[00:00:00] Welcome to the English for change podcast, a place for you if you are an ambitious English learner who wants to build a confident voice in English so you can make positive change for yourself and the world. My name is Ruth Whittle and I am an English language teacher. Join me here each week as we explore ways you can improve your English and use your voice in English to speak about important global issues.
[00:00:33] Hello, everyone. Welcome to this week's podcast. We are going to be talking on the topic of refugees in the next two episodes. So this will be part one where I'm going to be giving you. Six pieces of vocabulary to talk about refugees in English. This will be probably quite a short episode, but it's going to be packed full of value, packed [00:01:00] full of vocabulary that you will be coming across in the news, reading it in English or listening or watching the news in English at the moment.
[00:01:09] And it's a very current, one of course, because. , as you, if you're listening to it right now, , as I release it, it's the end of March, 2022. And we are seeing the invasion of Ukraine and, uh, ordinary people from Ukraine, leaving the country, fleeing. From, , their homes and fleeing to safety in nearby countries because, , there is war going on and people are being killed ordinary people, not just soldiers.
[00:01:44] So, , I wanted to share with you how you can talk about this in English, the vocabulary in this part one in the episode today. And in next week's episode part two, I want to go into more, [00:02:00] on, the definition of what a refugee is and how it is different to an asylum seeker or a migrant, which you probably would have heard of in the news.
[00:02:12] And it can be quite confusing the differences there. I want to share some information to inform you. Also share some of my experience because I did work in a refugee organization in Ireland and I dealt directly with refugees migrants, asylum seekers a few years ago. So yeah, I really want to share this and , start the conversation with you in the episodes.
[00:02:39] So yeah, let's get into this short episode giving you vocabulary that you can use to talk about refugees in English to talk about this current situation that is going on and refugees in general. So I'm giving you six pieces of vocabulary and I have put the [00:03:00] vocabulary into a few sentences actually to begin.
[00:03:03] So you could see it in context. So I'm going to read the sentences with all of the key vocabulary in them, and then I will break it down for you. And as always, the vocabulary will be in the show notes. So you can take a look during or after you listened to this.
[00:03:22] So most European countries do not back the war in Ukraine. International media shows the devastation of the invasion with 2,500 civilian casualties, including 977 killed and 1,594 injured. On the news, we see the plight of ordinary Ukrainian people as they need to flee their home country to find safety in nearby countries.. Many take demanding car and train journeys and arrive in neighboring countries, [00:04:00] sleep deprived and in a state of shock.
[00:04:04] Okay. So this is the kind of thing that we're hearing in the news at the moment. And actually this vocabulary comes from the English changemaker club this month, we're just finishing up for the month of our discussion classes. We had six this month, like we do in all months. And the topic we spoke about in the changemaker club in March was human rights. So it was a very good topic to talk about because we did go into the current events of Ukraine, looking at the situation from different angles, looking at the humanitarian situation, the law of wars, humanitarian law, also looking at racism, potential racial language, and comparing it with how we are treating refugees in Ukraine versus other [00:05:00] conflicts. And so actually all of this vocabulary comes from questions that my members had during the month in the discussion classes. So it's not vocabulary that I've just chosen from nowhere. This comes from questions that my intermediate & advanced learners had in the club.
[00:05:20] And it also came from native resources that we were covering videos and articles that we were reading about this topic. So without further ado, let's get into the six pieces of vocabulary.
[00:05:34] So in the first sentence, I said most European countries do not back the war in Ukraine. To back something. So that was kind of a strange one for many of my club members to learn about. So to back it's a verb. Yes. It's like the part of our body a back, but to back is to support something, to support an idea, a cause, to support something like the [00:06:00] war that is going on at the moment. So, yeah, very simply to back means to support.
[00:06:05] You can say, for example, to back a cause, to back an idea, to back a person. And my kind of putting it into context question that I will give you. This is something as well I do in the club to help people to practice the vocabulary and to practice writing the question is: do you back the war in Ukraine?
[00:06:29] So you could answer this question if you like, you can answer this as you listen to this podcast. , if I would say ideally, if you wanted to, you could pause the podcast episode now and write a few lines about whether or not you back the war in Ukraine and why you do or don't back it. So yeah, this is the idea of supporting a war.
[00:06:54] So I would say you would mainly be saying, no, I don't back the war. [00:07:00] I don't support it. And, I think that the things that are happening, the atrocities, the casualties are just inhumane and horrific and they shouldn't be happening. So yeah to back.
[00:07:17] And that brings us on nicely to something that I just mentioned in speaking, I did mention casualty. So casualty is let me see the definition. This is an interesting one I will give you the uses of it. So a casualty, you will hear this in articles now because we do talk about people who have been injured or killed in a serious accident or war. And you talk about the number of casualties in the Ukraine invasion at the moment as it stands as I am recording this, it's on the 27th of March. There are 2,500 casualties in Ukraine. Now that doesn't mean [00:08:00] deaths. So casualty is the broad term and that means both injuries and deaths. So there are, more people injured than killed, but there are like 977 killed and the rest are injured. So casualty.
[00:08:15] Now an interesting one that you can apply and you can think about because I'm sure you've heard of, , well, actually, yeah the TV program is called casualty. So there you go. Oh, no. I'm wrong. I don't know what I was saying there. No, there's the TV program, the famous TV program. It's quite old now, but E R emergency room. So this is the word that you use in US English, American English, to talk about that part of the hospital, where you go for emergencies.
[00:08:49] So yeah, it's called very simply the emergency room. But in Britain, the UK and Ireland, I'm not sure about other countries, but definitely where I'm from the UK and [00:09:00] Ireland. It is casualty. So I'm going to casualty. I'm going to go to casualty and just like that, we don't say room.
[00:09:07] We just say, I'm going to go to casualty because you have suffered a casualty. Although, a casualty as the definition goes, it's usually something, yeah, it's a serious accident. So it doesn't have to be more, so yes, a serious accident that needs immediate assistance. so we can see a lot of casualties on the TV, people who were injured , and yeah, that's the second piece of vocabulary.
[00:09:34] Now, moving on to the next one. And I think this one comes up quite a bit. It's not something that you would be using day to day, like in informal conversation, but it is a good one linked to war linked to serious conflict. It is plight. A plight. it's a noun. It means an unpleasant [00:10:00] situation or condition, especially a serious, sad or difficult one.
[00:10:05] Another example sentence could be, we must direct our efforts towards relieving the plight of children living in poverty. And in the paragraph that I read, I said that we see the plight of ordinary Ukrainian people. We see their plight. So we're seeing, the unpleasant condition and condition that they are enduring, that they have to go through and suffer through.
[00:10:31] A question that you could put in context -so this is the question that you can, you know, practice your writing, write a few sentences and respond to this question.
[00:10:42] What do you think of the plight of refugees in Ukraine?
[00:10:46] So. you could say here that it's really shocking to watch their plight, watch the devastation, watch the number of casualties, and [00:11:00] also that they are forced to leave their homes.
[00:11:02] They can't stay in their home. They don't know when they will be returning to their country. And so looking at the plight of refugees in Ukraine at the moment is really difficult really horrific to watch families, children, women, also fathers staying in Ukraine and the women and children leaving the country.
[00:11:33] And I was going to say the next one. I'll I'll say it, the women and children fleeing from, Ukraine. Fleeing is a verb , it means to escape by running away, especially because of danger or fear. it is an irregular verb, flee, fled, fled. So they have fled. They have fled from Ukraine. you can say in the present perfect.
[00:11:58] They fled from Ukraine,[00:12:00] they are fleeing from Ukraine. All of those ones are quite common. I said in my little paragraph that, they need to flee their home country to find safety in nearby countries, to flee. So this is really. A very urgent thing when you were fleeing from something.
[00:12:20] And the question that I would use to put this in context is: have you ever had to flee from a dangerous or scary place?
[00:12:29] So this could be war, but it also, I often think, you know, from a fire that if there was a fire in your house, you would flee from the building. Criminals. they will flee from, you know, if they were robbing a bank or something, they would flee from the scene of the crime. So it's a very urgent running away from danger or running away because you were afraid of what could happen.
[00:12:53] Okay. The next one we have two more left.- it is demanding. This is an adjective. [00:13:00] To demand something is more than to ask something in English. It's really to ask something through force, but here we're looking at the adjective and really just demanding something is demanding. It means that it's challenging. For example, he has a demanding job with a lot of responsibilities and in the paragraph that I gave, I said that many Ukrainians take demanding car and train journeys. So these car journeys I've heard about, you know, they drive for four days. from Ukraine to, neighboring countries like into Poland or maybe to Germany and these journeys are very long. They're very challenging.
[00:13:44] To put it in context, you can always bring it back to your work or to your life. you can say that your work is demanding. What is the most demanding work you've ever needed to do?
[00:13:55] So maybe you had a job that was really demanding, or maybe there are [00:14:00] aspects of your job at the moment that are really demanding.
[00:14:03] Okay. And finally, the last piece of vocabulary is to deprive. This is a verb to deprive and it means lacking something that is needed to live the way most people live. That's the definition. It's a little bit strange. Yeah lacking kind of the basic needs. Yeah, the basic needs of life. And we do talk about it in terms of disadvantaged. So we say that an area at a part of the city or a part of the country is a poor and deprived area. So yeah, linked to poverty deprivation.
[00:14:44] And the one that I actually used here was sleep deprived. So when you haven't slept for days and days, Or yeah, you haven't got much sleep. You are sleep deprived, you lack that sleep. And so when was the [00:15:00] last time you felt sleep deprived? Maybe it was after staying up all night partying or traveling on a long journey or maybe, you know, taking a long haul flight.
[00:15:12] Well, definitely what I've heard from the reports in Ukraine is that many people were driving these long distances and they were sleep deprived. So I'll just read the last sentence, many Ukrainians take demanding car and train journeys and arrive in neighboring countries, sleep deprived and in a state of shock. So yeah they were sleep deprived..
[00:15:36] So, yeah, they are the six pieces of vocabulary, to back meaning to support something. A casualty person injured or killed in a serious accident or war. Plight is the unpleasant condition that someone is in.. So we linked this to refugees. To flee is a verb to escape by running away, especially [00:16:00] through fear or danger. Demanding means challenging and to deprive means lacking something that is, you know, a basic need of a human.
[00:16:11] So I hope you found that useful. And there are six pieces of very good vocabulary that you could use to talk about refugees. I would advise you to always try to put this in context. You can write these words down and try to make at least one or two sentences so that you could. put it into use and I would say, you know, using something like Linguee the dictionary Linguee, because it's very good at putting vocabulary in context. Also, you could use Yougllish, which is a really great search engine tool linked to YouTube. So you type in a word on Youglish and it's able to find for you through different videos it searches. It's a very powerful thing. [00:17:00] It searches through all of the videos on YouTube and finds for you videos, examples of this vocabulary in use. So you could type sleep deprived. And then you would see all of these videos of people talking about sleep deprivation or being sleep deprived. I really like it.
[00:17:19] It's really fun. It's a really engaging and interactive way to learn vocabulary. So yeah, I would say, I would advise you with learning vocabulary. It can be very overwhelming, but just try to find different ways, try to make it interesting and fun for yourself and always just, you know, go back over it and revise and try to see how you can apply this vocabulary to your own day to day communication in English.
[00:17:48] So I hope you find that episode helpful, valuable and I'm looking forward to part two, we're going to talk more about refugees, definition of refugees [00:18:00] some of my thoughts, some of my experience. As always, it would be great if you could share this episode with your friends and family, because I really want to help as many people as I can with this free podcast to help advance your English. I am hoping to produce transcripts for this so that you can follow along my podcast more easily, to read at the same time to look back at the text, look back at everything, that I said in text form. So thanks for tuning in this week. And I will talk to you in the next episode.
