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Hello everyone. Welcome to another lesson at EnglishPod. My name is Marco

my name is Catherine. So Marco, what are we talking about today?

Today we’re gonna be talking about a popular topic all over the world and that is smoking.

Well, not so popular in the States right now, to be honest.

Well, that’s the thing in every country in the world. Now they are becoming more strict on smoking and where you can smoke, so it’s becoming very difficult for smokers nowadays.

Well, it’s a good reason to want to quit.

and that’s what we’re going to be talking about today is quitting smoking.

Before we get going, we do have a really important phrase, that we should preview in today’s vocabulary preview.

Vocabulary preview

All right, so on vocabulary preview we’re gonna take a look at this word, pack of smokes

pack of smokes

a pack of smokes

so smokes is a word for cigarettes. It’s the same thing, smokes or cigarettes.

Right, but a pack is like 20 cigarettes.

It’s a box of cigarettes. You buy them in a pack, you don’t just buy one at a time. So again, the phrase is pack of smokes

pack of smokes. So why don’t we listen to our dialogue for the first time and see what’s going on with this smoker.

A: It smells like an ashtray in here!

B: Hi honey! What’s wrong? Why do you have that look on your face?

A: What’s wrong? I thought we agreed that you were gonna quit smoking.

B: No! I said I was going to cut down which is very different. You can’t just expect me to go cold turkey overnight!

A: Look, there are other ways to quit. You can try the nicotine patch, or nicotine chewing gum. We spend a fortune on cigarettes every month and now laws are cracking down and not allowing smoking in any public place. It’s not like you can just light up like before.

B: I know, I know. I really am trying but, I don’t have the willpower to just quit. I can’t fight with the urge to reach for my pack of smokes in the morning with coffee or after lunch! Please understand.

A: Fine! I want a divorce!

Sorry, I just smoked a pack of—

Do you smoke, don’t you?

Well, we’ll talk about that later.

All right, so it is a little bit extreme though. I mean he’s divorcing her because she won’t quit.

Well, some people really are health-conscious and are afraid of the negative side of something which has a lot of health side effects.

Yeah, well as he was complaining about all the negative effects and the negative aspects of smoking, he did mention, both of them mentioned a lot of great words and phrases. So why don’t we take a look at them now in language take away.

Language take away

Well, this first word is a word that’s very important for any smoker who goes to a bar or a restaurant and needs to put the ash somewhere, right? So when you smoke there’s some ash. There’s some messy, dirty stuff and you need an ashtray to collect it.

an ashtray

so an ashtray is something that’s usually round or square, you put on a table and it’s very helpful to keep the house clean or the restaurant clean. So if you’re in a restaurant, you say, can I have an ashtray please?

so the residue or the stuff that when you’re smoking it comes out, the gray, it’s like dust, it’s called ash.

right and this is a tray. But the complaint here is, it smells like an ashtray in here. That means it smells really really bad in here.

Yeah, it smells like cigarettes.

Yeah, so that word again is ashtray

ashtray

all right. Well and the guy was complaining and he said, well, I thought you were going to quit smoking and she said, no, no; I said I was going to cut down.

she said, it’s very different from quitting smoking. So Marco, maybe we should talk about how cutting down and quitting are different.

all right, so if I say I’m going to cut down on smoking, it’s just I’m gonna smoke less.

Okay, so let’s take an example. I smoke 10 cigarettes a day but I want to cut down. How many should I smoke later? Maybe—

like 2 or 3

2 or 3

Instead of quitting. So if you quit smoking, that would mean 0

0 cigarettes. No smoking anymore.

Right.

All right, so you can also cut down on carbs like carbohydrates. So some people who cut down on carbs, eat less bread, they don’t eat any pasta. So these are really good ways of trying to talk about dieting as well as smoking.

right and I think we have a couple of examples of other ways we can use this phrase cut down, so let’s listen to them now.

Example 1

Our company has decided to cut down our workload. So from now on we leave 3 PM every Friday.

Example 2

You should really cut down on the amount of salt you eat. It’s not good for you.

Example 3

My doctor told me I need to cut down on fatty foods because of my heart condition.

And when you want to smoke a cigarette you have to do something first with some fires. We call this lighting up

to light up

so lighting up, it doesn’t mean turning on the light. It actually means using a lighter or some fire to start your cigarette.

Right, so you want to light up with the lighter or matches or some sort of fire.

The man says, the husband says, it’s not like you can just light up like before. That means it’s not like you can just smoke like before. So in some cases light up means to smoke a cigarette. Or in a movie theater, and someone lights a cigarette and you can light up in here.

Right, so you can’t smoke in here

you can’t smoke in here

it’s another way of saying smoking. Very good. And she was explaining how difficult it is and she’s trying to quit but she said, I don’t have the willpower to just quit.

Willpower, so this is an important word.

Willpower

Willpower. You think of the main part of this word is will. That means the desire to do something. You want to do something.

So if I have willpower, I have strong willpower, what am I saying?

You’re saying that you can make a decision and you can follow your decision. So I decide not to eat cake. I have very strong willpower so I never eat cake. If I don’t have strong willpower, maybe I sometimes

You’ll eat cake

Secretly eat cake in the middle of the night from my refrigerator.

So, that happens, right? Sometimes you don’t have strong enough willpower so you kind of eat a little bit of cake. Nobody’s watching.

Exactly, you can have willpower about lots of different things. So this is a great word again, to use when you’re talking about dieting or smoking or drinking

any type of maybe temptation

exactly

all right, and well, she said, she had this urge to reach for her pack of smokes.

Urge is another good one. It’s very similar to willpower, but an urge is kind of like a physical feeling that makes you want to do something.

So, you have like this strong desire.

So, I have the urge to go swimming today. I don’t know why but I really want.

all right, you have an urge. Interesting word.

Pregnant women often have these kinds of things too. I have the urge to do something. We also call them cravings.

Cravings are urge to do something. All right, interesting. So we’ve taken a look at these 5 great words and I think we should listen to our dialogue again. We’re gonna slow it down just a little bit and then we’ll come back and talk some more.

A: It smells like an ashtray in here!

B: Hi honey! What’s wrong? Why do you have that look on your face?

A: What’s wrong? I thought we agreed that you were gonna quit smoking.

B: No! I said I was going to cut down which is very different. You can’t just expect me to go cold turkey overnight!

A: Look, there are other ways to quit. You can try the nicotine patch, or nicotine chewing gum. We spend a fortune on cigarettes every month and now laws are cracking down and not allowing smoking in any public place. It’s not like you can just light up like before.

B: I know, I know. I really am trying but, I don’t have the willpower to just quit. I can’t fight with the urge to reach for my pack of smokes in the morning with coffee or after lunch! Please understand.

A: Fine! I want a divorce!

And we are back. So, we have a great part of our show. We like to talk about some phrases that help you attain fluency. That means sounding like a native speaker of English. And today’s phrases are wonderful.

All right, so let’s take a look at them now in fluency builder.

Fluency builder

So, on fluency builder today, let’s take a look at two different phrases and let’s start with the first one. She mentioned something about going cold turkey overnight. What is that phrase? Cold turkey.

Now, this is a very strange phrase. Okay, so first of all, why would a turkey be cold? They have lot of feathers. And second of all, what does is have to do with cigarette?

Right, so if I say I’m going cold turkey, what is that?

So, just think this is a phrase. Don’t think about the actual words because they won’t make sense in this context. What we’re talking about is quitting smoking, entirely. You’re not going to cut down. That means, today I’m not going to smoke at all and I’m never smoke again. That means never, ever will I smoke another cigarette. So, it’s cold turkey.

So, if I go cold turkey means I stop doing something immediately and suddenly and forever

entirely

all right

so you can use this phrase for different habits, different things that you do like drinking, for example, or cutting down on sugar. But generally we just say this about cigarettes.

So it’s mostly related to smoking.

Yeah. Going cold turkey.

Some people like to smoke less, like one cigarette a day or one cigarette a week but going cold turkey is supposed to be the hardest.

Right, okay, going cold turkey. All right and well, he was explaining the different, negative aspects of smoking said, well, they spend a fortune on cigarettes every month and he said, laws are cracking down. So, if the laws are cracking down, what is he trying to say there?

Well, this is actually very interesting point because in America right now, it’s very hard to smoke in public places. So this means that the government is trying to stop people from smoking. So they say no more smoking in public places, no more smoking in restaurants, no more smoking in bars. And so, this means they’re cracking down. They’re making it harder to do something.

So they are becoming more strict. I think for this phrase, we should listen to a couple of more examples just to make sure we understand it.

Example 1

The police are cracking down on drunk driving in our city.

Example 2

Our school is really starting to crack down on tardiness.

Example 3

The prison has passed a law that will crackdown possession of illegal substances.

All right, so the government is cracking down laws are cracking down.

Yeah, exactly. So, this is an important one because you read this in the newspapers as well about certain laws and police action.

All right, great. So I think it’s time for us to listen to this dialogue for one last time and then we’ll come back and talk a little bit more about this vice.

So, do you have a problem with this vice as you call it? Are you a smoker?

I’m really not. I’m the type of person that could maybe smoke socially like if we go out to a bar with drinks, a social smoker, like they call it, right?

Yeah. I’m jealous

but not really. You’re a habitual smoker, right?

Right, well I was. I’m trying to cut down so as a habitual smoker I often smoke every day. Sometimes I smoke a lot and sometimes I smoke less but right now I’m in a period where I am mostly quit.

okay. Almost.

Yeah, well I haven’t smoked in a while and when I do, it’s just one cigarette.

Now, it is interesting because like we mentioned laws are cracking down where you can smoke, but also taxes and cigarettes are becoming much more expensive, right?

absolutely, especially where I’m from, in Chicago, it’s easy to spend maybe US$10, or US$12 on one pack of cigarettes.

on a pack of cigarettes, imagine that. So, and you have people that can’t help smoking one or two packs a day. So, how much is in a month? It’s just an amazing amount of money.

thoughts of dollars. Well, and I have to say though, a lot of my friends who used to smoke in America have quit. So, this is maybe working.

The whole thing of making cigarette more expensive

Yeah, making them much more expensive.

Now, another interesting thing and what I was reading recently is that you know those warnings that come on cigarette packs.

Yeah

It says that smoking kills, smoking causes cancer. Actually, a study has proven that it’s not effective, that people don’t mind it or even worry about the cautions on the cigarette packages.

Well, as a smoker I can say that, yeah. You generally, if you’re going to smoke a cigarette, don’t look at the label that much. You just, you threw it in your bag and you forget about it.

Well, it’s actually gotten to the point where people choose the cigarette pack based on the pictures. So, it’s like, give me the one with the black lungs or give me that one.

Oh, god

Yeah, it’s interesting so it’s not really working. I guess we’re gonna have to find other ways to make people more conscious about this vice.

We should

but come to our website at Englishpod.com. Tell us what you think about this vice, smoking. Is it good? Is it bad? Are you a habitual smoker or just a social smoker?

Yeah, we also have lots of great stuff, tools for you on our website and expansion sentences and all that stuff that helps you continue your studies outside of well, the car or your house. So, check it out. Let us know you think and until next time.

All right, we’ll see you there. Bye.