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Hello everyone and welcome back to EnglishPod. My name is Marco.

My name is Catherine and today we’re talking about something that has always been very confusing for me.

For me as well. I don’t understand very well what this is about. We’re gonna be talking about time zones and a little bit about daylight savings time.

Before we get started, though, let’s take a look at this phrase in today’s vocabulary preview.

Vocabulary preview

All right. So, the phrase is daylight savings time. Okay, so we’re trying to save daylight, pretty much.

That’s right. So, this is the time of year when we change our clocks. What does that mean? That means in the fall, there’s a special day and everyone has it on the calendar and we change the clock. So, put them back one hour so if it was 8 o’clock, now it’s 7 o’clock.

Okay, so everything is earlier, starts earlier

yes

and that’s basically to take advantage of the daylight, right? That’s why it’s called daylight savings time.

Exactly. And so, that’s for the winter and then when the winter is past, we change the clocks again. We have the spring daylight savings or we change our clocks ahead.

Okay. So, it sounds kind of complicated. Many countries don’t have daylight savings time. They don’t change their clocks at all. But we’re gonna be talking about this in a little bit more. So, why don’t we listen to our dialogue for the first time.

Did you set your clock forward for daylight savings time?

What? Why do we have to do that?

Well, at the start of the spring we usually have more daylight in the mornings and less in the afternoon. This is basically due to our position on the planet and the rotation of the earth. In any case, to take better advantage of the daylight available, we compensate by moving our clocks forward one hour.

I see. That’s convenient! I never understood things like this, such as GMT. I never know what time zone we are in or when to change my clock!

That just stands for Greenwich Mean Time. Here in California, we are in Pacific Standard Time, that is eight time zones west of Greenwich. Remember when we were in Beijing? Well, then we were in China Standard Time, and that’s eight time zones east of Greenwich!

That’s why it was so weird traveling from Beijing to LA! Because of the huge time difference, even though we left Beijing at noon and flew for more than eight hours, we still arrived in LA the same day at noon! It’s like we went back in time!

All right, we’re back. So, that was a pretty clear explanation of why we do these things but maybe there were a couple of words that you didn’t understand. So, let’s take a look at those now in language take away.

Language take away

Marco, well you were hinting out before this idea that we have shorter days in the winter and longer days in the summer has to do with the rotation of the earth and so the rotation of the earth is our first phrase.

Okay. So, the earth rotates. What does that mean, if it rotates?

It means to spin around but not just to spin around anywhere. It means that if you draw a line through the middle of something, it never leaves that line, it just kind of turns.

Okay. So, it’s spinning

like the wheels on a car, they rotate. That means they go around, but they are fixed

to the car

to the car

right. So, this is one of the reasons why we need to compensate our clocks because of the rotation of the earth.

And that’s our next word, to compensate. This is a verb, to compensate. And it’s often used with money but it can be used with time as well, time or sunlight. So, with money, you’d say, I paid him $100, but I owed him 150 so I’m gonna compensate him for the extra 50.

Okay.

It means I’m going to fix it.

Okay. So, to compensate would be the verb and compensation would be the noun. Now in this case, we’re talking about time. So how can we compensate time?

Well, that means that if we have lost an hour because we changed the clocks, we have to compensate. We have to try and gain that hour back. And so that’s why, in the spring after the days start to get longer and longer we have to compensate for that by changing the clocks again.

Okay. So, we’re compensating time. Now, related to daylight savings and this whole time thing is, time zones. We have time zones all over the earth and you’ve probably noticed this. If you’ve traveled, you have to change your clocks or many times you see in hotels what time it is in London, in Hong Kong, in Berlin, etc.

And this makes a lot of sense because like we said the earth is rotating and so if it’s daylight in Moscow and it’s nighttime in New York, obviously, it’s not the same time.

right

So, to compensate for this difference, we have different time zones and each time zone is pretty much an hour or so and half an hour different from the next one.

Right. So, most countries actually have different time zones throughout their country unless they’re small that they don’t really need to compensate any change. Or for example China, just to unify everything. It’s a big country, but they have one time zones, China standard Time.

Exactly. But in the United States, we have four times.

Right. All right, so that’s time zone and now related to time zone is time difference.

Okay. Well, think about math here. Difference is a word that we use in math and the time difference is the amount of time, that means how many hours there are between one time zone and another time zone. So, for example Beijing and New York City, these are very, very far away from each other. If it’s day in New York, it’s night in Beijing. So that means if it’s 7 in the morning in Beijing, it’s probably around 7 at night in New York.

So the time difference would be more or less 12 hours.

Exactly. But when it’s daylight savings time, it’s 13 so, be careful.

Right, okay. I think that’s pretty clear. I think we should go back and listen to our dialogue again and we’ll be back soon with fluency builder.

Did you set your clock forward for daylight savings time?

What? Why do we have to do that?

Well, at the start of the spring we usually have more daylight in the mornings and less in the afternoon. This is basically due to our position on the planet and the rotation of the earth. In any case, to take better advantage of the daylight available, we compensate by moving our clocks forward one hour.

I see. That’s convenient! I never understood things like this, such as GMT. I never know what time zone we are in or when to change my clock!

That just stands for Greenwich Mean Time. Here in California, we are in Pacific Standard Time, that is eight time zones west of Greenwich. Remember when we were in Beijing? Well, then we were in China Standard Time, and that’s eight time zones east of Greenwich!

That’s why it was so weird traveling from Beijing to LA! Because of the huge time difference, even though we left Beijing at noon and flew for more than eight hours, we still arrived in LA the same day at noon! It’s like we went back in time!

All right, we’re back. So, now let’s take a look at three key phrases in fluency builder.

Fluency builder

Well, let’s go back to the beginning of this dialogue. The person who is explaining all of these interesting things is saying that well, in any case to take better advantage of the daylight available, we compensate by moving our clocks forward one hour. So, this is an important phrase. You could say, to take better advantage of or to take advantage of. Let’s talk about this, to take advantage of something.

So, to take advantage of something is to use it efficiently, right? Or to take better advantage. So, for example if you drive to work every day and your neighbor drives to work every day and you work at the same place, you could take better advantage of your car and the cost by sharing the same car to work.

Exactly. Or when people started to use computers, you could say well, they were taking better advantage of their time by speeding things up, by making things faster with the computers.

Right. Or many mothers say, take better advantage of your time and read something instead of playing those videogames.

Exactly. So, it means like you said to be more efficient, to do useful or important things.

That’s right. And now, when we talked about what daylight savings time means or GMT, what that stands for, this is an interesting phrase it stands for.

Well, think about it as a picture. So, if something stands for something else, that means the original thing, it’s not there anymore. And so in words and phrases like GMT, you– GMT doesn’t mean anything by itself, but the G stands for something, the M—It’s an acronym.

Okay.

So, this is an acronym that stands for, that represents three big long words.

okay

Greenwich Mean Time

Right. So, we use this a lot when we are defining words or when we are defining an acronym. Like GMT stands for Greenwich Mean Time or for example USA stands for United States of America.

Or we can even say, someone’s name stands for something. So Marco, what is the M in your last name stands for. So, you’re Marco M, what is the M stands for?

Right. And then I would say well, it stands for Mejia.

Your last name

Right.

So, you can use this when you see things that you don’t understand may be an acronym or an abbreviation. Like does Kathy stands for Catherine? Yes, Kathy stands for Catherine. It’s a short version of Catherine.

Cool. All right and well now, talking a little bit more about time, you’ve maybe seen the movie back to the future and this is what it’s all about, to go back in time.

To go back in time. So, we went back in time. This is what the person says about the flight from Beijing to LA. What’s interesting is that to go back in time is kind of a fixed phrase. We always say like this. So, we could say if you went back in time, where would you go? What time, what place?

Right. So, to go back in time, usually use it like this. Now, what if I wanted to say to go into the future. Could you say go forward in time?

You could go forward in time or you could go into the future.

Right, going to the future. So, remember if you want to talk about going back in time, it’s usually traveling to the past.

Exactly.

All right. So, that’s all the phrases we have. Why don’t we listen to the dialogue for the very last time.

Did you set your clock forward for daylight savings time?

What? Why do we have to do that?

Well, at the start of the spring we usually have more daylight in the mornings and less in the afternoon. This is basically due to our position on the planet and the rotation of the earth. In any case, to take better advantage of the daylight available, we compensate by moving our clocks forward one hour.

I see. That’s convenient! I never understood things like this, such as GMT. I never know what time zone we are in or when to change my clock!

That just stands for Greenwich Mean Time. Here in California, we are in Pacific Standard Time, that is eight time zones west of Greenwich. Remember when we were in Beijing? Well, then we were in China Standard Time, and that’s eight time zones east of Greenwich!

That’s why it was so weird traveling from Beijing to LA! Because of the huge time difference, even though we left Beijing at noon and flew for more than eight hours, we still arrived in LA the same day at noon! It’s like we went back in time!

All right, we’re back. So, now this is actually something that really does happen, right? If you take off in an airplane from Beijing, you fly for a certain amount of hours and you reach California and it’s still the same time. You’re reaching the same day.

It’s very strange. The same thing happens to me when I go home. So, I leave Shanghai and I arrive in Chicago and I arrive at the exact same time I left on the same day.

So, it’s like if time never passed.

It’s the longest day of your entire life because it’s not 24 hours. The flight is 14 hours. It’s really 24, 38 hours long, right? So, it’s really intense and exhausting.

And then, what happens is when you do the opposite. You go from Chicago to Shanghai, then you go into the future pretty much, right? Because you left on a Sunday, but you arrive on a Tuesday.

Yeah, you leave on a Sunday and you’d arrive on a Monday and you lose half a day of your life.

Right

You’re just sitting there and all of a sudden, it goes pass you.

right

Yeah. So, it all evens out in the end.

Right, right. So, when you go back or when you come it all evens out. You recover, you get those hours of your life back, pretty much.

They’re not gone forever.

All right. So, if you guys have any questions, any doubts, you can send us an email at EnglishPod@practicelanguage.com or come to our website Englishpod.com.

We hope to see you there, ask away and until next time everyone. Bye.