Learn the English Phrases "a two-way street" and "the word on the street"

In this English lesson, I wanted to help

you learn the English phrase a two-way street.

Now, the street behind me is a two-way street.

You can drive that way on that street

or you can drive the other way.

But this phrase also has a different meaning.

It's used to describe a relationship or

situation where things go both ways.

Let's think about respect.

When two people respect each

other, it's a two-way street.

I respect to Jen and Jen respects me.

In order to be respected, you

have to respect other people.

It's a two-way street.

I think this happens as well with trust.

In order to trust someone, they need to trust you.

It's a two-way street.

You can also use this to

describe a situation like this.

Sometimes Jen doesn't have enough flowers, so

we get some from another flower farmer,

but it's a two-way street.

When they don't have enough flowers,

we sell them flowers as well.

So we help each other out.

The other phrase I wanted to teach you today

is the phrase, the word on the street.

This is what we use when we talk

about information that we've heard from someone else.

It doesn't have to be information you heard while walking

along the street, but you could say to someone, hey,

word on the street is you're expanding your business.

Or you could say, hey, word on the street is

you took an English test and you passed it.

So when you hear something from someone else, you

would say, it's the word on the street.

It's what people are talking about, about that person.

So to review, a two-way street is

that street behind me, but also any relationship

or situation where things go both ways.

And the word on the street is a

phrase we use to talk about information we've

heard or things we've heard about other people.

But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video.

This comment is from Andres. Oh, volunteer firefighters.

Interesting.

If you were a firefighter, were you allowed

to interrupt your lesson at school, jump in

your car and go to the accident/fire?

Will this affect your performance as a teacher?

And my response?

I'm pretty sure volunteer firefighters have an agreement

with their boss that they can leave.

It's for the greater good, after all.

So thanks, Andres, for that comment.

And I did actually look this up, and

it's actually a law in Ontario, Canada.

Let me read a little snippet of the law to you.

It says, no employer shall without good cause prevent

a person who is a volunteer firefighter from leaving

for work to attend any kind of fire or

accident or other firefighter related incident.

They may either leave work or fail

to appear at work for those situations.

So it's the law.

If you're a volunteer firefighter, it means you can

get out of work when you need to.

Hey, I'm going to cough for a sec.

It's just a little cold out here.

I wanted to show you this fence.

I find this fence interesting.

We're actually at a park. Okay.

But this park has this really tall chain link fence.

We call this a chain link fence.

And at the top it's kind of bright in the sun there.

It actually has barbed wire.

This is the kind of fence you

would more likely find at a prison.

You don't normally find a fence like this at a park.

Now you can just come in the park down there.

I'm not sure why this fence is here.

I have a funny feeling that maybe

this used to be something else.

Maybe this park used to be some sort

of power station or some sort of small

water pumping station for the town.

And then maybe the park part came later.

But yeah, definitely.

I would say this fence is

probably at least 3 meters tall.

Yeah, it's probably about 10ft tall.

And then there are three strands

of barbed wire along the top.

I guess to keep those kids out of the

park so they can't come here and have fun.

I'm just joking there.

We wouldn't do that in Canada.

Anyways, thanks for watching this

little short English lesson.

I'll have another one for you in a couple days. Bye.