This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2562.
We're watching your English like a hawk.
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What are the things that you watch closely in life?
Your young children, your dog, maybe even job opportunities in your field?
Today, find out how to say that you pay close attention to something or someone.
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Everyone reacts, but you're left behind, still processing the words.
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Hello, Michelle.
How's it going today?
Great to see you on the microphone.
You too, Lindsay.
I'm happy to be recording with you again.
Yes.
Yeah.
But yeah, everything is good over here.
Guys, Lindsay and I were both away.
And now we are coming back to the mic refreshed and ready for...
All that's to come this year.
Exactly.
It's going to be a great year in 2026.
So Michelle, what are we getting into on the podcast today for our listeners?
Okay, so I have a question.
Do you ever have to watch Kiefer like a hawk?
Sometimes I do, because he does this thing where you know, when you take your dog for a walk, certain people's lawns have pesticides applied and he likes the taste of the pesticides.
Oh, delicious.
Yeah, really nice.
So he'll like if I don't watch him really closely, he'll lick the grass and then he'll like shake.
It's really bad.
Like, are you getting brain damage?
Like what is happening?
Oh, so it's really bad.
And then I'm like, Oh, my gosh, is he gonna die?
Like what's happening?
And then he's fine after that.
But I have to watch him like a hawk when he's got his nose down.
So he's not eating pesticides.
Yeah, well, that's good.
Yeah, that's definitely important.
So I Yeah, what about How is Kiefer with kids?
Like if if a kid is to come up to him, are you like are you confident?
Like how do you usually good?
Usually good because he has his cousins.
So my in-laws kids.
But he you know, sometimes he thinks a kid is a dog.
So he'll like play and try to play with, and I'll have to pull him back and I have to be careful there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I feel like that's a little bit stressful because, yeah.
Yeah.
And parents probably get nervous sometimes with dogs around.
Yeah.
Today we are going to talk about this fun and very useful expression that I just used with you.
I said, do you ever have to watch Kiefer like a hawk?
Now, what does that mean?
I know.
Good question.
Because I'm not a bird, right?
I'm not a hawk.
No, you're not a bird.
But I have to act like a hawk in some cases.
I mean, what do hawks, what is their behavior, Michelle, in the wild?
I mean, well, they're kind of, aren't they kind of aggressive?
I guess maybe they're aggressive.
Maybe they just like hunt down their prey.
I don't know.
I'm not a bird expert, right?
We might have a bird expert in the audience.
But based on the idiom, I would think that hawks really look at like they track things very closely, because that's what we're talking about doing here, right.
Michelle is tracking something, keeping a very close watch, right?
I don't know if they're aggressive, but what I'm looking at here, just in my hawk research, is that they have very good eyesight good eyesight yeah okay here from web.stanford.edu hawks can distinguish their prey at something like two or three times the distance that a human being can detect the same so they have awesome eyes yep good eyes so having good eyes laser focused eyes looking at something very closely especially in that case their prey right but in our case it's usually something we're trying to take care of more than anything right right right yeah exactly so i mean you have kids michelle so i'm sure that you have something to say here constantly i mean yeah i'm constantly having to watch them like especially the little one oh my gosh yeah yeah yeah and when you know when kids especially when they're at that age like two to one and a half to three where they're moving around but they don't know they don't know danger yet oh scary oh yeah that's that's yeah because they could put something in their mouth they could put their finger somewhere like in an outlet you got to be really careful right yeah you got a baby proof oh my gosh let's give some sample sentences to our listeners so they get the gist a bit more shall we okay here we go um I have to watch my kids like a hawk when they are around candy.
And yeah, my kids would just sit and eat candy all day.
I would too if I could.
Yeah, yeah.
Who wouldn't, right?
Here's another one.
When babies are learning to walk, you have to watch them like a hawk.
Probably because they fall down a lot, right?
And then they could get hurt, I suppose.
Yes.
And then especially if you have stairs in your house.
Oh gosh yeah um, or here we go.
Here's one more.
Um, i noticed she was watching me like a hawk and i didn't know why.
Then she came over and told me that i was her first grade student all those years ago.
Oh, do you ever have that experience michelle, where you can feel that someone is watching you, you know, like you just have that feeling yeah, that somebody might know you.
Yeah, so we so we were at a.
This is funny.
We were just on a cruise and Dan has, I think I told you, blue hair right now.
Oh, yeah, that's right.
You told us that.
So people on the cruise, like teenagers, kept on kind of staring at him.
Interesting.
And then twice.
Once somebody came and said that they knew him from some basketball thing and then this other kid walked by and was like I'm a big fan.
And we looked it up yeah, and we found who it is.
And it's this guy with blue hair who does basketball tricks.
That's so funny.
Oh my god, they're like big fan, big fan.
And dan just probably just said, oh thanks yeah, he was like thanks.
Like then he just like wanted to embrace it.
He was just like kind of looking around like yeah, this is mad, so funny.
I love that.
Yeah, they were watching him like a hawk, i'm sure.
Right yeah, i mean, you can't help it.
When you see someone you think is a celebrity, you can't help but stare.
Right, of course you're gonna stare yeah, hilarious.
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Yeah.
And Michelle, is it just people that we can watch like a hawk, or are there things that we can watch like a hawk, or items?
There are things.
Yeah, you can watch a person like a hawk.
You can watch a thing like a hawk.
So here's an example of something that people might watch like a hawk.
OK, you have to watch the ticket prices like a hawk every day and pounce when you get a good price.
Ah, that could be like.
Um, a kind of an auction is how you would have to behave in an auction, an online auction, or just as ticket prices change, right.
Airline tickets, maybe.
Yep.
Airline tickets.
I was thinking I like um sports tickets, something like that, where they're constantly changing um, and yeah, especially oh my gosh with airline tickets these days, you really want to get the best deal possible.
I know for sure.
Or stocks right.
Some people will play the stock market and try to buy low, sell high.
I'm watching this stock like a hawk.
I want to get in at the right time.
I don't bother with that, i just put my money in the stock market and let it sit for years.
Yeah, I don't really pay too much attention either.
But Lindsay, is there anything that you watch like a hawk?
I mean, maybe Kiefer with the pesticides, any other things you can think of in your life?
Right now, Kiefer's my biggest responsibility.
Lucky, right?
Yeah, pretty much.
It's just Kiefer, just to make sure he stays safe.
Um, and that's it.
But yeah, this is a great expression michelle, i really like it.
It's good.
Yeah yeah, definitely very useful.
Yeah, i mean definitely.
Um, when i was um planning on buying my tickets to go to florida um, this winter, i was watching the prices like a hawk, or sometimes um, definitely i remember when i was trying to see pink Um, you know, you're always trying to decide Oh, do I want to buy this?
Do I want to buy this?
Maybe the because, you don't know sometimes, closer to the event, the ticket prices go down, but sometimes they could go up.
No, that's true.
Yeah, that's true.
I remember I went to see Adele in Vegas a few years ago and I kind of watch those prices like a hawk for just a couple days because i wasn't sure what would happen.
Right yeah, and you don't want to buy at the highest point.
Like you know how they say, if you buy airline tickets on saturdays, you're paying more.
I don't know if that's a myth or not.
Oh no geez, but we'll take a quick break and then we'll be back to talk about other ways to say this.
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All right, Michelle.
So we don't want to always just say hawk, hawk, hawk, right?
It's good, but there's other ways to say it.
So you might say keep a close eye on something or someone.
This is a little bit more straightforward.
For example.
I'm going to keep a close eye on these prices to see if they come down in the next few days.
Or please keep a close eye on her.
She tends to eat chews.
And hopefully that's a dot, not a child.
And then keep tabs on someone or something.
If we make it a point to keep tabs on the account, we can avoid these types of issues in the future.
Yeah, or it's important to always keep tabs on the time when you, on the time you spend on each task yeah so yeah, i mean these are, these are all about watching things closely um, usually for a specific reason um, but it's very important for everyday life, for business.
I mean.
We always have to have those times where we have to be more alert, where we have to pay close attention to something and not kind of just let things, you know, just go by in the background.
Yeah, and it's good.
I mean, it's a connection skill.
This is another one of those episodes that's giving our listeners the tools to show who they are and what they care about.
Is it the concert tickets?
Is it your child?
Is it your dog?
Like, what are the things you watch like a hawk or keep tabs on?
That means those are the things that you care about in life.
Right.
For the most part.
Yeah, it's true.
So you can tell you know a lot of things about somebody by what they're, what they're watching, what's important to them, of course,
So let's do a role play here.
All right.
So here, Michelle, we are friends at the dog park.
All right.
How's Rufus doing?
He's such a cutie.
Oh, he's good.
Thanks.
But I've had to watch him like a hawk recently.
He started chewing the furniture.
Oh, no.
Lucky has done that, too.
I have to keep a close eye on her whenever any food is left on the table.
Same.
How's work?
Good, good, thanks.
I'm keeping tabs on other opportunities, but nothing has come up yet.
Yeah, this is a very typical conversation Michelle, where we went from talking about our dogs and their habits to work, and maybe we'll go to family next or travel right.
This is how native speakers communicate, right?
Mm-hmm, exactly so you said about your dog Rufus.
These are very typical dog names.
Yeah, actually my dog keeper has a friend named Rufus.
There's a neighborhood dog named Rufus yeah, so I asked how Rufus is.
You said I've had to watch him like a hawk.
Recently he started chewing the furniture.
So you can't basically you can.
If you leave the room you might come back and the couch will have a hole in it.
You know?
Yeah, exactly so i've had to watch him like a hawk.
Yeah, when you first adopt a new dog or if a dog moves to a new stage of life, he might become a little like when dogs turn, i think it's like one or one and a half they become really like adolescence, like tricky to deal with, tricky to handle.
I move out of puppy stage into trouble, like troublemaking stage sometimes.
Yeah Um, and then you said I have to keep a close eye on her whenever any food is left on the table right.
And then you said, how's work?
And I said, good, good.
Thanks.
I'm keeping tabs on other opportunities, but nothing has come up yet.
So keeping tabs sounds a little less intense to me than watching like a hawk, right?
I feel like it's pulling back a little like keeping tabs.
It's not necessarily like so intense.
It makes me think more, oh, you're a little more casual.
Yep.
I totally agree with you.
There's a degree of intensity here.
Yeah.
You know you wouldn't say you're not saying that you're watching LinkedIn like a hawk for other opportunities, right?
You're just saying, you know, you're checking in a few times a week, you know, something like that.
But it's not with the same intensity as watching like a hawk, right?
Exactly.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So yeah.
And Lindsay.
I want to let our listeners know about another great episode, that an interview that we had a guest on episode 2546.
It was Why Repetition is Key with Hadar Shemesh.
Yes.
And Aubrey did this interview.
So guys, check it out.
Such a great guest.
We've had Hadar on the show a couple of times in the past few years.
She's got some great techniques when it comes to pronunciation.
So go over and check out that episode.
Michelle, any final takeaways?
I think you mentioned.
I really like what you said about how you can tell a lot about somebody by what they're keeping a close eye on.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And what's important to them and what they're feeling in the moment.
Are they stressed about watching their kids?
Are they right?
So these expressions are very, very common, useful for everyday life and can really help you connect with someone.
You got it.
There you go.
Another connection episode, Michelle.
All right.
Good stuff.
Guys, if you love our style, our style is all about connection.
We show you how to connect using English to ultimately have a happier life.
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All right.
So, Michelle, we'll see you next time back on the show.
All right.
Bye, Lindsay.
Bye, guys.
Take care.
Bye.
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