Fun English Lessons

Story

Addison

I was talking to a friend of mine today.  He was really depressed because he’d just found out that he failed his Math class.  Because of that, he wouldn’t be able to graduate until the following year.  His mood was really negative and he saw it as a wasted year.  I told him that although it’s annoying, there’s no point in dwelling on it.  The past is the past.  He said, “That’s easy for you to say”.  I said, “of course it’s easier said then done, but you’ve got to look on the bright side.”  I asked him if there was anything good about the situation.  He thought for a while and told me that maybe this way he would have more time to really think about what job he was going to get in the future and have a fun year with his friends.  I said, “see, maybe it’s a blessing in disguise.”

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Key vocabulary and phrases that are discussed in the podcast:

 

Depressed –Sad, Can’t eat, can’t sleep, don’t feel like doing much.  If someone close to you dies you will be depressed for a while. 

Some people are depressed all the time.  They have a medical condition and need to see a doctor.

 

Negative mood – Always talk about the bad things about a situation.

 

There’s no point in – No reason to do something

 

dwelling – thinking about a situation over and over again.  Maybe he’d be thinking about how if he had studied more, then he would have passed the exam.

 

The past is the past – the idea here is that things that happened before have already happened.  You can’t change them so there is no point in thinking about it or dwelling on it.  Learn from your mistakes and move on.

 

That’s easy for you to say – Sometimes good advice is hard to accept.  Often the person giving advice isn’t the one who actually has to make the difficult change.  For example, if I passed my math exam and my friend failed, it’s easy for me to tell him not to worry about it.

 

It’s easier said than done – It’s much easier to make the plan than to follow it.  For example, I could say you should exercise for an hour per day.  That’s easier said than done.

 

Look on the bright side – Think about the good points in a situation.  For example, if you get fired from a job.  You could think about how now you have some time to relax and find an even better job.

 

Blessing in disguise – Something good that happened to you but it seems bad.  In this story, failing the math class seemed to be bad, but then he realized that it would be good because now he would have more time to think about what he really wanted to do for his career.

 

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 31st, 2007 at 7:50 am and is filed under Fun English Lessons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.