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Hi there and welcome to this latest podcast
from Adept English. Use listening to learn
English, speak fluently more quickly.
How about today we cover some useful vocabulary,
some words which you’ll definitely use,
once you’re speaking English fluently? Adept
English is here to help you in that stage
of learning English, when you’ve done your
basic English learning, but it’s a struggle,
it’s difficult to become fluent. Being fluent
in English means that you need to do lots
of listening and understanding spoken English
– much more than is possible in a classroom-based
course. So we are here, providing you with
that listening material, lots of it, so that
you can increase your vocabulary and your
understanding naturally, in a similar way
to how you learned your own language. If you
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with the podcasts, then buy our Course One
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& Learn strategy is the key.
What about some vocabulary today that is associated
with driving? Cars come in two types – what
we in the UK call ‘manual’ and ‘automatic’
– or if you want the US terminology, what
we call ‘manual’, they call ‘stick shift’.
The difference is that in an automatic car,
the gear changes are done for you, whereas
in a manual or a ‘stick shift’ vehicle,
you change gear yourself. And the word ‘gear’
is a noun, G-E-A-R – and it refers to the
mechanism which helps you manage the car’s
engine and the car’s speed. You have gears
on a bike – and there it’s quite obvious
– there are different sized cogs, which
determine how fast or how slowly you pedal.
It’s essential to have a low gear for going
up hill and a higher gear for when you’re
going fast on a level or going downhill. And
of course cars are no different – they have
gears which work in a similar way. You just
can’t see them.
So I mentioned the word ‘pedal’ there,
P-E-D-A-L. On a bike, ‘pedal’ can be used
as a noun – it’s the part where you put
your feet, so that you can push the bike forward
as you ride it. And there’s a verb ‘to
pedal’ which is the action of moving the
pedals, so that you can go forward. So you
wouldn’t ‘pedal’ a car, but a car does
have pedals as a noun. Words beginning with
‘ped-’, P-E-D like this come from the
Latin ‘pes, pedis’ a foot – like the
word in English ‘pedestrian’, P-E-D-E-S-T-R-I-A-N
to mean ‘a person on foot’. Or if you
have a pedicure, that’s a foot treatment
as opposed to a manicure which is for your
hands.
So in a car, if it’s an automatic, you have
two pedals and if it’s a manual or a ‘stick
shift’, then you have three pedals. In the
US, it’s much more common to drive an automatic
car whereas in Europe, we like our manual
transmission, we like our manual vehicles.
Personally I prefer manual – part of the
pleasure of driving for me is the gear changing!
So what are the two pedals in an automatic
car called? Well, one pedal makes the car’s
engine go faster – that’s called the accelerator,
A-C-C-E-L-E-R-A-T-O-R
and the other pedal makes the car slow down
or stop. And that’s called the brake, B-R-A-K-E.
And as there’s little reason to be pressing
both these pedals at the same time, it’s
usual to operate both the brake and the accelerator
pedals with your right foot! And if you have
a manual or a ‘stick shift’ car then there’s
a third pedal which you operate with your
left foot – and that’s called the clutch,
C-L-U-T-C-H in English.
So you’ve got your brake, your accelerator
and your clutch. Let’s talk a bit more about
these words in English, to help them stick
in your mind, to help that vocabulary stick
in your head. Of course, as with any Adept
English podcast, you need to listen to the
same material a few times to help you remember.
So the word ‘brake’ first of all. Notice
the spelling B-R-A-KE – it’s different
from the familiar word ‘break’, B-R-E-A-K
– but it’s a homophone – it sounds the
same. So ‘brake’, B-R-A-K-E is both a
noun and a verb ‘to brake’. So one of
the reasons that you might take your car to
the garage is to have its brakes repaired
or replaced. And back to your bike again – it’s
the same there, your bike has brakes to slow
it down, or at least I hope it does. So it’s
used as a noun and generally in the plural
– you would ‘put your brakes on’. And
as a verb ‘He braked sharply, when the squirrel
ran into the road’. And the noun and verb
‘to brake’ is used idiomatically as well.
You might talk about someone ‘putting the
brake on a house purchase’ – because they’d
lost their job perhaps. In a car you also
have the handbrake, H-A-N-D (hand) B-R-A-K-E
(brake) - that’s the mechanism for when
the car is stopped and you want to prevent
it rolling away down a hill.
And an accelerator? Watch the spelling A-C-C-E-L-E-R-A-T-O-R.
There are plenty of English speakers who would
spell that incorrectly – two Cs and one
L. It helps again, if you know Latin – ‘celer’,
C-E-L-E-R means quick, fast, speedy swift
– it’s an adjective. So if you accelerate
something, you make it go faster. So this
word is a noun ‘accelerator’ and a verb
‘to accelerate’. The English we speak
is peppered with Latin, as well as other languages
too. So it’s used specifically of that pedal
in your car, the accelerator and the verb
is used when you’re speeding up, going faster
in a vehicle. But you could also use the word
‘accelerate’ in other contexts. You might
say that ‘The adoption of home working and
remote meeting has accelerated recently’.
You might talk about an accelerator in chemistry
as something which makes an effect or a chemical
reaction happen more quickly. And in physics,
think of the Large Hadron Collider in Cern,
Switzerland. That’s a ‘particle accelerator’
– they accelerate tiny particles to observe
what happens when they ‘run into each other’
or collide.
So back to the third pedal in your car, the
clutch. So again ‘clutch’, C-L-U-T-C-H
is a noun. There is also a verb ‘to clutch’,
but that’s unconnected. So your clutch is
what you need to disengage when you change
gear. I have no idea what a clutch looks like
– but it’s a piece of machinery, a mechanism
– and I know that sometimes you might take
your car to the garage and the clutch has
worn out, it needs replacing. We might also
talk about ‘riding the clutch’ – that’s
what you do in your car on a hill, when you
use your clutch and your accelerator, those
two pedals, to stop the car rolling backwards,
rather than using your brake. Fun to do ‘riding
the clutch’, but it means that your clutch
mechanism on your car doesn’t last as long!
‘To ride the clutch’ – there’s a driving
term for you!
Anyway there you have it. You’ve learned
the words ‘gear’, the word ‘pedal’
and ‘pedestrian’. You’ve learned the
terms ‘automatic’, ‘manual’ and ‘stick
shift’. And you now know what the three
pedals in your car are called – the brake,
the accelerator and the clutch. And don’t
forget your handbrake. So some good driving
terminology today to help you speak English
– conversations about cars will be easier
now!
There are many more words, many more pieces
of vocabulary associated with driving. I sometimes
think about writing another course which gives
you lots of practical vocabulary like this
for different contexts, for doing practical
things, like driving a car. Or practical words
for part of your house or words you might
use at work. Let us know whether this would
be useful. So you can learn English, speak
fluently more quickly – listen to the podcast
a number of times until you understand all
the words. And then listen a few more times,
so that the vocabulary, the words and phrases
stick in your head.
Enough for now. Have a lovely day. Speak to
you again soon. Goodbye.
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