Hello and a very warm welcome back to the Easy English Podcast.
It's a real pleasure to have you join me on our show again today.
Easy English if you're new is the best place to practice your English listening skills, all while improving your English vocabulary, pronunciation and understanding.
So today we are putting on our detective hats.
In our digital world, we are constantly reading clues.
We read them before we buy a new product, before we choose a movie and especially before we pick a restaurant for a special dinner.
These clues are called online reviews.
They are everywhere and very important in our digital world today.
Reviews.
A review is when someone writes their opinion or about their experience with a place, a product or really anything that they have experienced or had an experience with.
But how do we know if a review is real, if it's useful, if it's positive or negative?
Today we are going to become digital detectives and we're going to look at some reviews.
So we're going to learn a little bit about the language of online reviews and we're going to read a couple of review examples.
So it's going to be an interesting episode and definitely very different from our usual episodes and, as always, we will have our key vocabulary section.
If you're new here, this is the section where I tell you five keywords that I want you to listen out for during this podcast.
And this allows you to practice your key active listening skills.
Not only practice active listening, but to hopefully learn and pick up a few new words along the way.
Don't worry if you know some of them and also don't worry if you don't know any.
You will hear all these words in context during the episode.
Okay, let's have a look at some of the keywords that we need for today's episode.
The first is, of course, a review.
A review.
And a review is an opinion about a product, service or place.
It can be positive or negative.
This can be written, so usually it is a written review.
It's typed somewhere online, on a website.
It could be in a book, perhaps.
And you can give a review verbally, so with your voice, to maybe a friend.
But we would more call this a recommendation.
So when we talk about a review, usually it is a written opinion.
Our second keyword for today is rating.
Rating.
And a rating is a score, usually with stars or numbers, that gives a quick summary or review of a place, product or thing.
For example, five stars, sometimes out of five stars.
People can rate a restaurant or food from one to five stars.
Sometimes people can rate things out of ten.
You know, for example, ten out of ten is perfect.
Whereas 5 out of 10 is average.
People can also give ratings with a percentage.
Like, for example, 80%.
So 80 out of 100 really is the review.
Let's go to our third word for today, and that is exaggerate, exaggerate.
And this means to describe something as perhaps larger or more important than it really is.
For example, if you went to a restaurant and you had a really bad experience because you had to wait for a long time to get your food.
If you're exaggerating, you're making it seem bigger than it really was.
You might say ah, I had to wait a thousand years for my food.
That is exaggeration.
You are exaggerating.
Our fourth word for today is atmosphere.
Atmosphere.
And this is the feeling or mood of a place.
So we might say that a nice cozy pub or restaurant had a warm atmosphere, a warm and friendly atmosphere.
It's describing really the feeling or mood of that place.
And our final word for today is deconstruct.
Deconstruct.
I'm going to use this word a couple of times in a few sections and to deconstruct.
Now, this is not specifically to do with reviews, but to deconstruct something is to break it down into parts to understand it better.
For example, we can deconstruct a sentence to understand the individual parts.
Okay, those are our keywords for today.
Keep an ear out, so listen for them.
And we will go to our main episode.
But first...
Today's topic is reviews, online reviews.
So I think you know what I'm going to say next.
Of course, I can't miss the opportunity to ask you to leave a review for Easy English.
So, if you can, if you're able to, on Apple podcasts or another platform where you can review, if you're on Spotify, you can rate the podcast.
So with five stars and do please leave a review.
It really, really helps the podcast to grow.
If you're listening on apple podcasts, you can click onto the show so go on to the actual easy english page and if you go to the bottom, you can leave a text written review so you can rate five stars and leave some nice kind words or whatever you think about the show.
It would be great to read these and see what you think.
Okay, let's look at our main episode topic.
So When you're reading a review, the language is definitely your first clue as to what type of a review it is.
Is it positive?
Is it negative?
What is the person trying to say?
And positive and negative reviews use very different language.
The descriptions will be different.
The way the person's talking quite different as well.
Positive language, you know, these will be words that are designed or made to make you feel good.
Look for words like fantastic, exceptional, wonderful, lovely.
They might even say a hidden gem, if talking about a, for example, a restaurant that not many people know about.
Or they might say that they highly recommend it.
They really recommend that place.
These are often used to create that sense of a positive experience.
But when we look at negative reviews and we come across negative ones, they're going to use, of course, more negative vocabulary that will make you feel bad about a place.
So words like disappointed, overpriced.
So overpriced means that it's too expensive for what you get.
Let down, maybe avoid at all costs, don't go there.
Those types of feelings and experiences.
Don't worry, I'm giving you a lot of words and phrases at the moment, but we're actually going to look at a few review examples and I will explain and deconstruct these reviews for you to understand.
So generally, sometimes people use words and expressions that exaggerate the situation.
For example, a reviewer might say something like, This service was a complete disaster.
I had to wait for a thousand years.
It was so slow.
This is exaggeration.
So being able to understand the tone and what they're saying will help you to understand that.
So let's deconstruct a negative review.
These are not real reviews.
I've created these reviews of a fictional restaurant.
So the restaurant's not actually real.
And we're going to look at a negative review of a restaurant first.
And then we're going to look at a positive five star amazing review for the same restaurant.
Okay, so let's begin our first case.
And this is a one-star review for a restaurant called The Corner Bistro.
I'm going to read you the review first, and then I'm going to deconstruct it.
I'm going to break it down so that you can understand each part.
Sound good?
But before I read the review, I want to tell you that if you would like more advanced episodes on Patreon, check out the link in the description below.
Patreon is a service where you can subscribe and for a small fee every month, you get access to all of the extra learning features of Easy English.
That includes a full transcript, a written transcript of every episode that comes out, with vocabulary lists and and phrasal verb lists too.
I've also recently started doing a PDF worksheet with every episode.
So there will be some comprehension questions, grammar questions in some cases as well, and extra materials to help you study with each episode.
Not only do you get that, but you also can get access from the main tier to bonus episodes every week.
And that includes extra series as well.
So come on over and join us on the Easy English Patreon.
I hope to see you there.
The link is in the description of this podcast episode.
So you can click on the information of the podcast episode and you should see a description and you can click that link and it will take you to be able to find the Patreon page.
Let's begin our review.
So I'm going to read you the review first and then let's deconstruct it.
Absolutely terrible.
The service was a joke and the food was disgusting.
Waited an hour for a cold burger.
That was absolutely inedible, overpriced and a complete waste of money.
Avoid at all costs.
Okay, so this is a realistic example of a review that you might see on a restaurant's Google page or Trustpilot or one of these websites online.
And this review is full of strong, very emotional language.
The reviewer uses words like terrible, disgusting and inedible, which are very descriptive emotional words.
And they show that the reviewer is very angry.
So let's look at the vocabulary first and then a little bit at the overall picture too.
So absolutely terrible means very bad.
Of course the service was a joke, was a joke.
It just means that the service was so bad that it seemed like a joke.
It seems like it was a prank or a practical joke.
It was so bad okay, and the food was disgusting.
It means that it tasted very bad, disgusting.
Waited an hour for a cold burger.
I think that one is clear.
That was completely inedible.
Inedible.
That means that they couldn't eat it.
It was so bad that it wasn't possible to eat it.
Overpriced and a complete waste of money.
Overpriced means it's too expensive for what you get.
And a complete waste of money.
You should not spend your money on it, because you're just wasting and losing your money.
Avoid at all costs means don't go there.
Just don't go there.
It's bad.
So what facts do we have really for showing that this is a bad review?
The reviewer waited for an hour, which of course is not nice.
And then the burger was cold.
The rest so terrible, disgusting.
All of those things are the reviewer's opinion, their personal view on the food.
A good detective that's looking for a real review or a review that will help their decision, usually will try to look past the emotions.
So when you're reading reviews, be careful with people's emotional language, because they can be very complicated.
And you focus on the facts.
So in this case, they waited for a long time and the food was very cold.
What I would do after reading, that is, I would check some more reviews and see if there were many other people complaining about a long wait for the food and about the food turning up cold.
And that'll help you to figure out if it's just one person's one-time experience or it's quite a common experience.
Okay, now we are going to deconstruct a positive review.
We're going to look at a good review.
But first, actually, no, let's do the positive review and then we will do the listener spotlight.
I love doing listener spotlight, but we will do positive review first.
Let's deconstruct the positive review.
So for our second case, we have a five star review of the same restaurant.
I'm going to read it to you first.
Then we're going to have some comments about it, and then I will deconstruct it again.
Okay, let's go.
What a fantastic place.
The atmosphere was so cozy and welcoming.
Our waiter, David, was so friendly and gave us some great recommendations.
The pasta dish was out of this world.
We highly recommend this restaurant.
Wow, what a different review for the same restaurant.
So this review is also full of strong emotional language.
You'll see this a lot in reviews.
Most of the time it has strong emotional language, but this time it's positive.
Fantastic, cozy, out of this world, which means amazing.
Wow, some really, really positive language.
Let's deconstruct the review.
So what a fantastic place.
That one makes sense.
The atmosphere was so cozy.
Again, the atmosphere, the mood, the feeling was so cozy.
Cozy is quite like warm and comfortable and welcoming.
Our waiter, so the person serving them that was taking their order and bringing them their food.
David was so friendly and he gave us some great recommendations.
He was recommending what food they should take, what food is the best.
Perhaps specific dishes.
The pasta dish was out of this world.
Out of this world, this is, I guess it's an idiom, and it means amazing.
And think about it.
So if something is out of this world, it means it's not from this planet.
It's from space or from another planet.
It's so good that it seems like it couldn't come from planet Earth.
It's out of this world.
Final line, we highly recommend this restaurant.
Also easy enough.
So, what makes this review very useful if you're looking for a good review?
It contains specific details.
The reviewer mentions the atmosphere.
They use even the waiter's name David, and they mention a specific dish the pasta dish.
And this makes the review to me feel quite authentic and trustworthy.
You know that that person has been to that restaurant for sure.
So these specific details help you to know that it's a trustworthy and good review.
But of course, you always want to compare with many more reviews just to check at least a couple.
So let's go to our listener spotlight for today.
If you're new, this is the part of the show where I read some of your answers to my questions.
And then I ask you to write an answer to a new question.
So let me have a look and see which one I can get your answers to.
Okay, so I'm going to just read one answer today and I thought it was really good.
And it was on my podcast episode about healthy eating.
So eating good healthy food.
And it was from Lou.
And Lou said, Hi, Oliver.
Another great subject.
Thank you very much.
As far as I'm concerned, eating properly isn't always easy, because the brain and the stomach are connected.
And sometimes, after a difficult day, we need to compensate with unhealthy foods.
But if my life is balanced between work and free time to recharge my batteries, then my diet is also balanced.
That's a great comment, lou.
I completely agree with you.
For me, I also have this experience when I'm very busy with work, with life, and I'm doing so much.
I find it hard to eat healthy.
There's so much that I want to do and it's sometimes easy just to buy a pizza or pick up some snacks.
Maybe unhealthy quick food and a lot of fast food, like quick food, I guess, is not so good for us.
So I can totally understand you when you say that when your life is balanced, your diet becomes more balanced too.
Because it's definitely the same for me as well.
So great, great answer.
I don't have time for too many answers today.
So I want to go on to ask for you to answer another question.
And it's not a question for today's listener spotlight.
I would like you to write a review.
And I would like you to write a review about this podcast.
Not in the actual review section.
You can do that too.
But I would ask that you can write in the comments.
Or if you are on Apple Podcasts and you can't leave a comment, you can leave a real review.
And I would like you to write a review about what you think of Easy English.
Do you like Easy English?
What is useful for you in Easy English?
But also be honest to me.
What would you like to see?
What would you like more of in Easy English?
I want to know your feedback and your review.
So that is today's listener spotlight.
Leave a review about Easy English.
I would love to hear your feedback, what you enjoy and what you would like more of.
Okay, so as we end our review reading investigation.
I want you to remember this.
The digital world out there.
Whether you're looking for a restaurant, a new Hoover or sorry, a vacuum cleaner we say Hoover in the UK a microwave or a phone, or you just want to order some food on a delivery app, the digital world is full of information.
It's full of reviews, but not all of them are useful.
And by looking a bit more critically at the stuff that we see online the content, the reviews we can find what works, what's real and what's not.
So make sure when you're reading reviews that you can look for the clues.
You can look for what is emotional language and what are the facts, what is useful.
And when you're writing your reviews, try to keep them as...
As truthful and as true and honest as you can.
That's always the best policy for helping others.
Pardon me.
I had a little bit of hiccups like today.
But yes, always keep your reviews as authentic as possible.
So I may be a little bit slower this week at replying to messages and comments.
I always try my best to reply to everyone if I can.
I am on holiday this week.
So I may be a little bit slow.
I've pre-recorded this episode and I've pre-recorded sort of all the content for the time of the holiday.
But I will be back very, very soon.
At the moment, I'm enjoying a little bit of sun abroad.
So I'll be back very soon.
Thank you very much for listening and for supporting the show.
And a special thank you to all of my Patreon subscribers and supporters.
I couldn't do it without you.
So thank you very, very much.
And I will see you in the next episode of the Easy English Podcast.
Goodbye.
