Your English Five a Day #45.4

E369: 🎙️ Hello and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast. My name is Anna, and you're listening to Week 45, Day 4 of Your English Five a Day. In this series, we explode your active vocabulary and improve your listening skills by diving into five vocabulary items every weekday.

🧠 Today, we dive into advanced words like the noun "deprivation" and the verb "extrapolate". After that, we explore the adjective "emergent" and the collocation "fair comment". Last on today's list is the noun "mindset".

🏠⚠️ Join me as we pronounce these words together and explore their usage in context as we do a quick quiz to test your memory. In today's story segment, a keen student presents her project on the national housing crisis, highlighting deprivation as families struggle to afford homes. She uses data to extrapolate future trends, leaving a lasting impression on her classmates.

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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 45, Day 4 of Your English Five a Day. This is the series that is dedicated to advancing your active vocabulary and improving your overall English by dipping into it every day of the working week from Monday to Friday. Today's list consists of quite a few advanced words, so buckle up and let's get into it. We start with the noun deprivation, deprivation. We spell this D E P R I V A T I O N, Deprivation, deprivation. Deprivation describes a situation in which you don't have the things or the conditions that are usually necessary for a pleasant life. So, for example, if you do not have a warm and secure home. If you do not have the right kind of nutritious food or clean water, then you are living in deprivation. Here's an example sentence,"Child poverty involves material deprivation and hardship." Do you know anyone who's ever lived in deprivation? Who's been deprived of something that's necessary, that's fundamental in your view, in your mind, things like basic education, access to clean water, access to healthy food, access to a safe and secure home? Have you yourself ever lived with any level of deprivation? I hope not, but it does happen to many people around the world. And it's something that I hope in future can be eradicated. Let's move on to the next item on the list. It's a verb and it is extrapolate, extrapolate. We spell this E X T R A P O L A T E, extrapolate, extrapolate. To extrapolate is to use what you already know, so the facts that you already know, use them to make a guess about something that will happen in the future. So for example, if you are someone who trades in stocks and shares, and you always analyse the data and you can see that a certain stock is always correlated with the wider market, and you can see a pattern emerge over many years. And so you use what you know from patterns in the past to try to work out, try to guess what will happen to that stock in the future based on the current economic climate. So, you extrapolate. Here's another example sentence,"Based on the current growth rate, we can extrapolate that the population will reach 10 million by 2030." So, it's like making an educated guess. To extrapolate. Next on the list is the adjective emergent, emergent. We spell this E M E R G E N T, emergent. Emergent describes the early stages of existence or the development of something. So, if something is emergent, then it's just starting. It's coming into being; it's developing. Here's an example sentence,"The emergent technology of artificial intelligence has the potential to revolutionise many industries." The emergent technology of AI. Very good. Okay, next on the list is a collocation, and the collocation is fair comment, fair comment. We spell this F A I R, fair. Comment, C O M M E N T. Fair comment. We use this to say that criticism or a remark that's been made seem reasonable. So I might not like what you say, but if it's reasonable, then I might say,"Fair comment. That's a fair comment." I didn't like it so much, but it's true. It's reasonable. It's based on some fact, and I can understand why you would think that. Here's an example sentence,"The journalist's critique of the politician's policies was considered a fair comment because it was based on factual evidence and offered an honest opinion without intending to harm the politician's reputation." Last on the list is the noun mindset, mindset. We spell this M I N D S E T. Mindset. Mindset. Someone's mindset is their general attitude and the way in which they think about things, the way they make decisions. So, for example,"A growth mindset allows a person to view failures as opportunities for learning rather than obstacles to success." I could say that there are people I know in my close family and friends network who have a defeatist mindset, they feel that everything is against them. They feel that they will be defeated no matter what. And those people are relatively unhappy. And I try to encourage them to adopt a growth mindset. So we all should check our mindset on a regular basis and make sure that we are in a good frame of mind and that we are not sabotaging ourselves and our lives by having the wrong mindset, having an inappropriate mindset. So that's our five. Let's do a quick recap. We started with the noun deprivation, which describes a situation where you don't have things or conditions that are considered necessary for a pleasant life. Then we had the verb extrapolate, which is to make a guess about the future based on what you already know. We had the adjective emergent, which describes the early stages of existence or development. We had the collocation fair comment, which we use when we are saying that a criticism or a remark is reasonable. And we have the noun mindset, which describes someone's general attitude and way of thinking about things. Okay, let me do this now for pronunciation, so please repeat after me. Deprivation. Deprivation. Extrapolate. Extrapolate. Emergent. Emergent. Fair comment. Fair comment. Mindset. Mindset. Okay, let's test your memory now. So, what adjective describes something in its early stages? Remember, we used this to describe the technology of AI. Emergent. Very good. And if I want to make a guess about the future and I use the knowledge that I already have, what am I doing? Extrapolating. Yes, I'm going to extrapolate. Fantastic. And if I'm describing a child who is living in terrible conditions with no clean water, very little to eat, left alone for many hours of the day without any opportunity to socialise or have any connection with other human beings whatsoever. What is that child living in? Deprivation. Absolutely. We should get that child somewhere safe ASAP. And if you make a remark, which is quite cutting about me, but it is actually based on evidence, so it is reasonable. What collocation could I use to reply to your remark? Fair comment, fair comment. Finally, if I want to talk about the way you think, what noun could I use to wrap this up neatly? I would talk about your... mindset. Very good. Okay, let's listen out for these items once again in today's storytime. Last week, I had the chance to present my exam project on a topic that affects many people in our country: the national housing crisis. As a politics student, I have spent a lot of time researching this issue, and I was eager to share my findings with my classmates. As I walked into the classroom, I could feel the excitement and a little bit of nervousness in the air. After all, this was not just any subject; it was about deprivation, and the struggles faced by many families trying to find a home. I began my presentation by highlighting how affordable housing is becoming an emergent issue in our cities. I wanted my classmates to understand that it's not just a problem for a few; it's something that affects us all. I used some statistics to extrapolate the current situation. Did you know that in some areas, more than 40% of people's income goes on rent? This is staggering! With so many people spending so much money just on housing, there's little left for basic needs like food or education. I could see my classmates nodding, realising how severe the situation was. Next, I shared stories of real people struggling with housing costs. One story was about a single mother who works two jobs yet still cannot afford a decent place to live. Sharing these personal stories made my classmates feel the weight of the issue. It reminded us all that behind the numbers, there are real lives affected by this crisis. During the Q&A session, my classmates brought up fantastic points."Do you think the government is doing enough?" one asked. I admitted that while some policies are emerging, it is a fair comment to say that not enough is being done. We need a change in mindset from both our leaders and the public to truly address this crisis. As I finished my presentation, I hoped I had inspired my classmates to think deeply about the pressing issue of housing in our nation. After all, we all deserve a place to call home! And that brings us to the end of today's session. I do hope you found it useful. Until tomorrow, please take very good care and goodbye.