[0:01]Okay, hello, hello everyone. Hello, High Level Listeners. Welcome. Hello, High Level Listeners. Yes, welcome to episode three of our Advanced English live classes. Uh, today we're going to be talking about lunch and your lunch break when you have a little bit of time in the middle of the day to grab some food. Uh, before we talk about that, we can introduce ourselves. Uh, my name's Mark. I'm from the United Kingdom. And, uh, I'm, I have about 10 years of teaching experience with students from all over the world, from all kinds of different countries. Because I'm from the UK, I will have the, the British voice of the show. So I'll tend to use more British phrases, British vocabulary, and expressions that you're more likely to hear in the UK. Hi, everyone. Welcome high level listeners. I'm Kat. I'm the American voice on high level listening, and I've been teaching English as a second language for over 10 years. I don't always like to say that out loud because it makes me feel old, but I still really love and feel very passionate about teaching English. My style is sharing my American culture and especially conversational English with my students. I like to focus on pronunciation, fluency, fluidity, and using slang and informal speaking to speak more naturally with your new American friends. My biggest goal is for you to feel more confident chatting with your American friends and other English speakers. Yeah, I think if I had to talk about my style, I say, I would say I prefer the grammar structures, um, sort of revealing the grammar patterns and structures behind the language. So I think that allows students to put their own ideas and their own thoughts into these structures so they can impress people when they speak and describe their real lives. But uh, together with our combined experience of teaching, we want to help improve your English, take it from textbook rules, which are quite strict, and show you what the real dynamic, sometimes a little bit crazy world of real English conversation and speaking is like. So today, like we've done in previous episodes, we will read a short passage each about our lunch break. Cat will read hers first, then mine. Both the stories will be similar in meaning, but again, because of our different cultures and different nationalities, the way she describes hers will be more American style, and mine will be a little bit more British. And after the scripts, we'll go through and compare the different phrases, expressions, and vocabulary for you. So, the question today is, what do you do on your lunch break? So, for lunch today, I decided to take a little break from the office. Left around noon and headed out with some colleagues. We chose a nearby eatery and grabbed a quick bite. I opted for a sandwich and some chips. The conversation was great, and it's always refreshing to catch up outside the usual work setting. The whole lunch outing took about 45 minutes, so I was back in good time to settle back into my afternoon tasks. All right, so that was my side, um, kind of more my American style. And now I'm going to ask Mark the same question. What do you do on your lunch break? I really needed to get out of the office for lunch today. Uh, at about noon, a couple of workmates and I went down to a local cafe that we usually go to for lunch. I had a sandwich and a warm drink. I think it's nice to chat in a more relaxed environment and I'd say we had a good hour to enjoy our meals and have a proper chat. Once we wrapped up, I went back up. Um, I think we were all feeling good about the rest of the afternoon. Okay. So just a, just a couple of things before we get into the actual language structure. Just a couple of things that I noticed as the biggest differences between our lunch break. American lunch breaks are notoriously short. You had well over an hour, just about an hour, to kind of get there, settle in, enjoy yourselves. But me and my colleagues, we had about 45 minutes, because by the time we got down the stairs, got down the elevator, went to the place, ordered the food, sat down, we are fast eaters in America, so I was kind of wondering, Mark, do you think that you usually try to eat pretty quickly on your lunch break, or do you have a little bit of time to settle in and have something? Um, I think we're, the UK is somewhere in the middle, like, I've heard the stories of the USA from, from what I've heard people in America eat their lunch at their desk. Maybe they don't even leave the office. They literally move their keyboard to the side and then eat right there. Maybe even I've done that. Right, right. Uh, so then I think the UK is about an hour or maybe 45 minutes if you work in an office. Office jobs seem to have a slightly more generous amount of time, so about one hour. And then, yeah, we all dream of having these like Italian or French lunch breaks that are two hours or three hours long where you go back to work at 3:00 PM. Uh, we dream of that. I think we have something a little bit in the middle. So about an hour-ish. Okay, yeah, that sounds about right. The second thing that I kind of noticed was, um, you said your workmates and I said my colleagues. Now, I get this question a lot from some of my students. What's the difference between colleagues and coworkers? Most of the time we would use coworkers if it's a little bit more informal. So my coworkers may be at a retail job or at a restaurant job. My coworkers, um, colleagues might feel more like someone that's on your level. Um, especially someone in a bit more of a, a business situation or a work office, but definitely we use both of them, colleagues and coworkers. And what was the word that you used, Mark? I said a couple of workmates. Yes. I feel like if you say colleagues, you're trying to keep this professional distance. Oh yeah, that's a good point. Right, so they are colleagues from work. We interact at work. And at 5 o'clock we say, Okay, buh bye, see you tomorrow. We don't go to a restaurant together or a pub together after work. The colleague sounds like you're not super close. Workmate sounds a little bit closer, feels a little bit closer. Like maybe you go out for a drink after work, or maybe you hang out in your free time. So colleagues is most professional. Workmates, you're a little bit closer to each other. Would you use the word coworkers or would you prefer to use workmates? Uh, workmates. I, I would choose workmates. I think the workers was actually a phrase I picked up in, in Korea. Oh, really? Okay. That was the first time I had co. Ah, okay, so Now, um, when you say workmates, because I know mates in British English means like friends, would you consider those people friends? Or just simply people that you are like, classmate? I would use classmate. But you use mates for friends, so I was just wondering if you would consider those people your friends. Sure, it definitely depends. Um, I think it has the word mates in it, but like you said, it's the same as roommates, housemates, classmates, teammates. It just has the word mates in it. Um, if the most professional is colleagues, then closer and friendlier is Uh, workmates, and then if you are, like, close, maybe you hang out at the weekend, I would say a friend from work. I would say exactly that as well. Yeah, a friend from work. Um, would you also say, like, a mate from work? A work, like, a... My mate at work. My mate from work. What would you say? Yeah, he's my mate from work. Okay. Yeah, he's a mate from work. Yeah, Jamie is coming over tonight. He's a mate from work. Right. And I would say the same thing. He's a friend from work. She's a friend from work. Because I think instead of a work friend, you're more focused on the fact that you are friends. You just also work together. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so one of the things you said in your script was I needed to take a little break from the office. Yes. And in my version, I said I needed to get out of the office. It sounds like we were both a little bit tired. We both needed a break. I needed to get out, like, escape. I was tired, I was bored, and maybe I was hungry, which didn't help things. So, get out of the office is to take a break. Needed to get out of the office. Get out. Um, take a little break from the office. Absolutely. So, I think if I was taking a little break from something. Okay, I'm taking a little break from studying. I'm taking a little break from this. I also think that I'm going to be moving away from that. Okay, I need to take a little break from this. I need to stop doing it. And I need to go do something else. Go somewhere else. So, if I'm taking a little break from the office, that's from the place I'm in. So, I think I will definitely be, um, removing myself from that situation. I'll be going outside of the office. So, it's usually if you have lunch outside of the office. What's also very common is to take your lunch from home. So if you take your lunch from home, you don't need to go out from the office. You don't need to leave the office. You can simply take your lunch. Leave it in the refrigerator, use the rest area or the kind of the co workers lounge to go and eat, heat up your food, or some people, yes, a lot of Americans simply eat at their desk, so they can eat in the break room, they can eat in the, um, area provided for them for the co workers or colleagues, like a lounge or a break room. And of course, because Americans don't always have a lot of time, we often bring our lunch, take our lunch and eat it at our desks. Uh, I remembered another phrase you could use with get out of the office. Sometimes I need to get out of the house. Maybe I've been at home for a long time, um, just doing chores or working and I need to go outside. I need a change of environment because, yeah, I just want to refresh my mind. I want to recharge my batteries. I just need to get out of the house. Sometimes I feel that way, even if I have a day off and I'm relaxing on the, on the sofa and I'm just playing on my phone. Even after that, I feel a little bit bored or restless. I just need to get out of the house, so that worked as well. Need to take a little break from the house. Um, you're so used to it. Maybe we haven't left the house in a couple of days. And oh, man, I really just need to get out of the house. Mm hmm. Okay, so next we're talking about where did you go for lunch? Okay, so where did you go for lunch? And let's go ahead and ask Mark. So on your lunch break, where did you end up going? Where did you go for lunch? A couple of workmates and I went down to a local cafe. So, workmates, we discussed, are close. We went down. That's an important word for native speakers because we use this. And I think we use down and we're not even aware of it. We do it without thinking. We often use went down when you walk to or go to a building or, in this case, a cafe. I went down to a cafe. I went down to a restaurant. People in the UK might say, I went down to the gym. I went down to the pub. And it's a very common expression. It's totally correct if you say, I went to a cafe. I went to the pub. That's totally fine. Native speakers like to add this extra word. I went down to the pub. I went down to the gym. Uh, it doesn't mean that it's very far away. If anything, it means it's rather close, or it's a usual place that you usually go to. My mum often says, I went down to the supermarket and found this really cheap thing. Went down? Maybe you'll hear that more often in the UK. Later on, we'll discuss went up, because there is a difference, and that's something we're doing in our subconscious, but we'll talk about that later. Um, where did you go for lunch, Kat? Okay, so in my bit, I said something like, we headed out, let me just double check, okay, so I, we headed out. We headed out. I headed out with some colleagues. We chose a nearby eatery, okay, so I headed out. Um, if you've listened to high level listening before, we've used this verb before. It just naturally shows up quite a bit. We often use it to replace the word go. So, we went to this place. We left work and went to this place, but more casually, um, I would probably say we headed out. And I like this because we headed to the restaurant. We went to the restaurant. We headed out to the restaurant. I think we went to the restaurant and left another building. Okay, so we headed out. We went out. We left. Okay, so not only did we go to the restaurant, but we left the building. We headed out of the building to the restaurant. We headed out, leaving a place, going to a new place, heading out.
[15:26]Heading out. Yeah, I imagine we headed out of the airport and took a taxi. Like, we left the airport and took a taxi. So, headed out. Yeah, you're leaving a building. Again, uh, we've discussed this in a previous episode that, uh, head out more American than in the UK. I think in the UK you're less likely to hear that phrase. In England, we might just say go. We went to a local cafe, or I said I went down to a local cafe. So, uh, when you were in the eatery, what did you have to eat? Okay. So, um, at this point, we grabbed a quick bite. Okay? We grabbed a quick bite. I grabbed a sandwich. Now, of course, the, the verb to grab, okay? So, if I grab something, that means to physically go and take it, right? I grabbed it. But we often use the word grabbed Uh, when it's kind of something fast. Okay? Maybe you literally grabbed a sandwich at like an eatery, or if you're at a cafe, or if you're at a restaurant, I grabbed a quick bite. I grabbed a quick bite. Now, bite. a quick bite to eat. I grabbed a quick bite. That would mean that I went, I ordered something very simple and easy, maybe soup and salad or a sandwich, something that's fast. We grabbed a quick bite. We grabbed a quick bite. So, you could even use this for inviting your friends out. Hey, do you want to grab a coffee? If someone says to me, do you want to grab a coffee? I would think maybe it's going to be for about an hour. We can have a little chat, grab a coffee, or we might grab a coffee to go. Even faster, grab a coffee, get the to go cup, maybe have a little chat, nice and quick. So grabbing a coffee, grabbing a quick bite, grabbing a sandwich. I think you're kind of moving pretty quick. Maybe you don't have a lot of time, like our lunch breaks. So you need to do something quick. What about you, Mark? What did you have? I had a sandwich and a warm drink. A warm drink, probably a cup of tea if we're in the UK. And, uh, yes, I specifically chose a sandwich because, uh, Brits love sandwiches. Uh, I, I literally saw an article earlier saying that over 50% of British people eat a sandwich every single day. 56%. That's a lot. Yeah, that's a lot of sandwiches. Um, I guess it helps that in supermarkets in the UK, there is a huge variety of sandwiches. It's, it's actually impressive. Any kind of meat filling, fruit, uh, sorry, vegetables, vegetarian options. There's so many types and they're often part of deals where you can buy a drink, a snack and the sandwich together. And it's very cheap. So it's super convenient, uh, especially if you only have a short lunch break. You can grab it, we use that word too, grab it because you're in a hurry and you don't have a lot of time. You don't need a fork and a knife to eat a sandwich either, you can just use your hands. Eat it on the go. Yeah, you can walk and eat. Eat it on the go. You can grab and go. A lot of people are eating lunch and walking back to the office already. So, sandwiches are a big deal in the UK. And you, you're allowed to put pretty much anything inside a sandwich. And it's fair game. So, yeah, I think it's very appropriate that I had a sandwich and a warm drink. That sounds... Very British, very... Actually, I did want to ask you because I think that is one of the biggest cultural differences between Americans and Brits. Um, it besides having a coffee, we actually very rarely order a warm drink, especially if we're, um, having lunch it. It's even if we get a glass of water, even if we get a glass of tea or a glass of iced tea, that is one of the biggest differences that I, we always have these iced drinks in America. A lot of my students from different cultures say, what? How can you drink iced water? How can you drink iced tea? Warm water is better for you, but in America, we culturally just love iced drinks, whether it's iced soda, iced water, or iced tea. Yes, that's one thing I like about America. And it's, is it free? As well, free water, always free water, but you have to pay for the iced tea. However, when you buy a drink for say two or three dollars at a restaurant for sodas and iced tea, you get free refills. Now a refill is where they come and fill up your glass again when it's empty. So iced tea has free refills, Sprite, Coke, sodas, those are all at restaurants usually free refills. All right. And those are usually cold drinks. In the UK, it's warm drinks, like coffee, tea, things like that. Do you get free refills? No. It's so common. It's so common in the United States. I wonder if we're the only country that does free refills. Right? You're pretty generous. Food experience in the UK is a gen in the US is a, is a generous one for sure. Absolutely. Okay. Um, and what about after the meal? After you've finished eating? What did you, did you hang around or did you go straight back? Actually, it's pretty common. You know, Americans always do so many things at the same time. We just don't have time to really separate it out. So while I'm grabbing a sandwich or while I'm ordering something, I'm actually going to be talking to my colleagues, kind of catching up with them and just seeing if there's any, um, you know, office gossip, or anything that I've missed out on. So, usually, uh, especially if I've gone out of the office with some colleagues, we'll just have a little chat, okay? So, we can have a little chat. And if we're going to, say, catch up, I might talk with a friend I haven't seen in a while. I might ask them some business questions if, uh, it would be a good time to chat with them. And just in general, catching up with someone is just learning the new information about them. Do you have any news? Do you have anything new? I want to catch up with you. I want to learn new things about you. Did you do something new? Can you give me some more information about your life? Let's catch up. Let's catch up. It might be a phrase that we also used in another episode, uh, when you're on the train and you are reading the news for the first time, maybe, you know, something happened in another country while you were asleep. You wake up and you catch up social media, you catch up on the news. You can do the same thing face to face. You can talk to someone. If you haven't seen them for a while or haven't spoken to them for a while, you can catch up and learn the news, the gossip. Um, yeah, another type of tea. Tea is a, is that slang for gossip in the States? Definitely. Right. Yeah, get the tea. Spill the tea. Get the gossip. Get the goss. Get the goss. Absolutely. So, another word that we had that I thought was interesting, the word outing. The word outing. So let's see where I said this here. Uh, let's see. Overall, the whole lunch outing took about 45 minutes. Okay? The whole lunch outing. Now an outing, O-U-T-I-N-G an outing is kind of a, a special time where you get to go out. Okay? So maybe. I usually take my lunch to work, okay? So, a kind of a nice event would be, you know, a little lunch outing. I'm going with my colleagues, we're kind of choosing a place, we get to chat a little bit. This feels kind of special. A little lunch outing. Going out with some people. Kind of like a, you know, a nicer event than just simply eating your food at your desk, right? A nice little outing. Kind of the whole outing. The whole experience, the whole event, took about 45 minutes. It's a very flexible word, an outing, because it's a word you can also use on vacation or holiday. If you have an outing, if you decide to leave your hotel and go to the beach and relax and enjoy it, that is an outing. Yeah, that's true. An outing to the beach. Um, I also, one of the first thoughts is a boat, if you went out on a lake, you were on a boat, that's an outing as well. So, it's a trip, essentially, a kind of trip, but you can use it in this context, going to a little restaurant and eating, that's an outing, or even something bigger on vacation that takes a few hours, that's also an outing. Absolutely. I don't know if I would use it as often for vacation. Um, but that's interesting that you use that. I'd probably use more of an excursion on vacation, but definitely a beach outing. I would definitely use that because that feels like a special trip, like you said, where we are all going out together. We are going out to the beach. We're going out to, uh, on vacation. We're going out for lunch. We're going out for dinner. All of these. Lunch outing, a beach outing, a dinner outing, definitely. cool. There's another example where the short, rushed American lunch break versus the slightly longer UK break. In my script, I said, We had a good hour to enjoy our meals. a good hour.
[25:56]Good hour, not a bad hour, but a good hour. So good, a good hour here. It's not about if I had fun or not, or it's not about the conversation and it's not about the food either. A good hour is sixty whole minutes. We arrived at 1pm and we stayed and we ate and we talked. We left at 2pm. We spent a full hour, a good hour. So a good hour, you're emphasizing that you spent the full time. Um, you could say, we talked for a good few hours, a good couple of hours, and that means you were talking the whole time. You really used all of it. You know, how long was the presentation? Yeah, it was a good two hours. Um, and now that's an example of where good doesn't necessarily mean that I had a good time. Uh huh. Yeah, it was a full two hours. It was a good two hours. They talked the whole time. Okay, so that is a good example of how good doesn't always mean great or had a good time. This is a whole 60 minutes, a good 60 minutes. So it can just depend on your tone of voice and what you say afterwards, whether you actually enjoyed that time or not. Yeah. It can be bad too. We waited for a good 30 minutes before they opened the gate. Yeah. So it can be good or bad. So, um, well, now that we've tied up lunch and we're finished up, it's time to head back to the office. Similarly, um, Mark, what would you say when it's, you're ready to go back to the office? Um, in my script, I said, once we wrapped up, or finished, I went back up. This connects with what I was saying earlier, how we went down to a local cafe, and then we went back up. I think native speakers have this subconscious sense of direction. If we're going up, then we say up. If you're going north, we say went up. In this case, let's imagine I work in an office where it's a few floors. I'm going back up in the lift or the elevator. I push my button and I go up to my office. And we use went down and went up. And I think native speakers will change the preposition if we know that you're going up, upwards, um, or if you're going down or south. In this case, I'm going back up in an elevator or in a lift. So I went back up to work. Um, in my hometown in Colchester, the main town is on top of a hill. Uh, the main street is, is up there. So if you arrive at the train station, you have to go up North Hill. So if you're starting there and you're telling the story, native speakers will say, Yeah, I went up into town. I went up North Hill. I went up to the restaurant on North Hill. Because you are rising. You're literally going up. Again, the sentence is correct if you say, I went to North Hill, I went to town, that's totally fine. But native speakers will always add this little detail. I went up. So that's what I did here. Because I'm going up in a lift, I went back up to work. Um, do they do that in the States as well? Yes, I think we, we definitely have this idea, especially if we're used to our city map. We naturally know what's kind of north and what's kind of south. Now, if you're in a small street, you know, go up the street, go down the street, um, we might need some elevation. We use this more for cities. I'm originally from Houston, Texas, and if we go up to Dallas, that's north. Or if we go over to Austin, that's west. If we go over to New Orleans, that's east. So, going north, go up. Going down to Mexico. But going over would be west or east. So, we usually use that when we talk about going from city to city. Uh, my mum is from Scotland. Scotland is in the north, so if we visit them up there, I went up to Scotland. We'll always add that detail, even though it's not necessary. I think we just want to give you a really clear image in your mind. Because if you say, Yeah, I went, I went to Scotland, I think of just, okay, that happened. All right. But if you say, I went up to Scotland, I really think about the trip that you're taking from the south to the north. Okay. So I kind of, kind of gives us a little bit more of a, like, a longer activity as well. Yeah. So when I got back to the office, got back to the office, okay. So I left the office, I came home. back again. So, I came back. I settled back in. Okay? I settled back in. So, it took about 45 minutes. I had about 15 minutes to settle back in. When you settle back into something, you're getting comfortable again. Think of, you know, in the morning. You have your coffee. You're sitting down. All right. So I'm going to open my emails. Uh, what am I doing? What am I doing? Okay. I need to, oh yeah, need to do this. And then when you finally feel comfortable and you're really starting to work, you are settled in. Okay, I'm settled in. Now, of course, uh, you work, work, work, you leave, you go have lunch and then you come back. come again. You return. We would also settle back in. Okay, so we are settling back in, getting ready, getting comfortable to work again. In fact, in both of our scripts, we both used back. We said went back up, settle back in. So back is returning to the office. We were there, we had lunch, and now we're going back to settle back in, went back.
[32:15]Okay, and that's the last point of this little script analysis. That's all we have for you guys today. I hope you enjoyed it. Uh, I hope you learned some new phrases and expressions. And now when you talk about your lunch break or your lunch time, whether it's long or short, you've got some phrases to help you express yourself and describe exactly what usually happens or what you did yesterday or the week before. So, thank you very much for joining us. Like usual, we'll be back next Monday, same time, same platform, uh, for the next series of this Advanced English, uh, these Advanced English live classes. And, uh, I really hope you can join us. Like always, there'll be the MP3 files on our website. They're not ready at the moment, but I'll post them a bit later. There'll also be a transcript available of the full episode, which you can find online. Again, I will post the link and share it on our Facebook page when that's ready. So, yes, thank you very much, guys. I hope, uh, you have a very nice week ahead. And if you have any questions, you can always ask us in the chat and we'll come back and check here. Um, but yes, thank you very much for joining us. Yes, thank you, everyone. And, uh, we hope to see some messages from you. Feel free to interact with us on the message board. Or you can join our Facebook and have a, send a quick message over there as well. So thank you so much, everyone. And we'll see you next week, next Monday for our next class. Hi everyone. Thank you. Bye bye.
