Your English Five a Day #44.1

E361: 🎙️ Welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast with me, Anna! You're tuning into Week 44, Day 1 of Your English Five a Day. This daily series is dedicated to improving your English listening skills and expanding your vocabulary one episode at a time. Each day, we introduce five new vocabulary items and explore their usage in engaging contexts.

💖 First on the list today are two idioms, "young at heart" and "beauty sleep". Next up, we'll explore the noun "wisdom". Then, we'll delve into the adjective "boundless". Finally, we finish off today's list with another adjective, "steadfast".

👵🏽 Join me as we pronounce these words together and explore their usage in context as we do a quick quiz to test your memory. In today's story segment, we meet Marie, a 70-year-old with boundless energy, who is described as young at heart. Her wisdom, gained from a lifetime of experiences, keeps her steadfast in her optimistic outlook, inspiring her friends who admire her youthful spirit and resilience.

⭐ ENGLISH LIKE A NATIVE PLUS ⭐

Join English Like A Native Plus - a membership allowing you to access the bonus episodes, plus live classes and all podcasts' transcripts & vocab lists. Become a Plus Member here: https://englishlikeanative.co.uk/elan-podcast/

If you enjoy this podcast, please leave a rating/review - it is a simple, free way to support us. 

Transcript

0:00

Hello and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast. My name is Anna and you're listening to Week 44, Day 1 of Your English Five a Day. This is the series that's dedicated to improving your English listening and expanding your vocabulary. We do it a little bit at a time with your daily dose of English vocabulary. So let's start today's list with an idiom and it is young at heart, young at heart. Young, Y O U N G. At heart, H E A R T. Young at heart. If you are young at heart then it describes that you think and behave in a way that's younger than you really are. Of course, this is mostly used with people who are considered to be old or elderly. So you might say that my granddad is young at heart. He may be old, but he's young at heart. He has a wicked sense of humour. He is excellent with a computer. He is young at heart. Or you might see a lady in her 70s doing gymnastics and you'll be like,"Wow, she is definitely young at heart." You might see a guy in his mid-60s on a skateboard at a skate park. I mean, I don't really consider 60s to be old, but maybe to a teenager that is considered old. Don't hate on me if you're 60 and listening to this, I'm not saying that you're old. Not at all. It's all relative. OK, so here's an example sentence,"My mum is in her 60s but she's still young at heart she goes out clubbing more than me." Next on the list, we have another idiom and it is your beauty sleep, your beauty sleep, beauty. B E A U T Y, beauty. Sleep, S L E E P. Your beauty sleep is basically enough sleep at night that you feel restored. You feel and look more healthy and more beautiful. So we often say that we need to get our beauty sleep. For example, if you're someone who goes to bed at nine o'clock and you're with someone who stays up much later, and you wish them goodnight at nine."Goodnight, I'm going to bed now.""Huh? You're going to bed now? It's only nine o'clock.""Yes, I need to get my beauty sleep." So this is the kind of situation in which it's used. Talking about getting your beauty sleep. Or sometimes you might say,"I'm not getting enough beauty sleep." Here's an example sentence,"I need my eight hours of beauty sleep every night." Eight hours. Eight hours is something that I wish for and long for. I'm lucky if I get more than seven hours. My typical night is somewhere around six, six and a half hours at the moment. How much sleep do you get? Do you get enough beauty sleep? Next on the list is the noun wisdom, wisdom. We spell this W I S D O M wisdom, wisdom. Wisdom is the ability to make good judgements, good decisions based on knowledge, experience, understanding and common sense. You have wisdom. If you have wisdom, you are wise. Here's an example sentence,"My grandfather's words of wisdom guided us through the difficult times, like a beacon illuminating our path in the darkest of nights." So that's a phrase you'll often hear with this word, words of wisdom, words of wisdom or sometimes pearls of wisdom. Do you have any words of wisdom that you would like to pass on to your children? Next on the list is the adjective boundless, boundless. We spell this B O U N D L E S S, boundless, boundless. If something is boundless, then it has no boundaries. It has no limits. It's limitless. For example, the sea is often described as boundless. The boundless ocean because it goes on and on and on. And it goes deep. It spreads wide. Here's another example,"Marie's enthusiasm and energy were boundless. She was always eager to try new things and explore the world around her." Next is the adjective steadfast, steadfast. We spell this S T E A D F A S T, steadfast. If something is described as steadfast, then it doesn't change. If someone is described as steadfast then they don't change their attitudes or their aims. They are focused and determined. They are steadfast. You cannot change their attitude; you cannot change their determination to reach their goals. Here's an example,"The group made a video thanking their fans for their steadfast support and understanding." Okay, so that's our five, let's do a quick recap. We started with the idiom young at heart, meaning that someone thinks and behaves in a way that's younger than they are. Then we had the idiom your beauty sleep, which describes getting enough sleep that makes you feel young and healthy and look beautiful. We had wisdom, which is the ability to make good judgements and decisions based on your knowledge and experience and common sense. We had the adjective boundless, which means to have no boundaries, to have no limits. We had the adjective steadfast, which describes a person that won't change their attitude or their aims. Let's now do this for pronunciation, so it's your turn to speak out. Please listen very carefully and repeat after me. Young at heart. Young at heart. Your beauty sleep. Your beauty sleep. Wisdom. Wisdom. Boundless. Boundless. Steadfast. Steadfast. Fantastic. If I need to rest at night for about seven hours so that I look and feel good, what is this? What idiom would I use to describe this? My beauty sleep. Absolutely. And if when I'm in my 80s, I'm still playing squash and doing gymnastics, what idiom would you use to describe me? Young at heart. Absolutely. And if I make very good decisions based on my knowledge and experience, what do I have? Wisdom. I have wisdom. And if something is without limits, what adjective can we use to describe it? Boundless. Boundless. And if my fans, my listeners listen every day without fail. They never change their mind. They never change their aims. What adjective can I use to describe them? To describe you? Steadfast. Absolutely my steadfast listener. Fantastic. Thank you so much for your input. Let's now listen out for these items once again in today's storytime. Marie had always been a bit unusual. At 70 years old, she had the boundless energy and curiosity of someone half her age. Her friends would often tease her, saying she was young at heart and didn't need as much beauty sleep as the rest of them. But Marie didn't mind their playful teasing. She embraced her youthful spirit and saw it as a blessing. While her peers were happily settling into retirement, Marie was busy taking art classes, learning a new language, and even contemplating a career change."I've still got so much I want to do!" she would exclaim, her eyes sparkling with excitement."Why waste time sleeping the day away when there's a whole world out there to explore?" Her friends shake their heads and laugh, unable to understand Marie's boundless energy. But what they didn't realise was that Marie's young-at-heart attitude was rooted in a deep well of wisdom. You see, Marie had experienced more than her fair share of hardships in life. She had been through a bitter divorce, nursed her beloved second husband through a terminal illness, and even lost her only child in a tragic accident. But through it all, she had remained steadfast, her spirit unbroken."Life is too short to be weighed down by sadness and regret", Marie would often say."We have to make the most of every moment we're given." And that's exactly what she did, filling her days with adventure, laughter, and a contagious joie de vivre. It was a lesson in living that her friends couldn't help but admire, even if they didn't fully understand it. For Marie, being young at heart wasn't just a cute turn of phrase it was a way of life, fuelled by the wisdom of a lifetime of experiences. And that brings us to the end of today's episode. I do hope that you found it useful and I hope that you have a wonderful day, whatever it is that you are doing. If you could just take a few seconds to leave a like, if you're watching on the YouTube channel, or to leave a rating or review if you're streaming on a podcast streaming service. Thanks again for joining me today and I hope to keep you company again tomorrow. So until then, take care and goodbye.