Upside down and Get caught

Hello everybody. This is Alisson Viana with a new podcast. For tips, curiosity and other podcasts just go at alissonviana62.blogspot.com.br

So, today I am gonna talk about some new expressions that we can use on our conversations so that it can flow more naturally, okay? And today’s expression’s are: upside down and to get caught.

But just before I start explaining the meaning and usage for them let me tell you guys what happened to me and to my classmates last week. As you may already know I studied in a Federal High School named IFRN where I was supposed to study subjects related to the electronic engineering field. And one of the subjects that I studied there was called hydropneumatic. From pneumatic we understand that it is something operated by air pressure, but please don’t ask me to give more details about it.

Well, the thing is that our teacher Roberto asked us to draw pneumatic circuits, which were on an exercise list. If you have no idea what a pneumatic circuit is just look at the picture, then you will know what I am talking about.

He also told us that one of the drawing would appear on the test that we were going to do on the day next. Since we knew that one of the circuits was going to appear on the test, we knew that the most logical thing to do was to draw them repeatedly. I myself drew twice each drawing and they were twelve, which means that I drew them twenty-four times. At that I was able to draw the circuit upside down.

Expressions with the word Dog

Hello everyone, welcome to a new “Dicas de Inglês” here with me Alisson Viana. And today we are looking at some useful phrases using the word Dog.

So, for everyone Dog is considered to be a man’s best friend, that’s not a secret for anyone, right? What maybe not everyone knows is that the word dog can be used to describe lots of ideas in English. For example, you know that we are living a competitive world. Certainly you’ve heard that being good is no longer enough and that got to be the best one in whatever we get into. There is a good explanation for that. It’s because people are becoming aware of the importance that should be put on education and preparation for work, like dedicating more time to study an perhaps having a superior education grade. If you don’t keep up with the speed that the job market requires from you, you will be left behind. It is because we are living a dog-eat-dog world. That means many people are competing for the same thing. In this example for good jobs.

I have a couple of friends who keep this is mind that they have to work like a dog to be successful in their lives. It is certainly true, though. Nevertheless, they also have to be willing to lay off most of the things that they are used to do like hanging out with friends, going to movies and so on. As a consequence of such hard work is that they are likely to get dog tired. And because of that they won’t be able to enjoy their hobbies. I guess you are quite familiar with this expression. In Portuguese we say: “Cansado feito burro”. Another way of passing the same message is by saying to be sick as a dog, which sounds even worse.

Now, to be really successful people should learn new things to improve their skill at work. However there are lots of people, often older people, who firmly believe that you can never teach an old dog new tricks, because they do not like to be taught by someone else. It means that no matter what you say, they will never change the way they do things. Some people are so convinced of that that they may even get offended if you try to pursue them to think otherwise. The situation happened to me when I was trying to convince my grandmother that she should learn how to use a computer. She told me that it was useless and it would be better not to insist, otherwise I’d be in the dog’s house. What she meant indeed was that I should not keep nagging her about this learning how to use a computer thing.

Common English expressions

Olá a todos! Sejam bem vindos mais uma vez ao “Dicas de Inglês” aqui comigo Alisson Viana. Hoje nós vamos estudar sete expressões em inglês que são bastante utilizadas. Eu tenho certeza que aprendendo estas expressões você vai se dar bem melhor no quesito aprender a ouvir em inglês, porque muitas das vezes a gente não consegue entender o que uma pessoa está falando, porque ela está utilizando expressões idiomáticas, que são uma característica particular de cada idioma. Então eu trouxe para vocês hoje sete expressões que eu tenho certeza que vai ajudar vocês bastante.

Usando a palavra Tip

Hello everyone this is Alisson Viana with a quick tip. And actually it is exactly about the word “tip” that I am going to talk about today. The first use of this word is to give extra information to someone, like when you need help to answer a question that you consider to be very hard. Let’s suppose I made a question to you and you didn't know had to answer it, then I tell you:

“Ok, that’s fine I am gonna give you a tip” slowly

"Ok, that's fine I am going to give you a tip"

What I mean is that I am going to help you out with this question since it seems to be hard to you.

The second use of the word tip is to give an extra amount of money for a service, which can be a room serve in a hotel or maybe to a waiter in appreciation of his efforts to serve you well and many other services. In the United States there is a tradition to tip everyone who offers you a service like carrying your bags to your room, bringing a bottle of wine and so on. Just check out the bellow example:

Ex.: The boy from the Hotel took our bags to our room, and from the way he kept standing there in the doorway with his hand slightly out, palm up, you could tell he was hoping for a tip.

After that, we can also use the word tip like this. I was telling my mom about an awkward situation that happened to one of my friends last week. As I was telling her what happened she stopped me and asked: “What’s his name again please? Is it, umm! Don’t tell me I know his name. It is just on the tip of my tongue. Golly gosh I can’t remember it”

Okay, now in Portuguese we could say. “Ah o nome dele está na ponta da minha língua” Oh, his name is Just on the tip of my tongue. You know his name very well, but you can’t come up with the actual word.

Well, that was it for today. I hope this tip suit your needs on learning English. If you have any suggestion or any question let me know by leaving a comment or sending me an email for alisson-62@hotmail.com I am Alisson Viana and this was one more “Dicas de Inglês.” Good bye.

Click here to download the pdf. Click here to download mp3.

On time or In time

Hello everyone. Welcome to a new episode of “Dicas de Inglês” podcast. To download the mp3 or the script go for dicasdeingles62.blospot.com.br and if you also want to keep in touch with me add me on facebook.

So, before we start with our podcast, let me introduce you my two best friends. They are Derpe and Derpina. I’m quite sure that you have already heard about them or even bumped into one of them since they are pretty famous in almost every social network.

Do you think you know everything about both of them? I guess you may even know a lot about their lives, but today I am going to tell you some of their good and bad qualities.

Derpe despite being a good and funny guy he has a fault that most people disapprove. He never arrives on time at his appointments. Which means that he is always late or too late for whatever it is. If a meeting is said to start at 7.30 - it is likely that he will arrive at about 8 o'clock.