Hello, and welcome to the English Like a Native podcast.
My name is Anna and you're listening to week 38, day two of...
Your English five a day, the second season.
With me.
You're growing in a very simple and straightforward way, simply by listening every day of the working week, from Monday to Friday.
You're expanding your vocabulary, improving your listening skills and, slowly but surely, starting to feel more like yourself when communicating in English.
I hope that you also enjoy your time with me here.
So, without further ado, let's begin today's episode, as we always do, with a snapshot of what's to come.
Edna walked through the unremarkable stairwell of her old apartment block, carrying her shopping.
A quick glance at the third step made her stomach drop, because an unsettling shadow seemed to move there on its own.
She hurried past, telling herself it was nothing, but the echo of her footsteps felt too loud in the silence. okay let's dive into the vocabulary starting with the noun stairwell stairwell we spell this s-t-a-i-r-w-e-l-l the stairwell the stairwell is the space in a building where the stairs are often going up many floors In some of the bigger buildings that I've visited, if I stand at the bottom of the stairwell and look up, I can see many flights of stairs.
Remember we had flight of stairs yesterday.
The stairwell is the space that holds all of those flights of stairs.
And they're often open in these big buildings.
So you can see all the way up to the roof or the ceiling of the building that you're standing in.
So that is a stairwell.
That's the space that holds the stairs.
Here's an example sentence.
She heard footsteps echoing in the stairwell.
Next we have the noun glance.
Glance.
We spell this G-L-A-N-C-E.
A glance.
A glance is a quick look at something or someone.
You're listening and all you can hear is me making little squeaky noises.
If you're watching on YouTube, you'll see me demonstrating a glance.
I forgot for a second.
I do apologize.
Now a glance could be completely harmless and unremarkable, but a glance can also say a thousand things.
A glance could say, stop talking, or a glance could be, I'm surprised you just said that.
I might be talking to the boy that my best friend really fancies and my best friend is in earshot.
And I might invite this boy to come and watch my best friend singing in a concert at the local church.
And my best friend might give me a passing glance as if to say, that's so embarrassing.
What are you doing?
Stop talking to him and don't invite him to my concert.
Or she might give me a glance with a little smile and saying, I can't believe you did that.
That's amazing.
So a glance can be powerful.
Here's another example.
She gave the letter a quick glance before putting it away.
Next, we have the idiom, make your stomach drop. make your stomach drop four words make m-a-k-e your y-o-u-r stomach s-t-o-m-a-c-h drop d-r-o-p if something makes your stomach drop then you suddenly feel shocked nervous or scared oh it's almost like feeling a little bit sick here's an example sentence Realising I had lost my passport made my stomach drop.
What makes your stomach drop?
Next, we have the adjective unsettling.
Unsettling.
We spell this U-N-S-E-T-T-L-I-N-G.
Unsettling.
If something is unsettling, then it makes you feel worried, nervous or uncomfortable.
Oh, that's concerning.
It's unsettling.
For example, if your boss tells you that the business is struggling and they will have to look at the headcount and they may have to make some cuts.
That's quite unsettling.
You'll worry about your job security.
If there is a round of redundancies, that's quite unsettling because you don't know what's going to happen.
Will you still have a job this time next week?
Here's an example sentence.
The sudden knock at the door late at night was unsettling.
Last, we have the adjective unremarkable.
Unremarkable.
We spell this U-N-R-E-M-A-R-K-A-B-L-E.
Unremarkable.
If something is unremarkable, then it's ordinary.
It's not special or unusual.
Unremarkable.
Here's an example sentence.
The town was small and unremarkable with nothing much to see.
All right, that's our five, so let's do a quick recap.
We started with the noun stairwell, which is that space in a building where stairs live, where the stairs are the stairwell.
We had the noun glance. which is a quick look at something or someone, a glance.
We had the idiom make your stomach drop.
When you suddenly feel shocked, nervous or scared, make your stomach drop.
We had the adjective unsettling, which is something that makes you feel worried or nervous or uncomfortable.
It's unsettling.
And we had the adjective unremarkable, which is something ordinary, not special or unusual.
It's unremarkable.
Now that we've heard the recap, let's listen to the snapshot once again.
Edna walked through the unremarkable stairwell of her old apartment block carrying her shopping items.
A quick glance at the third step made her stomach drop, because an unsettling shadow seemed to move there on its own.
She hurried past telling herself it was nothing, but the echo of her footsteps felt too loud in the silence.
I want you now to listen out for that target vocabulary once more as we head into story time.
The stairwell of Ed's building was usually silent a hollow space of echoing footsteps and peeling paint.
He passed through it every day without a thought, rushing to work or heading home with shopping bags.
It was an unremarkable place.
And that was why he noticed the coin at once.
It lay on the third step, dull and small, so ordinary he almost ignored it.
But when he bent to pick it up, he saw it was unlike any coin he had ever handled.
There were no numbers, no familiar faces, only strange lines carved in a circle.
A quick glance made his stomach drop, though he could not say why.
The markings were not frightening in themselves, yet there was something deeply unsettling about their pattern, like an eye that was watching.
He laughed at himself for being so jumpy.
A neighbour had probably dropped it, he thought.
He tossed it into his pocket and carried on.
That night, he left the coin on his desk.
In the morning he slipped it back into his pocket with the intention of showing it to one of his colleagues who knew a thing or two about old coins.
But as he walked through the stairwell, there it was again, resting neatly on the third step.
Ed stopped, frozen.
He went to pull the coin from his pocket to prove it was not the same one, but his pocket was empty.
His heart thudded against his ribs.
Slowly, he picked it up once more and carried it outside.
He dropped it into a bin on the corner, pressing the lid firmly shut.
Satisfied, he hurried away.
Two days passed.
Then, late on Wednesday evening after a long shift, Ed trudged up the stairs his eyes half-closed with tiredness.
He lifted his head and his stomach dropped so suddenly he felt dizzy.
The coin lay on the third step, exactly where it had been before, as if waiting for him.
His breath came faster.
He picked it up with shaking fingers, carried it back into his flat and hurled it into a drawer.
He locked the drawer, telling himself he would forget it.
But forgetting was impossible.
Each time he passed the stairwell, he found himself glancing at the third step, dreading what he might see.
Sometimes the step was bare and he would sigh in relief.
Other times the coin gleamed faintly in the dim light, patient and familiar.
The stairwell, once unremarkable, now felt like a place alive with secrets.
Shadows seemed to thicken along the walls and the air grew colder.
Near the third step, ed began to sense that he was not alone when he walked through it, as if something unseen lingered close watching one evening, unable to resist, he crouched and pressed the coin between his palms.
A faint vibration pulsed through his skin.
He dropped it in shock, but the vibration continued, running up the steps like a whisper.
Somewhere above him, in the dark of the stairwell, a door creaked open.
And that brings us to the end of today's episode.
I do hope you found it useful and enjoyable.
Until tomorrow, take very good care of yourself and goodbye.
