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Teaching / Teacher 2 Vocabulary Lesson

Hi. This is AJ Hoge and this is the vocabulary lesson for “Teacher 2.”

Let’s get started okay?

In the beginning I talk to Kristin and Kristin says, “Hey AJ, sorry I had to cut off that last call.” To cut off. To cut off means to suddenly finish something. Suddenly stop something. We use it with phone calls a lot. A lot of times with the phone. So maybe you’re talking on the phone and suddenly you’re busy, something happens and you have to hang up. You say, “Oh, I’m sorry I cut you off. Sorry I cut off the conversation.” To cut off also means to interrupt. So if we’re talking to each other, you’re talking to me, you’re talking, talking. Suddenly I interrupt you. I say, “Oh, wait a second…” And I say my opinion or I say an idea. I interrupt you. Then I might say, “I’m sorry to cut you off. I’m sorry to interrupt you.” I’m sorry to cut you off. So it has this idea of interruption. To interrupt.

Okay, I said, “It’s okay, no worries, no problem.” And then Kristin says, “Yeah, y’know, I’m just really glad that we’re on the same page when it comes to our teaching techniques and ideas.” That’s a very, very common idiom, on the same page. To be on the same page. So we are on the same page. Usually we use it with we… we or they. Because you need two people to agree, right. So it means to agree. To agree, to have the same idea about something. To agree about something. So if I like the Democrats for politics in America and my friend also likes the Democrats, we say, “Oh, we are on the same page with politics.” Right, we’re on the same page. We agree. We have the same ideas. But if I am a Democrat and he’s a Republican, then we say, “We’re not on the same page.” We’re not on the same page with politics. We don’t agree with politics. We don’t have the same ideas. So Kristin and I are on the same page about our teaching ideas, our teaching technique. We agree. We have the same ideas.

Okay, and then we go down. I say, “Yeah.” And we talk a little bit more and then down let’s see, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 paragraphs. Down towards the bottom of the page, we would say… Kristin says, “Mm-hm, mm-hm.”

She’s agreeing.

And I say, “But then Tomoe just started learning Spanish. I mean she’s just a low beginner. She had zero Spanish.”

So it says, but then Tomoe… Tomoe is a name. Tomoe is my wife. She’s Japanese. It’s a Japanese name.

Tomoe.

And in that same paragraph you see the word intensive. “He took this four day intensive course.” Intensive. Intensive comes from the word intense. It means very strong or very concentrated. So a lot in a short time. When we talk about learning, intensive learning, we mean you learn a lot in a short period of time.

So she took an intensive Spanish course. So, a lot of Spanish in a short time, only four days. That’s an intensive Spanish course. Intensive.

Alright, let’s go to the next paragraph. I say, “I couldn’t believe how she learned… how much she learned in four frickin’ days.”

Frickin’. Frickin’ is kind of a slang word. Sometimes people say freakin’. But it can be pronounced free, freakin’. Or it can be pronounced frickin’. Frickin’. And it has no real meaning. It just shows stronger emotion. And actually it’s a polite way to say fu@king or fu@k. So instead of saying, “fu@king… that, y’know, fu@king bastard, you might say that frickin’ bastard.” So frickin’ is less strong and more polite. Much more polite than saying fu@king. But both words, all they do is… they just add emotion. They make the emotion stronger. They can be positive. They can be negative. It depends on the situation. But it makes it a little more positive or a little more negative when you use these words. Frickin’ or fu@king is very, very strong.

Frickin’ is kind of the polite nice way to say that.

Okay, and we go down several paragraphs and we see the word cool. Cool. “Yeah,” I say, “Yeah, it’s pretty cool.” And I laugh.

Pretty cool. Cool means great, wonderful. It can have a lot of different meanings in fact. But in this case it means great. It’s pretty great. It’s, it’s, it’s quite great. Quite wonderful. Okay, so that’s pretty easy.

And then we go a little lower and then we see the word crap again. We see the word crap.

If you’ll remember crap means, means sh@t. It’s a, it’s kind of a weaker word for sh@t. Instead of saying sh@t, we might say crap. It’s less strong. And when we use it as a noun like this, “You can forget all that old crap.” I said. “When you use the Effortless English system you can forget all that old crap.” Crap means bad stuff, bad things, negative things. In this situation crap means old methods, old bad methods. It means bad learning methods. So you can forget all those old learning methods. That’s what the phrase means. Crap.

Kind of using it like a pronoun, it’s just saying crap is bad stuff. Anything you don’t like, it’s worthless, it’s bad.

You might call it crap.

Alright, and then we go down and there’s a big paragraph, for AJ, for me. And in the middle of that paragraph we see the phrase “leap of faith.” I say, “Students just have a kind of leap of faith and say, ‘Okay, I’m gonna believe, I’m gonna believe in these methods.’”

A leap of faith. That’s a great phrase. It’s very common. A leap of faith is an action that requires courage.

An action that requires bravery. An action that requires faith. It means you do something. It’s kind of like a risk. It’s a big risk. You do something but you don’t know. Will it succeed, will it fail? No guarantee, you don’t know. But you do it anyway. You believe. I believe this will succeed. You don’t know. It’s risky, maybe dangerous. Not sure, but you do it anyway. So if you do something and it’s risky you say, “It’s a leap of faith.” For example, in this, in this paragraph: You don’t know, maybe, you don’t know, will Effortless English work? Will it help me or will it not help me? Well, you think it will help you. You read about Effortless English. You think it will help you but really you don’t know, right. You don’t know until you do it. So you decide I will do it. I will use it. That decision is a leap of faith. The action to use Effortless English, it’s a leap of faith. It’s an action that requires courage. Okay, so a leap of faith. Very nice.

And that is the end of our vocabulary lesson for “Teacher 2.”

Thank you very much and I’ll see you next time. Again, this is AJ Hoge, Director of Effortless English.