Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 504, Training Inexperienced Employees.
This is English as a Second Language podcast number 504.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Our website is eslpod.com.
Go there to download a learning guide for this episode, an 8-10 page guide that will help you improve your English even faster.
This episode is called Training Inexperienced Employees.
It's a dialogue between Kazuko and Martin, using a lot of vocabulary that relates to experience or inexperience, someone without experience at work.
Let's get started.
I really appreciate you helping with the training of the newbies.
I couldn't have done it without you.
Don't mention it.
I remember when I was still wet behind the ears and the veterans in the company gave me the benefit of their time and expertise.
They propped me up until I could stand on my own two feet.
I can't imagine you as a novice.
Everybody here thinks of you as the cornerstone of the institution.
Well, that may be.
But you should have seen me in the early years.
I was naive and reckless.
I saw you talking with some of the new recruits.
What advice did you give them?
I gave them the same advice that an old hand gave me when I first started.
Kazuko begins by telling Martin that she really appreciates him helping with the training of the newbies.
A newbie.
N-E-W-B-I-E is an informal term used to describe someone who's a beginner, someone who's a novice, someone who is new at something.
Kazuko says, I couldn't have done it without you.
Martin says, don't mention it, meaning not at all, not a problem.
I remember when I was still wet behind the ears and the veterans in the company gave me the benefit of their time and expertise.
The expression to be wet behind the ears means to be inexperienced, to be doing something for the first time, not to know exactly what you're doing.
I'm not sure where the expression comes from, but it's a common enough one.
When you say someone is wet behind the ears, you mean they don't know what they're doing.
They're new at something.
They're inexperienced.
A veteran here means someone who has a lot of experience, someone who has done something for a long time.
A veteran teacher is someone who has been a teacher for a long time.
The word veteran can also describe someone who was once part of a country's army or military forces.
But here it means just someone with a lot of experience.
The veterans in the company gave Martin the benefit of the advantages of their time and expertise, meaning their knowledge about something, their deep knowledge, their considerable understanding about something.
He says To prop up something, or to prop something or someone up is a phrasal verb meaning to support someone or something, to help someone do something, to accomplish something.
So in this case, because Martin didn't have very much experience, he needed help.
He needed other people to help him do what he needed to do.
And they propped him up until he could stand on his own two feet.
To stand on your own two feet means to be independent, to do something without help from other people.
Kazuko says, I can't imagine you as a novice.
A novice.
N-O-V-I-C-E is a newbie, someone who is doing something for the first time or someone who doesn't have very much experience.
If you were beginning to learn the piano, for example, you could say, I'm a novice.
I'm not very good.
I'm a beginner.
Well, Kazuko says that she can't imagine Martin as a novice.
Everybody here thinks of you as the cornerstone of the institution.
The cornerstone is, in this case, someone or something that is necessary for the success of a.
The word cornerstone comes from architecture.
It's the actual piece of stone that you would put in the corner of a building where the two walls would meet.
More generally, cornerstone is the part of the building that is often dedicated at the beginning of the construction of an important building.
When used normally in conversation, it means the foundation, the thing that is very necessary or important.
Martin says.
Well, that may be I may be thought of as the cornerstone of this institution and Naive N-A-I-V-E means that you don't have a lot of experience in life, so you have to trust other people.
Naive is usually considered a bad thing.
It's when you trust other people too much and you believe things that you shouldn't believe.
For example, if your new girlfriend tells you that she's going to have dinner with her ex-boyfriend, because they're just friends.
You might not want to be so naive as to think that perhaps there isn't something else going on there.
That would be an example of being naive, perhaps.
The same would be especially so if it happened with your boyfriend.
If your new boyfriend says they're going to have dinner with their ex-girlfriend, you should probably maybe go with
To be reckless means to do things that are risky without thinking about the danger involved.
We have an expression reckless driving.
That's when people drive their cars without any concern about how dangerous driving can be.
And, for example, they may hit another car or hurt people.
That is reckless driving, driving in a way that could cause an accident or does cause an accident.
Martin says, We have two words here that end in E-P-T, adept, A-D-E-P-T, and inept, I-N-E-P-T.
To be adept means to be able to do something easily, quickly, and well.
My mother is adept at cooking.
She can cook very well.
That's just an example, however.
Inept means incapable, unable to do something, without the ability to do something well.
I am inept at playing the violin.
I'm not very good at it.
Notice that both with adept and with inept, we use the preposition at.
I am adept at making cakes.
The verb is in the ing after the at.
I am inept at driving, ing form.
Kazuko says, I saw you talking with some of the new recruits.
What advice did you give them?
A recruit is someone who has recently joined an organization, and We usually talk about recruits as new employees, often people that we try to go and find and hire.
The Army, the Navy, the military forces also have recruits.
These are people that they want to get to join the Army and then join the military service.
Kazuko asks what advice Martin gave the new recruits.
Martin says.
The expression an old hand means a person who has a lot of experience doing something, someone who knows how to do something very well.
Hand has several different meanings in English.
Take a look at our learning guide for some additional explanations.
Martin says, To take something with a grain of salt is an old expression.
That means not to believe everything that you are told to decide which things you are going to believe.
Of course Martin is giving this as a piece of advice that the recruits take advice from people like him with a grain of salt.
Of course, if we take his advice about taking advice with a grain of salt well, you see the problem.
We're not sure what to believe.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
I really appreciate you helping with the training of the newbies.
I couldn't have done it without you.
Don't mention it.
I remember when I was still wet behind the ears and the veterans in the company gave me the benefit of their time and expertise.
They propped me up until I could stand on my own two feet.
I can't imagine you as a novice.
Everybody here thinks of you as the cornerstone of the institution.
Well, that may be, but you should have seen me in the early years.
I was naive and reckless.
I may be more adept at my job now, but I felt inept for years.
The script for this episode was written by someone who is very adept at writing, Dr. Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thanks for listening.
Come back and listen to us next time on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2009 by the Center for Educational Development.
