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Looking for a fun way to use the word textbook?
It doesn't always have to mean studying.
Today, find out how native speakers use the word textbook to describe something that is typical or expected in English.
Do you freeze when you're in an English meeting at work and you get called on to participate?
Wherever you're listening right now, open up the search bar and type business English from All Ears English.
Hit follow. We publish three business focused episodes per week with your favorite hosts Lindsey and Michelle Hey Lindsay, how are you?
Hey Michelle doing great.
How are you today? I'm good Lindsey What's your favorite kind of book to read?
Oh, I really like reading novels right now.
I'm reading wild by Cheryl Strayed, the story of the woman that hikes the Pacific Crest Trail.
It's a great one and she's such a good writer actually.
You're rereading it.
Yes. Wow. That's great.
Are you finding different things from when you read it the first time, is this your second time or it's the second time.
Yeah. It is interesting to kind of, I am finding I'm kind of taking it in differently.
My perspective is different from 10 or 15 years ago when I read it before.
So, yeah, it is really interesting.
Do you like to read textbooks?
I can't say I do, Michelle, do you?
No, I can't imagine just at the end of the night trying to relax, a glass of wine and a textbook.
No, thanks. Exactly.
But today we are going to talk about the word textbook and we're going to talk about a really interesting way to use it that's not how you would think.
Yeah. It's not boring like reading a textbook.
It's actually kind of slangy and fun.
I actually, I really like it.
Yeah, exactly. So, we're going to let our listeners in on a little secret of how to be natural in English.
But first, I do want to remind our listeners, Michelle, where is a great ...
Where's the best place to consume this podcast?
Oh, it's on our app, Lindsay.
We have a really great app that's available for Android and iOS.
Gosh, you can get so much over here, including your personal power or playlist of words.
Now your personal power list, vocabulary words?
Exactly. You can get transcripts that you can follow along with.
It's just great, Lindsey.
What else do we want to say about our app?
Well, we now have these special roleplays that are vocabulary recap roleplays at the end of each week, they're only in the app, so you won't see them if you're listening in another podcast player or YouTube.
You do need to be in the app and you do need to be a premium member to see those, but what we do is we take all the vocabulary words that were highlighted from the week in the transcripts in the app, and we put them into one really cool role play.
So you see it in a new context, and this is what we need to learn a new word is seeing new contexts for words.
All right. That's great.
Yeah, I love it. I love just mixing everything together to finish off the week.
So to get that app guys, go to all is english .com slash app that's APP.
All right. Sounds good.
We'll see you guys over there.
All right. So Lindsay, do you hear people use the word textbook when they're not talking about an actual textbook.
I definitely do Michelle, that's why I'm glad we're talking about this today.
So I'm excited to explain to a listener as how to do that, how to use it in more of a slang way a commentary.
Yeah, I've been meaning to do this episode for a while.
Really? It always kind of enters I think it's one of those things where I hear it and I think should do an episode.
Yeah. And I hear it again and I think and then finally I'm glad I remembered to do it.
So this is a really fun one.
So when you use textbook in a different way, that doesn't actually mean a textbook.
It's used to describe people and their behavior or how something is done.
Sometimes it's a good thing.
Sometimes it's bad, but it's mostly just saying something is exactly what is expected or what someone would imagine or how someone would act.
The idea is that it is what you would see in a textbook.
Right. So if you look up something about English in a textbook, the idea is that's what you would find if there were a textbook on this subject.
Exactly. I love this, and you can hear this in so many different places, right?
We have some examples and then maybe we have some examples from our lives.
It just comes up all the time from different directions, right?
Exactly. Instead of a long -winded explanation like I just gave, let's give some examples.
That was kind of long, but it was good.
Yeah. That was a very long winded, strange explanation.
Sorry, guys. Here's an example.
This problem is not that complicated.
It's actually pretty textbook.
We have to remember our clients and their needs.
That must be our guide.
It's a standard problem.
Standard. That's a really good way to describe it.
Standard. Yeah. That's like, this is the problem that we studied in marketing school, right?
For example, business school.
And makes books. I studied it in a textbook, right?
So it could be that something actually would have been the textbook.
But here we go. Here's another one.
Her behavior is textbook teenager right now.
I wouldn't think anything of it.
Textbook teenager. I love it.
That's so funny. Oh, your kids are heading in that direction, Michelle.
Get ready. Get ready.
What does that mean when I say textbook teenager?
I don't see things you've got to expect from a teenager, a little angsty when I think of teenagers, I mean, obviously not everyone, but I mean, I had this, you know, this time especially more pre -teen years, early teen, like 11, 12, 13, 14, angsty, grilling against their parents a little bit, rebelling against their parents, talking back, right?
Being fresh. Right?
Yeah, and sometimes I think as a parent, you know, it's probably pretty easy to get offended by this But so that's why somebody might say oh it's textbook teenager, you know, meaning yeah, they'll grow out of it This is what always happens, right?
Totally. It's exactly what we would expect from a teenager So it's kind of reassuring when you say this to someone.
Yeah, it normalizes what they're going through what they're doing Yeah, sure.
Yeah another example of the eye exam didn't reveal anything.
That wasn't textbook I think we know how to handle this.
Now sometimes you don't want to hear like for example a few weeks ago I had a bout with shingles which I thought was something like 80 year old women, God But apparently you can get it at any age and I had it on my face And it was so painful and awful and I did a telehealth appointment and I thought I had hives I thought I had hives and as soon as I got on the call the doctor saw my face And he said oh, this is textbook shingles It's just on one side of your body.
That's the last thing I want to hear, but that is another place we might hear it from a doctor.
They're literally saying, like, this is what I studied in medical school.
This is a perfect presentation.
I know exactly what this is.
Yeah. You might hear also, I think people in the mental health industry using this, right?
It's like, you know, it's textbook OCD, it's textbook, you know, it's something like that.
As opposed to maybe a more complicated diagnosis where maybe it's a combination of things or they're not sure or they're, what do they call it, differential diagnoses?
Were there other things that it could be?
I'm not a doctor, but, so that's the opposite of this.
This is when something is very clearly expected as symptoms or kind of the presentation of something, a behavior or a condition.
Right. Yeah, exactly.
Imagine this. You walk into a social event at work and you see tons of colleagues that you'd like to get to know better, but when you walk up to them, your mind goes blank.
How would you start that conversation with your colleagues?
This is one of the many things that we show you how to do on our other Business English podcast.
search for business English right now and hit the follow button and come back for new episodes Tuesdays Fridays and Sundays.
See you there. All right, Michelle, we are back.
So how else might we express this if we want to say the same thing, but we don't want to always say textbook textbook textbook.
They're gonna boring.
Well, this goes back to what you said in the beginning.
Standard, right? So you could also say typical, standard or typical, but you could say, this all looks pretty standard to me, no surprises here.
Mmhmm, yup, or quintessential.
Now, I like this one.
It's a little more, has more personality I think.
They are the quintessential cute family, so much fun to be around.
Yeah. Yeah, we could do another episode on that word because that one is high level, Michelle.
That is definitely.
Or a classic. You could say, this is classic Tiffany late again.
I like that one too.
I like it. This is what she does.
Right. Tiffany might not love it when you say that, but you know.
What feels most natural to you, Michelle?
Which of these? I think classic or textbook.
What do you think? Yeah, I like classic too, especially for a person.
This is classic whoever, John, he's doing this again.
This is something I expect to see from him, it's what he does.
Lindsey, do you have an example that you can think of that's textbook in your life or what is textbook Lindsey or textbook Michelle?
Do we have anything that we can think of?
Textbook Lindsey is definitely coming up with lots of big ideas and getting there and trying to trying to execute on all of them and getting stressed out that I can't get them all done.
You know, I love. I get like this dreaminess in this dreamy state, we could do this, we could do that, we could do it all at the same time.
We don't need to wait.
No, we could do them all.
That is textbook Lindsay.
What about good? Yeah, it's good.
What about you Michelle textbook.
Michelle is saying that it's a good idea to go to sleep early tonight and then it's one thirty in the morning and I'm still awake.
You're scrolling Instagram or something.
Yeah. So that's textbook Michelle.
Got it. OK. Yeah. You've shared with us before that you're a night owl.
So interesting. All right.
Good. Yeah. All right.
Let's do a role play.
So here we are reviewing notes that our friend took for us in class.
Here we go. Can you read this?
No. Wow. This is really textbook, Michael.
I can never read his handwriting.
Yeah. It seems pretty standard to me.
Well, I'm just thankful for the notes.
Seems like this was the quintessential boring lecture.
Seems that way, classic for this professor.
That's true. Yeah. Very common conversation you might have with college friends, right?
right. Did you often in college have friends take notes for you and skip class or did you, Oh no, no, no, not a class skipper.
Nope. No, what about you?
No, of course not. Are you kidding me?
I think we're the goody toosh.
Yeah, no, I didn't skip class and college.
Nope. I needed to be there taking the notes.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
All right. All right.
So you said, you said, can you read this?
And I said, no. And then you said, wow, this This is really textbook Michael.
I can never read his handwriting.
So what are you saying here about Michael?
That we all know that he's terrible handwriting.
So we kind of expected it.
Yes, exactly. And then, what did I say?
You said, yup, seems pretty standard.
So, yup. And then we brought in this word that I love, which is quintessential.
Seems like this was the quintessential boring lecture.
So maybe the professor is very known for these boring lectures, right?
He's got a reputation around campus.
Exactly, and that's why you said, seems that way classic for this professor.
Yes. I love this conversation.
Really good. Really good.
Where else can our listeners go, Michelle, to keep listening to all of those English today?
Guys, go on over to Episode 2366.
That was, Don't Blow Off This English Vocabulary Episode.
Excellent. Where should we leave our listeners?
This is just a really interesting way to connect.
I mean, we were talking about it a little bit in the beginning.
It can be used to reassure someone of something.
It can be used to poke fun of something.
So there's just a lot of ways that you can use this to actually connect.
You can even use it to poke fun at yourself.
So, yeah, so this is very versatile, this word and this idea and it's definitely a good idea to give it a try, but I wouldn't say everything is textbook, right?
We don't want to overdo it.
Yeah. And there's a little bit...
I think this is a fantastic word.
Be a little bit careful when you're talking about people, because maybe they're trying to change.
And if you're always, like, oh, that's textbook you...
Yeah, right. ... you get it again, but they're actually trying to change, then that could be hurtful.
But generally, I think this is used in a pretty harmless way.
Don't you think? Yeah.
For connection? I think so.
I think so. But yeah, so give it a try.
And yeah, let us know how it goes.
Alright, Michelle. You have a great day.
I'll talk to you soon.
Alright, bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to All Ears English.
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