Vocabulary Spotlight | 3 Confusing Words
Description
In this episode of The A to Z English Podcast, Xochitl shares 3 confusing words with the listeners. She and Jack explain the meanings of the words and how to use them in sentences.
Transcript:
Jack
Hey, A is the English podcast listeners. It's Jack here and we just want to announce that we are now on WeChat. Our WeChat ID is A-Z English podcast that is A-Z English podcast, one word all lowercase.
Jack
And if you.
Jack
Join the group. You will be able to talk with me. You'll be able to.
Jack
Talk with social.
Jack
And we can answer your questions. We can read your comments on the podcast. So we'd love for you to join us and be active in our we chat group. Our WeChat ID is A-Z English podcast. Thanks. See you on the app.
Jack
Welcome to the A-Z English podcast. My name is Jack and I'm here with my co-host social. And today we're going to share. Well, we're going to do a we're under the vocabulary spotlight and we are going to share some words that we came across during our English corner classes that students kind of struggle with. And so so.
Jack
Was the first one that you you had that you came up with?
Xochitl
The first one I noticed students struggled a little bit with was workload, the pronunciation, workload and then on top of that, what it meant workload is just. It's a compound word. It has the word work in it and the word load in it, and you put it together.
발표자
Hmm.
Xochitl
With no spaces and its workload, so workload just means the amount of work that each person is.
Xochitl
Uh.
Jack
Each.
Xochitl
Person's share of work so that can be at your house like domestic tasks like chores or that can also be at your job. You know, between your colleagues you may have a heavier workload if you have a higher position in the company. So that's kind of what workload refers to.
Jack
Yeah, exactly. It's, it's it's a lot of times you hear it with the word share shared workload.
Jack
You know, so you have, you have this like?
Jack
The certain amount of work that you have to do at your office and then they divide it among the employees. You're gonna do this much? You're gonna do this much? You're gonna do this much? You're gonna do this much, and each piece is your workload.
Jack
And and then you basically just start working away, chipping away at it, you know, trying to to decrease it down to 0.
Jack
And of course, in the company or corporation it never gets down to 0 because there's always more work. You know you there's another workload piled on top of your old workload. And so you know, it's kind of a never ending, you know, thing but.
Jack
Yeah, I mean, I just think that like, yeah, certain even within this podcast social and I divide certain parts of the workload, she's spends a lot of time talking to students on the app.
Jack
App communicating with them, recording I my workload is. Yeah, I do like the editing and and and some of the you know adding like little music pieces or whatever to it which actually I enjoy. So it's kind of like my my workload is kind of the fun part and I get the the editing part of it.
Xochitl
Can I have an idea?
Jack
But yeah, it's a it's a shared workload and and you know when you do that, when you share the workload, it makes it a lot easier to finish a project more quickly.
발표자
So.
Xochitl
The second one that I saw some students struggle with was the meaning of emotional labor. When I say emotional labor, what does that mean to you, Jack?
Jack
This one I've actually I'm not too familiar with this term. This seems like uh, maybe something that is a newer.
Xochitl
Kind of a new age term.
Jack
Yeah, just like a Gen. Z kind of thing like.
발표자
Yes.
Jack
Most workload is, that is that does that mean like managing your relationships with other people and and trying to keep those you know keep up with like replying to people on social media and emails and that kind of stuff is that, am I right about is?
발표자
Well, let's yeah.
Jack
That what an emotional workload is.
Xochitl
Yeah, it has a.
Xochitl
Couple of different meanings. So some people said, uh, emotional labor, can you know it can be part of your job, like if you're working in customer service, you know, regulating your emotions and kind of managing customer emotions as well.
Xochitl
But I think a lot more commonly in this new age, we use it when we're talking about women's workload in the home, which a lot of it is invisible labor, which means labor that you cannot necessarily see and appreciate. For example, if you have a stack of.
Xochitl
Dishes and they're all gone, you know, because your mom did them. You can see that. That's another type of Labor. But that's a domestic labor, but.
Xochitl
When the kid comes flying home from school and maybe they got depressed because their friends bullied them and their mom is checking in on their kid day after day for the week and cheering them up and maybe your husband came home from a stressful job and then you have to see the in laws and you have to pick a a gift.
Xochitl
For your mother-in-law, it's a lot of these things that kind of fall under an invisible guys that you can't see the person.
Xochitl
Doing these tasks in the same way, perhaps because they don't have a clean cut result, but overall you're doing a lot of Labor emotionally, kind of like what a a therapist would do, maybe. Or a psychologist would do. So you're you're kind of doing unpaid.
Xochitl
Emotional labor. You're like a, uh, unpaid therapist for your family.
Jack
Right, right. It's like it's not quantitative, but it's qualitative in nature.
발표자
Hmm.
Jack
It's like, uh, yeah, it's it. It's emotionally draining. But you don't really get any credit for it. You know, you do the dishes, you get like, a, you get a little little star sticker, you know, like, good job. You did the you did the dishes, you know, check that off the list. But.
Jack
And.
Jack
Johnny has a skin knee and he, you know, he's scared of skateboards now you know. So you've got to console him for 1/2 an hour. You don't. There's no. There's no sticker for that. You know, there's, there's, that's just.
Jack
I mean, I guess in in the traditional sense they would just say, well, that's parenting. So just, you know, suck it up and and do it you know.
Jack
But it often falls on the the mother's shoulders. You know, she's the one that has to take do the the, the nurturing and the the caring for the child with the skin and the knee and the father kind of gets a pass as he, you know, marches off to his.
Jack
The computer room.
Xochitl
Drink beer and watch TV or something.
Jack
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You didn't ask your mom. Mom will deal with it, you know? Yeah. So emotional labor. I I like it. I dig it. Yeah, I'm. I'm. I think we should be more careful to to consider that, you know.
Xochitl
Yeah.
Xochitl
Yeah, I recognize it. Another thing I noticed that students were struggling with the vocabulary word to describe certain words. Certain chores. Sorry. And they they were missing one and I didn't want to interrupt, but I thought it would be be a good time to introduce the vocabulary word.
Xochitl
Tedious Jack. What does tedious mean when attempts is tedious?
Jack
Hmm.
Jack
Yeah, if something is. If a task or a chore is tedious it it's just it's very.
Jack
Well, I'm going to use another big word to describe a big word. Monotonous and monotonous, means it's very repetitive. It's just like it's something that you do that is, it's not difficult, but it's. But it's time consuming and it's very annoying.
Jack
You know, I'm trying to think of like.
Jack
You know, a lot of a lot of construction work is very tedious. You know, when you're building a a wall like a like a brick wall, you have to just one brick at a time, you know, and it take, you know, it takes a long time to finish that wall. And so it's very just doing the same thing over and over.
Jack
And over and over again 100 * 1000 * 10,000 times. That is very tedious, tedious work.
Jack
Work.
Xochitl
One of our students was talking about how she has a cat and she doesn't like to put her clothing directly into the washer because she's worried that the cat hair will damage her clogged her washer so she takes clothing item by clothing item and puts.
Xochitl
A lint roller.
Xochitl
Over it and gets rid of the cat hair that way. And so she said.
Xochitl
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