts to sprint because they're anticipating the gun going off and they start running, but they have a false start and that is jumping the gun. So to jump the gun means to do something too quickly without thinking carefully about it beforehand. So you go before the starting pistol has set you off. So it's not a good thing to jump the gun. Here's an example sentence I don't want to jump the gun, but I think they'll give this promotion to me. So in that sentence the person is jumping the gun by assuming that something is going to happen before they know it's going to happen. So they're announcing that they're going to get a promotion and they're setting themselves up mentally to have received a promotion. That may not necessarily be the case. So they are jumping the gun. They don't know the facts, but they're making assumptions, which is always bad. Right, moving on, we have the noun rival, arrival. Arrival is a person or people who are competing against each other for the same thing. So if you and I want the cup of tea, the golden cup of tea, ah, sitting there gloriously on a Monday morning. It's just been brewed. It's perfect Brewed to the perfect temperature, the perfect flavour, with just the perfect amount of milk in it and there's a lovely little chocolate digestive biscuit on the side. That is the prize that both you and I are competing for. You are my rival because we both want that and we're both going to run towards the golden cup of tea and the biscuit. You are my rival and I am your rival. We are rivals. Here's another example sentence my biggest rival in the talent show is the girl who does the Gymnastic Style Dance Act. I really need to do something great to beat her. Okay, moving on from rivals, we have a phrase over and above, over and above, over and above. This means to do something in addition to, or to do more than what is asked for or more than what is expected. So if I expect you to make me a cup of tea and you make me a cup of tea, but then also empty the dryer, fold my laundry and bake a cake and put a slice of cake on a plate for me and bring the cup of tea to me at my desk with a slice of cake and inform me that you've done my laundry for me, then you have definitely gone over and above. That was not needed. All you needed to do was make the tea and you did so much more. Here's another example sentence. My best friend definitely goes over and above when it comes to organising days out. Everything is always perfect. Next on our list and last on our list today is the adjective ambitious Ambitious. I imagine that each and every one of you listening today are ambitious. It means to have a strong wish to be either rich, powerful or successful, or all three of those. Here's an example sentence. I used to be an ambitious person, but as I've grown older, I've realised that family is more important than money. Now I know that each and every one of you are ambitious because I know that you are trying to achieve success in the English language, in learning the English language. Now, that's all of our words and phrases for today. Let's do a quick recap. We had the verb to advantage, to make something more likely to succeed. We had the idiom jump the gun To go too quickly without thinking carefully. We had the noun rival rival, when you're competing against someone for something. We had the phrase over and above. Over and above to do more than what's expected of you. And we had the adjective ambitious to have a strong wish to be rich, powerful or successful, for the sake of pronunciation. Now repeat after me Advantage, jump the gun. Rival Over and above Ambitious, wonderful. Let's bring them all together in a little story. In the competitive fashion industry, lisa, the well-known secretary of Vogue magazine, found herself vying for a promotion against a younger male colleague, george. Her boss had already given her the advantage over him by providing a glowing reference letter. Going over and above her duties, lisa had shown perfect organisational skills and attention to detail, becoming an invaluable asset to the team. However, her ambitious and eager rival jumped the gun by announcing to his family and close friends that he was the chosen candidate. You can imagine the confusion on interview day when Lisa saw a huge congratulations bouquet on George's desk. Had the decision already been made, she thought why would they go ahead with the interview if they'd already awarded the promotion to her rival? There was only one thing that she could do To avoid jumping the gun and, assuming it was all over, she had to ask her employer if George had been given the promotion. So that is exactly what she did. Okay, that's the end of today's episode. I do hope you found today's vocabulary useful. Until next time, take very good care of yourself and goodbye.