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 with 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, then you'll sign up to my mailing list.

After that, you'll receive my free weekly PDFs alongside my news, course updates,

and offers.

It's a 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

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 Scientist.

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 people.

I'm going to start with the story about

self-checkouts.

This story is from the BBC and it's

available 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 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, 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-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 /liːd/ 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 tills were supposed to revolutionise 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 for

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 sight 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 cashier-less 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 lone people or things,

we mean that they are alone.

It always comes before the noun.

And in this case, it emphasises that there is no one else around to help.

A lone worker is a worker who is alone.

Next, multiple malfunctioning machines.

That's some 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.

Krispy Kreme.

Multiple meaning many.

Malfunctioning meaning not working correctly, and machines, which I'm

sure you know.

To malfunction is a great high-level

verb to talk about machines not working properly.

We also have the frustration 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

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 self-service registers as

they do their own labour 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 paragraph.

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 usher in.

To usher in, to usher 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 usher in followed by expressions like a new 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 learnt.

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 ways

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 mum 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 organising his workbench.

I want to point out two words in this part.

Industrious.

This means hard-working.

He's very industrious.

We also have rodent, which is the name

for the group of animals that includes mice, rats and squirrels.

I personally 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

two months.

Wildlife 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 that 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 particle 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, which means to return an object to where

it 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 Biltwells in Powys, 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,

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, 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 too.

One is footage, and this has nothing to do with feet, as far as I know.

Oh, my word!

I just searched the etymology 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 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 conscientious rodent gathering clothes

pegs, corks, nuts and bolts and placing them in a tray on Holbrook'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 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 ever.

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 en, 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 appears to.

I think the writer had a lot of fun with this article, and 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.

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 programmes.

I offer B1, B2 and C1 Beautiful British

English programmes that are full of really interesting reading and listening

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If you'd like to learn more, please visit englishwithlucy.com.

I'd love to have you as one of my students.

I will see you soon for another lesson.