Your English Five a Day #28.5

E268: 🎙️ Welcome to The English Like A Native Podcast! I'm Anna, and you're tuned in to Week 28, Day 5 of Your English Five a Day. Join me as we explore five enriching items each weekday, enhancing your active vocabulary one step at a time.

⚽ Today, we begin with the captivating idiom, "a silver tongue". Next, we delve into the adjective "cynical", followed by the verb "condemn". Then we explore another idiom, "keep your eye on the ball" and wrap up today's list with the noun "apology".

🔬 Join me for some pronunciation practice before I test your memory of these new vocabulary items. Then, in today's shocking story, researchers Clarissa and Ruben experience a rift in their relationship when Ruben steals Clarissa's research. As Clarissa confronts his actions, she learns to condemn deceit and stay focused amidst turmoil. But Ruben's schemes hint at darker twists ahead.

⭐ ENGLISH LIKE A NATIVE PLUS ⭐

Join English Like A Native Plus - a membership allowing you to access the bonus episodes, plus live classes and all podcasts' transcripts & vocab lists. Become a Plus Member here: https://englishlikeanative.co.uk/elan-podcast/

If you enjoy this podcast, please leave a rating/review - it is a simple, free way to support us. 

Transcript

0:01

Hello and welcome to The English Like A Native Podcast. My name is Anna and you're listening to Week 28, Day 5 of Your English Five a Day. The series where we are exploding your active vocabulary by deep diving into five items every day of the working week from Monday to Friday. We start today's list with the idiom, a silver tongue. Now a silver tongue is something that you have. We spell it silver, S I L V E R, tongue, T O N G U E. So we all have a tongue, but if you are described as having a silver tongue, then you are someone who's able to persuade people with your words. You're very charming. You're very eloquent. You can convince other people to your will, whatever you want them to believe or to do. You can win them over with your words, with your silver tongue. Here's an example,"Jamie used his silver tongue to win over his peers and secure their votes. He was determined to become the next Student Counsellor." Would you describe yourself as having a silver tongue or do you know someone who has a silver tongue? I think it's actually a good thing to have a silver tongue as long as you use it to achieve good things. To convince people to overcome their fears, to encourage, to persuade them to do the right thing. That would be a good use of a silver tongue, I think. Moving on, we have the adjective cynical. Cynical. Do you know how we spell this? Oh, this would be one I'd struggle with, C Y N I C A L. Cynical. Cynical. I guess not that hard. It's just remembering that the/s/ represented with a C and that/ɪ/ is represented with a Y, cynical. cynical. If you are described as being cynical, then you have a belief that people are selfish. You believe that people are only doing things to benefit themselves. They are motivated purely by self interest and they don't have any moral or ethical considerations when they are making decisions or acting. So a cynical person would be someone who's probably experienced the unpleasant side of human nature. Greed and jealousy and anger and just generally the bad side of humans. Sometimes that can impact how we view the world and how we view everybody. But of course, you can't taint everyone with the same brush because we're all different. So here's an example sentence using cynical,"She had a cynical view of politicians, believing that they only cared about their own power and not the wellbeing of the people." I mean that's understandable. I think many people are quite cynical about politicians because in the news, especially in the UK, I don't know what it's like in your country, but in the UK, it's just full of politicians who have acted in their own self interest. So they've been either embezzling money, so stealing money from the funds that were given to them to campaign, or they were giving contracts, government contracts to their friends. Rather than actually choosing the best contractors for the job at the best price, they said, I'll tell you what I'll give my mate this job and pay them twice as much. And just spending taxpayers money in a really frivolous and selfish way. And so we see this all the time in the news. And so we generally as a nation have a cynical view of politicians. Though I'm sure there are many politicians who do work very hard for the rights and the well being of their constituents. So to be a cynic, it's not a good thing. Obviously, you don't want to be the opposite end of the spectrum. You don't want to be naive. You have to have your wits about you to a certain extent, but to be cynical is not good for you, I don't think. If you're a cynical person, then I would think that you wouldn't be a very happy person. And we all need to be happy. We all need to smile on a regular basis. Alright, moving on from our cynical item, we're going to go to a verb now. This is condemn, to condemn. We spell this C O N D E M N. Condemn. To condemn is to express your disapproval of something or someone. So if you disapprove and you think it's terrible what's been done, or you don't like a person for whatever reason, you would condemn them. In fact, that actually reminds me of a house I lived in when I was a youngster. The house was in such a poor state that it was actually condemned by the council, and we were kicked out and told we couldn't live there because the house was probably about to fall down. I remember taking a bath and being cold in that house because the bathroom window frame was so rotten that the glass had fallen out and so there was no glass in the window in the bathroom because of the rotten window frames and we had just a piece of cardboard stuck up at the window to block the hole and it was so cold. I remember not having doors on many of the bedrooms and I was a teenager by this point. In fact, I think I must have been about 16 years old. And as a 16 year old girl with many brothers in the house, not having a room where I can lock the door and have my own space was just torture. But yeah, that was the house I lived in that was eventually condemned by the council. Anyway, enough of my colourful childhood. You can condemn the actions of a person. So here's an example,"The judge decided to condemn the defendant to life in prison for his evil crimes." Wow, yeah, you would be condemned if you committed evil crimes. Right, moving on. Next we have an idiom and it is keep your eye on the ball. To keep your eye on the ball, keep, K double E P, your eye, E Y E on the ball, B A double L, keep your eye on the ball. This means to keep your attention on what you're supposed to be doing. So don't get distracted. For example, if I was working in a marketing agency, it would be important for me to keep my eye on the ball of what's going on within the marketing industry. Is there a new platform that's just popped up that everyone is using? I need to know all the changes and innovations that are coming into the industry. I need to know what my competitors are doing. If I get distracted for a few weeks, I might miss something that's really important to my business, so you've gotta keep your eye on the ball. Another analogy would be if you are a goalkeeper on a football pitch and there's a match going on, you need to keep your eye on the ball because if you stop looking at the ball even for a minute, it might come your way and you might fail to do the one job you're meant to do, which is stop the ball from going into the goal. When I'm playing squash, the ball moves around the court so fast that if you allow the ball to leave your eyesight for even a second, then you're probably going to miss the next shot. I know that all too well. Here's an example sentence,"In the stock market industry, it's super important to keep your eye on the ball, you miss one deal, and it could be game over." Okay, moving on to our last item for today. We have a noun and it is apology. Apology. How do we spell it? A P O L O G Y. Apology. An apology is something we make or give, but we tend to say make an apology. It's a statement or an action that expresses regret for doing something wrong or for offending someone. This morning, my youngest son was scowling at my eldest son and my eldest son got upset about it. So my youngest son went over to my eldest son and gave him a cuddle, by way of apology. Have you made an apology recently? I think I had to apologise to my partner yesterday. We were having a very heated discussion about something to do with the business. Some of the really boring, mundane systems that we have in place that are causing us a bit of a headache. We were discussing the best way to deal with this very stressful situation and we both became a little heated and spoke to each other in a very harsh way, which we don't normally do. And so we had a few minutes apart and then it came time to make an apology. So he made me a cup of tea and I gave him a hug and then everything was fine. We made up. Alright, here is an example,"You need to make a sincere apology for your rude behaviour at the party yesterday. You were totally out of order." Alright, that's our five. Let's do a quick recap. We started with the idiom, a silver tongue, which is something that someone has if they are quite persuasive with their words. Then we had the adjective cynical, which describes a person who believes that all other people are motivated. by selfish reasons, purely by self interest. Then we had the verb condemn, which is to express complete disapproval for something that someone's done or for someone. Then we had the idiom, keep your eye on the ball, which is to pay close attention to what you're doing and not get distracted. And we finished with the noun apology, which is to make an expression of regret or remorse for doing something wrong or causing offence. Alright, let's do this for pronunciation. Please repeat after me. A silver tongue. A silver tongue. Cynical. Cynical. Condemn. Condemn. Keep your eye on the ball. Keep your eye on the ball. Apology, apology. Very good. Okay, let me test your memory now. If I spend a few years working in politics and come away feeling that people are just all selfish and that no politicians can be trusted, they all just care about themselves and their own benefits and their own power, what adjective would you use to describe me with those beliefs. Cynical. Cynical. Absolutely. I'm now a cynical person. But if I very bluntly told somebody who said that they were a politician, if I bluntly said to them, which is very'un-British', if I said, oh, you must be a very selfish person. You don't really care about your constituents. You're just doing it for yourself. That's obviously why you become a politician. That's what all politicians do. And I offend that person with my very ill-judged statement, I should then go and express regret, make a statement of regret for offending that person. And I did act in the wrong way. I shouldn't have spoken like that. So what do I need to do? What do I need to make? An apology. Yes. I need to make an apology. I need to give them my apology. Now during my tennis match, I am working really, really hard to win. What piece of advice would you give me if I kept getting distracted and looking at the birds that were sitting in the tree next to the tennis court? You'd say to me... This is an idiom, by the way. You'd say to me, keep your eye on the ball. Come on, Anna! Like, literally and metaphorically, keep your eye on the ball, otherwise you're never going to win. Stop allowing yourself to get distracted. Now, if I finish that tennis match and discover that the actual court is in a terrible state and the reason it's in a terrible state is because some of the local youths have been coming and digging up parts of the court just for fun and graffitiing all the poles and graffitiing the equipment. I would look at that in complete disapproval. I would express complete disapproval for their actions. What am I doing? What verb could I use here? I would condemn them. I would condemn this action. This is terrible. Something needs to be done to stop these hooligans from vandalising the tennis courts. So I go and speak to somebody in the local police station. Now, generally, they're very busy. The police are so busy and they don't really have time to deal with petty crimes like vandalism, but because I'm very persuasive, I've got a nice way of speaking and I'm charming and eloquent. I'm able to convince the officer to look into this for me and deal with the problem. What idiom would you use to describe my ability to be able to persuade with my way of speaking. A silver tongue. Yes. Anna has a silver tongue and she convinces the police officer to look into the crime that I condemned of these hooligans digging up the tennis court. Okay. Fantastic. Let me bring them all together once again. In a very well-planned and structured story time. Clarissa and Ruben were both biologists, working at a large medical science research facility in Oxford. They had been colleagues for years and shared a passion for discovering new medical breakthroughs. However, their relationship took a dark turn when Ruben stole Clarissa's research and tried to pass it off as his own. Clarissa was devastated when she found out that her colleague and friend had betrayed her. She couldn't believe that someone she trusted and respected would stoop so low. Ruben, on the other hand, was a master manipulator with a silver tongue. He had always been envious of Clarissa's success and couldn't resist the opportunity to claim it for himself. As the news of Ruben's actions spread throughout the facility, Clarissa was filled with a mix of emotions. She was angry, hurt, and cynical about the world of science and the people in it. She couldn't believe that someone would go to such lengths just to get ahead in their career. When Ruben was confronted by his colleagues, he tried to defend his actions with a fake apology. But it was too late, the damage had been done. His reputation was tarnished, and his colleagues were quick to condemn him for his unethical behaviour. Despite the chaos, Clarissa tried to keep her head held high and focus on her work. She knew that the only way to succeed in this field was to keep your eye on the ball, and not let anything or anyone distract you. The incident had caused a rift between Clarissa and Ruben, and they hardly spoke to each other anymore. But little did Clarissa know, this was just the beginning of Ruben's devious plans. He had no intention of changing his ways, and he was determined to do whatever it took to raise himself up in the scientific community. As the days went by, Clarissa couldn't shake off this feeling that something was off. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but she knew that Ruben was up to something. And just when she thought things couldn't get any worse, she stumbled upon a shocking discovery that would change everything. Dun dun duuuun! To be continued! And that brings us to the end of today's episode. I do hope you found this episode and indeed Week 28 useful. If you did, please take a second to leave a like, a rating or review. This helps the podcast to be discovered by others. And if you know anyone who is learning English, remember to recommend The English Like A Native Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. I look forward to tickling your eardrums once again tomorrow. Until then, take care and goodbye.