English Listening Practice: Smell Goes Straight To Your Emotions
Did you know that smells from your childhood will dictate what you love and hate, for life. Unfair? Find out in today's English language listening lesson which is all about the smells that shape you psychologically. A fascinating and fun way to work on improving your English language skills.
Get access to exclusive subscriber only podcasts. If you want to learn more we have a great FAQ all about our premium subscription here: Your support will help me continue to create more thoughtful content for you.
What does this have to do with learning English? Discover how your sense of smell can help improve your vocabulary and conversation skills in this unique lesson! Don’t miss out—start listening now and find out why it works! 🎧
✔️ Lesson transcript: https://adeptenglish.com/lessons/english-listening-practice-five-senses-smell-vocabulary/
The sense of smell can be extraordinarily evocative, bringing back memories buried for years.
⭐ Rachel Carson
Follow and subscribe to our FREE English language podcast, wherever you listen or watch your podcasts: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/adeptenglish/
More About This Lesson
Learn how powerful smells are and why they evoke your emotions and memories while you improve your English language skills through listening to fascinating real-world English conversations.
Nothing is more memorable than a smell.
⭐ Diane Ackerman
- If you feel we have helped you please consider supporting us https://adeptengli.sh/donate
You won't just learn all about scent in today's English lesson yolu will also:
- Practice listening to natural, conversational English on various topics
- Learn about the sense of smell and its connection to emotions and memory
- Expand your vocabulary with words related to senses and smell
- Improve your ability to guess meanings of unfamiliar words from context
- Learn about different uses of the verb "to smell" (transitive and intransitive)
- Gain exposure to English idioms and expressions related to smell
- Practice understanding longer, more complex sentences in English
- Learn about the structure of the brain and how it processes sensory information
- Get exposed to personal anecdotes, helping you understand cultural contexts
- Practice listening comprehension without relying on visual cues
If you like this sort of Listen & Learn English lesson then you will love out premium subscription service, which give you two extra, exclusive English podcasts EVERY week, check it out here: Our premium podcast subscription explained | FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- How can I improve my English listening skills using smells as a conversation topic? Practicing English listening by discussing real-world examples, like the topic of smells, is an effective way to enhance your skills. As you listen to descriptions of smells and how they evoke emotions, you engage with everyday language. Repeatedly listening to podcasts like the one in this transcript allows you to guess words in context, helping you get better at understanding English conversation in real-life situations.
- Why do smells trigger emotions and memories, and how can this help with learning English? Smells connect directly to the limbic system in the brain, which is responsible for emotions and memories. This connection makes them powerful in recalling experiences. When learning English, discussing smells helps you practice vocabulary and conversation around personal experiences, making the language more memorable and relatable.
- How can I guess the meaning of unfamiliar words in English conversations? When you come across unfamiliar words, use the context to make educated guesses about their meanings. This is a common situation in real-life conversations where you might not understand every word. Listening to the transcript several times will help you guess words better and improve your confidence in English conversation skills.
- What are some common English words and phrases related to smells? Some common English words and phrases from the transcript related to smells include "evocative," "inhale," "olfactory bulb," and "limbic system." Learning these words can enhance your ability to talk about your senses in English, especially when discussing memories or emotions triggered by smells.
- How can I use this podcast to enhance my British English fluency? By listening to this podcast, you get exposed to British English pronunciation, sentence structure, and vocabulary. The real-world topic of smells encourages natural conversation practice. Repeated listening will help you understand more words and expressions, improving your fluency in British English over time.
Most Unusual Words:
- Evocative: bringing strong memories or feelings to mind
- Connoisseur: an expert in a particular subject, especially in the arts
- Underrated: not valued as highly as it should be
- Conjure: to make something appear as if by magic
- Inhale: to breathe in
- Receptors: parts of the body that respond to stimuli
- Olfactory: related to the sense of smell
- Limbic: part of the brain involved with emotions and memories
- Transitive: a type of verb that requires an object
- Intransitive: a type of verb that doesn't require an object
Most Frequently Used Words:
| Word | Count |
|---|---|
| Smell | 34 |
| Smells | 16 |
| Sense | 16 |
| English | 9 |
| About | 8 |
| Because | 7 |
| Their | 7 |
| Where | 6 |
Listen To The Audio Lesson Now
Transcript: How to Speak About Smells in English–Even If You Are Busy
The psychology of smelling!
Hi there. Do you have a favourite smell? And how does it make you feel? This one's one of mine. That's my favourite perfume. Your favourite smell might be the smell of coffee or baking bread. Or it might be the smell of the perfume that your grandmother used to wear. I read an article this week about how the smells of autumn are really evocative for some people. That word 'evocative', E-V-O-C-A-T-I-V-E, that means 'they evoke'. They bring up feelings and emotions in us. That's 'evocative'. The smell of autumn, and it's all around in the UK at the moment, well, it is quite evocative for me. But other smells are too. Why do we have such an emotional reaction to smell? Well, the answer is in our brains. Our sense of smell links directly to memories and to feelings. So smells can instantly affect our emotions. Let's talk today about smell. This one of our five senses, which perhaps gets ignored. This is great practice for English conversation. It's really helpful if you don't understand all of this podcast because then you can practise getting good at guessing when you don't understand words. That's just like real conversation, where you're not going to understand every word, but it's good to be able to guess and to feel comfortable with guessing words, guessing their meanings. If you listen to this podcast several times, you'll find that you understand many more words than you did on first listen. Give it a try and see. And keep listening to the end of this podcast where I'll talk about smells that mean a lot to me personally.
Hello, I’m Hilary, and you’re listening to Adept English. We will help you to speak English fluently. All you have to do is listen. So start listening now and find out how it works.
Do you want to improve your fluency?
And if you would like to work more on your English conversation, we have courses to help you. Our New Activate Your Listening Course covers common conversation topics. And you get to listen to several speakers, not just me. Speaking natural English, having conversations. And it's the same successful Listen & Learn formula as you know from the podcast. This course will really take your level of English further forward. Check out New Activate Your Listening on our website, adeptenglish.com.
Boost Your Learning With Adept English
The Five Senses
So when we talk in English about our five senses, that's Senses, S-E-N-S-E-S, we generally mean touch, sight or vision, hearing, smell and taste. And understandably, our sight, S-I-G-H-T, 'being able to see', in other words, our hearing, H-E-A-R-I-N-G, that's 'being able to hear', are probably the senses that we focus on the most. Our sense of touch is really important too, and so is our sense of taste. Being able to taste your food is really important. Anyone who has lost their sense of taste, possibly due to Covid, will know how horrible it is to eat food you can't taste. But we don't often give much attention to our sense of smell, S-M-E-L-L. And perhaps this is because smell has lost some of its importance for us in evolution, as we've evolved as human beings. If you own a dog, you'll know how much time they spend smelling and sniffing. Sense of smell is very important to dogs. And this is because a dog's sense of smell is believed to be up to 10 million times more sensitive than ours. Dogs have roughly 40 times more smell receptors than we do. No wonder they spend so long sniffing at things when we take them for a walk.
📷
A woman standing in a leafy scene enjoying the the scent of Autumn. Use Sensory Words to Add Depth to Your English Conversations
Our sense of smell is linked directly to our emotional centre
But that's not to say our sense of smell isn't important. It's just somewhat underrated and probably underdeveloped. Unless you're a perfumer, a wine specialist or a connoisseur, usually we don't pay much attention to our sense of smell, but it affects us on the less. And the reason why our sense of smell is so able to conjure up emotions is the way that the brain processes smell. When you breathe in or inhale, I-N-H-A-L-E, then molecules, tiny pieces of the substance you're inhaling, arrive at receptors in the nose. That's N-O-S-E. A 'receptor', R-E-C-E-P-T-O-R, is essentially something that's 'ready to receive'. So I often talk about 'receptors' in the brain, but here this is smell receptors in our noses. They're parts of us that are 'waiting to receive input'. That's 'receptors'. And the receptors in our nose, the smell receptors, communicate with something called the 'olfactory bulb' in the brain. It's not important that you remember that name in English, but the 'olfactory bulb' links direct with our limbic system. That's L-I-M-B-I-C. And the limbic system in the brain is where we process feelings and emotions. Our other five senses don't link direct like this. They go through a part of the brain called the 'thalamus', T-H-A-L-A-M-U-S. And the thalamus does 'higher order brain function'. It's much more cognitive in its processing. So smell is unique in the five senses in that it communicates directly with your limbic system. And smells can cause us to have intense emotional responses and bring up all kinds of memories. And it's very quick. It's immediate and automatic.
Using the word ‘smell’ in English?
A word about the word 'smell' here, S-M-E-L-L. This is an English language podcast after all! Firstly, 'smell' is a verb and a noun, which of course many English words are. But when we use it as a verb, we can use it both transitively and intransitively. 'Transitively' means 'with an object'. I might say, 'I am smelling this flower'. Or at the moment, I'm smelling the perfume I sprayed at the start of the podcast! So that's a 'transitive' use. But we can also use the verb to smell 'intransitively'. That means 'without an object'. So where I'm smelling the flower, I'm doing the sniffing, the smelling with my nose. But if I say, 'Oh, I smell terrible, I need a shower!' That means I'm the one giving out the smell! So two ways of using the verb 'to smell' are possible. And there are many jokes in English that rely on this. If you hear the verb 'to sniff', S-N-I-F-F, that always has an object. That's always transitive. I might 'sniff the air'. It means the same, but I'm doing an action to bring air into my nose more. Whereas smelling, you might do that without sniffing.
What is it like for our ‘four-legged friends’?
So all of this made me wonder more about the experience of dogs. The world of smell must be absolutely amazing for them if they have a sense of smell up to 10 million times better than ours! But are dogs sniffing around and experiencing different emotions because of the smells they find? I'm not sure. They pick up a whole lot of information, like which dog has passed by here today and maybe where the rabbits are. But probably dogs' memories are not as sophisticated as ours. Dogs don't lay down memories in quite the same way as we do. But given just how sensitive their noses are and how receptive their brains are to smells, it does make you wonder whether sniffing evokes emotion in dogs. Just a thought.
Selling smells as branding?
But I read an interesting article on this in the Harvard Gazette. A woman called Dawn Goldman has a business called 12.29, which sells smells to companies, to businesses, so that they can be associated with the brand. This is very clever psychological marketing, isn't it? So Dawn Goldman sells smells to big companies like Nike. She says, and here is your opportunity to practice some more difficult English. 'Smell is the sense that is most developed in a child up to the age of 10 when sight takes over. And because smell and emotion are stored as one memory, childhood tends to be the period where you create the basis for the smells you will like and the smells you will hate for the rest of your life'.
What else can our sense of smell tell us?
Dawn Golding also commented that sometimes people can lose their sense of smell as they get older or with a bump on their head. But also that you can make your sense of smell more acute, more discerning if you practise smelling, if you do a lot of smelling consciously and on purpose. I'm aware also that having a good sense of smell can indicate good brain health when you're older, and that loss of ability to smell can sometimes be the first symptom of serious neurological illness. And smell is useful to us sometimes even for our safety. We're very quick to smell fire or smell gas in our houses. That's G.A.S. And sometimes even people can have a certain smell. You can tell when they visited even if you weren't there. And I remember as a child and through my own children that different households had very different smells. And of course each smell can have a positive or a negative emotional association because of that close connection with the emotional limbic system in our brain.
Your Relationship Roller Coaster | English Listening
Personal ‘smell stories’
This is a personal bit. After my mother died in 2012, so it's quite a while ago now, one of my daughters kept her jewellery box. This was in fact a glass jar that my mum used to keep her jewellery in. And my daughter used to always keep the lid on this jar. When I asked why, she said she would take the lid off from time to time and sniff inside the jar because it 'smelled of grandma'.
Download The Podcast Audio & Transcript
Solve The Maths Problem To Download Podcast & Transcript
I rather like that! And for me the smells which I particularly like, probably the smell of flowers, wisteria or honeysuckle on a warm evening, that takes some beating. They're beautiful smells in their own right but they also have nice associations with gardens and summer. I also like the smell of coffee and the smell of freshly cut grass. G-R-A-S-S. Rather bizarrely, I quite like the smell of fresh tarmac too. That's T-A-R-M-A-C. Though probably that's bad to sniff too much of that. Smells that conjure up feelings for me? Autumn, yes. But also the smell of rain on hot pavements. Do you know that smell? And smells I don't like? Petrol, peanut butter and wet dogs!
Goodbye
What are your favourite smells and why? Do you have smells that conjure up particular memories or feelings for you? Good ones or bad ones? And could you pay attention to your sense of smell more? Let us know. Enough for now. Have a lovely day.
Speak to you again soon. Goodbye.
Thank you so much for listening. Please help me tell others about this podcast by reviewing or rating it. And, please share it on social media. You can find more listening lessons and a free English course at adeptenglish.com
Links
- Why Autumn Makes You So Emotional
- Dog sense of smell
- What the nose knows
- Join our premium podcast subscription
- Premium podcast subscription explained | FAQ
- If you feel we have helped you please consider supporting us https://adeptengli.sh/donate
- More great listening lessons
- Find us on Spotify
- Read along on YouTube
- Apple Podcasts
- English language courses
- Listen & Learn
- Activate Your Listening Course
- Downloads
