Shadowing Practice: Let's Learn English! Topic: Construction 👷🏾🔨🧰🚧 (Lesson Only) - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Hello and welcome to this English lesson where I'm going to talk about construction.
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I'm not sure what it's like in your part of the world.
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In Canada, it seems like there's always construction happening.
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People around the world like to build things.
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We like to build houses.
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We like to build apartment buildings.
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We like to build roads and bridges.
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People have been building things for a long time and generally, we refer to this as construction.
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I was laughing because as I was starting this lesson, I could hear a truck backing up down the road.
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They're doing a little bit of road work down the road.
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The road is under construction and when trucks back up here, they beep.
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I'm sure they do that in your country as well but I thought I should do a lesson on construction.
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I thought I should talk about all of the words
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and phrases that we use in English when we talk about the world of construction.
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So, we use the word construction to talk about anything that is being built, okay?
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So, if someone is building a bridge or a road
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or an overpass or they're building a highway or an apartment building or a skyscraper or a house, we call it construction.
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We don't use this to talk about things made in a factory, okay?
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So, if a factory makes ovens or stoves, we would just say that they make them in the factory.
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Construction almost always refers to things that are being built outside.
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So, you can see in this picture, they are building a house.
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That house is under construction.
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And that leads me to my next slide.
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I'm not sure what it's like in your country.
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In Canada, there is a lot of construction during the spring, summer, and fall.
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And there's a lot less construction in the winter.
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It does still happen but usually in the summer especially,
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we see a lot of signs like this that say under construction or drive slowly, road ahead is under construction.
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So, in our part of the world, I think because it's a little too cold in the winter,
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we generally see things under construction during the spring, summer, and fall.
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It's kind of a mad race to get things done before the winter comes.
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And I wanted to talk a little bit about the verb to build.
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We use the verb to build to talk about the things that are under construction, okay?
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So, you would say they're going to build a new road.
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They're going to build a house.
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That man is going to build an apartment building.
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He's a rich man and he's going to build an apartment building and rent out the apartments.
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So, we use the verb to build quite a lot
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when we're talking about construction and generally for things that are being made that are new.
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The person or the most common term
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when you talk about someone who works in the construction industry would be the term construction worker.
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Now, there are specific names for every type of construction worker
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and I'll talk about those later but the general term is construction worker.
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My uncle was a construction worker.
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My cousin is a construction worker.
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When Bob the Canadian was younger, when he was in college and university or university, during the summer, I was a construction worker.
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Construction work is considered one of the best paying jobs for students during the summer.
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Um it's very hard work but it pays well.
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So, when I was younger, I was a construction worker.
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And the person who owns a business that does construction is usually called a contractor.
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So, if I wanted to build a new house, I would call a contractor.
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You can see this guy has a white hard hat on.
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Generally, in Canada, when you go to a construction site, the person wearing the white hat is the boss.
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That person is in charge.
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So, a contractor is someone who owns a construction business.
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So, I if I did need to build something, if I wanted to build a new house, which I'm not gonna do.
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My house is awesome.
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I don't need a new one.
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I would call a contractor and they would tell me how much money it would cost
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and then they would build a house for me.
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I'm not sure if you are familiar with the cartoon
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Bob the Builder but my kids when they were young really liked watching
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Bob the Builder.
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If you have young children who are learning English or if you yourself are a beginner, Bob the Builder is a great cartoon to watch.
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Bob the Builder, he is definitely a construction worker and he definitely builds things.
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I would sing the song but I can't really remember it.
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Bob the Builder, can he fix it?
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Yes, he can.
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Yes, that's how it goes I think.
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Scoop, Muck and Dizzy.
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Those are the names of his pieces of equipment.
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Anyways, I'll move on now.
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The place where something is being built is usually called a construction site.
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Okay?
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In Canada, if you go on a construction site, if you visit a construction site,
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you have to make sure that you wear a hard hat and work boots and other safety gear.
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A construction site is a somewhat dangerous place for people to be.
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Not always but if you go to a place where they are building something, it's generally called a construction site.
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So, when I was younger, I worked at many construction sites.
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Notice I used at and on.
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You could use both with this.
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Sorry about the prepositions in English.
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Um he's at the construction site or he's on the construction site.
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I think I would more use at but you could definitely use both.
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There's a lot of people on that construction site.
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He's going to meet me at the construction site.
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So, a couple of interesting words here.
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In English, when you say someone is building an addition,
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an addition is an extra room or a couple of extra rooms
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that someone builds on an existing house or adds to an existing house.
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That's why we say addition.
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So, for instance, I could say this.
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My brother -in -law is putting an addition on his house.
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He is building an addition on his house.
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So, that means he has a small house and because he needs more room, he is adding an extra couple rooms.
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I think two rooms and a bathroom.
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He's putting an addition on his house.
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We also have the word renovation which if you watch any of the American renovation shows they often use the word reno.
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So they'll say oh we're doing a reno.
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So a renovation is when you take an existing part of your house
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and you remove everything and you make everything new again.
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So sometimes people will look at their bathroom
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and maybe their bathroom is 10 or 20 or 30 years old and if it's getting close to 35 years old,
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they might think, you know what?
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I think it's time to do a reno.
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It's time to do a renovation.
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So, they'll take the toilet out, they'll take the sink out, they'll take the bathtub out,
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they'll remove everything from the walls and they'll redo the bathroom so it looks brand new.
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Renovations are expensive by the way.
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We did a renovation in the back of our house um a few years ago
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and it was a lot more money than we expected.
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Um it was definitely a little bit pricey.
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Um and there's another word remodel.
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So, sometimes people will remodel part of their house
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and this is similar to a renovation but it might be more just the look of things.
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So, they might put new kitchen cabinets in,
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new cupboards in their kitchen and a fresh coat of paint and you might say that that's a remodel.
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By the way, the word remodel, I use it as a verb and as a noun
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and I'm wondering if Brent from American English with this guy is here.
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He can help me here.
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So, I would say this.
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My sister is going to remodel her kitchen
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and then I could also say my sister is doing a remodel and we would say that in Canada.
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We would use remodel as a verb and as a noun.
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She's doing a remodel.
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My sister has actually done a few remodels on her house.
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So I'm curious if Brent is in the chat
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if he can let me know whether he uses that as a verb and a noun as well.
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We also have the the word home improvements.
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Home improvements are anything that you do to your house that improve it.
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So putting putting a fresh coat of paint on in a room.
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In this room here, Jen and my one of my kids painted this room.
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We did a little a few home improvements.
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We put up some new curtains.
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You can't see them but basically anytime you improve your house,
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you call it a home improvement and you'll see later that there's actually stores that are called home improvement stores.
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Um there was also a TV show many years ago called home improvement.
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It was very very funny.
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So when you demolish something, when you do a demolition, it means that you destroy what's there.
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Sometimes when someone wants to do some construction, they have an existing building but everything is in such bad shape,
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they decide that it's just it's it's not worth renovating or remodeling.
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It's it's just worth being destroyed.
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If that's if you can say that.
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So, they will have someone come in to demolish it.
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They will decide that demolition is the best thing to do.
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Here's an excavator by the way.
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I'm gonna make one lesson all about excavators someday just for mode eggs so he could so he can laugh but yes,
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if you wanna know what that machine is, it's an excavator.
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Also, it can be used for demolition.
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When you build a new house, you usually have what's called a blueprint.
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So, a blueprint is a piece of paper and it has the plan for what you want to build.
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Even if you do a renovation, you'll usually have a blueprint kind of showing what you want to build.
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Definitely, if you put an addition on your house or if you build a new house, you will have a blueprint.
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Now, the lines on a blueprint used to be blue a long time ago.
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They're not blue anymore.
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Most blueprints are printed in black ink
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but a long time ago the ink on a blueprint was blue and so it became known as a blueprint.
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Um interesting thing in Canada our blueprints have both inches and centimeters on them.
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We have both units of measurement on our blueprints.
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Um because we live close to our friends in the US
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and we want to make sure that we have both on there.
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By the way, a lot of our measurements in the construction industry are in Imperial.
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We build our houses in Canada using inches and feet not centimeters or meters.
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We kind of use both but when you buy wood in Canada,
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it's always it's usually eight feet long or ten feet long or twelve feet long.
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We don't use the metric system.
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The person who makes a blueprint is called an architect.
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Um if you are an architect, you dream up new buildings in your mind
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and then you create blueprints um as instructions so that someone can build that someday.
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Um I thought briefly about becoming an architect when I was younger um
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but there weren't really a lot of computers back then.
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It was all done by hand like how this person's doing it.
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I think if I was young again, I might consider becoming an architect because computers are really cool
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and it's really it's really a cool job to have now, I think.
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Down the road, there is road work.
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In Canada, around the end of March, beginning of April, road work begins everywhere.
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Winter wrecks roads.
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When water gets into the road and freezes, the water expands and it wrecks parts of the road.
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It destroys parts of the road.
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So in Canada we often have road crews.
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People who work on the roads.
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Uh they start working early in the spring.
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Uh and they work long hours and about six days a week.
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Uh for the whole year to fix parts of the road.
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You can see here he's cutting a part of the road out probably to put a new piece in.
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Uh so definitely lots of road work.
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In fact, there's road work down the road from me right now.
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When I go for my walk every morning, I see a crew out there working on the road.
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When I went that way last summer, they were fixing the road as well.
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There was road work.
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And we generally call so the place where they're building something like a house, we call a construction site.
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But when they're fixing the road, we usually call it a construction zone.
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So, when you're driving in Canada, you might see a sign that says road work ahead or construction zone ahead.
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Reduce your speed.
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So, generally, just kind of to clarify again, a house, if a house is being built, we would call it a construction site.
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Generally, when you're driving and they're fixing the road or building the road, we would call it a construction zone.
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Construction zone ahead is a very common sign in Canada.
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Um so, I I couldn't find my hard hat.
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So, last night when I was going to take a picture for the thumbnail, I tried to find my hard hat.
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I couldn't find it.
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It has been so many years since I've worn a hard hat that I I don't know where it is.
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It's in our garage somewhere.
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But a hard hat is a very durable hard hat.
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I don't know if you can hear my head.
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My head's hard enough.
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I don't need a hard hat.
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No, I'm joking.
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Hard hats are very important on job sites on a construction site.
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Like I mentioned in Canada, often the person with the white hard hat is the person in charge of that job site.
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There might be more than one person with a white hard hat
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and it might be different in other parts of the world or even other parts of Canada but where I live generally,
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the person with the white hard hat is the most important person and hard hats are nice.
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When you when something falls on a construction site and lands on your head.
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And when you're wearing your hard hat, you don't get hurt.
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And this happened to me once.
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My cousin dropped his tape measure and it hit me on the head
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but I had my hard hat on so I didn't get hurt.
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Um let's see here.
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Where am I at?
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Work boots.
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So, these are also called safety boots sometimes.
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Um in Canada, they have a little green triangle on the side
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and that means that they have a steel toe
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and the bottom of the shoe um is durable so that nails can't go through it.
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So when I was a construction worker, I had a pair of work boots.
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I had a pair of safety boots.
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Uh and basically, they're designed so that your feet don't get hurt.
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If you drop a piece of wood on your steel toed boots, that's what we also call them on your work boots.
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It doesn't hurt because there is a piece of metal inside the shoe to keep your feet safe.
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So, I still wear work boots on the farm by the way.
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They look more like running shoes but they have a steel toe
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and the bottom has a steel plate in it as well.
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They're very heavy.
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It can be a little hard on your feet
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and knees to wear work boots but they do protect you and keep you safe.
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So, I have a tool belt.
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I should have went and got it but I didn't.
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A tool belt is worn by people who are construction workers
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and it's a place where you can keep all of your tools.
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So, when I did construction, I had my hammer, my tape measure,
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a pencil and I would keep nails in the front in the pouches of my tool belt.
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I actually, I actually couldn't find that either.
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I think it's in the barn somewhere.
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Bob the Canadian failed at finding all his construction gear when he was getting ready for this lesson.
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Um and of course, we have the general term tools.
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So, tools, that's the word we use to refer to anything that we use as humans to build or fix things.
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You have things like hammers.
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I think I'll go through the tools rather quickly.
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So, this is a hammer.
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I think I mentioned this in another lesson.
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I actually have this exact hammer somewhere.
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I should go find that as well.
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You have something called a level
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and what a level is is it's a long straight piece of material
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and it has little glass sections with a bubble in it
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and if the level is too high one way or the other, the bubble goes to the top.
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And so, you wanna use the level to create things that are completely flat or level.
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So, you use a level to make things level.
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If the bubble is exactly in the middle, it makes it level.
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You may have used a small level in your house.
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When you put pictures on the wall, sometimes you use a level to get the picture exactly level, we would say in English.
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I think you're familiar with what a screwdriver is.
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I just used a screwdriver the other day to mount something outside on a pole.
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Uh for Jennifer, we screwed a sign to the pole using a screwdriver.
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A tape measure is something that you use to measure things.
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Most tape measures that construction workers use look like this because when you pull the tape measure out and let go, it automatically goes back in.
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In English, we would say it's spring loaded.
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Okay?
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There's a spring inside.
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So, when you pull the tape measure out and you measure something and you let go, it automatically goes back in.
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On construction sites, there's a little saying, measure twice, cut once.
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What that means is if you need to cut a piece of wood, it's good idea.
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It's a good idea to measure twice so you're absolutely sure
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and then cut once because you can't cut a piece of wood longer if you accidentally cut it too short.
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If you cut it too short, you have to use another piece of wood.
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Uh and then you have what's called a drill.
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This is a cordless drill.
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A drill is used for a couple things.
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It's used to drill holes.
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So, a drill is used to drill.
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Again, And very often in English, we take a noun.
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and we make a verb out of it or maybe it was a verb and we made a noun out of it.
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But you use a drill to drill a hole.
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You can also use a drill to put screws in.
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If you don't like using a screwdriver because your hand is getting sore, you can also use a drill to put screws in.
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I sometimes use my drill as well to do that.
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Um and then we have things called power saws which are used to cut wood.
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Um a little bit dangerous but once you are aware of how they work,
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you can use them safely but you would use a power saw to cut wood.
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There's a few things that you need on a job site or construction site.
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By the way, I said we use the word construction site and that's true
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but the shorter version of it is to just say job site, okay?
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So, often when you are on a job site, you will need to wear safety goggles or safety glasses.
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So, safety glasses actually look like glasses and they protect your eyes from things hitting your eye.
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Goggles are a little bigger.
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Um a little more like what you would wear skiing.
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So, safety goggles look a little bit like that and you might have to wear hearing protection.
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When I was a construction worker, I didn't have to wear hearing protection.
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The place where I worked wasn't loud and so I wasn't afraid
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that my ears would be damaged and so I didn't need it but on some job sites, you need hearing protection.
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On the farm, Jen and I actually wear hearing protection sometimes.
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There are certain jobs I do where I like to wear hearing protection if it's very very loud.
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Although, I think I damaged my ears more going to rock concerts when I was younger rather than on the far.
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Many people uh who are construction workers will have a toolbox.
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Now, if you fix cars, you might have a toolbox as well if you're a mechanic.
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Um but if you are someone, let me just make a little change here for a sec.
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I'm gonna switch chat to anyone.
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There we go.
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I've tested it.
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Let's move on.
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Uh a toolbox is a box that you keep tools in.
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They're not always red but they are quite often red.
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Many people have red toolboxes.
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I don't know why uh red is the color but I mean I have four or five toolboxes.
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I think three of them are red.
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One is black but they are places where you can keep your tools.
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Um let me see here.
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If you are putting pieces of wood together,
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you might use a nail and a nail is something that you have to hit in with a hammer.
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So, you might use a nail or you might use a screw.
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A screw is something you put in
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with a screwdriver and a nail is something you put in with a hammer by hitting it.
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I think I have a picture coming up of a person putting a screw in with a hammer.
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I didn't realize that till till this morning.
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Let me see here.
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You might need to wear a safety vest.
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So, when I was a construction worker, I didn't need to wear one but many uh times when you see road work,
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the workers will have a safety vest on.
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They are required to wear a safety vest because it makes it a lot easier to see them.
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Um it's very dangerous working on the roads.
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It's good to be highly visible we would say in English.
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Hey Guhan, welcome to the lesson.
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Good to have you here or welcome as a member.
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Good to have you here.
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Thank you so much for becoming a member.
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So, this is a pickup truck but we might just call it a work truck.
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So, my brother -in -law is a contractor actually
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and he has a pickup truck but he refers to it as his work truck.
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So, a work truck is any truck that is used to do construction type work, okay?
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So, usually it has a place to put ladders.
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It has a bunch of tools in the back.
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It might have a large toolbox in the back as well.
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Uh but definitely uh you would refer to it as a work truck.
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My friend
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when we go somewhere he might say oh I'll pick you up um I'll take my work truck
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and then he'll take the truck that he normally uses for work.
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Because his boss pays for the gas then, I guess.
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Um let's see here.
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A trailer.
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So, there are many different kinds of trailers
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but many people who are construction workers or contractors will have a trailer and then inside the trailer, it's like a little workshop.
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They might have a workbench.
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They might have tools.
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They might have their saws and things like that.
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We had new windows put in our house a few years ago.
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And the person who did it had a trailer
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and then he could go in his trailer if he needed to cut a little piece of wood or anything like that.
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You might see scaffolding on job sites or a scaffold.
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We use both words for this.
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This person is standing on a scaffold.
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So, in order to get up high, in order to reach something,
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this person built some scaffolding so that they could climb up and work at uh work up in the air.
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Now, I will say in Canada,
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this scaffolding would be illegal because there's nothing that's going to stop this person from falling off.
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So, this is very dangerous scaffolding.
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Um but definitely, this is um something you would use if you need to get up high while you're doing work.
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Or you might just use a step ladder or an extension ladder.
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So, a little bit of a difference here.
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A step ladder is something that you open up
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and then you climb up one side and then you can reach higher areas.
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An extension ladder is a ladder that can extend.
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There's usually two parts to it and you lean it against a building and then you climb up.
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So, again, both of these are ladders.
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You could just say, where's the ladder? can you go get the ladder?
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Um but this is what's called a step ladder and this is called an extension ladder.
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So, let's go through what we call the trades in our part of Canada.
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Trades are things like carpenter.
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A carpenter is someone who works with wood.
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I think this carpenter is pounding a screw in with a hammer.
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So, again, that's not normally how you do it.
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I thought it was kind of a funny picture.
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Um let's see here.
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Um but yes a carpenter is someone who works with wood.
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Their primary tool is a hammer.
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A plumber is someone who works with pipes.
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So a plumber would install all of the pipes in your house or in a building.
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Um so they would hook up things like taps and they would install sinks.
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Uh and they would make sure that the water is all working properly.
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So they are a plumber.
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Notice you don't say you don't pronounce the letter B. So plumber.
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An electrician is responsible for putting all of the wiring in a house and making sure that the electricity is working.
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So an electrician is someone who knows a lot about how to install plugs
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and outlets and light switches and lights and they do all of the wiring in a house.
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A brick layer will lay bricks or blocks.
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So when something is small and a reddish color usually,
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it's a brick but you can have bigger things that are about this size that we call blocks.
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So, a brick layer or a block layer will be someone who does that kind of work.
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A roofer is someone who puts shingles
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or tiles on the roof of a house or building
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or they might even put flat roofs on buildings
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but a roofer is someone who works on the very top of a house
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or building in order to make sure it doesn't leak.
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That's their primary job is put shingles or tiles or something on the roof so that when it rains,
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the water doesn't get in the house or the building.
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So, that is a roofer.
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You might on job sites find certain kinds of machinery.
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You might find something called a crane.
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A crane is used to lift things off the ground and put it on top of a building.
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So, in the city, you will often see cranes on construction sites.
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A job site might have a crane so
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that they can get things from the ground up to the higher parts on the building.
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In Canada, even when they build houses, when they put the final part of the house on which is called the roof,
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the roof trusses which are part of the roof are sometimes lifted up with a small crane.
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You might have a cement mixer.
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This is a small machine that you can use to make cement.
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So, you pour in some stone, some sand in a bag of cement and a little bit of water and when you are done,
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you have that cool material that we can build things out of called cement.
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I wanna use the word concrete as well but I don't actually know the difference between cement and concrete.
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They are very similar but I think we use the words interchangeably
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and I don't know enough about them to give you the definition.
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Uh we have what's called a cement truck.
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So, if you have to do a lot of work with cement and you don't want to make it yourself,
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you might just call and a cement truck will come with it ready to go
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and these turn while they're driving so that the cement doesn't get heart.
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Of course, there's always the dump truck.
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A dump truck is a vehicle where you can put dirt
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or stone in the back and then it can dump and all of it falls out.
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So, often when often when you are building something,
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you might need a dump truck to take dirt away or to bring stone or gravel.
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I see Judith in the chat saying, cement mixer.
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My father mixed those elements by hand at first.
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Yes, my dad and uncle used to make cement in a wheelbarrow.
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Very cool.
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Uh a bulldozer is used to move dirt around.
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We talked about this in our lesson about earth a couple of weeks ago.
436
It's a very strong machine that can move dirt and soil
437
so that they can build uh um things on a construction site.
438
And then of course, there's an excavator.
439
This is going to be the running joke, I think, for my lessons from now on.
440
I'll try to include an excavator in every lesson.
441
If you learn one word with Bob the Canadian, it will be excavator.
442
A machine used to dig a hole.
443
But I have to say this is what we call it in my part of Canada.
444
A big machine with tracks and a big arm and a bucket.
445
We call it an excavator.
446
Some people call it a digger but we would call it an excavator.
447
And then here's a wheelbarrow.
448
Probably one of the coolest inventions ever is the wheelbarrow.
449
It allows humans to move a lot of heavy stuff very easily.
450
Instead of carrying it, a wheelbarrow makes it a lot easier.
451
It's it's just a cool invention based on the physics of leverage and having a wheel.
452
So, if you filled a wheelbarrow with stone,
453
you could actually drive the wheelbarrow somewhere but you could never carry that much stone yourself.
454
It's a very cool invention.
455
I think it might be one of the coolest inventions ever.
456
Um we also have what's called a jackhammer.
457
This is something you might hear in the city a lot.
458
A jackhammer goes
459
that's that's my impression of a jackhammer but it vibrates up
460
and down very quickly and it's used when they have to remove part of a road or a floor.
461
It's just something that it's a machine that makes a lot of noise when it vibrates and it's good at removing things.
462
We have a lot of stores where you can go if you need to.
463
Sorry.
464
I'm not sure what happened there.
465
My voice suddenly stopped.
466
We have a lot of stores that are called home improvement stores.
467
A home improvement store is a place where you can buy wood, you can buy nails and screws.
468
Uh you can buy tools, you can buy everything you need to do some home improvements.
469
So, the most common store in Canada is something called the Home Depot.
470
I think this is very popular in the United States as well.
471
Um I don't often go to the Home Depot
472
because it's far away but they have everything you need to do home improvements.
473
If you need to do a renovation, you can buy windows and wood and bags of cement.
474
Everything you need you can find at a home improvement store like the Home Depot.
475
Um and then there's also something called a lumber yard.
476
If I need to buy wood, I usually go to a lumber yard.
477
A lumber yard is this a place is just a place with a building
478
and there's some people working there and you say in English, sorry, in Canada, we everything's in feet and inches.
479
So, I might say, oh, I need ten two by fours, eight feet long and then they're like,
480
okay, it'll be this much money and then I go out and they put it in my van.
481
So, a lumber yard is a place where you can go to buy lumber.
482
So, lumber of course is wood that you use to build things, okay?
483
So, you could say, oh, I need to go buy some wood but you could also say, I need to go buy some lumber and generally,
484
we do call them lumber yards.
485
We don't call them wood yards.
486
I've never heard that.
487
That that's don't don't remember that.
488
It's a lumber yard.
489
And then you might go to a hardware store.
490
A hardware store is simply a place where you can buy light switches and tools as well.
491
You can buy some of the things you need to do home improvements
492
but not everything but they'll have most of it and usually every town has a hardware store.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Let's Learn English! Topic: Construction 👷🏾🔨🧰🚧”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: construction, road, site, build. This video has 492 sentences and 5710 words to shadow. The speech runs for 34:32. The speaker talks at a natural 165 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 83% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| cement noun | /səˈmɛnt/ | A powdered substance produced by firing (calcining) calcium carbonate (limestone) and clay that develops strong cohesive properties when mixed with water. The… |
| renovation noun | /ɹɛnəˈveɪʃən/ | An act, or the process, of renovating. |
| worker noun | /ˈwɝ.kɚ/ | One who works: a person who performs labor for a living; traditionally, especially, manual labor. |
| drill noun | /dɹɪl/ | A tool or machine used to remove material so as to create a hole, typically by plunging a rotating cutting bit into a stationary workpiece. |
| ladder noun | /ˈlæd.ɚ/ | A frame, usually portable, of wood, metal, or rope, used for ascent and descent, consisting of two side pieces to which are fastened rungs (cross strips or… |
| lesson noun | /ˈlɛs.ən/ | A section of learning or teaching into which a wider learning content is divided. |
| boot noun | /but/ | A heavy shoe that covers part of the leg. |
| hammer noun | /ˈhæmɚ/ | A tool with a heavy head and a handle used for pounding. |
| lumber noun | /ˈlʌm.bɚ/ | Wood sawn into planks or otherwise prepared for sale or use, especially as a building material. |
| verb noun | /vɝb/ | A word that indicates an action, event, or state of being. |
| nail noun | /neɪl/ | The horny plate or appendage at the ends of the digits of various animals, including most reptiles, birds, and mammals (both nonhuman and human). |
| tape noun | /teɪ̯p/ | Flexible material in a roll with a sticky surface on one or both sides; adhesive tape. |
| trailer noun | /ˈtɹeɪlɚ/ | Someone who or something that trails (follows behind); something that is trailing. |
| contractor noun | /ˈkɒnˌtɹæk.tə(ɹ)/ | A person or company that builds or improves buildings or structures. |
| refer verb | /ɹɪˈfɜː/ | To direct the attention of (someone toward something). |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. |
| back up verb | To move backwards, especially for a vehicle to do so. |
| get up verb | To move in an upward direction; to ascend or climb. |
| fall off verb | To become detached or to drop from. |
| fall out verb | To come out of something by falling. |
| go out verb | To leave, especially a building. |
| hook up verb | To assemble the parts of a mechanism, especially by connecting wires. |
| open up verb | To open. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- I'm not sure what it's like in your country.
- I don't need a new one.
- Yes, that's how it goes I think.
- Anyways, I'll move on now.
- You could just say, where's the ladder?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | if you do a renovation, you'll usually |
| “Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true | used to be · used to make |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | being built · being made · is considered |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | someone who works · person who owns · someone who owns |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 99 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, they're, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: bathtub /ˈbæθtʌb/, thumbnail /ˈθʌm.neɪl/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: renovation /ɹɛnəˈveɪʃən/, invention /ɪnˈvɛnʃən/, extension /ɪkˈstɛnʃən/, demolition /ˌdɛm.əˈlɪʃ.ən/, shoe /ˈʃu/
- Long words — get the stress right: renovation /ɹɛnəˈveɪʃən/, demolition /ˌdɛm.əˈlɪʃ.ən/, electricity /ɪˌlɛkˈtɹɪsɪti/, accidentally /ˌæk.sɪˈdɛnt(ə)li/, machinery /məˈʃiːnəɹi/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like cement, renovation, worker.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.