Hello, and welcome back to another episode of practicing English. And today I'm going to be talking about the imperative. And also I'm going to explore the language of the car or the automobile. Here we go...
Now, yesterday was a traumatic day for me. Why? Because yesterday, I had to take my car for its MOT test. Now, what is an MOT test? Well, MOT actually means the Ministry of Transport, and the MOT is something you have to do with older cars, you have to take them to be tested to see if they are roadworthy, which means they are suitable for driving on the road.
So they will check things like the tyres, the tyres on the wheels to see if they have enough tread on them. The tread is the pattern on the rubber of the tyre. If that is worn, if that is worn away, well then you have to change your tyres. Anyway, my tyres were fairly new and they had a lot of tread on them.
And then there are other things that they check. They will check your brakes. The brakes are for stopping the car or slowing it down. And they will also test things like the exhaust fumes. That is the amount of carbon dioxide and other horrible gases which come out of the exhaust pipe - that is that tube at the back of the car. That come out of the exhaust pipe and they can contaminate or pollute the atmosphere. And so what they do, they test the amount of carbon dioxide and if you have too much carbon dioxide in your exhaust fumes, you will fail the test.
I take my car to a garage. And every year, it has its service where it is repaired and looked after. They change the oil in the car, they change the oil and put fresh oil in. And they change the filters, the air filters, the pollen filters, and oil filter as well. So they do all those things, and I keep my car well maintained. So it's in good order, although it is quite old. But when you take your car for the MOT, it is a traumatic experience. But I'll tell you one thing, it's not so much for the car itself. But it's because I live in Spain. So that means I have to understand what the inspector is telling me in Spanish. Well, I've lived in Spain for a long, long time, I have a degree in Spanish. But I am always very frightened or nervous when I have to have the inspection, because of all these imperatives that he gives me. And I am trying to understand what he's saying. And sometimes I find it difficult.
Now, I'm going to give you the imperatives, of course, in English - it's not really useful for you to have them in Spanish.
I arrived at the MOT test. And you have to... in Spain, you have to pay an amount of money for the test. And then I drove up to the lane where they are waiting for you. And this time it was just one man there. And he tells me drive forwards, please, drive forwards and stop the car. No, don't stop the car there! Drive forwards a bit more. Stop the car there, there! Stop, Stop the car now! I stopped the car. Right. Then he put a tube into the exhaust pipe. So the first test is for the gases. Accelerate! accelerate! So accelerate. Accelerate more! Okay, stop accelerating now. And I don't know if that's worked or not. There's a machine there with a lot of numbers. I don't know whether I have passed or not. They don't tell you anything. You don't find out until the end of the test whether you have passed or failed.
Anyway, I'm using imperatives here. Maybe I should briefly say how to use the imperative. I don't think most students find it difficult because the imperative is the same, usually, as the infinitive of the verb. So accelerate is the infinitive to accelerate, and it's also the imperative. And if it's a negative imperative, well, we just say, don't. Don't accelerate. So that's all quite easy, isn't it, really, I think - the use of the imperatives.
More interesting, I suppose, are the verbs that I'm going to use to talk about the different actions and the different imperatives. So the next thing was then the lights. Switch on the headlights, I switch on the headlights. I'm so thankful that I understand what he's saying. Switch on the headlights. Now the headlights are the lights at the front of the car, which light up the road in front of you at night, I switch on the lights, the headlights. Good. And then he put some sort of machine in front of the lights to see if they are shining in a straight line. Then he says switch off the main beam and put on the side lights. Now it's you're getting a bit complicated already. So you switch off the main beam and you put on the side lights, which are the little lights on the side of the car, and they just have a very small light, don't they? They don't give out a lot of light. You put those on, for example, when it's not very dark.
Then switch on the indicators. And the indicators are those yellow lights, which show whether you're turning right or whether you're turning left. Switch on the left indicator. Switch on the right indicator. All four indicators! Oh, right. That's that button that you push and all four indicators start flashing, don't they? Right, okay. Put on your fog lights. Put on your fog lights!! They get annoyed with you, they get annoyed with you. Put on your fog lights, those are the lights that nobody ever uses in the south of Spain, because we don't have any fog, or very rarely. Fog is that mist when it's sort of low cloud and you can't see very much usually you get it in winter. But we don't have a lot of that in the south of Spain. But anyway, we have to test the fog lights. So I put the fog lights on.
And the next one is the reverse gear light or the reversing light. So when you go backwards in a car, you put the car into gear we say into reverse gear, which will make the car go backwards. And so the idea is just to put that into reverse gear to light up the little white light at the back of the car, which is called the reversing light.
Next thing - switch on the windscreen wipers! So those are the little wipers, little arms on the windscreen, which is the window right in front of you when you're sitting in the front of the car. And they go backwards and forwards and we use those when it's raining, for example. Now, it doesn't rain very much in the south of Spain either. And mine don't work very well. And they go squeak, squeak, squeak. Still, anyway, they work. Now put on the windscreen washers, the windscreen washers. So that's the little button that you push so that the water will squirt onto the windscreen. And I always forget to put water into the deposit for the windscreen washers. So, oh, no! Is there any water in there, I push the button and the water came out. So good as another test passed - well done!
Right The next thing is... now, because we're in a situation of COVID 19 here. So I had to get out of the car to test the seatbelts. Fasten the seat belt. So I got out the car and fastened the front seat belt - that is to attach the belt which goes around you, which keeps you safe and stops you hurting yourself if you have an accident. So I fasten the seat belt, push the button to open the seat belt, push the button and the seat belt sprang out. And I have to do this test for all five seat belts in the car. Get back into the car, he says. I got back in the car. Start the engine, drive forward, and I have to drive up to some rollers - some cylindrical metal things on the ground and you put the front wheel on top of these and this is to test the brakes.
In front of you there is a machine with a round display and a little hand which moves round the display like a clock, like the hand of a clock. And he says, push down the brake pedal, push down the brake pedal until the hand is in the yellow area. And there's a part of the clock face, if you like, which is yellow and I have to push down the brake pedal until that's in and this is really difficult. It's like a video game. It's difficult to get this little hand to go into the yellow area and he says hold it there! So I held it there. I held the brake pedal down for a few seconds. Okay, take your foot off the brake! I took my foot off the brake, and then you drive forward and you do the same with the wheels or the brakes on the back wheel.
And then you test your handbrake. So the handbrake is the part of the brake which you pull with your hand to stop the car or usually to keep the car in position when you are parked. And so he says, pull it on slowly, pull on the handbrake slowly. So I do. I pull it on. Now pull it hard! And I pull it really hard. Just to show how good the brakes are. And the car jumps out of the rollers. That's great, you know, it shows the brakes are really good!
Okay, now the next bit it is even more traumatic for me because he says, wind down your window. So that is to lower the window, we still say wind down the window. Because in the old days, you had a winder, a manual winder, something that you turned. You turned this lever and it made the window go down or up. But now it's just a button isn't it. It's just a button and it's an electric device. Anyway, so I push the button, lower the window and he puts a walkie-talkie... He hangs a walkie-talkie onto the window and he goes down some steps underneath the car.
So he then gives me instructions from underneath the car and his Spanish is coming out of the walkie-talkie in a kind of a crackly voice so it's really difficult to understand. Turn the wheel, he says, turn the wheel. I kept turning the wheel. More! Turn the wheel more! Right okay, I turn the wheel. Put the handbrake on, take the handbrake off, turn the wheel, push down the foot brake.
And I'm just trying to understand everything I can to make this nightmare as easy as possible on me. And that's the end of the test. And then he comes out and he says, drive forward and wait over there. So I drive the car forward, out of the lane - the test area to a little car park. And then I get out of the car and wait.
And I see some of his colleagues coming out of a little office with papers and with little plastic stickers. And everybody wants a plastic sticker, don't they? Because on the plastic sticker, it says you have passed for a year. And the chap who I'm waiting for, my inspector, is taking a long time. So I'm thinking, oh, dear, is he writing a long report of things that I have to correct about the car? Things I have to get fixed, things I have to repair? Eventually he comes out and he walks towards me. And I seen his hand a little red ticket [sticker]. And that is the ticket [sticker] which says you've passed. Well done, sir. Everything's fine. One year more. And off he goes!
Wow! I've passed my MOT test!
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