Learn English with the News: Advanced Vocabulary Lesson from BBC News & The Guardian

hello lovely students and welcome back to English with Lucy in this video I'm going to show you how you can learn English with the news I've chosen two articles to use in this lesson the first is on the failure of self checkouts which is very relatable to me and the second is about Welsh tidy Mouse no spoilers but it might be the cutest story I've read in a very long time this is a really Advanced English lesson designed to supercharge your vocabulary I'm going to read sections of the stories wi

th you and I'll pick out some really useful vocabulary I've also created a free pdf that goes with this video in this PDF you can see all of the vocabulary that I teach in this video plus lots more that I'm not going to have time to mention there is also a quiz in the PDF that I know lots of you will love if you want to download that PDF just click on the link in the description box you enter your name and your email address address then you'll sign up to my mailing list after that you'll receiv

e my free weekly PDFs alongside my news course updates and offers its free service and you can unsubscribe at any time hopefully it will be useful for you if you want to improve your English I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that there are a lot of news websites out there not to mention newspapers magazines and so on and the great thing is you can choose your news source depending on the type of Articles you're interested in and the Vo vocabulary you want to learn if you work in finance you

might want to read The Economist people who are interested in science might read articles from new scientists in the PDF I have also included a list of recommended news sites based on the topics that you're interested in news articles are usually jam-packed with useful vocabulary collocations phrases and many are full of phrasal verbs and idioms too especially if they include interviews with with people I'm going to start with the story about self checkouts this story is from the BBC and it's a

vailable for everyone to read I'm going to leave a link to the story in the description box and in the PDF I'm only going to go over the first few paragraphs in this lesson so if you want to continue reading check it out on the BBC website so self checkouts love them or hate them I personally love them until I hear unexpected item in bagging area which I hear almost every time I use use them but let's see what the article from the BBC has to say first here's the headline it hasn't delivered the

spectacular failure of self-checkout technology I want to draw your attention to the verb to deliver to deliver in that headline in this context to deliver means to do or achieve something that was promised for example Alice has promised to increase sales and I'm sure she'll deliver so the headline says that self self checkout technology has not done what was expected under the headline we have What's called the lead the lead and we can spell it two different ways l e d e or l e a d but both are

pronounced lead with the long e sound this is the first sentence or paragraph of a news story that gives you an overview and is supposed to make you keep reading let's see if this lead delivers unstaffed TI was supposed to revolutionize shopping now both retailers and customers are bagging many self-checkout kiosks okay I want to talk to you about a pun in that lead now puns often use a word with two meanings in a funny way news writers love puns but they can often be difficult to understand fo

r people who are learning a language the pun in this lead involves the word bagging in this context to bag means to decide not to use something and to use something else instead but of course to bag also means to put something into a bag which is something that you generally do at a self checkout for example please bag your items carefully so they don't break so are you following the story self checkout technology has failed it was supposed to completely change how we shop but according to this

story shops and customers are deciding not to use it I wonder why let's read on here's the next paragraph It's a common site at many retail stores a queue of people waiting to use a self-checkout kiosk doing their best to remain patient as a lone store worker attends to multiple malfunctioning machines that's hard to say the frustration mounts while a dozen darkened roped off and cashierless tills sit in the background wow I have never identified with anything more standing in a queue watching a

poor store worker running from one checkout to another while the other tills are empty now the language in this paragraph from the news story is extremely expressive let's take a look at some of it in more detail we have a lone store worker when we talk about loone people or things we mean that they are alone it always comes before the noun and in this case it emphasizes that there is no one else around to help aone worker is a worker who is alone next multiple malfunctioning machines that's so

me great alliteration here that quick repetition of the M sound alliteration is a literary device in which the same starting sound of words in a sentence or line is repeated close together it's used a lot in advertising because our brains love these repeated sounds Coca-Cola Crispy Cream multiple meaning many malfunctioning meaning not working correctly and machines which I'm sure you know to malfunction is a great highlevel verb to talk about machines not working properly we also have the frust

ration mounts this is a really good collocation really high level it means the frustration increases to mount in this context means to gradually increase using to mount instead of to increase re makes the sentence sing you'll also often see the collocation written like this mounting frustration there was mounting frustration this morning as the delay continued use that in your writing and chef's kiss beautiful all right let's look at the last part of this article and remember to follow the link

in the description box if you want to continue reading more for Shoppers self checkout was supposed to provide convenience and speed retailers hoped it would usher in the new age of cost savings they're thinking why pay six employees when you could pay one to oversee customers at selfservice registers as they do their own labor of scanning and bagging for free that's so true isn't it we're kind of working for free when we use self checkouts let's look at one particular expression in that paragra

ph retailers hoped it would usher in a new age of cost savings this is a great sentence for learning English it actually makes me feel excited first we have the phrasal verb to washer in to washer in to washer in and phrasal verbs are usually less formal than similar single word verbs but not this one to usher in means to be at the start of something new or to cause something new to start in the article we saw that self checkout was supposed to usher in a new age of cost savings you'll often see

to user in followed by expressions like a new age age a period or a time for example the policies ushered in a time of economic growth so what do you think is self-checkout technology a good thing or a bad thing I personally go back and forth sometimes I love it and I find it really convenient sometimes I find it really frustrating or I feel a sense of mounting frustration as we just learned I would like to know how you feel in the comments it's a really good Writing Practice opportunity okay I

hope that first article helped demonstrate how good a resource news articles can be when you're learning English now it's time to take a look at our second article it's Welsh tidy Mouse Welsh tidy Mouse this article is from The Guardian newspaper and again I will put a link to it in the description box and in the PDF it's free to read this article is stuffed with phrasal verbs I know phrasal verbs can be really tricky for Learners of English but seeing them used in context is one of the best wa

ys to learn them and get an idea of how to use them naturally there is a lot of other great vocabulary in this article too let's take a look at the headline I warn you this is so unbelievably cute my mom sent it to me on my family WhatsApp group and I had to share it with you Mouse secretly filmed tidying man's shed every night let me just say that again so you understand how cute it is mouse secretly filmed tidying man's shed every night so a shed is a small building usually in someone's Garden

used for storing things like tools and bikes and at night a little mouse was going in and tidying up the shed underneath the headline we can see this sentence photographer who noticed his items were mysteriously moving around discovered an industrious rodent was organizing his workbench I want to point out two words in this part industrious this means hardworking he's very industrious we also have rodent rodent which is the name for the group of animals that includes mice rats and squirrels I p

ersonally find the image of an industrious rodent so funny anyway let's look at the next part of the article a mouse has been filmed secretly tidying up a man's shed almost every night for 2 months wildlife photog photographer Rodney Holbrook noticed that objects he left out of place were being mysteriously put back where they belonged overnight how convenient that the man who owns the shed is a wildlife photographer so this man goes to bed with a messy shed and wakes up with a tidy one isn't th

at the dream I want to talk about two phrasal verbs from that part of the article the first is to tidy up meaning to make something look neat and clean and the part article up doesn't change the meaning of the verb to tidy we could simply say a mouse has been filmed tidying a man's shed but the preposition up adds a sort of shade of meaning and it implies that the tidying is complete you tidy everything the second phrasal verb is to put back to put back which means to return an object to where i

t was before it was moved another example put those biscuits back on the Shelf we already have some at home let's look at the next part now Holbrook from bwells in poess Wales set up a night vision camera on his workbench to find out what was happening and captured footage reminiscent of the 2007 animated movie Ratatouille where a rodent secretly Cooks at a restaurant have you seen Ratatouille this really does sound like a real life version of Ratatouille doesn't it there are two more excellent

phrasal verbs in that passage can you find them in this sentence the first is to set up to set up meaning to prepare some equipment so it's ready to use for example I set up all of my video equipment before I start filming the second one was to find out to find out which means to get information about something for example I want to find out who is tidying my shed there are a few more words I want to talk about from that part of the article two one is footage footage and this has nothing to do w

ith feet as far as as I know on my word I just searched the atmology and it does have something to do with feet it comes from early silent film it's related to the fact that silent film was measured in feet and Frames so footage is a film that shows a particular event we often say that we capture footage for example she used a drone to capture footage of the wildlife the other is the word reminiscent reminiscent and this is followed by the preposition of if something is reminiscent of something

it reminds you of something and this is quite a formal word we don't use it that often in everyday speech but you do often see it in writing I think it's beautiful now let's look at the next part of the article Holbrook 75 told the BBC it has been going on for months I call him Welsh tidy Mouse at first I noticed that some food that I was putting out for the birds was ending up in some old shoes I was storing in the shed so I set up a camera night vision footage showed the seemingly conscientiou

s rodent Gathering clothes pegs corks nuts and bolts and placing them in a tray on Hull Brook's workbench let's look at two phrasal verbs from that part of the article the first is to go on to go on it's been going on for months to go on means to continue over a period of time we also have have to end up to end up meaning to finally be in a place often one that you didn't plan and there is one phrase that I simply can't resist talking about the seemingly conscientious rodent okay cutest phrase e

ver seemingly means appearing to have a quality or to be something though we're not sure the quality is being conscientious conscientious meaning doing something carefully and with effort it's a really tricky word to pronounce make sure you put the main stress on N conscientious conscientious and you know the word rodent from earlier in the video so we have a seemingly conscientious rodent seemingly because of course we can't ask the mouse if it likes to do things carefully but it certainly appe

ars to I think the writer had a lot of fun with this article and I I hope you enjoyed reading it with me make sure you download the PDF that goes with this video there is lots more information on there and there is a quiz so you can test your understanding of the new vocabulary if this Advanced video has made you want to learn more vocabulary including collocations phrasal verbs maybe even Advanced grammar you might be interested in joining one of my beautiful British English programs I offer B1

B2 and C1 beautiful British English programs that are full of really interesting read reading and listening passages and real life conversation lessons to help you learn vocabulary and grammar in context as well as dedicated vocabulary and grammar lessons and pronunciation lessons to make sure that you speak English confidently and fluently if you'd like to learn more please visit englishwith lucy.com I'd love to have you as one of my students I will see you soon for another [Music] lesson [Mus

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