Episode 0011

And today with Erica, we have an upper intermediate lesson.

That's right, an upper intermediate lesson that's a little bit strange.

Gossip. Why don't you explain it a little bit, just in case?

Okay, so if I gossip, I maybe share news or information about other people with my friends. Like I might say something like,

Exactly, that's gossip. And we also have language today to describe things.

To describe strange things.

Strange things. All right, so let's take a look at our vocabulary preview.

Vocabulary preview.

So in our vocabulary preview, we'll look at a few important words that will help you to understand the dialogue a little bit better.

Exactly, and the first word is weird.

Weird. Weird.

Weird. Now this is a common word you probably hear all the time and in a lot of different situations. So we wanted to explain it today.

Yeah, this word just means strange.

It's strange.

Yeah. Weird person is a strange person.

Exactly, but the thing about this word is if you are a young person, let's say under the age of 35, you'll probably use it about a hundred times a day.

Weird.

Yeah. Just such a good sounding word, weird.

It is.

Okay, but the thing is that even though it's probably more commonly used in American English, it's still widely used for British English as well.

Yeah, that's true.

So, but maybe in British English you would say something like

Odd.

It's odd. That's more common.

Okay, let's look at our second word.

Housewarming gift.

Housewarming gift.

Housewarming gift.

Housewarming gift.

Now, this is a cultural thing. It's really common in North America to give a housewarming gift to someone.

Yeah, if I move into a new house, maybe some of my friends or family will bring a gift over to make my house a little bit more beautiful.

So something like a photo frame or

Or maybe a plant, or sometimes even like maybe a basket of pastries or something.

Oh, okay. Yeah.

I've never gotten one of those cuz I don't have a home.

Oh. Where do you live on the street?

Well, I don't have a my own home, so I've never gotten one of those. Okay.

Okay, so we're ready now to listen to our dialogue.

So we've got two housewives who are gossiping about what's going on in the neighborhood, and let's listen to what happens.

Oh, I don't know if you've heard, but someone moved into that old house down the road.

Yeah, I know. I met the owner of the house yesterday as he was moving in. His name is Armand.

Actually, he's a bit strange. I don't know. I've just got a bad feeling about him.

Really? Why?

Well, yesterday I brought over a housewarming gift, but Armand started acting really weird and then he practically kicked me out.

I tried to sort of peek into his house, but everything was so dark inside that I couldn't really get a good look. The whole thing really creeps me out.

Well, you'll never guess what I saw this morning. A delivery truck pulled into his driveway and it dropped off a long, rectangular box. It almost looked like a coffin.

You see? Why would he

Hello ladies.

Armand. Oh, you scared the heck out of me. This is my friend Doris.

A pleasure to meet you. If you're not doing anything tonight, I'd like to have you both for dinner. I mean,

I'd like to have you both over for dinner.

Ooh, that guy seems kind of weird.

You can hear his voice is like a weird guy, right?

Yeah.

All right, let's take a look at our language takeaway and look at some of these great words.

Language takeaway.

So our language takeaway focuses on several words from the dialogue that we feel are really important for you to know.

Exactly, and we have four of them for you today. Why don't we look at the first one?

Okay, so the first word is a bad feeling.

Bad feeling.

A bad feeling. A bad feeling.

So we've got a few examples that will help you to understand how this phrase works.

Example one.

I don't like Kelly's new boyfriend. I've got a bad feeling about him.

Example two.

It's so dark. We shouldn't be out here. I've got a bad feeling about this.

Example three.

I've got a bad feeling about this trip. I feel like something's going to happen. Maybe we shouldn't go.

Okay, so basically you think something bad is going to happen.

Yeah, you have a sort of uncomfortable feeling.

Okay, that makes sense. I have a bad feeling about something.

Exactly.

Okay, let's look at our second word now.

Kicked me out.

Kicked me out.

Kicked me out.

So when someone kicks you out, it's they force you to leave. You don't want to leave, but they force you to.

Yeah. Marco, have you ever kicked someone out of your class?

Um, yes, I have.

Really?

Yeah, if you misbehave in my class, you're kicked out. So you're pretty strict, huh?

Sometimes I am. Okay, also maybe you've kicked your husband out of bed.

I might have done that once or twice more.

We'll have to ask him. I'm sure he has. All right, so that's what it means. You force someone to leave the house, leave the class, leave the bed.

So kicked out of class, kicked out of the house, kicked out of bed.

Exactly. Great. Let's look at our third word now.

Creeped me out.

Creeped me out.

Creeped me out.

Creeped me out. Now, this is a really common phrase.

I like this phrase a lot, and we've got some examples for you to listen to to help you understand this word a little bit better.

Example one.

Shh. Did you hear that? Oh. I think I saw something.

Stop it. You're really creeping me out.

Example two.

This place really creeps me out. Let's get out of here.

All right, well, I have a confession to make. I'm kind of creeped out by clowns.

You are?

Yes. I don't know, they're just creepy. They're they scare me. I don't know.

Really? What is it about clowns that scare you so much?

I don't know, they're just white faces and weird paint. I don't know, it's just creepy, and the way they laugh. I don't know.

Maybe you had a bad experience with clowns as a child?

Probably. I watched a scary movie about clowns or something.

Yeah.

All right. So, creeped me out basically means made me feel uncomfortable.

Yes, it scares you.

Yeah. Well, speaking of being scared, we have our final word for language takeaway, and it is scared the heck out of me.

You scared the heck out of me.

Scared the heck out of me.

You got really scared.

Yeah, I think this is a quite common way of saying, you really, really scared me.

Yeah. Okay, we're ready to listen to our dialogue again. Now, try and see if you can catch all these phrases that we just talked about.

Oh, I don't know if you've heard, but someone moved into that old house down the road.

Yeah, I know. I met the owner of the house yesterday as he was moving in. His name is Armand.

Actually, he's a bit strange. I don't know. I've just got a bad feeling about him.

Really? Why?

Well, yesterday I brought over a housewarming gift, but Armand started acting really weird and then he practically kicked me out.

I tried to sort of peek into his house, but everything was so dark inside that I couldn't really get a good look. The whole thing really creeped me out.

Well, you'll never guess what I saw this morning. A delivery truck pulled into his driveway and it dropped off a long rectangular box. It almost looked like a coffin.

You see? Why would he

Hello ladies.

Ah, Armand. Ah, you scared the heck out of me. This is my friend Doris.

A pleasure to meet you. If you are not doing anything tonight, I would like to have you both for dinner. I mean, I would like to have you both over for dinner.

That's a good observation. So I think it's time for fluency builder.

Fluency builder.

In fluency builder, we take a simple phrase or a simple word you already know and show you how to express the same idea a little bit more naturally.

Okay, great. So let's take a look at our first item for fluency builder.

So when you gossip with somebody, you often tell them news or information that they don't know already. And you might start by saying, did you know that?

Or you can say, did you hear?

Yeah, both of those phrases are perfectly fine, but if you want to sound a little bit more native-like when you're gossiping, you might try out this phrase from the dialogue.

I don't know if you've heard.

I don't know if you've heard.

Yeah, that's a really good phrase. You're saying exactly the same thing, but in a really natural way.

See, that's exactly how you would use that phrase. So now let's take a look at our second item. Now, when you're gossiping, you want information.

That's right. So you might say, oh, tell me about it.

Or something like, give me the details.

Yeah, and again, both of these examples are perfectly fine, but when you're gossiping, you might want to try something like this.

You have to fill me in.

You have to fill me in.

Fill me in. Yeah, that's that's what I would say. Fill me in, you know, give me the details. Fill me in.

Fill me in on today's gossip.

Okay, so let's take a look at our third item. Now, if you have some juicy gossipy news,

And you want to start up a conversation, you might use this phrase here.

Well, you'll never guess what I saw this morning.

Well, you'll never guess what I saw this morning.

That's a really good phrase. You can change it a little bit. You can say, you'll never guess who I saw.

Or you'll never guess what I heard.

Exactly.

All right, so enough of our gossip. I think it's time for us to listen to the dialogue one last time.

Oh, I don't know if you've heard, but someone moved into that old house down the road.

Yeah, I know. I met the owner of the house yesterday as he was moving in. His name is Armand.

Actually, he's a bit strange. I don't know. I've just got a bad feeling about him.

Really? Why?

Well, yesterday I brought over a housewarming gift, but Armand started acting really weird and then he practically kicked me out.

I tried to sort of peek into his house, but everything was so dark inside that I couldn't really get a good look. The whole thing really creeps me out.

Well, you'll never guess what I saw this morning. A delivery truck pulled into his driveway and it dropped off a long rectangular box. It almost looked like a coffin.

You see? Why would he

Hello ladies.

Armand. Oh, you scared the heck out of me. This is my friend Doris.

A pleasure to meet you. If you're not doing anything tonight, I'd like to have you both for dinner. I mean,

I'd like to have you both over for dinner.

Okay Marco, I have a true story for you.

Is it kind of like a creepy story?

It is a creepy story indeed. Is it a true story?

No, it's really true. So when I was young, I used to live in the country.

Mhm.

And you know, in the country, all of the neighbors know each other. It's a small community so everyone knows what's happening all the time.

Okay.

And there was some gossip going on in our community about a guy who lived at the end of the road.

Mhm.

And he was the owner of a car wrecking yard. So a place where you take old broken down cars and take the parts apart to sell.

Right.

And anyway.

A scrapyard.

Yeah, a scrapyard. Okay, so you know, he had a wife and a couple of kids. Um, and suddenly his wife disappeared.

Wow.

Yeah.

And no one knew what happened or anything. And so several years passed and suddenly the police start coming in and start investigating this guy and start digging up all of the land around his property.

And I guess, I don't know what they're doing, but I think they were looking for the wife's body.

Wow. And did they find it?

I don't know, I moved away.

Oh, such a great story, but we don't know how it ends.

Yeah, well, but we can leave it up to the imagination of our listeners.

Exactly. Maybe they were looking for an old car.

An old car buried in the ground. I don't think so.

All right, that's a true story. Real English, real stories. There you go.

You heard it first here on English Pod.

All right. So we want to hear your comments and suggestions about this topic. I bet a lot of our listeners also have creepy stories, maybe ghost stories, maybe, I don't know, different types of uh, weird stories. So you guys should definitely log on to English Pod and share them with us.

That's right. Go to Englishpod.com and in the comment section of the website tell us your creepy stories.

And we're going to pick out the best story as the story of the week.

We'll announce it in our this just in podcast.

Yes, so we want to hear all your juicy stories and gossip maybe as well.

Yes.

All right. Well, it's time for us to go, so be sure to listen to us next time. But until then, it's bye-bye.

Bye.

The English Pod audio review.

Listen to the meaning, then say the vocabulary word.

Phrase used to introduce a piece of information.

I don't know if you heard.

Tell me about it.

Fill me in.

A sense or feeling that something bad is going to happen.

A bad feeling.

Strange, unusual.

Weird.

Make or force someone to leave when they don't want to.

Kick out.

Make me feel uncomfortable and a bit scared.

Creep me out.

Phrase used to introduce a piece of news.

You'll never guess.

Cause someone to feel a lot of fear.

Scare the heck out of me.

Strange or unusual.

Bizarre.

Strange or scary, causing people to feel nervous and afraid.

Creepy.

A dead person who drinks the blood of living people.

Vampire.

Phrase used to introduce a piece of gossip.

Have you heard?

Phrase used to introduce an interesting or surprising piece of information.

Guess what?

Let's try that faster.

A dead person who drinks the blood of living people.

Vampire.

Phrase used to introduce a piece of news.

You'll never guess.

Tell me about it.

Fill me in.

Phrase used to introduce a piece of gossip.

Have you heard?

Strange or scary, causing people to feel nervous and afraid.

Creepy.

Phrase used to introduce an interesting or surprising piece of information.

Guess what?

Strange, unusual.

Weird.

Make me feel uncomfortable and a bit scared.

Creep me out.

Cause someone to feel a lot of fear.

Scare the heck out of me.

Make or force someone to leave when they don't want to.

Kick out.

A sense or feeling that something bad is going to happen.

A bad feeling.

Strange or unusual.

Bizarre.

Phrase used to introduce a piece of information.

I don't know if you heard.

Now say the word and hear it in a sentence.

Weird.

Last night, I kept hearing a really weird sound. I don't know what it was.

Weird.

Our teacher seems a bit weird, don't you think?

Weird.

The weirdest thing happened to me yesterday. A pack of monkeys stole my car keys.

A bad feeling.

I've got a bad feeling about Kelly's new boyfriend. I don't think he's a good guy.

A bad feeling.

I have a bad feeling about this sales strategy. I think it's going to fail.

A bad feeling.

I've got a bad feeling about this trip. I think we should stay home.

Kick out.

If you don't be quiet, I'm going to kick you out of this meeting.

Kick out.

We got kicked out of the restaurant at midnight because they were closing.

Kick out.

Creep me out.

This old house is so scary. It's really creeping me out.

Creep me out.

I watched The Exorcist last night. That movie really creeps me out.

Creep me out.

The last time I walked home alone at night, I really got creeped out.

I almost got in a car accident yesterday. That scared the heck out of me.

Don't wear that vampire mask. You're scaring the heck out of the baby.

I'm terrified of clowns. They scare the heck out of me.

I don't know if you've heard, but Susan and John are breaking up.

I don't know if you've heard, but the new marketing manager is single.

I don't know if you've heard, but Maurice quit his job yesterday.

Fill me in.

I can't go to today's meeting, but can you fill me in on the important details?

Fill me in.

How was your date? You have to fill me in.

Fill me in.

Sarah missed her class yesterday, but I filled her in on the homework assignment.