چگونه اصطلاحات انگلیسی را یادبگیریم و به کار ببریم

How to Learn and Use American English Slang

Lindsay: This is an All Ears English Podcast, Episode 19: Teaching Tuesday.

Gabby: Welcome to the All Ears English Podcast, where you’ll finally get real, native English conversation. Now here are your hosts, Lindsay McMahon, the ‘English Adventurer’ and Gabby Wallace, the ‘Language Angel,’ coming to you from Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

Lindsay: Okay. So in today’s episode, you will learn about one really great website to understand some common American slang terms, American English slang terms.

Lindsay: Okay. So Gabby in this episode, yesterday on Monday, we talked about a couple of things. We were talking about the fact that Americans are getting around by bike instead of by car and I just said it, the first term.

Both: ‘Get around.’ Yeah.

Lindsay: So what does it mean?

Gabby: So to ‘get around’ is just how do you – what kind of transportation do you take? It could be by foot. It could be by car, by bike. It could be on the subway.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Gabby: It could be um – I think – did I cover everything?

Lindsay: Yeah. How do you…? Yeah. How do you…?

Gabby: By limo.

Lindsay: Exactly. Right. Yeah.

Gabby: By private helicopter. Um. Yeah, so – so to ‘get around’ is just how do you go where you want to go?

Lindsay: Yeah. How do you move from point A to point B?

Gabby: Yeah.

Lindsay: So it’s a great uh term – it’s a phrasal verb.

Gabby: Very natural.

Lindsay: It’s a phrasal verb that you can use to sound more natural.

Gabby: Yeah. Exactly. Very common. So it kind of leads us into our next teaching point which is the prepositions that you use with ‘get around.’ So I said a bunch of them just now, but just to focus on them again we have to get around by car or by bicycle or a bike.

Lindsay: Or by bike or on the subway.

Gabby: Right. So just remember always, you know, by bike, by car, right. Right. It’s kind of an individual thing where you’re driving your own car, driving your own bike, but on the subway, um, so on the subway if you think of the subway as like a flat surface, I guess.

Lindsay: Platform.

Gabby: A platform.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Gabby: …on the subway. So um, so yeah, just two ways to use um, ‘get around’ two different prepositions.

Lindsay: Cool. And the next one was – we said ‘a headache.’ If something can be ‘a headache’ it can be really inconvenient, frustrating, annoying.

Gabby: Mm-hm.

Lindsay: Actually cause – could cause an actual headache.

Gabby: Yeah.

Lindsay: Pain in your head.

Gabby: Yeah.

Lindsay: Right. What did we say was a headache?

Gabby: Um?

Lindsay: Driving maybe?

Gabby: Um – oh driving in traffic, heavy traffic. Yeah. You can’t go anywhere, you’re just stuck in your car, so it’s a real headache.

Lindsay: Absolutely.

Gabby: Or getting parking tickets is a headache.

Lindsay: Yuck!

Gabby: Yeah. So I mean we use this phrase a lot but, you know, I wouldn’t use it lightly like calling someone a headache like…

Lindsay: No, no. Don’t say that.

Gabby: “Oh. She’s such a headache.” You know that’s like pretty insulting. Right?

But a situation can be a headache and that’s like no problem.

Lindsay: Like going to the DMV.

Both: The Department of Motor Vehicles.

Lindsay: Oh, what a headache.

Gabby: Huge headache.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Gabby: Okay, so the last term. Lindsay said that as a 16-year-old girl, she would go cruising in her car and um, this has two different meanings, so we wanted to clarify them for you.

Lindsay: Yes.

Gabby: Um, if you know, according to urbandictionary.com, we have several different meanings, but primarily they fit into two categories. So which category did you mean?

Lindsay: So the category that I meant and the way we used it in high school was that we would just go around, drive in the car and have fun. We’d turn the music up. We’d really drive with no real destination. There were four or five of us in the car, um, and music blasting and just sort of having fun – driving as a form of entertainment. Not looking for anything or anyone.

Just having a good time.

Gabby: Yeah. Just driving for driving’s sake.

Lindsay: Yeah. Yeah.

Gabby: Cool.

Lindsay: And so the other term for cruising, the other meaning for cruising is…

Gabby: So it’s like if you’re looking for a sexual partner.

Lindsay: Right.

Gabby: And you’re not necessarily in a car. You could just be like inside a bar or inside a club and you’re cruising for, you know, a person to pick up someone in a sexual way.

Lindsay: That’s a good point. So you want to think about the context of the conversation to figure out what the person actually – which meaning the person is actually using.

Gabby: Yeah. Like if I say “Hey Lindsay what’d you do last weekend and you’re like “I went cruising.”

Lindsay: Except I don’t do that too much.

Gabby: Well it would be ambiguous.

Lindsay: Right.

Gabby: I wouldn’t be sure.

Lindsay: Yeah.

Gabby: I’d be like “Well so you mean…?” Uh….

Lindsay: “Tell me more.”

Gabby: Yeah. “Tell me more.”

Lindsay: Exactly.

Gabby: Cool. Yeah, so those were our four phrases and let me just say them and give you a little time to repeat so that you can work on your pronunciation. So first one ‘get around’ and I’ll say the whole phrase with prepositions so, “I ‘get around’ by bike.” “I ‘get around’ on the subway.” And the next phrase ‘to be a headache.’ Lindsay: Mm-hm.

Gabby: And the last one, ‘cruising.’

Gabby: Okay. We’ll see you guys tomorrow for a ‘Wisdom Wednesday.’ I’m gonna (going to) share a really crazy tip. It’s a little embarrassing actually, but it’s something I used to do and uh, I think it’ll help you guys to practice your English.

Lindsay: All right. See you tomorrow.

Gabby: See you then.

Lindsay: Okay. So Gabby, what do you think would be the best way for students to use the All Ears English Podcast to actually move from the intermediate to the advanced level?

Gabby: Yeah. A lot of people get stuck at the intermediate level. I know in my own, uh, language learning, that listening and then reading the transcript of what I just listened to, like a radio program or a podcast, really helped me to push my language skills to the advanced level.

Lindsay: Absolutely. So in order to do that and to actually get more out of this All Ears English experience, where can our listeners go?

Gabby: Well you guys can get premium transcripts of all of our podcasts, word for word, what we’re saying if you go to allearsenglish.com/conversations.

Lindsay: And one more time that’s www.allearsenglish.com/conversations.

Lindsay: Thanks for listening to the All Ears English Podcast. We’re here to help you learn English and you can help us by leaving a five star review on iTunes.

See you next time!