AVOID BASIC ENGLISH 🚫| 10 Adjectives to Transform Your Vocabulary

Hi there. This is Harry. Welcome back to Advanced  English Lessons with Harry, where I try to help  

you get a better understanding of the English  language. Hopefully, we are helping you improve  

your spoken English, your conversational  English, your business English, or indeed,  

if you're preparing for that all-important  proficiency exam. Well, you've come to the  

right place; we'll help you with your vocabulary,  your grammar, pronunciation, whatever it is.

We are here to help you.

And in this particular advanced English lesson,  we're looking at other ways to say difficult.  

So it's an advanced English lesson looking  at other ways to say difficult. So I've got  

ten particular words. I'll go through them with  you and give you an example of when you can use  

those particular words in those situations. So,  difficult is something that's not so easy to do.

It can be some written work  that's difficult. It could be  

a task that the school gives you that's difficult.

It could be a speaking engagement, and it's  difficult to write the speech or to prepare  

for it or the presentation, whatever it might  be. There are lots and lots of things in life  

that are difficult. Making ends meet in  terms of our budget can be difficult,  

but there are ways and different  ways in which we can express that.

And we don't have to use the word difficult  all the time. So here we've got a list of ten.  

I'm going to give them to you one by one,  and then we'll go through them at the end,  

and you know the drill by now. If  you have any problems or you need  

some further explanation, just come back  to me at www.englishlessonviaskype.com.

Always happy to help you. Always happy  to give you some additional help.

Okay, so back to the lesson. Some other ways to  say difficult. First one: demanding. So something  

that is demanding is difficult. Okay. The work  that I have is very demanding. Preparing lessons,  

scripts, and lesson profiles, and setting out  the lessons that I want to do with the students  

can be very demanding. Checking homework can  be very demanding if there's a lot to check,  

and you have to go over some mistakes  that are repeated time and time again.

Some people have jobs that are very demanding,  

like doctors. They demand the  time they have to be on call.

Dentists, all those professional  people who have spent many years  

qualifying can have very demanding  jobs. And it depends, of course,  

on the hospital or the area in  which they work. So demanding.

Number two: challenging. Well, something that  is challenging can be difficult. It doesn't  

mean it's impossible, but it is going to be  difficult to achieve it. So if you're into these,

Sports where you've got to take extra risks,  it could be climbing a mountain. It could  

be hang gliding. It could be kayaking. These  can be quite challenging or quite difficult.

Now, you could stand at the bottom of  the mountain and you can look up and say,  

this is going to be difficult today  or this is going to be challenging,  

and challenging probably means  that, yeah, you'll get there,  

but not without some difficulty. It's, you  know, it's going to take a little bit longer  

than you thought. But when you do get to the  top, you'll feel really, really good about it.

So challenging.

Tough. Another word for difficult, tough,  tough mathematical problems. Yeah. Okay,  

so the teacher has taken you through the course.  You're getting ready for the final push before the  

final exams. And you know that the last few  weeks are going to be really, really tough.  

You're going to have to go over a lot of the work  that you started two years ago in this course.

You've got to remember how  to solve these problems,  

and then you've got to put yourself in an  exam situation and get ready to answer the  

questions that would be in front of you on  the paper. So yeah, it's going to be tough.

How was the exam today? Oh, it was really tough. I  mean, some of the questions really challenged you,  

but I managed to get through it okay. So tough,  but not totally difficult. Something you can  

achieve. But it is. Yeah. Something that  you have to work at and think about. Tough.

Arduous. This is an unusual name. You may not  have come across this unusual word before. So  

something that is arduous is again very,  very difficult. Yeah. We often use this  

in connection with a long, hard journey.  So if you had to get from one part of the  

continent to the other and there was some  problem with your travel arrangements,  

or indeed for part of it, you had to take  trains and buses instead of a flight.

Then you could describe it as an arduous  journey. So at the end of a very long,  

hard, arduous journey, you were ready for.

Holiday, a few days' rest. So perhaps you  hopped on a plane from Lisbon to Madrid.  

You took a train from Madrid to Barcelona. You  hired a car from Barcelona to Perpignan in the  

south of France, and then you got a  bus to take you all the way to Paris.

So after two days of travelling, you could  describe that as a long, hard, arduous journey.

Daunting. Daunting. Like, challenging is  something that is going to be difficult,  

but it is achievable. Okay, running a marathon  could be described as daunting. It's a difficult  

job to do. It's a difficult sport. You've  got to put in a lot of training. You don't  

just decide to run a marathon tomorrow,  put on your running gear, and run 40km.

No. You start building up with a bit of training,  

maybe nine months, 12 months in advance.  So you start off at one kilometre a day,

Picking it up to 2 or 3, and then by the  time you get to six months of training,  

you're ready perhaps to run half  marathon. And then you build it up.

Effectively, you never actually run  a full marathon until the day of the  

race. That's. You're building  up strength in your legs to.

Maintain your running speed through that 40km.  But it's a daunting challenge. It's difficult,  

but when you finish it, you'll be so, so glad,  whatever the time you achieve. So daunting.

Gruelling. Gruelling is about hard work.

Perhaps it's hot work working out in the  sunshine. If you're in a country where  

the sun during the summer and the temperature  reaches 35 to 40 degrees, so any work outdoors  

is going to be very gruelling, even if it's  working in a garden or working on a farm,  

working in a vineyard, whatever it might be, that  work could be gruelling under the hot, hot sun.

Very difficult. Or you could be working in a  factory where you have to use your hands and  

your body strength, carrying loads, picking up  loads, going from one part of the factory to the  

other. And you may have trolleys to help you,  but there's a lot of physical work involved,  

so you could describe that as  extremely gruelling and tiring.

And at the end of each day or week, you're  very tired and you need to soak in a long,  

hot bath or take a long, hot  shower and rest. So gruelling.

Rigorous. Another word that you may not  have come across so often. Rigorous,  

so rigorous can often used to describe  checking procedure. So, you...

When we manufacture something. It could be  computers or desktops or cameras or whatever  

it is, they are checked and rechecked to  make sure that they work correctly before  

they are packaged and boxed and sent off to  the wholesaler and then on to the retailer.

So we could say that these items that  are manufactured go through a rigorous  

checking procedure. So maybe every fifth or  10th or 20th item is taken off the conveyor  

belt and is checked rigorously to make sure  that it works. Because what we don't want,  

we don't want a lot of returns of products that  don't work. Occasionally 1 or 2 will get through.

That will be a problem, and they'll  be returned and the manufacturer will  

replace it. But all of these items  go through a very, very specific,  

rigorous checking procedure. So rigorous  means really difficult. It's not just checking  

to see if the boxes okay. It's making  sure that each individual part works,  

that each individual part fits, and each  individual part is connected to the other.

So a rigorous check.

Tricky. Well, difficult and tricky. Something  that's tricky is it makes you think, okay,  

a crossword puzzle can be tricky. I like tricky  crossword puzzles because you've got to use your.  

Your brain's got to think of those words. And  often the clues that they give you are cryptic.  

So they're not straightforward. So you've got to  really think about them so they can be tricky.

So a mathematical problem that your son or  daughter brings home from school can be tricky. If  

you haven't looked at mathematics for a long, long  time so you're not so sure how to help them. Yeah.

A problem that you have at work dealing with two  people where there's a clash of personalities  

that can also be tricky because, as you know,  it's probably the biggest problem in an office.

The biggest problem that when if you're a  manager is dealing with people and their  

problems. So these can be described as  tricky, not impossible, just tricky.

Awkward. Well, an awkward situation is something  

or a situation you don't like to find  yourself in, so it can be difficult.

Perhaps you've had a row with your best friend.  Perhaps you've had a row with one of your

business partners, or one of your colleagues, and  nobody has had the opportunity to apologise. And  

when you meet the person in the elevator  that morning, it is a little bit awkward.  

You're not sure whether you should say something.  You're not sure whether you should say nothing.

You're not sure whether you should apologise.  And for a few seconds, you just sort of look  

there until somebody breaks the ice. So  it can be described as awkward—an awkward  

situation. You put me in an awkward situation  by telling your friend that I would be happy  

to help them. I don't really want to help them.  So you're in an awkward or difficult situation.

How do I tell them now that I cannot  help them? Okay, so awkward or difficult?

And finally, number ten. Well,  

it's a very simple word that means difficult.  Hard. Yeah. So it's not hard in terms of the

like cement is hard or teak or mahogany wood  is hard. Hard means not easy to solve. Again,  

if we go back to the crossword puzzle  or the cryptic clue, they can be hard.

A test for a driving test where you it's  not just simply getting into the car.  

Now you have to understand all the rules of  the road and explain situations that can be  

hard. Doing an exam 10 or 15 years after you  left school or university. That can also be  

hard. They're not very, very difficult,  but it is a challenge and it is hard.

So.

some people find some things harder than others.

Yeah, it's hard to say sorry. Yeah,  it's hard to apologise because it's  

about our egos and our pride. These are  all things that could be described as hard.

Okay, so that's a list of ten different  ways in which we can say difficult.  

These are advanced English words  or expressions about difficult.

Let me give them to you one more time.  One. Demanding. Two. Challenging. Three.  

Tough. Four. Arduous. Five. Daunting. Six.  Gruelling. Seven. Rigorous. Eight. Tricky.  

Nine. Awkward and ten. Hard. And just be  careful with some of the pronunciation.

Some of them are a little bit difficult.  For example, arduous, arduous, gruelling,  

gruelling. Daunting. Daunting. Daunting. Prospect.  Rigorous. A rigorous checking procedure. Rigorous.

Awkward. This is one of the  most difficult ones because  

it doesn't sound anything like  it's written. Awkward. Awkward.

Okay. So you practise those. Practise the  pronunciation. Practise more importantly the  

use of them. See how you can use these instead  of always using the word difficult or hard,  

hard or difficult. Try and use some of these  words. Look and listen to the situations that  

I've given to you. Check a few out yourself.  Try to practice them. And as always, come back  

to me at englishlessonviakype.com  if you have any other problems.

Okay, this is Harry saying goodbye. Thanks for  joining me and join me for the next lesson.