On this episode of the Real Life English with Gabby podcast, I'll be teaching you 15 phrasal verbs, slang words and idioms all about reading and books.
You'll be learning vocabulary like flip through, jot down smut, read up on to dog ear page and more.
Let's get to it.
Hey there, welcome to the Real Life English with Gabby podcast.
I'm your host, Gabby, your fun and friendly English teacher from the one and only New York City.
My goal is to teach you phrasal verbs, idioms and slang that will help you speak English confidently and understand real American conversations.
Are you ready to improve your English skills?
Let's jump right in.
Hey, hey, hey, greetings from New York City.
Welcome to episode number 45.
I'm so excited to be talking about books and reading today.
I absolutely love reading and I love books too.
I'm what you would call a bookworm.
This is one of our words for today and it means someone who loves reading.
I truly love to read.
I always have.
I have a very large collection of books in my home library on every kind of genre that is out there.
I've always loved reading.
I guess that maybe is a, But my love for reading is actually not why I picked this topic for this episode.
It's actually because reading has made a huge comeback in the USA.
Everybody has gone back to books here.
For a long time, people were doing e-books.
People were reading on their phones, their iPads, Kindles.
In fact...
Many of our large bookstores went out of business.
Barnes & Noble, which is our biggest book retailer, they were on the brink of bankruptcy years ago.
But then, because of social media and something called BookTok, that we're going to talk about, reading has made a huge comeback.
We'll get into this later in the episode, but now bookstores in the USA are making tons of money.
They're growing.
We see book cafes all over the place, and they are busy.
If you stop at a Barnes & Noble here in New York City, there'll be long lines for books.
There'll be people reading there, drinking coffee while reading.
It's a true revolution.
You're going to hear the 15 words from today's episode very often, especially those of you who are in university teaching, going to grad school.
These words are going to be everywhere around you.
But even if you are not a student, you will see these words everywhere on social media.
You'll hear them a lot when you're talking to Americans, because many Americans like to talk about TV shows, movies and books that they are currently into.
I also chose this topic because reading is extremely valuable when it comes to improving your English vocabulary skills.
Reading American books helps your vocabulary and your grammar skills.
You're immersing yourself in correct grammar without even realizing it.
There are also many good books that are interesting and fun, but also helpful for understanding American culture.
So what kind of books should you read to improve your English?
Well, it largely depends on your level.
But overall I've found that young adult fiction, which we call YA fiction, is an extremely valuable resource for English learning students.
This includes book series like The Hunger Games, for example.
Also, books that are also movies are extremely valuable, mainly because being familiar with the originals can help you while you're reading.
I've had a lot of students recommend the book Eat, Pray, Love, for example.
Now, as much as I love the Harry Potter series, I actually wouldn't recommend Harry Potter books unless you're level C1 or C2, which is advanced, or proficiency, because these books have many new words that even Americans don't know.
When I was reading the Harry Potter books, I had to look up some words that aren't used in American English, only British English.
Remember that you want to read a book that challenges you, but not too much.
You should know most of the words on a page with only a few new words.
Too many unknown words won't really help you much, because you won't understand, you won't remember and it'll be a little bit overwhelming.
I don't recommend that you stop and look up words.
When you're reading an article, when you're reading a book, highlight or underline words you don't know, but read straight through the page.
See if you can still figure out the main gist, the main meaning of what's happening on the page, without looking up those individual words.
Some students like to take it slow and they like to look up new words at the end of one page, two page, three pages or some.
Just write them down and look them up after they have read.
In the study guide for this episode, I'm going to include a recommended book list that you can use to help you improve your English.
Most of the books I have broken down level.
Speaking of the study guide, just to remind you, there's a study guide waiting for you that will help you remember and really learn all of the new vocabulary you've heard in this episode.
The study guide has all of the new words, plus definitions, example sentences and practice activities, along with the transcript, so that you can follow along.
All of the episode study guides are in one folder.
That makes it easy for you to access all of them whenever new episodes come out.
To get the link to that folder, all you have to do is click the link in the episode description.
Okay, so let's talk about the words that you'll be learning in this episode.
A bookworm.
Bookish.
Flip through thumb, through skim, through tear, through a real page turner, a plot twist, look up, jot down, romanticize book, talk to dog, ear a page smut and read up on.
All right, now I'm going to read you a story that has all of these 15 words in real life contexts.
While I'm reading the story to you, try and listen for these new words and see if you can figure out their meanings based on the context.
After the story, we'll go through all of the definitions and I'll give you some extra examples.
Let's get started.
This story is about a young lady named Mia.
Mia had been a bookworm ever since she learned how to read.
She spent every free moment reading.
And her friends, who mostly weren't bookish like she was, often joked that she lived in the library.
She even volunteered at her local bookstore once a week because she just loved being around books.
Not only were books like an escape for her from everyday life, but she also loved reading and learning new things.
One day, while she was helping organize books at the bookstore, she found an old, dusty novel tucked away in the corner.
It looked like someone had left it there many years ago because it definitely wasn't a book that the bookstore sold.
She flipped through the pages and saw that it was a rare first edition of a famous fantasy book that she had heard of but never read.
Excited, Mia thumbed through the introduction, trying to see what the book was going to be about.
She only had a few minutes before her lunch break ended, so she quickly skimmed through the first chapter.
The story was fascinating. and she couldn't wait to read more.
That evening, she curled up in bed and began to tear through the book.
It was a real page-turner, full of adventure, magic, and romance.
There was even a shocking plot twist in the middle that made her gasp out loud.
As she read, she came across a few old-fashioned words that she didn't know, so she looked up their meanings in her dictionary.
She also jotted down some interesting quotes in her notebook that she wanted to remember for later.
The book reminded her of the best romantic stories she had seen recommended on BookTok.
She couldn't wait to tell her friends about it.
She was so interested in the book that, without realizing it, she had accidentally dog-eared a few pages that she wanted to go back to.
Oops, she whispered, smoothing them out.
She usually hated messing up the pages of books, but she had been so caught up in the story that she didn't have time to grab a bookmark.
As she reached the final chapter, she found something unexpected.
The book contained a secret love letter hidden between the pages.
It looked like it had been written decades ago.
The note described a romance just as dramatic as the stories in her favorite smut novels.
Mia couldn't believe her luck.
She had found a forgotten treasure, a love story hidden in an amazing book.
Maybe she was meant to discover it.
At that moment she decided she would also read up on the history of the book's author, because who knew what other fun and exciting secrets might be waiting for her?
The End Okay, so let's review all of the new vocabulary that you just heard in the story.
Here we go.
First up, we have the term a bookworm.
You heard me explain this a bit at the beginning of the episode, when I described myself as a bookworm.
A bookworm is someone who loves reading and reads often. as often as possible.
The origin of a bookworm is that sometimes in the past you would open up old books and you would see a little worm hanging out inside.
These worms would damage the books actually.
So it was pretty clear that they love to eat books, devour books.
And so Symbolically, that's what we call bookworms.
For example, my sister is such a bookworm.
She always has her nose in a book.
If you've ever seen Beauty and the Beast and you've heard the first song of the movie about Belle, where she's in the town, you'll hear one of the lines to describe Belle is her nose stuck in a book?
And that's an expression that we have.
We say someone's nose is always in a book or stuck in a book.
So Belle would be the perfect description of someone who's a bookworm.
Next up, we have the word bookish.
Okay, so bookish is very similar to bookworm.
A bookworm is a noun.
Bookish is an adjective.
And bookish describes someone who loves books, they love reading, or anything related to books.
This could be used to describe someone who's very quiet, and they prefer reading to really engaging with other people.
But for the most part, it's very similar to a bookworm.
So let me give you an example on how we would use it differently.
In the example for bookworm, I said, my sister is a bookworm.
People are called bookworms.
But with bookish, for example, we would say, he's always reading or talking about literature.
He's very bookish.
This is a descriptive word.
Again, it's an adjective.
And so we would use it differently than we would use the word bookworm.
Next up, we have the phrasal verb flip through.
To flip through something is to quickly look at the pages of something without reading it in detail.
We can flip through a book.
We can flip through a file.
We can flip through a packet like study resources or materials.
But we have to be doing it through a physical book.
If you have a textbook and you're trying to study, you can flip through, meaning you quickly look at the pages but you don't really read in detail.
For example, I flipped through the novel before deciding whether or not to buy it.
I'm giving you four phrasal verbs in a row that end with the word through.
And they're very similar to each other with very slight differences.
We just did flip through.
Now we're going to do thumb through.
As you know, the thumb is the smallest finger on your hand.
And the thumbs are very important.
Thumbing through, we typically use our thumbs, right?
You don't have to, but typically you use your thumb.
That's where this came from.
To thumb through is to turn the pages of a book quickly.
However, it's often to find something specific.
So flip through is to quickly look through a book.
But thumb through is when we're looking for something specific.
So let's use a textbook again.
You want to find a page in the textbook that talked about present perfect tense.
So you quickly thumb through the book specifically looking for that one thing.
That's how we use thumb through.
For example, he thumbed through the textbook to find the chapter on verb tenses.
And again, we thumb through something physical.
So flip through and thumb through, very, very physical.
So if we have an e-book or we're looking through a digital file, we can't really thumb through it or flip through it.
However, skim through, the next one, is a little bit different.
One of the things that you learn in English when it comes to reading is the skill of skimming.
Skimming is when you look through written material, focusing on the main points.
And so that's what we mean by skim through.
Skimming through something means to read something quickly, focusing only on the main points.
So imagine that you're studying for a biology test.
You're going to skim through your textbook looking for the main points that you need to study.
For example, I skimmed through the introduction before diving into the main story.
Skim through you can do with physical documents or digital documents.
So you can skim through an e-book, for example.
Skim through an email from your boss.
This is actually a very popular way to use skim through.
So if you get a really long email at work, you just want to look for the main points because it's too long for you to read.
We're going to use skim through.
Next, we have tear through.
Tear through is to read a book very quickly, often because it's exciting or interesting.
I want to emphasize something here.
Flip through, thumb through and skim through are to go through a book quickly, but not reading every single word.
Tear through a book is to read a book completely. but very quickly because you're excited.
So this is like when you got a really interesting book.
For me, it was when I got the Harry Potter books.
I probably read them all within two or three days because I didn't want to put them down.
This is what it means to tear through the book.
For example, she tore through the entire trilogy in just one weekend.
A trilogy is a set of three.
Three books, three movies.
This is what it refers to.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy, for example.
Because the last four words were similar, I'm just going to go over them again quickly.
Flip through.
You're looking quickly through a book without reading in detail.
You want to know what this book's about?
Let me look through.
Cool, looks good.
Thumb through.
Turn the pages very quickly, but to look for something specific.
You forgot where a certain section is, so you're going to thumb through the whole book.
These two have to be done with physical books.
Skim through, you read the book quickly, only looking for main points.
So this is, again, when we want to summarize something.
This can be done with physical or digital copies.
Tear through is when we read a book completely, but we do it quickly because it's so good.
All right, no more phrasal verbs with through.
Let's get to the next word, which is a real page turner.
A real page turner.
This is an expression that we use to describe a very exciting, a very engaging book that's hard to put down.
We want to keep reading it and reading it and reading it until it's done.
For example, that thriller was a real page turner.
I stayed up all night reading it.
Next up, we have the expression a plot twist.
This is a word that is very common when you talk about any kind of stories.
It could be a Broadway show.
It could be a book.
It could be a movie.
But it means an unexpected development, a turn of events, a twist in the plot or the story.
Something we really didn't expect to happen and we gasp.
It shocked us.
For example, the plot twist at the end of Shutter Island completely shocked me.
Next, we have the phrasal verb look up.
This is a very common phrasal verb.
In fact, I would say this is probably like in the top 25 most common phrasal verb lists.
More than likely, you've heard it.
More than likely, you know what it means.
But just in case...
To look up means to search or research.
Specifically, this is done for words, for facts, for pieces of information.
So...
In a classroom setting.
We would typically tell students okay, try not to look up too many words in the dictionary during class.
I usually tell my students when they're reading something in class don't look up these words in the dictionary.
Try and figure them out through the context.
Next up, we have a really cool phrasal verb, jot down.
This is to write something quickly for referencing it again in the future.
It's kind of like taking notes, except you're jotting something down.
So your teacher says something, you read something in a book, in your textbook.
You're going to jot it down.
You're putting it down quickly for future reference.
And jot down does not have to be writing physically.
It could be typing something on your phone, on your computer, in a program, etc.
For example, I jotted down some notes about the main themes of the book.
Next up, we have a new slang word, very, very new, past few years, called Romantasy.
Romantasy is a genre that blends romance and fantasy elements.
These books have taken over the book universe.
These are pretty much like Game of Thrones, but a love story.
Or Lord of the Rings, but a love story.
And a lot of times we call these spicy books because they have a lot of love scenes, a lot of sex scenes.
They're very sexually heavy.
And honestly, they have taken over the USA.
One famous book series is Akatar, A Court of Thorns and Roses.
These books are like about fairies and love stories.
And this is one of the most famous books that really set this off.
On BookTok, which is our next word.
Booktalk is a slang word and it refers to the community on TikTok that's dedicated to discussing and recommending books.
So, because I'm a bookworm, when I open up TikTok or even Instagram, there's always someone talking about how amazing a book is that they read.
They're doing really cool videos about books to recommend.
And so BookTok is really what's responsible for this resurgence in reading physical books in the United States.
I read an article not too long ago, which is actually what made me solidify this topic for the podcast.
And the article talked about how BookTok and Barnes & Noble have just been at the top of this reading revolution.
So it's been really cool.
Let me give you two examples for romanticism in book talk.
For example, these romanticism novels have the perfect mix of magic and love.
Book talk example would be, I've found so many great book recommendations thanks to book talk.
The next expression is to dog ear a page.
Okay, this is an interesting expression.
This is when you fold down the corner of a page in order to mark your place.
So if you've never heard of a bookmark, a bookmark is usually like a rectangular piece of paper, or some of them are metal.
Some of them are plastic.
They're meant to keep your place in a book.
But when you don't have a bookmark, it's very common to fold down the corner of the page so that you can remember where you are.
We say to dog ear a page.
Dog ear.
And it's because when you fold it down, it looks like the ear of a dog.
The little flappy dog ear.
For example, I try not to dog your pages, but sometimes I forget my bookmark.
Next up, we have the word smut.
This is a slang word, and it's a very popular slang word.
Smut is referring to romance novels that contain explicit sex scenes.
That book would be considered smut because it's a very sexually charged, sexually heavy book.
And so that's what we call smut.
For example, she loves reading smut, especially when it has a good plot.
And lastly, we have a three-word phrasal verb, read up on.
Read up on means to read a lot about a specific topic because we want to learn more about it.
I really, really like this phrasal verb because it's very specific.
We often use it to replace the word research.
If you're anything like me, I love to learn.
I love to watch documentaries.
I love to research topics, which is why a lot of times you'll notice in my episodes I give background information.
So when I was talking about politics and the current political situation in the United States, I looked up statistics.
And I was actually going to look up statistics today, but I was like it's not necessary for this episode.
But to read up on something is to dig deeper.
It's to look deeper.
Imagine that you're at the Museum of Natural History here in New York City.
You go to an exhibit and you read up on the Earth, something with space.
And you find it really interesting, so you go home and you want to read up on it.
And you go look up books, you look up articles and then you tell your friends hey, I've been reading up on black holes.
I've been reading up on the International Space Station, and here's what I found.
And so this basically means to research, dig deeper.
It's a specific topic that you want to learn more about.
For example...
I need to read up on mythology before I start this fantasy series.
I need to read up on New York City before I go on vacation.
All right, so that concludes the 15 new phrasal verbs, idioms, and slang from this episode.
I really hope that this episode taught you some good vocabulary, but I also hope that it encouraged you to go read something.
Here's my homework for you.
Here's my challenge for you, okay?
Go read something in English.
If you can't find a book in English, remember, you can purchase e-books, okay?
They usually have some free ones, some cheap ones in the Apple Store, on Kindle, with Amazon.
But if you can't find a book in English...
Go read an article, write down a few vocabulary words and then use those vocabulary words throughout the week.
The same is true with the words that you learn here.
Go use the study guide and then pick five words from this episode.
Try to create some sentences yourself, write them down somewhere, text a friend and then make it your goal to use them this week.
The more you use them, the more confident you'll be and the better you'll get.
All right, see you next week.
Well, that's a wrap for today's episode of the Real Life English with Gabby podcast.
Be sure to download today's study guide so that you can learn how to use this vocabulary confidently.
If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe for more weekly adventures in English learning.
Also I'd love to hear from you so please leave me a review.
Thanks so much for tuning in.
