Pratica di Shadowing: Too much or too many: What’s the difference? - Impara a parlare inglese con i video

Creazione lezione...
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Do you know how to use too much and too many in English?
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What about enough and not enough?
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We'll look at these, plus countable and uncountable nouns, and a little quiz towards the end.
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Stay tuned!
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Welcome to the Coffee Break English show.
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I'm Nick.
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And my name is Annabelle.
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How are you doing, Nick?
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I'm really good, yeah.
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I'm looking forward to this episode.
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How are you?
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Yes, I'm also looking forward to this episode, Because you mentioned we are looking at four different things.
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Too much, too many, enough and not enough.
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Exactly.
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So where are we going to start with?
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Well, first, before we look at these, I think it's important to look at countable and uncountable nouns.
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So too much and too many, we use these to show that something is more than enough
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or it's more than we want but too much is with uncountable nouns.
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An uncountable noun is a noun that is not possible to put a number in front of.
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So usually liquids, so we can't say one water,
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we say some water or coffee or with ideas that we can't count, so information.
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Okay, I was going to say information.
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Yeah, or it could be something like advice.
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So these are not possible to count.
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We can't say one advice, two advices.
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Whereas with too many, we use that with countable nouns.
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So we can count them.
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Yeah, exactly.
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One cup of coffee, two people, three computers.
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Okay, I see it.
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Okay.
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So let's have a closer look at too many.
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Yeah.
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So, with too many, we can use this to say that the quantity of the noun is too much.
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I watch too many videos of cats doing funny things, for example.
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Okay, so it's like too many videos.
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Videos is countable because we can count one video, two videos, three videos.
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And that's why we are using too many videos.
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Exactly.
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Absolutely.
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And with the uncountable nouns, we have too much.
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So I can say I spend too much time on the internet looking at videos of cats.
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Okay.
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In this time, we are using time, which is uncountable, and then we are using too much.
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Exactly.
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So then too much and too many, both have the same meaning, but it's about the noun that we are using after them.
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Exactly.
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And we have to be careful here because what we're saying here is it's a negative idea.
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Okay.
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So we put two in front here to show that this is not a good thing.
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Okay.
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But if we want to be positive, we could use so.
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We can say so much or so many.
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I understand.
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There is a way that we can use two with adjectives as well.
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So with two plus adjective, we could say, for example, for me, cats are too entertaining.
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It's a problem for me.
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Okay, so we have to entertaining, entertaining being the adjective.
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And because it's an adjective, we are not using too much, like much or many.
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Exactly.
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We just need to plus adjective.
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So just to recap, is to plus adjective,
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too much plus an uncountable noun and too many plus a countable noun.
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Exactly.
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Perfect.
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So let's move on to enough and not enough.
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With enough, we're saying that something is the correct quantity.
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It's sufficient for what we need.
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Okay.
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And an example is there's enough light in this studio.
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Yeah.
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So it's the correct amount of light.
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People, if you're watching, you can see us.
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Excellent.
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And here with enough or not enough, do we need to know if the noun is countable or uncountable?
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With enough, it's not important.
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But we do need to be careful with the verb
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because we can focus too much on the quantifier and not on the verb.
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We still need to pay attention to whether it's countable or uncountable for the choice of the verb be, for example.
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So it's, there is enough light.
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Exactly.
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And there are enough mugs of coffee on the table. For us.
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Excellent.
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And imagine that today I have a headache and I really need a nap.
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So, I could say there is too much light in this room.
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Exactly.
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Yeah.
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You need less light in the room for you.
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Okay.
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And let's look at a not enough then.
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So, not enough is to show that the.. quantity is below what we need.
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So we want more.
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Yeah, exactly.
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So it's like the opposite of enough.
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Enough is correct quantity and not enough is below that correct quantity.
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I understand.
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So we could say you didn't get enough sleep.
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Yes.
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Well, I hope that this lesson is clear enough.
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Oh, wait a minute.
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There, you haven't used a noun.
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You said clear enough.
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Yeah.
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So, you are using an adjective.
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Exactly.
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So, here we have adjective and enough.
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We have to be a little careful with that.
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In this case, we've got clear enough, so the adjective always comes before enough, whereas when we talk about nouns,
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enough comes before the countable or the uncountable noun.
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Okay.
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So, it's enough plus a noun and adjective enough.
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Yeah.
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Excellent.
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Do you have some practice?
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Yeah, I think that is enough for the explanation.
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We can have a look at the quiz.
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I'm going to give you some sentences and with a space.
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I want you from the context to tell me which of the quantifiers is best for this sentence.
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Okay, so we are using too much, too many, enough, not enough.
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Exactly.
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Perfect.
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And you'll hear a little noise there when there's the time to put that word in.
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Perfect.
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And before we start, remember that you can pause your video if you're listening so that you can play along with this.
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Okay.
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Perfect.
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So, number one, she put salt in the soup and now it tastes terrible.
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Okay, so it tastes terrible so I think that is too
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and it's too much because it's salt and salt is uncountable
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so too much salt absolutely exactly now perfect
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so number two there are spaces in the car for all of us we will take two cars okay
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so we need two cars so not enough so there are not enough spaces Exactly, yeah.
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We have four spaces and five people, for example.
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Um, okay.
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Number three.
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I have books in my bag.
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It's so heavy.
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Hmm.
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Okay.
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Well, here I love reading.
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I will say I don't have enough books, like not enough books, but it's too heavy, so I'm guessing it's too many books,
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because books is a countable noun.
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Great.
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Absolutely.
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Yeah.
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In this case, we don't want a bad bag.
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Yes. But having...
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You can never have too many books.
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Exactly.
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Okay.
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Number four.
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Yeah.
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You can stay for dinner.
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There is food for everyone.
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So there's food for everyone, so there is enough food.
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Yeah, exactly.
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Absolutely.
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Okay, great.
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So that's a bit of a warm up.
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Now for a quick fire quiz.
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Okay, yes, I'm ready.
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So I'll give you a sentence and I want you to tell me if you think it's too much, too many, enough, not enough.
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Okay.
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First one, five cups of coffee in a day.
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Well, I personally don't like coffee.
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So to me it's too many cups or too much coffee.
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Great.
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And both options work well here.
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For me, sometimes I need five cups, so it's enough.
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Okay.
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Especially on a Monday.
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Enough coffee, enough cups of coffee.
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Yeah.
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And again, both are okay.
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Perfect.
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Great.
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Number two.
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Eight hours of sleep in a night.
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I would say it's enough, but if I'm very tired, it's not enough.
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Yeah, for me, I would say that eight hours of sleep, it's enough.
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I don't often get it.
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I don't get enough sleep, I think.
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I only get six or seven hours.
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Okay, yeah.
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And if someone doesn't need to sleep eight hours, then it's too many hours of sleep or too much sleep?
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Here we're talking about sleep, so maybe it's better to say too much sleep.
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Okay, I see.
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Okay, last one.
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Going for a 100 kilometre run.
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Okay, that's too much.
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Yes, I think for me, it's also, it's too far.
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Maybe a 10 kilometre run is my limit at the moment.
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Okay, I think that's enough exercise on that topic, don't you?
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Well, I think it was like more than enough.
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Thank you very much for the practice and also for the explanations.
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But before we finish, shall we do like a quick recap?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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So there's a lot of information here.
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So let's go through that.
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So we have.
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countable nouns, we can put a number in front of a countable noun, uncountable nouns, we can't.
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Okay.
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We have too much for uncountable nouns,
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too many for countable nouns, and they mean it's.. the quantity is more than we want.
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And then we have two plus an adjective.
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Exactly.
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And two plus an adjective gives this a negative idea that there's too much of that adjective.
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Yeah.
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Then we have enough, enough we put before countable and uncountable nouns and we put after adjectives.
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And the meaning is correct amount.
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And we have not enough, which means below the correct amount.
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That we need more, we want more.
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Exactly.
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Great.
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So, thank you very much for today, Annabel.
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No, thank you for the practice and the explanation.
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Yeah.
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I really hope it has been clear enough.
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More than enough.
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Great, that's fantastic.
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And if you do want more practice with much and many, check out this video here where we give a bit more of an explanation of how to use them.
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And if you would like to read a written version of this episode, don't forget to check our blog article on this.
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The link is in the description.
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Thanks very much for joining me today, Annabel.
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Thank you for the activities and also for the explanations.
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And thank you as well to be like learning with me, the listeners, and also if you are watching.
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So thank you.
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Happy coffee breaking.
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You have been listening to a Coffee Break Languages production for the Radiolingua Network.
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Copyright 2025, Radiolingua Limited.
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Recording copyright 2025, Radiolingua Limited.
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All rights reserved.
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Thank you.

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Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?

Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.

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