Here is a piece of advice: Listen to this episode if you want to learn English
If you want to learn how to give advice to someone in English, you SHOULD listen to this episode. That’s my advice to you! Enjoy :)
Transcript
You’re listening to English Made Simple, this is Episode 28. Numero 28. Hello everyone! Hola! My name is Milena. Welcome, welcome guys to English Made Simple, where we learn to speak English with confidence. Where I try to explain English in a way that is easy to understand and easy to comprehend.
Hey, is anybody watching the Olympic Games? I haven’t been watching it, to tell you the truth, I have been sleeping. That’s why! Because of the time difference between Australia and Brazil. Unfortunately… but I’ve been reading about it in the news, okay. That’s how I’m following the Olympics.
Anyway, I want to begin this episode with a silly, random question, really silly question: ‘What do you get when you mix wine, chocolate and microphone? What do you get when you mix mezclas, wine, chocolate and microphone?’ I know, it’s a weird combination. Es una combinación muy rara! Well, the answer is you’ll get confused, you’ll get yourself confused, you’ll get confused and then you’ll make mistake if you mix all of those things together, and that’s exactly what happened to me in the past episode. I got myself confused, me confundí.
What happened in the past episode, or the last episode, what happened in the last episode, well, I forgot to introduce myself at the beginning of the show, and that was a little bit rude, you know, not very nice of me. Then I said to you guys to go to Episode 2 if you wanted to learn about accents and pronunciation. Well, it’s actually Episode 1. I’m such a dumbass (soy tan tonta!) haha
So, you should go to Episode 1 if you want to learn about the difference between accents and pronunciation. Anyway, I’m sure you have already figured this out on your own. This was clearly a small mistake on my part and I blame it on the wine por culpa del vino I blame it on the wine. So here is my advice to you guys, you should not drink wine, eat chocolate and then do podcasting because you will make mistakes, that’s my advice to you. But I do miss a good Chilean wine. So now, I’m not drinking wine, I’m just having a cup of tea, and hopefully I’ll start to make sense soon. Haha
Before we begin, I want to say a special hello to Marcela from Santiago. Hola Marcela, how are you? I hope you’re doing well, hope it’s not too freezing in Santiago, you know, it’s very cold over there. Hola to David and also Andrew, thank you guys, I’m glad that you are enjoying the show and thanks for the nice comments. :-) Let’s start the show! Okay?
In this episode, we will learn about different ways to give advice and recommendations dar consejos y recomendaciones. We are also going to learn some useful expressions that will help you give advice in English. To give advice, means dar un consejo. So, by the end of this episode, I want you to practise giving advice to a friend using one of these expressions, and you will also learn something interesting about the word ‘advice’.
The word ‘advice’ is a noun. It’s a funny word, I mean, funny strange, not funny ‘haha’. It’s a strange word, so it is a noun and it’s a non-countable noun sustantivo no contable. And if you are new to the show, I’ve mentioned the countable and non-countable nouns in Episode 23. If you want to find out more about that, go to Episode 23, you will learn about countable and non-countable nouns.
So, the word ‘advice’ doesn’t have a plural, we don’t say ‘advices’. If we want to offer more than one advice, then we must use the phrase ‘a piece of advice’, literally means un pedazo o parte de consejo. In this case, we can use advice as a plural, so we have to use ‘a piece of advice’ phrase, if you want to give more than one advice to someone. So, in English we say to give advice dar un consejo. Or you can say to your friend, ‘Hey Sandra, here is a piece of advice’.
When we give advice, we often use the word ‘should’. ‘Should’ is similar to deberías in Spanish. And guess what, the ‘L’ is silent, so the word ‘should’ spelled as in ‘S-H-O-U-L-D’, but we don’t pronounce ‘L’, it’s silent. ‘Should’ is often used when we give advice to someone, but it’s not always the case. In this episode, I’ll give you different ways to give your opinion or to give advice to someone. Now that we know that advice is a noun, it’s spelled ‘A-D-V-I-C-E’, but does it have a verb? Is there a verb for advice? Yes, there is, and it’s ‘Advise’. Aconsejar. So it’s spelled ‘A-D-V-I-S-E’. One is ‘advice’ and the other one is ‘advise’, the spelling is different.
If you want to know more about the word ‘advice’ and the verb ‘advise’, you can check out Weon Inteligente or Cambridge dictionaries online. I’m very impressed with their description of the word ‘advice’, check it out, it is very easy to understand if you need more explanation. So, when we give advice, we basically suggest to someone what they should do.
Let’s now begin with the common expression that we can use if we want to give opinion or give advice to someone.
Some common expressions when giving advice, when we give advice to someone, I’m going to use examples from my personal experience. So, let’s say, a very, very simple example, my husband tells me, “Milena, if you want to lose weight, I really think you should start exercising, or you should start going to the gym”. And I’m like, you know what? I think you should shut up haha. I don’t like when people give me advice to go to the gym.
Also, another example, “Milena, if you want to lose weight, you should stop eating chocolates and drinking wine, that’s not healthy, Milena”. I know! I know it’s not healthy, but it’s delicious, I’m not stopping that.
Again, from my personal experience, my friend was complaining to me about being sick, so I said to her, “Maria, you should go to the doctor, you should see a doctor, because I can’t help you, you should go to the doctor”. So, the word ‘should’ is very straightforward, ‘you should’ is quite similar to deberías in Spanish.
Another example, if you want to learn English, one thing you could do is listen to this podcast or any other podcasts in English. So another way to give an opinion is to use the word ‘could’. If you want to learn English, one thing you could do is listen to this podcast or any podcast. Next example, number 5 I think… let’s say your friend has a problem with his computer, it’s not working for some reason, you could tell him: Have you tried restarting your computer? It’s worth a try. Vale la pena intentarlo.
Have you tried restarting your computer? It is worth a try. How about restarting your computer?’ Another way to ask a question is ‘how about’, ‘how about restarting your computer’, or’ why don’t you try restarting your computer?’
Another example when we give advice to someone. ‘Have you tried Thai food before? Food from Thailand? It’s delicious, my favourite by the way. You really should try it! Again, we are using the word ‘should’. In this case, you say ‘you really should try it’. We want to emphasise, ‘you should definitely try it’, ‘you really should try it’.
And, that brings us to the end of the episode, thank you for joining me! If you enjoyed this episode of English Made Simple, please share it with your friends who may also find it helpful as well. And, secondly, if you haven’t already subscribed, make sure you subscribe to the show on iTunes, it will really help me spread the message. And, while you are there, please leave a nice review too, and that will be cool, so I can continue delivering awesome shows! MUCHAS GRACIAS! :-)
Don’t forget, all transcriptions are available on my website Englishmadesimple.net. If you have any questions on any of the topics we covered in this show, please let me know in the Facebook group, English Made Simple or on my website. This podcast is for you guys and I am here to help you learn. So let’s do this!!