Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 1,224.
Setting timers and alarms.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 1,224.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Go to eslpod.com and take a look at our ESL podcast learning guides.
Our learning guides contain complete transcripts of everything we say on these episodes, in addition to a complete glossary, that is, definitions of our keywords, as well as sample sentences using those keywords.
This episode is a dialogue between Laquisha and Yun about getting a reminder when you need to do something by using a timer.
Let's get started.
What's in the bag?
What are they for?
How?
The timer will help me time my responses to common interview questions so I don't run off at the mouth.
See?
Instead of the stopwatch function, I use the countdown function, so I'll know when to wrap up.
And the alarm clocks?
I have a habit of pressing the snooze button after an alarm goes off.
I've tried different kinds of alarms.
Ones that buzz, ones that beep, ones that vibrate, and ones that use a ringtone.
But I still fall back to sleep.
And what do you plan to do with three alarm clocks?
I plan to set the alarms one minute apart and put them around my bedroom.
By the time I turn them all off, I should be awake.
And if not?
Then maybe I should be applying for jobs as a mattress tester.
LaQuisha begins our dialogue by asking Yoon, what's in the bag?
Meaning, what is in your bag?
Yoon says, three alarm clocks and a kitchen timer.
An alarm clock is is a clock that, in addition to telling you what time it is, also has the option of making a noise.
Typically, at a certain time of the day, this noise serves as an alarm, that is something that tells you that you need to do something or that a certain time has been reached.
So if you have an alarm clock and you set S-E-T the alarm for say, 7 o'clock in the morning, when it is 7 o'clock the clock will make a noise.
We call that an alarm.
The noise tells you it's 7 o'clock and you need to get your lazy butt out of bed.
Yoon has three alarm clocks and a kitchen timer.
A timer, T-I-M-E-R, is different from a clock.
A timer is is a small instrument that you can set for a certain number of minutes or hours, and after that time is up, after that amount of time has gone by, the device, the instrument, will make a sound, will make a noise.
So it's like an alarm clock, except A timer makes a noise, not at a certain time of the day, but after a certain amount of time that you tell it to make a noise.
Let's say I want to take a short nap, N-A-P.
A nap is when you sleep for a short amount of time during the day.
If I want to take a 20-minute nap, I can set my timer for 20 minutes.
After 20 minutes, the timer will make a noise and that will wake me up so I can get back to work.
A kitchen timer is a timer that you might use in your kitchen.
Let's say you are baking a cake.
You are making a cake because it's my birthday soon and you want to give me a cake.
I actually prefer gold, but let's say you don't have enough money to give me gold, so you want to bake me a cake.
Well, you may set your kitchen timer for I don't know 30 minutes and After 30 minutes the timer goes off.
That tells you it's time to take the cake out of the oven.
That's what we use a kitchen timer for.
Although, of course, you could use it for other things as well.
LaQuisha says, What are they for?
Meaning, why do you have three alarm clocks and a kitchen timer, Yoon?
Yoon says, I have a very important interview tomorrow morning and these will help me prepare for it.
LaQuisha asks, How?
How will these alarm clocks and timers help you prepare for your interview?
Yoon says, The timer will help me time my responses to common interview questions.
Yoon wants to know how long he's talking.
He wants to practice his answers to the questions he may be asked.
So he wants to time them.
Notice we use the verb to time to mean to record questions. how long a certain thing takes.
If you are going to run a race, you will probably use a timer to time how long it takes you to run, whatever distance you're running.
Yoon wants to time his responses to common interview questions.
He wants to make sure he doesn't talk too long.
Another way of saying talk too long informally is to run off at the mouth.
To run off at the mouth is an expression which means to talk for too long, usually without knowing that you are talking as much as you are.
Yoon says see, instead of the stopwatch function, I use the countdown function, so I'll know when to wrap up.
Yoon is showing LaQuisha his timer.
That's why he says, see, he's actually having LaQuisha look at the timer.
We talked about a kitchen timer.
A kitchen timer is is what we would call a countdown timer.
A kitchen timer is a device that you set for a certain number of minutes and after that time has passed, the timer will make a noise.
That's the traditional way that we define a kitchen timer.
Another way of referring to that kind of timer is a countdown timer.
The word countdown C-O-U-N-T-D-O-W-N means to count backwards from a larger number to a smaller number.
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
That's counting down from 10 to 1.
The verb is to count down.
A countdown timer then starts at a certain amount of time and goes to zero.
And when it gets to zero, it makes a noise.
There's another kind of timer we didn't talk about, which is when you are able to make a machine turn on or have an electronic device turn on at a certain time.
That's also called a timer.
For example, if you are watching a certain television show and you want to record it, you want to have a video recording of it.
You can set the timer on your TV or cable box in order to have the video recorder turn on at a certain time.
That's another use of the word timer.
It's popular on many smartphones and tablets nowadays to have something called a clock or a timer that does more than one thing.
Not only does it work as a traditional countdown timer, but often it will also work as a stopwatch.
A stopwatch, S-T-O-P-W-A-T-C-H is a device that records how much time has passed.
Let's say you want to know how long it takes you to get from your house to your work.
You could use a stopwatch or a timer on your smartphone that had a stopwatch function.
The stopwatch is something that you turn on as you begin an activity and turn off when you are finished.
And you look at it and you see, oh, that took 10 minutes or that took two hours.
That's a stopwatch.
It's confusing because nowadays, with smartphones and computers, many times these different functions, these different ways of marking and measuring time are part of the same app or the same device.
Yoon wants to know how long he's talking so he'll know when to wrap up his speech.
Answer to his interview questions.
To wrap W-R-A-P up is a two-word phrasal verb meaning to bring something to an end, to finish something, especially when you are talking.
LaQuisha says, and the alarm clocks?
Now she wants to know why Yoon has three alarm clocks.
Yoon explains I have a habit, meaning I, often I have a habit of pressing the snooze button after an alarm goes off.
Many alarm clocks have what is called a snooze, S-N-O-O-Z-E button.
A snooze button is a part of a clock you push when an alarm goes off.
That turns the alarm off temporarily.
Basically what it does is give you an additional amount of time before the alarm goes off again.
To go off, I should explain, is for the alarm to make a loud noise.
So if you set your alarm, your alarm clock, for 7 o'clock in the morning, the alarm will go off.
It will start making noise at 7 o'clock.
You can hit the snooze button and that will give you, say, 10 more minutes.
The alarm goes off.
You turn it off.
Then 10 minutes later, the alarm goes off again.
Notice this phrasal verb to go off is a little confusing.
It's not the same as to turn off.
To turn off means to stop the device from functioning.
To go off means to make a sound.
So when the alarm clock goes off, it makes a sound.
To review then, the alarm goes off at 7 a.m.
You hit the snooze button that makes the alarm sound stop.
Ten minutes later, the alarm goes off again.
You can keep hitting the snooze button and never actually get up out of bed, but eventually you will have to get up.
Yoon says he has a habit of pressing, that is, of hitting the snooze button after the alarm goes off.
I've tried different kinds of alarms, he says ones that buzz, ones that beep, ones that vibrate and ones that use a ringtone, but I still fall back to sleep.
Alarm clocks often have different ways of making you get up or indicating it is a certain time.
One way is to buzz, B-U-Z-Z.
Buzz is a kind of sound like zzzz.
We describe the sound of a bee, for example, as a buzz.
Beep, B-E-E-P, is a high-pitched sound.
Something like that.
Other alarm clocks vibrate.
V-I-B-R-A-T-E.
To vibrate means to move back and forth very quickly.
If you have a cell phone, a mobile phone... you probably have a vibrate function.
Instead of the phone making a noise, it moves back and forth quickly.
A ringtone, R-I-N-G-T-O-N-E, is the sound that a phone might make when someone is calling you.
It's just another word for a short piece of music or some other sound that you would typically find on a cell phone.
Yoon has all these different kinds of alarm clocks to make sure he wakes up.
LaQuisha says, and what do you plan to do with three alarm clocks?
Yoon says, I plan to set the alarms one minute apart and put them around my bedroom.
Apart, A-P-A-R-T, means within a certain time or distance between two things.
So if he's setting his alarm clocks one minute apart, one alarm clock will be set for 7 o'clock, the next one will be set for 701.
The next one will be set for 702.
You often see or hear the word apart with the word far, F-A-R.
How far apart are Los Angeles and San Francisco?
That means what is the distance between them?
How far apart are your appointments?
I have an appointment at 7 and at 7.30.
They are 30 minutes apart.
In this case, Yoon is going to set his alarms one minute apart and put them around his bedroom.
He says, by the time I turned them all off, I should be awake, that is, no longer sleeping.
LaQuisha says, and if not meaning if he isn't awake after turning off his three alarm clocks, Yoon says, then maybe I should be applying for jobs as a mattress tester.
Yoon makes a joke at the end here.
LaQuisha says, what if he's still sleepy after hearing three alarm clocks?
Yoon says, maybe I should be applying for jobs as a mattress, M-A-T-T-R-E-S-S, tester.
A mattress is what you sleep on at night, usually.
It's a soft, rectangular object that is part of a bed.
A mattress tester would be someone whose job it is to test how good a mattress is.
Yoon is joking here.
He's saying, if he is a person that loves to sleep so much, maybe he should be working as a mattress tester, a person who goes around and tests how good a mattress is on a bed.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
What's in the bag?
Three alarm clocks and a kitchen timer.
What are they for?
I have a very important interview tomorrow morning and these will help me prepare for it.
How?
The timer will help me time my responses to common interview questions so I don't run off at the mouth.
See?
Instead of the stopwatch function, I use the countdown function so I'll know when to wrap up.
And the alarm clocks?
I have a habit of pressing the snooze button after the alarm goes off.
I've tried different kinds of alarms ones that buzz, ones that beep, ones that vibrate and ones that use a ringtone, but I still fall back to sleep.
And what do you plan to do with three alarm clocks?
I plan to set the alarms one minute apart and put them around my bedroom.
By the time I turn them all off, I should be awake.
And if not?
Then maybe I should be applying for jobs as a mattress tester.
We'll wrap up this episode of ESL Podcast by thanking our script writer, Dr. Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2016 by the Center for Educational Development.
