Episode 0176

Hello everyone and welcome back to English Pod. My name is Marco.

And my name is Catherine and today we have a cold lesson.

That's right. It's the winter season and of course, it gets cold in a lot of different places around the world, and so we're gonna talk about heating.

Okay, this is very important, but before we do get started, we have a very important word to preview in vocabulary preview.

Vocabulary preview.

All right, so we're gonna preview the word freezing.

Uh, it is freezing today, by the way.

So this is very appropriate. Freezing means very, very, very cold.

Okay, it is freezing. Okay, so it's very cold. It's freezing today.

It's so cold, in fact, you can't have water outside because the water will become ice.

It will freeze.

Mhm.

Okay, great word. So, let's listen to our dialogue for the very first time.

It's freezing in here. Can I turn up the heat?

Look! I can see my breath.

Dad, I'm gonna catch a cold!

When I was your age, my parents didn't have central heating like you do. We had a furnace in the center of the living room and that was it.

We used it to cook, heat the house and even dry our clothes.

We never caught a cold. You should be grateful.

All right, we're back and uh this is actually what a lot of dads are like, I think around the world.

Yep, my dad definitely liked to keep the the heat low in the house.

Really?

Yeah.

All right, so we'll talk about that a little bit later, but let's take a look at some uh four words on language takeaway today.

Language Takeaway.

Well, this first word is important for anyone who has a home with heating, it's called a thermostat.

All right, a thermostat.

What is a thermostat?

A thermostat is a dial or a, like a, a device on the wall that tells you how hot or how cold the house is.

It's like a thermometer for your house.

Okay. So you can move the thermostat, the temperature to make the house warmer or colder, right?

Right, so if it says it's 20 degrees, and I think that's too cold, I can turn the thermostat up to 23 degrees.

All right. And uh well, very much related to a thermostat and what this device does, is uh our next word, central heating.

Right. So if you have central heating, you have a thermostat, that's the way to control the heat. And central heating means that you have um one heater for the whole house.

And so the air comes into all the different rooms.

So not many places in China have this, but for example in the United States and Canada, it is very common.

Okay, so your house or your apartment building will have central heating and then you can control how cold or warm the house is with thermostats.

Exactly.

Very good. And well, our next word is related to temperature, and it's chilly.

Chilly, okay. So, there's a big difference between chilly and freezing.

Freezing means very, very, very cold.

Chilly means a little cold.

Right. So it's a little cold. It's a bit chilly.

Right, so it's a bit chilly today, I'm going to wear a hat.

Okay, if it's freezing, I'm going to wear a hat, a hat and mittens, and a scarf and coat and boots.

All right.

So if it's a bit chilly, it's not very cold.

And well, moving on, the dad mentioned about him having a furnace when he was young.

That's right, the dad had a furnace in his house.

And a furnace is a is a way to heat your house. It's like a stove.

Mhm.

So yeah, just consider it like a big oven, right? Maybe you've seen it in the old movies where you would have to throw firewood into the furnace to make it heat up the house.

Exactly. And so this is very common in older homes and not very common in apartments.

Right.

And well, um, that's all the words we have for language takeaway today. Why don't we listen to this chilly dialogue again?

It's freezing in here. Can I turn up the heat?

Look! I can see my breath.

Dad, I'm gonna catch a cold!

When I was your age, my parents didn't have central heating like you do. We had a furnace in the center of the living room and that was it.

We used it to cook, heat the house and even dry our clothes.

We never caught a cold. You should be grateful.

All right, we're back. So now we have prepared for you three key phrases on fluency builder.

Fluency Builder.

Okay, so this first phrase is related to thermostat, okay?

So thermostat, like we said, is like a thermometer, but we can control the temperature.

So if we want to make the temperature hotter, we turn up the thermostat.

Okay. So this is a phrasal verb, to turn up, turn up the heat.

You could say this about heat, you could say this about noise, too. Can you turn up the radio?

Turn up the volume.

Mhm.

So it's to increase.

To increase, to make bigger or warmer or louder.

All right. And if we wanted to decrease the temperature in the thermostat, you would say, turn down the heat.

Exactly. So, it's too hot in here. Can you please turn down the heat?

All right, very good.

And our next phrase is, well, the dad was talking about the bills and how expensive it is to use the thermostat, and he said, I'm not going to let you run up my heating bill.

Okay, so a bill is like you know something that you pay, it's money.

And so in this case, I don't want you to run up the bill, that means to increase the amount of money I have to spend.

Mhm. So maybe if you leave your television on all night, you're running up your electricity bill.

Exactly. Or if you talk on the phone 10 hours a day, you run up the phone bill and your mother kills you.

Right.

All right. And well, the daughter was complaining about her catching a cold, to catch a cold.

All right, so remember this, a cold is when you have maybe a runny nose and a cough and a sore throat. It usually happens when the weather changes.

But we don't get a cold, you catch a cold.

Okay.

Remember like in baseball, you throw and catch. It's it's something that's fast.

All right, so you catch a cold. What about the flu? Do you get the flu or catch the flu?

So you can't catch the flu, but you can't catch a cold. Just remember this phrase to catch a cold. I caught the cold.

No. To catch a cold or I caught a cold.

It's almost like if I have it, I could throw it to you, Marco.

Ach, choo!

All right.

And you catch it.

Right, because it's in the air, the virus and everything.

Yeah, it passes very quickly.

All right, very good. So an interesting dialogue. Let's listen to it one last time.

It's freezing in here. Can I turn up the heat?

Look! I can see my breath.

Dad, I'm gonna catch a cold!

When I was your age, my parents didn't have central heating like you do. We had a furnace in the center of the living room and that was it.

We used it to cook, heat the house and even dry our clothes.

We never caught a cold. You should be grateful.

All right, we're back and well, you mentioned about a thermostat and your dad actually controlling the heating at home.

Was it was this the case like this in this scenario?

Um, it was sometimes would have to wear more clothes 'cause we didn't want to run up the bill.

But we had a special situation in my house because I'm from Chicago and it's very cold in the winters in Chicago, but we had a fireplace.

Okay, so even if it was very cold, we always had firewood and we could put on the fire in the fireplace to keep warm, so everyone would stay in the living room and read and listen to music and and just, you know, relax.

Now, I heard that because, you know, when you're burning wood, it causes some pollution, in some cities it's banned, right, to actually turn on or well, to have a fireplace.

That's right.

Yeah.

So but in Chicago, you can still do it.

Absolutely. And in most of the states you can, although a lot of people in new houses, they don't have real fireplaces, they have electric fireplaces.

And so you can use a light switch to turn on your fire. It's not a real fire.

It's not a real fire. It's just a glowing light.

It's very fancy.

Yeah.

All right, well, very good. This is an interesting lesson, especially because the the winter season is coming up and well, everyone is cold.

So we hope you enjoyed it and if you have any questions, any doubts, you can come to our website Englishpod.com.

The English Pod audio review.

Listen to the meaning, then say the vocabulary word.

acquire bills or debts.

Run up.

Increase the intensity of a device.

Turn up.

Very cold.

Chilly.

Become infected with a cold.

Catch a cold.

Thankful.

Grateful.

Let's try that faster.

Acquire bills or debts.

Run up.

Increase the intensity of a device.

Turn up.

Thankful.

Grateful.

Become infected with a cold.

Catch a cold.

Very cold.

Chilly.

Now say the word and hear it in a sentence.

Run up.

He ran up a very expensive tab at the local bar.

Run up.

The new heating system they installed ran up their electric bill.

Run up.

They were running up huge bills with his new spending habits.

Turn up.

Honey, could you please turn up the heat? It's freezing in here.

Turn up.

I need to turn up the heat or I'll freeze.

Turn up.

Chilly.

It's starting to get a little chilly in here.

Chilly.

He said that it was so chilly that he had to put two sweaters on.

Chilly.

It is very chilly in this room.

Catch a cold.

You will catch a cold if you don't put a sweater on.

Catch a cold.

My friend Amy caught the flu and had to stay home for a week.

Catch a cold.

He caught a cold last week and now we all have it too.

Grateful.

Grateful.

Grateful.