Your English Five a Day #51.2

🎙️ E403 of The English Like A Native Podcast.
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Transcript

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Hello and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast. My name is Anna and you're listening to Week 51, Day 2 of Your English Five a Day. This is the series that gives you a healthy, daily dose of English vocabulary so that you can improve your English skills and confidence. So, let's kick off today's episode with the noun format, format. Yes, we had this yesterday, but today's version is slightly different. We spell this F O R M A T, and this version is the way in which information is arranged and stored on a computer. So, for example, if I need to send an audio file to you, you might request a specific format. I obviously work with a lot of video and some software will not accept certain formats. I may need to provide an MP4 format rather than an MOV format, for example. And there's nothing worse than getting that message on the computer. The error message saying this format is not supported. Oh no! Here's another example,"The DVD format allows for higher video quality than traditional CDs." Does anyone still have CDs and DVDs? I do. I have a drawer full of CDs and DVDs that I just don't want to let go of, but I don't have anything to play them on. So, it seems quite silly storing them when I can't use them. Next on the list, we have the phrasal verb pick up. This is a separable phrasal verb. To pick something up. Pick, P I C K. Up, U P. Pick up. To pick something up means to learn a new skill or language by practising it rather than being taught it. So, you do it rather than being told how to do it. You just start to work with it and you slowly pick it up. Here's an example,"Claudia managed to pick up some basic Spanish while travelling through South America, even though she never took any formal lessons." I've been working quite a lot with my eldest son, teaching him phonics and how to read and how to write. And my youngest son, who is three, who would normally be starting to learn about letters and numbers, he knows all of his numbers. He can count up to about 40. He also knows all of his letters and can read three or four-letter words quite easily, and he has simply picked it up by listening and observing lessons that I've been doing with my eldest son. Next on the list is the verb clutter, clutter. We spell this C L U T T E R, clutter, clutter. To clutter is to fill something in an untidy or badly organised way. I often clutter my desk with a million notes: post-it notes, random pieces of paper that I've just grabbed in the middle of lessons or while working or watching something and I scribble notes and I stick them everywhere and then I, I just ignore them. They're not very helpful to be honest, because I make such a mess that I don't really see the individual notes that I've written for myself. And then when I want something, when I know I've written something important somewhere, I can never find it. Here's another example,"Don't let unnecessary papers and books clutter your desk; it's harder to focus when your workspace is messy." Yes, there we go. I should take a leaf out of my own book. I should practise what I preach. Okay, next on the list is the verb grin, grin. G R I N. To grin is to smile a wide smile. It means that you're really, really pleased about something. Here's an example sentence,"Her husband looked at her and grinned, excited to share the good news." Last, on the list, we have another verb, and it's the opposite of grin, it is frown, frown. We spell this F R O W N. Frown. To frown is to make a serious, angry or worried expression, usually by bringing your eyebrows close together so that lines appear on your forehead, and you might turn down the corners of your mouth. Hm. To frown. Here's an example sentence,"She frowned with concentration as she tried to understand the instruction manual." When my partner told me that he would be going out for drinks with his friends instead of coming home to relieve me of childcare duty when I'm supposed to be going to play a squash match, I frowned in dismay. Yes, I was very upset about that. I was very upset with him. When was the last time you frowned? And was it a justified frown? Okay, that's our five for today. Let's do a quick recap. We started with the noun format. In this particular case, we're talking about the way in which information is arranged and stored via a computer. Then we had the phrasal verb pick something up, which is to learn a skill or a language through doing, through experience rather than through specific instruction. We had the verb clutter, which is to fill something in an untidy way. We had the verb grin, which is to smile, a really wide smile. And we had the verb frown. Which is to make a very serious, angry, or worried expression on your face. Okay, so that's our five. Let's do this now for pronunciation purposes. Please repeat after me. Format. Format. Pick something up. Pick up. Clutter. Clutter. Grin. Grin. Frown. Frown. Very good. What is the noun that I would use if I was asking you how you would like information to be stored and sent over to you? What noun would I use? Format. Yes. What format would you like that in? And if I walk into your office and I can see that everything is quite untidy and disorganised, I'd say to you,"Why have you filled your office in such an untidy and disorganised way?" No, I wouldn't say that. I would use a better verb rather than saying,"Why have you filled your office?" What could I say?"Why have you cluttered your office in this way? You can't work like this. You need to clean this place up." And if in response to that very direct question and observation, you make a very serious expression to show me that you're unhappy with me, what verb would I use here? What are you doing? You are frowning at me, and rightly so. And to try and show you that I'm just joking with you, I might smile a really wide smile. What verb could we use instead of smile? Grin, I might just grin at you and try to change the subject and tell you that I am really pleased with myself because I've managed to learn how to play the guitar and I haven't even taken any lessons. What phrasal verb could I use here? Pick up. I picked up the guitar. Yeah, I managed to pick up the guitar and haven't had any lessons. Aren't I fabulous? Okay, let's listen out for our five, once again, in today's storytime. Margaret, an 82-year-old grandmother, sat at her new computer, frowning at the screen. Her grandchildren had insisted she learn to use email and digital photos."It will be fun, Gran!" they'd said. But right now, it felt anything but fun. She'd managed to take some lovely pictures with her new digital camera. The tricky part came when trying to share them. Her grandson wanted them in one format while her granddaughter needed another for a school project."What in the world is a format anyway?" Margaret muttered, clicking through folders. She found the photos easily enough, but when she tried to attach them to an email, an error message popped up."File format not supported," it read. Margaret sighed, feeling lost in this new digital world. Determined not to give up, she called her tech-savvy neighbour, Tom. He explained that the format is like a language for computers, which tells the computer how to read and display the information in a file. With Tom's help, Margaret learned about JPEGs, PNGs, and other common image formats. She discovered how to convert files from one format to another using simple online tools. As the weeks passed, Margaret grew more confident and even picked up some more digital skills by experimenting. She could now resize photos and even do basic editing. She was so into taking and sharing photos that hundreds of images cluttered her computer's desktop! One day, while sharing photos of her prize-winning roses, Margaret realised she was actually enjoying this new skill. Editing and sharing images no longer seemed like an obstacle, but rather an interesting puzzle to solve."Who knew," she chuckled to herself,"that at my age, I'd become a digital image expert?" She grinned and clicked'Send' on another email, sharing her digital world with those she loved. And that brings us to the end of today's episode. If you did enjoy it, then please take a moment to leave a like if you're watching on YouTube. If you haven't yet discovered the YouTube channel, where you can read and listen all at the same time, then click on the link below and make sure to subscribe. Until tomorrow, take very good care and goodbye.