Practise English Pronunciation
Today we have a short podcast lesson which explains an adverbial phrase in an interesting and fun way. While we turn that rather dry and boring linguistics topic into something interesting you can use in everyday English conversation. We also practice English pronunciation and pick up some interesting English vocabulary along the way.
So let’s listen like there is no tomorrow and with repeated listening we can work on improving your automatic recall of vocabulary without translating and getting the correct English word pronunciation first time every time.
With the reality of the holidays ending, and the colder weather setting in and people going back to work or school there will be lots of “dead time” you can use to listen to our podcasts. You can always find lots of interesting podcasts here.
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Most Unusual Words:
Adverbial
Morgan
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Most common 2 word phrases:
| Phrase | Count |
|---|---|
| You Can | 7 |
| Will Help | 5 |
| Adept English | 5 |
| 500 Words | 5 |
| As Though | 4 |
Listen To The Audio Lesson Now
The mp3 audio and pdf transcript for this lesson is now part of the Adept English back catalogue . You can still download and listen to this lesson as part of one of our podcast bundles.
Transcript: Practise English Pronunciation Like There Is No Tomorrow
Hi and welcome to this short podcast from Adept English. I hope that your English language learning is coming on well. If you know other people who are trying to learn English, then tell them about Adept English too! The more people we have listening, the better – and it encourages us to keep going! So if you’ve got family members or friends, who’re also learning English or struggling to learn English, then don’t forget to tell them about us!
Tomorrow and other expressions
So how about we do something quite simple today? What about the English word tomorrow? T-O-M-O-R-R-O-W. You probably have a word that means the same thing in your language. Tomorrow is the day after today. And do you remember the word for the day before today? Yes, that’s right. Yesterday. We don’t have words in English for the day before yesterday or the day after tomorrow, but I know they do in German for example. You have ‘gestern’ for ‘yesterday’ and ‘vorgestern’ for ‘the day before yesterday’. They also have a word in German for ‘the day after tomorrow’ - so ‘morgan’ is tomorrow and ‘übermorgan’ is ‘the day after tomorrow’. But as you can hear, we don’t have these words in English, only yesterday and tomorrow. I wonder what you have in your language?
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Like there’s no tomorrow
So what about a phrase, using the word ‘tomorrow’? If someone uses the phrase in English ‘like there’s no tomorrow’ or ‘as if there’s no tomorrow’, what do they mean? Well, I guess this phrase comes from a time where you would store up things up in your house. This might mean that the food your stored after the summer harvest had to last all the way through winter or your logs, your fuel for your fire had to be conserved so that there was enough for the winter. You needed to make sure that you had enough. So in this context, thinking about tomorrow was really important. You needed to make sure that you were covered, if you like. It’s less of a problem now, because we tend to just go and buy some more, of whatever it is.
Video
What does ‘Like there’s no tomorrow’ mean?
So when we say in English ‘like there’s no tomorrow’, it’s an adverbial phrase – a phrase which acts like an adverb, and which describes a verb. What does it mean? Well, when we say this, we mean that someone is doing something very quickly, very rapidly, very eagerly. They’re doing it without restraint or thought, as if there won't be another opportunity. As though you must do something as much or as quickly as possible. And there’s a sense that the speaker thinks that the action is a little bit irresponsible, people aren’t taking responsibility properly for what they’re doing, if it’s ‘like there’s no tomorrow’. There’s a slight bit of criticism in the phrase.
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A photograph of a man holding a baby you cannot tell the gender of the baby. Used to help explain English grammar she, he and they.
So the idea is that you are going at something, using it up, and it will run out soon. There’ll be none left for tomorrow. Where did this idea for the phrase come from, for the podcast? It came from my children, eating up all the biscuits on holiday ‘as though there was no tomorrow’!
Practise your English pronunciation like there’s no tomorrow
How about we use some examples in sentences. I’ll repeat the sentences three times each, then you can have a go at saying them yourself. This will help you practise your pronunciation. And by the way, the verb ‘to gobble’ means to eat very quickly. Here we go:-
- The children were really hungry and gobbled the sandwiches as though there was no tomorrow! (I’m leaving space for you to repeat it!)
- Every time my cousin goes clothes shopping, she spends money as if there's no tomorrow.
- You’re using printer paper, as if there’s no tomorrow!
- He piled wood onto the fire as though there was no tomorrow.
Video
OK, if you haven’t signed up yet for our free course, 7 rules of Adept English, then I suggest that you do this straight away. It’s free, you don’t have to pay any money, it’s full of video of me speaking – and it will explain to you our method, why and how Adept English works – and how to best use the podcasts. The course gives you tips on language learning – and in particular, it explains what is needed, what is necessary for someone to become fluent in a language – any language actually. But this is advice which you can apply to your English language learning, which will help you become fluent and speed up your learning.
Download The Podcast Audio & Transcript
Goodbye
You can download our Courses straight away – or sign up for our free course straight away. You’ll be learning English like there’s no tomorrow!
Enough for now. Have a lovely day. Speak to you again soon. Goodbye.
Update: We've recently done more on English pronunciation here.
PS: Which Course Do You Start With?
Recently, we’ve had a number Facebook, Twitter and even emails asking us which of the paid courses do you start with?
If you have gone through the free course here then we recommend you start with the most common 500 English words course here this course will help you practice the 500 words which make up over 50% of the words you will use in conversation, it will help boost your listening skills so that all the free podcasts will be easier to understand.
If when you listen to a free podcast lesson you struggle to keep up then the most common 500 words will help you.
Once you have completed the 7 rules of Adept English free course and the most common 500 words, then you should practise with our two free podcast lessons, every week.
When you feel the weekly podcasts are getting easier you should move on to the “Activate your listening” course which starts introducing conversations with two people speaking. This language course is much bigger, with lots of conversation audio and supporting explanation documents.
I hope that helps.
