Speak Better English with Harry | Episode 568

In this podcast episode, we focus on English verbs of movement and explain how native speakers use them to describe speed, direction, and manner of movement. You will hear clear explanations and practical examples that show the difference between similar verbs and help you choose the right word in real situations.

This lesson is ideal for intermediate and advanced English learners who want to expand vocabulary, improve accuracy, and sound more natural when speaking and writing. It is also useful for learners preparing for IELTS, TOEFL, or Cambridge English exams, where precise vocabulary is important.

By the end of the episode, you will understand how to describe movement in a more vivid and natural way, using the right verb for the right context.

Transcript

0:09

Hi there, this is Harry. Welcome back to Advanced English Lessons with Harry, where I try to help you to get a better understanding of the English language, to help you with your conversational skills, your business English skills, interview skills, whatever your goals are, we're here to help. And for those of you and your friends or family who want one-to-one lessons, well, you know what to do. Just get in touch, www.englishlessonviaskype.com and you can apply for a free try lesson and we'll be very happy to hear from you and very happy to help you. So what are we going to talk about today? Well we're going to talk about some verbs in particular, verbs to do with movement. So I've got a lot of those. I'll give them to you and then I'll explain them with a few examples. Dash. Now dash has got that meaning of vm, fast. Okay, so when we dash, we go very, very quickly. So we often say, oh, look at the time. I have to dash, meaning I'm in a hurry, means I have to rush. I have to get somewhere very quickly. I shouldn't have stayed so long. I think I'm going to get stuck. So if you don't mind, I have to dash. Okay, so to dash means to go quickly. So you're in the train station, you've just arrived, and you dash out of the train station to jump into a taxi and get yourself back home or get yourself to the office. You're on the phone to your friend. Say, look, you're holding me up here. I need to dash. I've got a bit of work to do before I go home. Okay, so to dash means to go very quickly. And usually it means on foot. Okay, so you're running somewhere, you're dashing to catch the bus or you're dashing to get the postman or to the post office before it closes. So it usually means by foot. We're not necessarily dashing in the car or dashing on our bicycle. Okay, so to dash, a very, very quick run. Okay, next, to creep. Now, creep can also mean to go slowly, but it's in a certain way. So if you're lucky enough to have a cat and you watch the cat trying to catch the bird in your garden, you'll see the cat creeping up very, very slowly and very softly on its paws so that hopefully the bird doesn't hear it and then pounce, it will jump and try and catch the bird. Thankfully, more often than not, it doesn't succeed. So the cat will creep. Or if you come in very late after that stag do or the office party and you don't want to wake up your partner, you take off your shoes and you creep up the stairs ever so slowly, one foot in front of the other. And then just as you get to the top of the stairs, what happens? Whoop, the light goes on and your partner says, where have you been? What kept you? Why are you late? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, you try to get in slowly so nobody notices you. So you creep along. Okay? To creep, to stride. Stride is very, very formal and big long steps. That's, you know, when you open your legs as wide as you can, then that's to stride. So when you're in the park and you want to do that fast walk, you stride out, yeah, and you stretch the legs. And so you maximize the effort and the energy that you will use. So you stride, or if you're really feeling important or inflated or proud, and you stride around, yeah, you just bought a new house and beautiful garden and you're really proud of this. So you stride around your garden thinking, this is it, I've made it, yeah. Okay, so to stride, mean big steps, strong steps, positive steps, really feeling in control. To hop, well, to hop usually means on one foot, either on your left foot or your right foot. And you can do this in a number of situations. If you injure your legs, let's say you unfortunately break your ankle or break your leg, then you're going to spend several weeks or months hopping, yeah, because your foot or your leg is going to be in a plaster and you can't put your weight on it. So you spend your time, oh, oh, oh, hopping along the ground. Okay, so to hop from foot to foot. Oh, if you're walking on the sandy beach for your holiday and the sun is beating down overhead and the sand is really hot and you forgot to bring those flip-flops, well, guess what? You're going to be hopping, hopping from the left foot, hopping to the right foot, because if you put your two feet flat on the ground, you're going to burn the underneath of your feet because the sand is very hot. So you hop from foot to foot. So to hop means to go on one foot, then on the other, or just hop constantly or continuously on one foot, because as I said, you've injured or broken an ankle or a leg. And it can be quite tiresome because you're putting all your weight on one leg and that's not so easy to do. So to hop. Now there is an old joke about hopping when the guy goes into the French restaurant and he asks the waiter, do you have frogs' legs? And the waiter says, of course we have frogs' legs. He said, oh, in that case, could you hop over there and get me a cheese sandwich? So to hop. Like frogs hop. They don't walk and they don't crawl. They hop. Okay. Next we have step. And step literally is one foot in front of the other to step out from the car onto the pavement. So you open the door, you put left or right foot out, you step out of the car, you step off the bus, okay? You step into the room for a quick minute to talk to your boss or to talk to one of your colleagues. Okay, so it's a short movement, one step. So when people are giving directions, they often use step as an indication as to what you should do. So first step is this. Second step is that. Third step is the other. Okay, so these are just talking about movements. But when we talk about to step, it's a short walk. It's not a run. It's not a fast walk. It's not long movement. It's steps. One. So babies take baby steps, small little steps. And we start with baby steps and then we get bigger steps. And next is to skip. Well, skip is a very sort of playful way of running is what young children like to do. They like to skip along the road. So they're not actually running, they're certainly not walking. So as they're moving, the left leg comes up and the right leg goes down. And it's very musical and rhythmical as well. Okay, so they are skipping along as young children do. And they have lots of games that they play that involve skipping. They have a skipping rope that they use. Okay, and this is a part of that process. So skipping left leg, right leg, right leg, left leg, up and down. And they're running around and skipping. And we often skip to keep fit. It's a good way of exercising where both of your feet come up at the same time and you're using the rope. And as the rope goes under your feet, you jump or you skip, skip, skip. Okay, so to skip is a certain activity. And we can also use skip to miss something. Okay, so if we skip a page, so you're trying to tell your students some homework or exercise they should do. You say, okay, well, look at page 25. You can skip exercise one because we haven't covered that yet, but go straight to exercise two and three, skip exercise four, and we'll do that next week. So to skip in that sense means to miss. Okay, so skip along the road as a child, to skip in the gym, to do some skipping exercises to keep fit, and then to miss, so to skip a page or a particular exercise when you're planning the homework. Okay, next we have to leap. Okay, leap is a bit like jump. Yeah, so we leap from one thing to another. Okay, so if you're trying to cross a river and it's reasonably wide, but there are rocks at different places in the river, you will leap onto the first one, leap onto the second one, and then hopefully get across the river without getting your feet, shoes, or anything else wet. Okay, so to leap. We can leap forward means to jump forward. So it can be a big leap, it can be a small leap, okay, but it's a leap is where your feet leave the ground and you're some form of an action like a jump, so to leap. And birds and they're trying to fly away from the cat, the cat will leap up to try and catch the bird. Okay, so the cat is jumping or it's in the process of leaping. So to leap and to jump, very, very similar. Okay, so if we leap as people, we leap with joy. So if we get the exam results we were expecting and we're really leaping into the air. Or if we're lucky enough to be at that football match and we're celebrating a goal by the winning goal by our team, then we all leap up at the same time and our hands go up, leap with joy. Okay, so to leap. March. A march is very military-like, yeah. Okay, so when we talk about march as a very, very formal type of walking, it's left, right, left, right. So there's a very rhythmical way of walking and it's very precise. So when you're getting trained in army cadets, then the captain or the sergeant or whoever is giving the instructions will inform you which way they want you to march. And it's very, very specific. You have to march in line. You have to make sure you're in step so that nobody is out of step. So they look odd. So they all are lined up, front row, second row, etc. And they're walking at a similar pace. They are marching. So it's very, very specific. So we have marching bands and a marching band is precisely as it says that people playing musical instruments while marching along the street. So to march in a formal way by playing while playing musical instruments to march. And to march to the head of the line means really determined, yeah? Okay, so you get up, you just want to get from the back of the line to the front. So you're really annoyed. So you march up and say, what's the meaning of this? So you can use it in that context. Or in the classroom, the head teacher came into the classroom, didn't knock on the door, everybody looked around and he marched to the front of the classroom and he wanted to know who had been smoking behind the bicycle shed. So he was really, really annoyed. So he marched in, marched to the top of the class and demanded to know what had happened. Jog. Well, we all like, or I used to like to jog and jog is a sort of a little quicker than walking fast. Okay, so to jog to keep fit or to jog to keep up with somebody. So if somebody's walking very quickly or running very quickly and you're jogging behind them. So to jog is in between a run and a fast walk. Okay, so you're not sprinting because either you can't or you're just warming up. So when you start to get ready for, let's say, a marathon run or you're going to go on a five kilometer run, you'll do a little bit of a jog to warm up, to stretch those muscles. So you won't do any damage. You won't pull a calf muscle or a thigh muscle. So you will jog gently or lightly around the park or up and down the track until it's time to get ready for your race. So to jog is in between walking quickly and running, jog. So I like to jog to work, somebody might say, or I like to jog in the park in the morning. I don't like to go too fast, but it's great at six o'clock in the summer's morning to go out in the park, smell the fresh air, listen to the birds and jog for a little while. It's a great way to keep yourself fit to jog. And then finally, to crawl means to go really, really slowly. So for those of you lucky enough to be parents, then you will know that when your baby gets to about six months old, it starts to crawl along the ground. So on, as you say, on all fours. It takes a little bit of time, of course, and push themselves up, and then they move the hands and move the legs. And after a few little bumps and falling over from left to right, they begin to crawl. Okay, so very, very slowly. We can also use it when we talk about the traffic. So if you happen to be living in a busy city and you take your car to work, then often you get stuff stuck in a traffic jam and the traffic will crawl along. So you're sending a text and when the traffic stops and oh, the traffic is terrible. I'm crawling along here. So meaning I'm going really, really slowly. So when we crawl, we go very, very slowly. One hand in front of the other, inching along the car, stopping, starting, stopping, starting to crawl. Oh, as when I go out for a walk with my wife and where I like to go for a little bit of a fast walk, she said, oh, stop, stop, stop, stop. Hold on. I said, oh, but you're crawling along. You're walking too slowly. So to crawl. So they're the different verbs connected with movement. Let me give them to you one more time. To crawl, to creep, dash, hop, jog, leap, march, skip, step, and stride. Everything connected with some type of walking or movement that you'll have to do. Thanks for joining me and join me again soon.