Podcast 68 - B1 adjectives for talking about people

 

Describing relationships with friends

And hello! Today I'm going to do a session on the B1 exam English, for the B1 Cambridge exam especially, or any, B1 [level] exam that you may be going to do. This will be very useful and it's based on analysing vocabulary which is essential for the B1 level. And it will be vocabulary in different categories. And the category today is English for making friends.

My advice to you is to write down the words I'm talking about and the related words as well while I am talking, okay. So you've got a nice little list of them. And I'll start off with just some of those words. I will spell [them] to you before I start.

And they are: sensitive, annoying, easy-going, jealous, sociable, reliable, sensible, and there are a few more as well so, just listen up and try to write down as many as you can while you're listening.

So, what do we like to do with friends? Well, we hang out. Now that's quite a colloquial expression, isn't it? To hang out with friends, which means to get together usually to arrange to meet somewhere and you get together and maybe just chat on a park bench. Or you may go to a hamburger bar and have a hamburger or hot dog and chat with your friends and I say chat and I mean the real meaning of the word chat, which is to just talk to your friends in an informal way. When I say the real meaning - the original meaning. The other meaning, of course, is more modern - chat on the Internet, for example, in a programme for chatting.

So you get together with friends and now it's important to be able to classify your friends. Well, it's interesting for B1 anyway, to be able to describe your friends with some suitable adjectives. So friends can be easy-going. That's one word - easy-going. And that means well, they're friendly, and they're nice. And usually that means there'll be sociable people. And they don't have problems really, which they tell you about anyway. They're nice people to talk to and you feel relaxed with them and they seem to be relaxed. And we call those people easy-going.

It's also nice to have friends who are thoughtful. Thoughtful as in thought and then FUL on the end in one word, and a thoughtful person is somebody who, well, does that really. [He or she] thinks about other people, perhaps before themselves. They may do something nice. For example, they know that you're doing some homework for English and you're having a problem with some kind of grammar point, and you arrange to meet with them and they come and they bring you a little book or something about that grammar point. Is that a thoughtful thing to do? Or, well, it could be thoughtful perhaps to say, hey, I'll buy these drinks. I'll buy these cokes or this orangeade. And that's a thoughtful thing to do, isn't it - to offer to pay.

And it's nice to have friends perhaps at least a little sensitive, and sensitive means that you feel that they empathise with you and with other people. And perhaps they also need you to empathise with them. If you say something critical or you criticise them. Well sensitive people may get upset, or even annoyed and it's not nice, is it, to annoy people or upset people?

Now we don't want to mix that word up with sensible. Now, sensible is not the same as sensitive, sensible means that you do things in an orderly way, in a proper way, in a way which shows maturity and also common sense, common sense as well. So that's a sensible person.

And it's good to have friends who are reliable. And reliable means those people who we are able to trust. And when we ask them to do something, or they offer to do something we say, great, that's great! Thank you very much for offering to do that. And the next day they've done it! So we say that person is reliable. They do what they say they will do. You can count on that person.

So good. That's lots of nice language there. But perhaps some negative adjectives to talk about people - could be jealous. Well, jealous is when perhaps a friend of yours feels envious, which is another word which means jealous, in a way, and they feel envious because you have something they don't. Perhaps you're good at something like maths and you get a good mark in your exam so they feel envious and they get a bit annoyed because you have passed your maths exam and they haven't. Jealous I suppose is similar but it often is related to relationships - that somebody, a girl for example... Let's take a girl, likes a boy and the boy likes another girl. Is this getting confusing? Well, so the first girl is jealous of the other girl. And they get angry or they get annoyed or they frown, which is to make a grimace with your face - I don't like that person. And that's being jealous.

That's all for now. Bye!

 

Copyright © 2023 Practising English
All rights reserved