S02 - 1 Celebrations

Hey guys, before we start with today's English lesson, I wanted to quickly tell you about something that's really been helping me improve my own language skills lately. I've been using I-Toki to book one-on-one classes with real teachers, and honestly, I love it. What I like most is that you can choose a teacher that really fits what you need, whether that's your budget, their teaching style, or even the accent you want to learn from. I've personally been using it to practice more natural conversation and build confidence in speaking. I chose a teacher with similar interest to me, which helps a lot, and is another excellent feature of the platform. You can see what the different teachers are interested in and pick the right one for you. So instead of studying by yourself, you're actually speaking regularly with someone who can correct you, slow down, explain things naturally, and help you sound more like a real person and less like a textbook. The classes are private, super easy to schedule, and there's no subscription, you just pay per lesson. If learning English with I-Toki sounds interesting to you, you can sign up for free using the link in the show notes, and with the code "real" English, you'll get five euros off your first class of at least 10 euros, but only for the first 50 people, so don't wait too long. I only recommend tools I genuinely like and use myself, and if you sign up through my link, you're also supporting my podcast. Why not give it a go? Season 2, episode 1, celebrations. Hello and welcome to Real Exam English, season 2. Firstly, thank you so much to everyone who downloaded and subscribed to the podcast in season 1, and also thanks to everyone who sent me messages to say that you enjoyed the podcast. That's our really lovely and greatly appreciated. Thank you so much. Okay. So season 2 is going to be similar to season 1. We have speakers from all over the English speaking world answering exam questions, and we will pick out the best bits to analyze. We're going to have some dialogues to this season, so we'll get some nice language to use when interacting with someone, agreeing, disagreeing, making suggestions, that kind of stuff. This first episode is about celebrations. It's a new year. It's definitely going to be better than last year, so hopefully we'll all have lots to celebrate. So you're going to hear some super vocabulary to describe partying and enjoying yourself. We have some nice phrasal verbs, and that's a great real English idioms. So let's go with the questions. Which do you prefer celebrations with family or with friends? I'm going to go with friends on this one. My family is quite small, and I'd like to go out like if I'm going to. Have a proper party. I like to be a bunch of friends. I like to go out, have some drinks, have some fun, and catch up with people that I haven't seen in a long time. That's how I like to celebrate. Obviously, family being there is cool as well. Just a phrasal verb to pick up on here, and that's to catch up with friends. So to catch up with someone means to talk to someone you haven't seen for some time in order to find out what they have been doing. So for example, you could say, "Oh, I haven't seen you in ages. Let's catch up over a beer." Is there an event in your hometown you particularly enjoy? I don't know. We. I feel like we have had no events because it's been 2020. So there's been no events. And normally there's lots of stuff that goes on around us. We have my town, Queen Pian, has a really lovely multicultural festival, which is quite small, I guess. But it means it. It's really friendly and it's really easy to be around. So that's a really good one. What special occasions have you celebrated recently? Well, Christmas. We've just been actually really lovely this year. Very different. We normally spend it with my parents and instead we just had it the five of us. We went to a club that did all the food and that was really fun. It's also been my six year old's birthday and that was a great birthday party. We went to a local skate park and did barbecue dinner for friends and family and that was really fun. Do you like organising parties? I do actually. I really like playing host. I get very nervous that no one will turn up. But I do like organising parties and I probably am a bit more slack dash than I would like to be. But I love to be able to invite people and make them feel welcome and to have nice food and hang out with friends and family. So yeah, I like organising parties. Lovely Australian accent there. The first thing to comment on is the use of the word really. So we heard really lovely, really friendly, really easy, really good, really fun. All of these are correct but it's not really showing much variety to the examiner. So alternatives you can use are very friendly, grace, great fun. Something a bit fancier, remarkably or extremely, it's extremely easy. And of course you could use an extreme adjective. So instead of saying really good, just say amazing or awesome or something like that. But the point here is to make sure to vary your language. And we also heard some great vocab here, including the phrase of verb to turn up. The sentence was no one will turn up, which means no one will arrive or no one will put in an appearance. You can also use show up in the same way. And the speaker said she was a bit more slack dash than she would like. slack dash means you act in a hurry or careless way. So for instance, you could say my slap dash effort at painting the fence resulted in lots of uneven patches. Is there an event in your hometown you particularly enjoy? We have a rodeo every summer that's a lot of fun. So rodeo is a big deal in small town, Texas. And so it's a time that everybody gets together and participates and there's a parade and there's a lot of to do for the events. But it's a chance for everybody to kind of get together and loosen up. But that's kind of my favorite. What presence do you like to give and receive? When I was growing up, we would say that we'd get four presents. So you'd get something you want, something you need, something to wear and something to read. And so we'd get, you know, like if you wanted a PlayStation or whatever, you might get that. But you also got underwear and you might also get a book and you'd get, you know, something that was, you know, something that you needed. So a shirt, pair of pants, whatever. So it was a chance to give you the things that were utilitarian, but also give you a little something for your birthday too. So that's kind of the way that we do presents in my house. And so that's a lot of the stuff that I get and give are along those same lines. So for me, camping gear is one that I've always like to receive because I always like to try new gadgets and gizmos and see what's out there. I don't end up keeping all of them, but I do get the experiment with it. You know, it's fun. It's a hobby. Okay. So if you didn't recognize this accent initially, then the mention of rodeo should tell you it's the USA. And we heard this expression. There was a lot of to-do. That's how hyphen do. This means that there's a lot of excitement and commotion, usually more than as necessary. And it can be used to describe anger too, actually. So an example sentence is getting our passports renewed was such a to-do. Also we heard that the speaker likes gadgets and gizmos, which are both excellent ways to describe small devices that you use for a particular purpose, like camping in this instance. These are great words too to use for when you have to write about or speak about technology. So make a note of those two gadgets and gizmos. For transcripts of the podcast, please go to the real exam English website. That's realexamenglish.com. As well as the transcripts, you can find information there about online classes. Whether you were looking for exam preparation classes in groups or individual classes. For exam prep, general revision, business English, or just conversation English, then check out the website for more information. Realexamenglish.com. Have you ever been to a fancy dress party? Well, you know, - Yes, as far as costume parties, Halloween, you know, is one turn of the year where, you know, it's entirely acceptable and encouraged to dress up and costume. And, you know, that's something that we, we had, have done often in the past, we had some friends of ours that would, would have a Halloween party every year at their house. Last year that they did not, naturally because of the coronavirus and pandemic. And so on, but we have dressed up. We usually make our own costumes and dressed up. - How do you celebrate the new year? - The new year is a bit of a let down. Here, and so, having grown up in New York and having lived nearby New York City and Times Square, it would have always been tradition to, you know, stay up and watch the ball and Times Square, you know, come down on New Year's Eve. You know, and have even been near the vicinity of Times Square at that time a couple of years. But, you know, later in life, I mean, most recently with a family and after moving to the mountains in the United States, you don't really have a particular time zone that's relevant, you know, or important. And so, it's pretty uneventful. Don't really do much. I wouldn't say we really have too much as far as parties here with kids because, you know, it's time to go to bed and we're tired too. - Okay, so this question was about fancy dress parties, which is British English. And in the answer, the speaker used costume parties to describe the same thing, which is US English. And he also used this expression and so on. He said, "Because of coronavirus and the pandemic and so on, "so this basically means et cetera "and is essential vocabulary if you have to do a writing exam. "I frequently receive writings from my students, "particularly my Spanish students "with something like this. "I like pizza, hamburgers, kebabs, dot, dot, dot." Okay, you cannot use dot, dot, dot in the same way in English. So, please don't put it in your writings in its place, put, and so on. So, I like pizza, hamburgers, kebabs, and so on. Okay, we also heard the phrasal verb to dress up, which means to put on a costume. And in the second answer, he said that New Year's Eve was a letdown, which means it was a disappointment. And you can use this either as a noun, it was a letdown, or as a verb, I was letdown by my son's behavior. "Presence, do you like to give and receive?" Great question. I really like giving books out, because I really like reading, and I really like to think about what is the other person interested in that I could give them? Or what kind of fiction is the person into that I could buy? So, I love giving books, and I definitely give more books than I receive. I love receiving books, but I feel because I'm a big bookworm, people are sometimes a little bit scared to give me a book because they don't know. They have it already, or they don't know if I will like it. I really like receiving gift vouchers, because it can sometimes feel a bit impersonal, but it does give you a flexibility. So I've received, for example, gift vouchers and music venues that I can use to buy concert tickets, and that's much less risky than buying a concert ticket. Again, if your friends don't know who you are, and I like receiving anything music related. Music presence, R&D, awesome. I agree. We heard this great word bookworm, which is really nice vocabulary for someone who is into books. And there are some similar ones, like a film buff for someone who is into films, or a foodie for someone who loves food. Okay, so this is really handy vocab to have to describe you or someone who fits into these categories. Do you like big parties? Pre-COVID, yes. I love getting together with family and friends, acting a fool, just playing games, cracking jokes. I absolutely love it. Okay, so more cool vocabulary here for having fun. We had acting a fool, which is brilliant expression here to mean behaving in a kind of silly way. And we had cracking jokes, which is a nice alternative to saying telling jokes. How do you celebrate the new year? Oh, denierly, I go out, I go out dancing, I probably get drunk. Last year, me and my partner went to Manchester, and we went to a Hacienda reunion party, which was near where the Hacienda used to be. The Hacienda is actually a block, like a block of flats. So that used to be a really cool club in the 90s. I think New Order played there, Madonna, all the big, like, people kind of played the Hacienda back to like late 80s, early 90s. And it was just, it's got a bit of a name for itself as being this house music club, I guess, from Manchester. So we went to this reunion, Hacienda reunion. And it was a lot smaller and a lot tamer than the real original Hacienda. But it was still good, and I still enjoyed myself. And it played all the old tunes from like early 90s. And yeah, just a good blast from the past, you know, where you can like reminisce and pretend to be young again. So yeah, that's what I did last year. So ordinarily, I go out, let my hair down, get drunk, and have a boogie. A great answer about the legendary Hacienda club. We had some brilliant expressions here. The first one is, it's got a name for itself. This means it's got a reputation. So you could say he's got a name for himself as a bit of a ladies man. And we also had a blast from the past, which means something or someone that a person hasn't seen for a long time, and which makes them feel nostalgic. So for example, watching my favorite childhood cartoons was a blast from the past. Then we had a run of super vocabulary. What did we have? We had, I go out, let my hair down, get drunk, and have a boogie. So to let your hair down is a great way of saying to relax or unwind, particularly when you're going out like in the example here. And to get drunk, you should already know. And to have a boogie means to have a dance. Excellent stuff there. I love it. Do you like organizing parties? Love it. Absolutely love it. It's the event management background in me. Absolutely love it. I love organizing little surprises, like even for my girlfriend's birthday. This 20, I'm trying to think, well, you know what I was though, 2020. Yeah, that was a huge surprise. You had no idea what was going on. From balloons in the house to the massive card that she doesn't really need to the gifts, to the meal, to go into my dread. So things like that, I think I love doing it. I love the particulars of it. I love the rescuing it. I love the fact things can go wrong. That's kind of the dangerous set of a buy-up. So love it. It's great fun. That my friends is a Scottish accent. A lot of people really struggle with the Scottish accent. So if you are one of those people, then make sure to check out the transcript on realexamenglish.com. And that's it for episode one. So remember the next time you go out to celebrate, to let your hair down, act a fool, crack some jokes, catch up with some friends, have a boogie and so on. And remember guys to check Facebook and Instagram for grammar and vocabulary exercises and videos. I'd love to hear from you. So come on, get in touch.