Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 1028.
Describing order and sequence.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 1028.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Visit our website at eslpod.com.
Become a member of ESL Podcast.
When you do, you can download the learning guide for this episode.
That gives you a complete transcript of everything we say.
If there's something you didn't understand, you can just look at the transcript.
Go to our website for more information.
This episode is called Describing Order and Sequence.
Let's get started.
Okay, your first task is to put all of these files in order.
Wow, there must be hundreds of files in this storeroom.
How am I supposed to organize them?
Create a basic filing system.
Put things in sequence.
If they're labeled with dates, put them in chronological order.
If they're labeled with names, put them in alphabetical order by last name.
Okay, but what about this file?
It's labeled with a four-digit number, but it's not a date.
Those are case numbers.
Put those in ascending or descending numeric order, whichever makes sense.
But this file has letters followed by numbers.
Then put those in alphanumeric order, first by letter and then by number.
Simple, right?
Yeah, but have you ever considered a more random filing system?
Something that embraces chaos?
No, I haven't.
If I wanted chaos, I'd just go home to my eleven children.
We begin our dialogue with Patrick saying to Maya Okay, your first task is to put all of these files in order.
The word task T-A-S-K is very commonly used in the business world to refer to some piece of work that has to be completed, some small job or some small project.
Sometimes a project has a number of different tasks, a number of different steps or things that have to be done.
Patrick is giving Maya a task.
He's telling her to put all of these files in order.
To put something in order means to move them around so that they are logically arranged, so that they are organized.
For example, you can put things in alphabetical order.
That would be starting with A, B, C, D in order according to the English alphabet.
So B comes before D and D comes before M and so forth.
There are all sorts of ways you can organize something, of course.
Patrick is telling Maya to put the files in order.
Usually, a file on a computer is an electronic document.
However, in the old days when people used paper, files were things that you put papers into in order to organize them.
Maya says, wow, there must be hundreds of files in this storeroom.
A storeroom, S-T-O-R-E-R-O-O-M, is another word for a warehouse, W-A-R-E-H-O-U-S-E.
A storeroom or a warehouse is basically a large room that you keep things in, that you store things in.
To store, as a verb, means to put aside, to keep in a place until you're ready to use it.
Maya says there are hundreds of files, paper files, in this storeroom.
So she asks Patrick, how am I supposed to organize them?
Patrick says, create a basic filing system.
A filing system would be some sort of logical, organized way that you store or keep either your paper or your digital files.
Digital files are usually kept in folders.
Just like we have paper folders, you also have digital folders.
And that's the word we would use in English to describe a place where you would collect a number of different kinds of files that were similar.
A filing system then is some way of organizing something.
For example, for me, when I buy something, especially a piece of computer equipment or electronic equipment, I make a paper folder or I create a label, a name that I put on the folder.
That says hardware colon and then the name of the object.
And then I put all of those together in my filing cabinet, which is a place where you keep paper files.
That is my, or part of my, filing system.
Patrick tells Maya to put things in sequence.
Sequence, S-E-Q-U-E-N-C-E, is another word for order.
Usually it involves putting the earliest things before the latest things.
Patrick says if they're labeled with dates, put them in chronological order.
To label something is to put a name on something, to provide basic information about something with what we would call a tag, or a sticker, S-T-I-C-K-E-R.
On a paper file.
That would be a little piece of paper that goes on the folder, or just words that you write on the folder itself to identify it.
Chronological order refers to putting things in the earliest to latest sequence.
That is, if you are putting things in chronological order, you would put 2010 before 2011 and 2011 would come before 2012.
You would put January before March.
Patrick says, if they're labeled with names, put them in alphabetical order by last name.
Alphabetical order, as we explained earlier, is when you put things in the order of, in this case, the English alphabet.
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, and Z. Like that.
Maya says, okay, but what about this file?
It's labeled with a four-digit number, but it's not a date.
A digit, D-I-G-I-T, is one written number from zero to nine.
So, What Maya is saying is that this particular file has four numbers.
She could just say it's labeled with four numbers.
To say it's labeled with a four-digit number means the same thing.
A digit is, as I mentioned in this case, a number from zero to nine.
Patrick says those are case numbers.
Put those in ascending or descending numeric order, whichever makes sense.
Numeric, N-U-M-E-R-I-C, comes from the word number.
So numeric order would be putting things in order of the number that appears on them.
Ascending A-S-C-E-N-D-I-N-G means putting the smallest numbers first before the largest numbers, or the largest values after the smallest values.
So if you have... four objects.
One is labeled 7, one is labeled 15, and one is labeled 25.
To put them in ascending numeric order would be to put the 7 before the 15 before the 25.
The opposite would be descending order.
Descending D-E-S-C-E-N-D-I-N-G order is when you put the largest values first, the largest numbers first.
So in our example, it would be 25, 15, 7.
That would be in descending order.
To ascend, as a verb, means to go up.
To descend means to go down.
Maya says, but this file has letters followed by numbers.
So the file maybe has something like B29 or C748.
Patrick says, then put those in alphanumeric order. first by letter and then by number.
Alpha numeric order is used when you have both letters and numbers, or words and numbers together.
Alpha refers to alphabetical.
Numeric, of course, refers to numbers.
So alphanumeric would be first you put it in alphabetical order and then you put it in numerical order.
So, for example, if you have A29 and A78, if you're putting them in ascending alphanumeric order, you would put A29 before A78.
If you were putting them in descending alphanumeric order, you would put A78 before A.
What did I say 29?
Something like that.
Maya says, yeah, but have you ever considered a more random filing system?
Something that embraces chaos?
Maya perhaps is making a joke here.
She asks Patrick if he's ever considered a random R-A-N-D-O-M filing system.
Something that is random is something that is unpredictable.
It is based not on any sort of logic or order, but basically on chance, on luck.
Of course, that wouldn't be any sort of system at all if it were just based on luck or chance.
Maya is suggesting that Patrick have a random filing system that embraces chaos.
Chaos, C-H-A-O-S, is the opposite of order.
If you looked at my desk right now, for example, and I'm looking at it right now, it is chaos.
There's no order.
I have papers over here and papers over there.
It drives my wife crazy.
But enough about me.
To finish the dialogue, we will explain what Maya means by embraces.
To embrace E-M-B-R-A-C-E here means to welcome something with a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of energy, a lot of joy and happiness.
Maya is suggesting that Patrick create a file system that would embrace chaos.
That would be based on, if you will chance.
Patrick says, no, I haven't.
If I wanted chaos, I'd go home to my 11 children.
Patrick says that if he wants disorder, he can go home to his 11 children.
And if you have 11 children in one household, you would have a lot of chaos, a lot of disorder.
I know, of course, because I come from a family of 11 children and there was a lot of chaos when I was growing up.
Now let's listen to the dialogue this time at a normal speed.
Okay, your first task is to put all of these files in order.
Wow, there must be hundreds of files in the storeroom.
How am I supposed to organize them?
Create a basic filing system.
Put things in sequence.
If they're labeled with dates, put them in chronological order.
If they're labeled with names, put them in alphabetical order by last name.
Okay, but what about this file?
It's labeled with a four-digit number, but it's not a date.
Those are case numbers.
Put those in ascending or descending numeric order, whichever makes sense.
But this file has letters followed by numbers.
Then put those in alphanumeric order, first by letter and then by number.
Simple, right?
Yeah, but have you ever considered a more random filing system?
Something that embraces chaos?
No, I haven't.
If I wanted chaos, I'd just go home to my 11 children.
Our scriptwriter, Lucy Say, is the opposite. of chaos.
She is the most organized person at the Center for Educational Development.
Trust me.
Thanks, Lucy.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2014 by the Center for Educational Development
