Learn how to improve your English listening skills through TV shows
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| Hi, everybody! Welcome back to Ask Alisha, the weekly series where you ask me questions and I answer them, maybe. Maybe, I don't know, maybe, maybe. |
| First question this week comes from Sitthi. |
| Hi, Sitthi! |
| Sitthi says… |
| “Hi, Alisha. What is the difference between figure out and find out (in terms of meaning and when to use, etc.)?” |
| Okay, nice question. So first, let's look at “figure out.” |
| “To figure out” means to solve. We use “figure out” when we have a challenging problem or we have like a complex puzzle, something that we need to do research on or we need to investigate into a little bit in order to find a solution. So “to figure out” means to solve. |
| For example… |
| “I can't figure out what's wrong with my computer.” |
| “I figured out why the house smelled so bad. Someone forgot to take out the garbage.” |
| “We need to figure out why the software isn't working.” |
| So, let's compare this to “find out.” |
| “To find out” means to discover, especially when we're talking about a secret or a surprise or something else that we need to hide for some reason. You may also hear it used as a neutral way to say “discover,” but you can kind of tell depending on the context. So, “to find out” means to discover, especially when you're talking about a secret. |
| For example… |
| “My parents found out I left the house late last night.” |
| “My boss found out one of our employees has been stealing.” |
| “Hey, I found out about a great new restaurant in the neighborhood, wanna go?” |
| So, we don't use these words interchangeably. In some, “to figure something out” means to solve something like a puzzle or you're finding the solution to a challenge. “To find out” means to discover and it often has a negative meaning as when someone finds information that they were not meant to find. So I hope that this helps you understand the difference. Thanks for the question. |
| Okay, let's move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from JerrySong. |
| Hi, Jerry! |
| Jerry says… |
| “I usually watch TV shows to practice listening, but sometimes I can't clearly hear what the characters say, even though I know the words when I see them in the subtitles. So, how do I improve this?” |
| That’s a good question. Keep in mind that there are a few reasons why it might be difficult to understand a character, especially in unscripted TV like reality TV where people aren't always speaking clearly. The words that people choose and the way that they make sentences may not be perfect, so please keep that in mind. People in unscripted TV shows often are not speaking clearly or maybe they have a specific accent or a special way that they speak. They may also just be stopping and starting in the middle of sentences and that can create some weird sounds too. So, try to keep in mind that unscripted TV, in particular, might not sound as clear as scripted TV. It might not sound as clear as like this YouTube Channel either. So, those are a couple of things to keep in mind. |
| Other things that you can consider though are reductions in speech and just speed of speech. So on this channel, we speak at a slower rate than native pace and we also make an effort to speak very clearly to help people as they learn English, but native speakers don't do this usually. Something in general to consider like even though characters may have accents that are difficult to understand even for native speakers, something that you can consider for your English learning is to consider reductions in speech. So by that I mean, the connections that we make between words and the ways that we make words shorter. |
| For example… |
| “I'm going to go to the store to pick up something for dinner.” |
| That sentence said by a native speaker at native speed would probably sound something like… |
| “I'm gonna go to the store to pick up something for dinner.” |
| So, we've reduced a lot of those sounds together. These words like, “I'm going to go…” that are very commonly used together are often reduced to, “I'm gonna go” or “I'm gonna go to the...” |
| So, think about these common reductions that you hear on TV and in movies and so on and try to practice those in addition to considering how it looks on the page. So yes, it's, “I am going to…” in the subtitle or “I'm going to…” but at native speed, it doesn't sound like that in many cases. “I'm gonna go to the…” is how, “I'm gonna go to the…” or “I'm going to go to the…” sounds in native speech. |
| So, another point about reductions in speech is prepositional phrases, so those words like “to” and “at” and “by” and even conjunctions like “and” and “but” and so on, those words tend to get very, very short when we're speaking quickly, because they're kind of giving us the structure of the sentence. So, you can think of these sort of structure words as being sort of the background of the sentence and the content words like the nouns and the verbs are kind of taking the focus. Those are sort of the highlights. So these are some other things that you can think of as you're practicing you're listening and you're speaking with reductions. |
| So please keep these things in mind and also keep in mind, as I said, people speak with different accents too. People from different areas of the U.S. speak differently. People from different areas of the world, speak different kinds of English too. So please keep in mind that in some cases, it's actually difficult for native speakers as well, but another thing that maybe you can work on to kind of advance your listening and even your speaking, is to consider reductions, so listening for those reductions and then considering how you can use those reductions in your speech as well to sound more natural. |
| So that would be my suggestion for improving your listening and improving your speaking as you practice with these reductions in your own speech too, so I hope that that helps you. Thanks very much for the question. |
| Okay, let's move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Junaid Raza, Junaid Raza. |
| Hello, Junaid! |
| Junaid says... |
| “Hello, Alisha! Most people are confused about the difference between motivation and inspiration. I know there are definitions available in dictionaries, but can you differentiate these two words in detail?” |
| Okay, sure. So, “inspiration” is something that gives us an idea. So we use “inspiration” to create something new. Inspiration is something that comes naturally. It comes from within us, so we have an experience, we see something or touch something, we hear something, we smell something, taste something, whatever. We have some kind of experience and it gives us an idea, so it comes from, like inside us, this idea comes from inside us based on this experience that we had. |
| So for example… |
| “My mother's stories were my inspiration for this book.” |
| Or |
| “My childhood by the seashore was my inspiration for this dish.” |
| So these are the things that gave the speaker an idea to create something else. In the first example there, the speaker’s stories were the inspiration for this book. So, that means the speaker's mother's stories were the thing that gave the speaker the idea. In the second example sentence, we can imagine it's about a chef, so the chef's inspiration was a childhood by the seaside, so that gave the chef the inspiration to create that dish. |
| So it's something that happens and there's a natural response in a person that makes them think I'm gonna create something. |
| In contrast then, “motivation” is something that comes from outside us that gives us a push or that helps us to continue doing something and motivation is usually for something that we maybe don't really want to do. So, like on this channel, we talked a lot about finding motivation to study, so maybe, studying is not something that many people want to do, but we can recognize the benefits of that, so we need to find different motivations for our studies. |
| So, some examples… |
| “My mother's encouragement provided the motivation I needed to finish writing my book.” |
| “My motivation to create this dish was to share my childhood with the people who eat at my restaurant.” |
| So, in these sentences that are kind of slightly changed from the first pair of sentences I introduced, we're talking about like the outside reason to do something. So, “inspiration” refers to something that kind of comes naturally from within you. “Motivation” is more external. it's something that's pushing you or causing you to move forward or to start something, to continue something, and it's often for something we might not otherwise have done if this outside force had not been there. |
| I would also say that personally, I think I probably use the verb forms more than the noun forms here, so that means I would use something like… |
| “This music really inspired me and I hope to create my own music one day.” |
| Or |
| “My promotion really motivated me to work harder.” |
| So, personally, I think, I tend to use these as verbs a little more often than as nouns, but this is the difference in terms of meaning between the two, so I hope that this helps you. Thanks for the question. |
| Okay, let's move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Tom. |
| Hi, Tom! |
| Tom says… |
| Is it correct to say “my favorite song of all times” or do you have to use the form, “all time?” |
| Yeah, nice point. We always say “all time.” We do not use “all times” |
| Let's look at a few more examples. |
| “The greatest of all time.” |
| “My all-time favorite food.” |
| “The most popular songs of all time.” |
| So, you'll notice in these examples, there are actually two patterns that we can use, the (something) of all-time pattern and the all-time plus adjective pattern. Both are correct. You can use both in whatever situation you choose. They have the same meaning and the same feel, just note that these positions and patterns are slightly different. Also, note that we always use the singular “time” there. We're not using “times,” so please make sure it's always all the time, greatest of all time and so on, so I hope that this helps you. Thanks very much for the question. |
| Okay, let's move on to your next question. |
| Next question comes from Mifta. |
| Hi again, Mifta! |
| Mifta says… |
| “Hi, Alisha! I've heard the idiom play Russian roulette. How do we use it? Thanks.” |
| Okay, nice one. This is a very dark idiom that refers to a very, very dangerous game. So the origin of this idiom is a game, an actual game called Russian roulette. So, in the game of Russian roulette, one type of gun that's called a revolver is removed of all of the bullets except for one, so one bullet remains in the revolver’s chamber. So this is the part of the gun where the bullets are kept, the bullets are held. So, one bullet is inserted into the chamber of a revolver and then the player spins the chamber and closes the chamber and we don't know where the bullet is. Then, the player points the gun at their own head or at someone else's head and pulls the trigger. So, this is a very dangerous and very risky game. So this is of course not a game that I recommend in any way, but this is the origin of this idiom. |
| Today, this idiom means to do something very dangerous or to do something very risky. So, it has a very dark origin, so we tend to use it to mean something very dark. |
| For example… |
| “He's playing Russian roulette with his career by skipping work all the time.” |
| So in this example sentence, the item that is kind of in danger is “his career,” so “playing Russian roulette with his career,” so his career is the thing that is in danger. We know that because it's connected to Russian roulette, so to play Russian roulette with this thing in danger. And the action, the risky behavior, is skipping work all the time. So he's playing Russian roulette with his career by skipping work all the time. That would mean in a non idiomatic expression, he's in danger of losing his job at any moment because he skips work all the time. |
| One more example… |
| “They’re playing Russian roulette with their savings by making this awful investment.” |
| So again here after Russian roulette, we see “with their savings.” So here, “savings” refers to like a savings account or money in someone's savings, so that's the thing in danger, that is the item of danger here. And then the risky behavior is by making an awful investment or by making this awful investment. So, the “they” in this situation is making this terrible investment, this risky investment, and putting their savings at risk. So, to play Russian roulette means to do something very risky and very dangerous and has a very dark and negative feel about it. So, I hope that this helps you understand this idiom. Thanks for the question. |
| Okay, that is everything that I have for this week. Thank you as always for sending your questions. Remember, you can send them to me in EnglishClass101.com/ask-alisha. Thanks very much for watching this week's episode of Ask Alisha and I will see you again next week. Bye-bye! |
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