Learn English Through a Story: Improve Your Vocabulary!

- Hello everybody and welcome.

It's Keith from the Keith Speaking Academy.

And today, I have another story for you.

You may remember recently,

I did a story about pollution.

Today's story is even more exciting.

More exciting?

Yes, if possible.

Now, today's story is about routines, and recently,

well, recently I did a live lesson

about routines a while back,

It was very, very popular.

And also recently, I did this video;

'Does It Really Work?' about using stories

to learn vocabulary

and to improve your vocabulary.

Does it work?

Absolutely, it works.

When you read a story,

it really helps build your vocabulary.

If you can listen at the same time,

develop your listening skills.

And I think all the language you get

from stories and the context,

you can transfer to develop your speaking skills,

if you are practicing.

And hopefully, with today's story about routines,

you'll be able to do that

to develop your speaking skills

to become a more confident speaker of English.

Now, if you haven't seen the video

about the daily routines,

I suggest you go and check it out.

You can also, if you like, go to my website,

whoa, over here, and you can check out there.

There's a whole page with the lesson.

You can download it for free there,

or you can just read it on the internet.

Get all the language you need

to talk about this topic.

Okay, without further ado,

let's get straight in to the story.

"Who is Joshua Smith?"

Chapter 1: "The Routine."

"Joshua Smith, known to his friends as Josh,

woke up to the familiar sound of his alarm clock.

(alarm clock ringing)

He rubbed his eyes,

(Keith imitates groaning)

(Keith chuckles)

and he stretched,

(Keith imitates groaning)

and crawled out of bed."

To crawl out of bed is to get out of bed

very slowly and lazily.

"He was a creature of habit." Right?

Creature of habit,

somebody who likes to have a routine.

"Every day he woke up, had a shower,

and smiled at himself

(Keith imitates smiling)

in the bathroom mirror,

come rain or shine."

Remember? Meaning, always.

Without fail, religiously.

(Keith chuckles softly)

Now, the routine for the rest of his days.

The rest of his days?

No, "the rest of his day goes something like this:

he typically has breakfast with his family,

goes to work, and then comes home for dinner.

As regular as clockwork," right?

Clockwork is that mechanism we have

for the old fashioned watches.

Tick-tock, tick-tock.

Something that goes regularly, perfectly always the same.

"As regular as clockwork,

he tells his family about his day."

That's nice, right?

Come home, talk to your family about your day.

"Then he goes to bed happy with his predictable life."

All is good until Chapter 2. (chuckles)

Chapter 2: "The Switch."

"One day, something strange happens.

Josh wakes up and goes to brush his teeth."

Do you notice, by the way,

suddenly we using the present simple tense?

You know, you can tell stories in the past

using the past simple and past tenses,

but you can also use the present tense.

And what it does is, it kind of brings the story

suddenly really in front of you, right?

The difference between "one day something strange happened,"

it's kind of the story's in the past,

"one day something strange happens."

It's like you're in the middle of the story, right?

"One day something strange happens.

Josh wakes up and goes to brush his teeth.

(Keith imitates brushing teeth)

When he looks in the mirror,

he stops and suddenly screams.

(Keith imitates screaming, then chuckles)

He can see a different face. Staring back at him

is Nick, his boss."

That's the reflection.

So Josh has become Nick.

Strange.

"Josh feels confused, but he decides to go with it,"

which is quite strange, right?

I think if I suddenly became somebody else,

I wouldn't go with it.

I would question what's happening.

But Josh, you know, he's laid back.

"As per usual, he heads off to work."

He goes to work.

"But today, he is the boss.

He checks his emails, manages the projects,

and even does a little bossing around."

Nice pun, right?

To boss somebody around is to kind of push them,

they not bully, maybe bully,

but more push them around a bit,

order them, give them orders.

"At the end of the day, he goes home,

has dinner with his new family

(Keith imitates gasping)

and goes to sleep.

How can he sleep?

Could you sleep?

Chapter 3: "The Employee."

"The next day, Josh wakes up in an unfamiliar room,

and he has become someone else again.

This time he's Sarah,

a new junior employee at work.

Josh, now Sarah, goes to work.

He finds out that being new is hard.

The weight of deadlines..."

So a deadline is when you must finish a piece of work

at a certain time or day.

"The weight of deadlines feels so heavy,

and at lunch he only has time

to grab a quick coffee."

(Keith makes a clicking noise)

Get a coffee, grab a coffee, get yourself a coffee.

"At night he goes back to Sarah's flat

where she lives alone

and tries to work out what is happening.

He falls asleep, exhausted.

Over the coming weeks, Josh continued to wake up

as a different person each day.

Each day a new perspective, a new life.

But no matter whose life he stepped into,

a part of him yearned for the predictable comfort

of being Josh."

To yearn for is to really want something.

So he misses the predictable routine of his life.

Chapter 4: "The Final Reality."

"After many weeks, Josh finally wakes up as himself.

He feels an immediate sense of relief.

(Keith imitates sighing)

He goes to the bathroom to brush his teeth

(Keith imitates brushing teeth)

as per usual," as always, right?

"He gets ready, resuming his familiar morning routine."

To resume just means to carry on.

"Resuming his familiar morning routine with his family.

His family's presence feels incredibly comforting."

I'm not surprised.

"He drives to work as if floating on a cloud of joy."

Almost like on cloud nine, right? As we say.

But something isn't right.

Surely something's going to happen.

"He commutes to work and things seem normal.

However, Nick and Sarah act a bit strange around him.

They look at him like they know something he doesn't.

Josh shrugs it off as his imagination."

So to shrug something off,

to shrug is to do that with your shoulders, right?

You can't see me, can you? (chuckles)

To shrug is to do that.

So to shrug something off,

imagine as you're thinking about something,

and it's on your shoulders, and you just shrug,

you shrug it off, right?

Is to not worry about something, right?

I've got this exam, but you know, shrug it off,

don't worry about it.

Come back.

So he shrugs it off as his imagination, right?

Thinking it's his imagination that there's nothing wrong,

and he carries on with his date.

"After dinner, Josh gets ready for bed

and pauses before the bathroom mirror.

'I'm back. I'm me,' he whispers to himself

as he looks in the mirror.

But then suddenly, his face flickers and starts to change.

For a second, he sees Nick's eyes, Sarah's smile.

His face morphs into the many people he has been,

not just Josh."

To morph means to change.

"Finally, the face becomes Josh again,

but he knows something's not right.

Josh feels scared and goes to bed.

He sleeps, but not well.

In the morning, he gets up but does not look in the mirror.

As he leaves for work, he wonders, 'Who am I today?'"

The end.

So there you have it.

Wow, what an interesting story.

What does it all mean?

Let me know in the comments what you think it means.

I hope you've enjoyed that, and please do use it

as a way to review the vocabulary all about routines.

You can make up your own story.

And that way, start practicing and speak it out aloud.

You may also have noticed in the story,

there are quite a few idioms,

and students of mine, as you know, I love idioms,

coming up very, very soon.

On the 9th of October,

I'm gonna be releasing a new book.

It's called "50 Idioms for IELTS,"

and it's gonna introduce 50 different idioms

that you can use on 10 different topics

so that you can use idioms more fluently

and introduce them into your English spoken language.

Gonna be very exciting.

It's gonna be very interesting.

In fact, that's part of a whole new bunch of stuff.

Later in the year,

I'll also be releasing a new course

called "150 Idioms for IELTS Speaking,"

different idioms, more idioms.

But through the course,

you'll be getting to not only learn them

but activate them in a really interesting way.

So all of that is coming soon.

Keep your eyes peeled.

(Keith makes a soft scaring noise)

If you've enjoyed this,

please do subscribe to my channel.

Turn on notifications to find out

about new and upcoming videos.

Thank you so much for watching,

listening, and learning with me.

Can't wait to see you in the next video.

If you want another story all about pollution,

check out this video coming next.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

(upbeat rock music)