Let's Learn English! Topic: Things You Should Check! 💱⛅🌡️
26:49 Share

Well, hello and welcome to this English lesson about things you should check. This might seem like a strange title but there are a lot of things in life that you should check. I don't wanna give too many away but if you have a car, you should check the oil every once in a while. I'll explain more about this one in just a moment once we get the English lesson started but in this English lesson, I'll teach you about 25 or more words and phrases. Looks like almost 30 or

words and phrases that we use when we speak English when we talk about things that you should check. Things that you should have a look at to make sure that it is working right or make sure that things are the way they are supposed to be. So again, welcome to this English lesson about things you should check.

Oil. So, in English, if you are someone who has a car, it is important to check the oil every once in a while. You want to make sure there's enough oil in your car engine. You do this by opening the hood in my part of the world. If you're in Britain, I think they call it the bonnet and then you pull out the dipstick, wipe the dipstick off and

put it back in again and pull it out and you will get an accurate reading. That to me is the proper way to check the oil. If you have a lawnmower, if you have a car, if you have a tractor, if you have a motorcycle, you should check the oil every once in a while because if the oil gets low, the engine, well, it could seize up if all the oil was gone. That's pretty rare but you definitely if you if you have something with an engine, you

want to check the oil. And you want to check the gas gauge. In English sometimes we just say check the gas. So I might say to Jen oh I'm going to check the gas in the van in the blue van. Uh I think it might be low. So I'll go and I'll check the gas gauge to make sure that van has enough gas in it. Um and

Again, I think if you're in Britain, you would probably say petrol. Do they say petrol? I'm not sure. In North America, we call it gas or gasoline and you're going to want to check the gas gauge or check the gas from time to time. There's nothing nothing worse than leaving to go on a long trip and you have forgotten to check the gas and you have to stop for gas right away.

might want to check the forecast. So the forecast is of course a prediction as to what the weather will be like over the next few days. This is actually my forecast. So you can see Friday the forecast is minus one 40% chance of flurries.

Um you check the forecast when you're going away for the weekend or you check the forecast the night before so you can decide what you should wear. How you should dress the next day. So now I know let's make this big again. Um I should probably wear a winter coat today. Minus one I don't think I need gloves or a winter hat but uh definitely I

I will I might even just wear a jacket like minus one isn't that bad is it? Anyways, you might check the forecast. You might check the weather. This is slightly different. Notice this person is simply looking out the window. When I check the forecast, I wanna know what they say the weather will be like tomorrow. When I check the weather, it can mean that I'm checking the forecast. You can check the weather on your phone. I

But you can also check the weather by simply looking outside. You might be wondering, is it raining today? And you look outside and you decide you need a jacket and an umbrella. So, a slight difference. Um checking the forecast means literally looking at something like this on the internet or on your phone. But when you check the weather, it might mean looking outside. It might mean simply looking at the app on your phone to see what the weather is like.

You might need to check your bank account. Um sometimes you buy things and you don't think about how much money is in the bank. If I go and buy some groceries there's usually enough money in the bank account to buy that. But if I decided to buy a

used car. I would certainly check my bank account before going to buy it. I would think okay is there enough money in my bank account? I should check my bank account to make sure I have enough money. Um and if there isn't enough money in my checking account I might have to borrow some money or I might have to transfer money from a different account. So from time to time I

you might need to check your bank account. I usually check my bank account before I go on a trip, even a short trip, just to make sure. I usually know how much money is in there, but it is good to check. You might just check the time.

uh often as a teacher, I'll say, okay, let's start on this now. Let me check the time. Okay, we have this many minutes left in class. Uh so let's get started on that or I might say, um I have one more thing to do today. Oh, let me check the time. Oh, class is almost over. Let's save that for tomorrow. So, anytime you look at a clock,

you look at your watch or you look at your fitness tracker or your phone, we would say that you are checking the time. I check the time quite often when I'm teaching. I don't check the time very often in the summer. In the summer, sometimes, I don't know what time it is. It's like, oh, is it one o'clock already? Oh, I hadn't checked the time for a while. You might check the temperature outside. You

So, you might have a little thermometer like this on your window which tells you the temperature outside. Again, you might just look at a weather app on your phone to check the temperature. This is similar to checking the weather. Um you might want to know the

Does that say 30 degrees? It's not 30 degrees here. Um if it was 30 degrees outside, I would think, okay, I should wear shorts. I should wear sandals. I should wear a thin t-shirt because it's really warm outside and the reason I put the word outside is because sometimes you might wanna check the temperature of food or drink.

So, you might want to um when you're drinking tea or coffee, if you bring it to your face, you can kind of feel that it's hot and you might blow on it. Here, I'll give you an example with water. Like when you bring it here, you can kind of sense how hot it is and then you might take a little sip to kind of check the temperature. Um if you're cooking something, you might want to check the temperature to make sure it's done. If you're cooking a chicken,

important that you cook it to the right temperature so that it is safe to eat. So, with food and drink, you might occasionally check the temperature.

sure most of you don't do this but farmers do this quite regularly. After it rains we check the rain gauge. Jen and I have two rain gauges on our farm. And when it rains raindrops go in the rain gauge and it fills up. And it has little measurements along the side. I'm not sure if you can see them. You can kinda see the number four there. Uh so we measure how much rain we got. That's very interesting for us. Uh

It's something we like to check so we know if we need to keep irrigating or keep watering the flower. So, I think most people don't have a rain gauge but I thought I would put this one in here because this is where the idea for the lesson came from uh from the idea that we check the rain gauge and then I thought, hmm, there's a lot of things in life that you can check.

So this we might use check or check on. If you have a baby and the baby is sleeping in a different room you might go check the baby. If you have kids and they're little kids and they're playing outside you might go check on the kids.

So notice you can say check or check on. It means you just want to make sure that everything is okay. You want to make sure the baby is sleeping well. So you go check on the baby or check the baby. Uh you might go check on the kids to see if they're having fun outside if they need a snack or something like that. Uh and I think it's

would most likely use the word check on. That to me seems to flow the best. I'm going to check on the baby. I'm going to check on the kids to make sure that they're having fun and enjoying their day. You might check the water temperature in the pool. Now as I look at this photo I feel like this is a very small pool. I'm not sure if this is an accurate photo but when you go swimming.

you go to the lake, if you go to the ocean, if you have a pool or you go to a pool, you might dip your toe in the water to check the water temperature and then you might say, oh, it's too cold or oh, it's too, it's quite warm. Um we go swimming at a pool in a town close to us in the summer and often one of us will dip our toe in the water before we start to go in the pool. We check the water temperature to see whether

what it is like. You might check your pulse. Now, this is common for people who exercise. Often, your Fitbit or your Apple Watch will track your pulse. My pulse right now is eighty-one. It's a pretty good pulse considering I'm actively teaching. If I sit for a long time and check my pulse or take my pulse. By the way, you can use both verbs for that. You can check your pulse or take your pulse.

My resting pulse is usually I don't know if I sit for a while it can be as low as 60. If I'm walking a lot like if I walk for a few months vigorously and my heart has good health my resting pulse is 61 or 62 but normally it's high 60s.

Um so people who exercise might check their pulse. When you go to the doctor, the doctor might check your pulse. The doctor might check your blood pressure, check your pulse to see um how many times your heart beats per minute. I should have mentioned that. You check your pulse to see how many times your heart beats per minute or BPM. So my heart rate right now. Oh now it's 90. I must have been moving my arms around a lot or something. Um or maybe oh I

maybe my Fitbit's just wacky cuz now it says it's 81 again. So, I'm pretty sure my heart rate or my pulse doesn't go up and down that quickly. So, you're actually checking the air pressure but we often say, check the tires. Sometimes, I walk around my van and one of the tires looks low and I know that I should check the air pressure and I should put some air in the tire.

When I take my van to the garage for an oil change, they also check the tires. They check the air pressure. They check the tire pressure. There's a few different ways to say that to make sure there's the right amount of air in the tire. The right amount of pressure. In Canada, we use PSI, pounds per square inch. Even though we

We, even though we use the metric system with tires, we still, for some reason, use PSI. So I think a tire needs to be 30 or 40 PSI, maybe 60 PSI. I don't know. A bike tire is way higher, but you might want to check the tire pressure, check the air pressure, check the tires from time to time.

you're driving somewhere where there's the possibility of lots of traffic or traffic jams, you might want to check the traffic. You might have an app on your phone that lets you check the traffic. When Jen and I go to Toronto, we take the train but from our house to the train station, sometimes traffic can be bad. So, we often check the traffic on our phone before we leave in case we want to take a

alternate route. We will check the traffic so that if we need to go a different way, if we need to take a different route or route, I guess there's two pronunciations there. I will check our traffic app to see what traffic is like. So, if you're sitting at an intersection in your car, you should check the stop light. You should check the traffic light. There's two names for it. To see what color it is. And

it's red in Canada, you can't go. If it's orange or amber, you can't go. But if it's green, you can go. So, when I'm sitting at a stoplight, this is a situation where I do check repeatedly. I'm always looking around, talking, look up, look up, look at the light. Has the light changed yet? I constantly check the stoplight so that when it turns green, I know that I can go. Um I

here in Canada we have more and more traffic cameras at intersections so you can get we call them red light cameras or traffic cameras but you can get a ticket from a camera if you go through an intersection when the light is red or I think you're okay if the light's orange or amber if you're if you're partway through the intersection you're able to go

Uh if you are going somewhere um to a different country you might want to check the exchange rate. When I went to South Africa the exchange rate for Canadian dollars to Rand was very favorable.

it was seven to one or eight to one. Um when you go on a trip and you're going to a country that uses different currency that uses different money you'll want to check the exchange rate because you'll need to buy Canadian dollars if you come to Canada and you'll want to know how many euros do I need to spend to get 500 Canadian dollars. You want to figure out what the exchange rate is. So

Um and it goes up and down. So, it's not predictable but you want to see if you can exchange money when the exchange rate is favorable. So, you kinda want to know what the exchange rate is.

Schedule. Why am I confused about this one? Oh this is for a train. Yes. You'll want to check the schedule if you are taking public transit. If you're going to take a bus. If you're going to take a train. If you're going to take the subway. You can go online and you can check the schedule. You can find out what time the train leaves. Or how often the train leaves.

Jen and I when we go to the train station the train leaves every half hour for Toronto. Uh during the week. During rush hour I think it's every 20 minutes. So you can go online. There's a nice little app again to check the train schedule. Um but you could also look at the big screens at the train station. Um if you go to an event. If you go to let's say you go for training somewhere. Um

for work. That day we'll have a schedule and you'll see okay nine o'clock opening speaker ten o'clock workshop on how to weld

pieces of steel together. Um 12 o'clock lunch, one o'clock, workshop on how to separate two pieces of steel that you welded together wrong. Sorry, these are bad examples but if you go for training or for a day like that, there will most likely be a schedule and you should check the schedule. Um so, we haven't been to a wedding for a while. By the way, in life, I

go to a lot of weddings and then there's a little bit of time where you don't go to very many and then all your nephews and nieces get married and then know and then eventually there's a time where you don't go to a lot of weddings. I think we'll start going to a lot of weddings again soon though. We're getting to that age. Um but you might wanna check the invitation to see when the wedding is or what time it is. There might even be a small map on the back of an invitation that tells you where it is. It

So if you get an invitation to a party, if you get an invitation to a wedding, if you get an invitation to something,

sometimes you need to check the invitation. Um sometimes the day of. You're like, what what time does Joe's retirement party start? And then you quick check the invitation. Oh, it starts at 8 PM and it's at um the hall in Hamilton. So, um anyway, sometimes you get an invitation and sometimes you have to check it. Sometimes you lose the invitation and then you can't remember where the event is or what time it starts. Uh

or even what day it is and then you have to ask somebody. Um so there's a number of ways to refer to this but we call it the best before date. Uh it might be the expiration date. Some food in Canada also has a made on date. So, when you buy bread from a bakery, it'll say made on November twenty-fifth, best before November thirtieth or something like that.

So the best before date or the expiration date. Um you should check it. Now this doesn't mean like if I checked the milk today and it said best before November 29th I would still smell it and if it smelled okay I think it's fine to use. It's not an exact date. When you see the expiration date you don't have to throw it out but certainly with some things you might want to be cautious. So anyways

Before you drink the milk, you should check the expiration date or the best before date. Before you eat um the cheese. Cheese lasts forever by the way but before you eat the cheese, you might want to check the best before date or uh the expiration date. So, this is uh gonna take me a little bit to explain. Um

you cross the road, you want to check for cars. You want to look both ways before you cross the road. Um we often use the word for and then refer to something that you're checking for. So, you want to check for cars before you cross the road. Uh you want to check for, I'm trying to think of another example. Um you want to check for geese before you go for a walk at the park.

Um you might want to check for I can't think of another example. Cars is the best one. Before you cross the road you want to check for cars. Uh you teach children this. You teach children to look both ways before you cross the road. We always tell our kids to look twice. Like look to the right, look to the left, look to the right, look to the left before you cross and if you look at this the young girl in the front she's still checking.

approved by Bob. That's a good way to cross the road because you never know if a car might be coming. So look both ways. Check for cars before you cross the road. And this is important in our current era. It's important to check the facts. It's important to fact check. If you read a news story and it seems hard to believe.

should see if other news organizations are reporting the same news. You should do some research. You should check the facts. If I was to tell you something that sounded in English we say sounds fishy. That means you you're not sure you believe it. I would certainly check the facts. So if someone asks me an English question. If I was to say

word either is pronounced two ways. We say either or either. If you don't believe me you should go to the internet and look up are there two pronunciations for the word either? And then either you would find the answer or you wouldn't see how I used either and either there. Anyways check the facts. Um I think it's very important in this era where we have fake news and those kinds of things. It's important to check the facts.

and you should check your spelling although we don't have to do this as much anymore because the computer does it for us but you should probably if you do some writing check your spelling. Make sure that you have spelled every word correctly. You should check your grammar as well but certainly you should check your spelling. Here we have the sentence I wasn't sure what to accept.

So we have an apostrophe missing in wasn't the contraction was not needs see in the blue and then the wrong word was used. So it's not what you were expecting. There you go. So check your spelling.

internet speed. This is for those of you who are more techie. Those who like technology. I often when I am somewhere else will check the speed of the internet. I will use my phone to run a speed test to see how fast the internet is.

probably most of you don't do this. I usually run a speed test before I do a live lesson to make sure that it is everything's working properly. Um so you might be somewhere where you do an internet speed check uh or speed test to see how things are working.

If you have software, you might check the version of the software. Someone might say to you, what version of PowerPoint do you have? What version of Chrome are you using as a browser? What version of Mac OS do you have? Here, this person has version twelve point seven point two and

Um this sometimes is important if someone is helping you with your computer. They might say what version of Microsoft Word are you using? What version of Safari are you using to browse the internet? So you might need to check the version so that you can tell them.

Uh the common thing to check is the mic. Like check, check one, two, one, two, check, check, check. If you go to an event early, you might hear someone checking the mic to make sure it's working. They are doing a mic check. And that's that is the common thing. Check. Check one, two, check one, two, testing, testing. Can you hear me? Check. Um so you might need to check the mic.

might to check but you might need to check a box. So, this is a different kind of check. If I check how much water is in my glass, I'm trying to see how much is there. If I check a box, I'm literally putting a check mark in. When you vote, you might need to check a box on the ballot to say who you are voting for.

You might need to check the year of something. Um when I was selling my tractor, I needed to check what year it was. It was built in 1999. It was built in Germany. Thank you for building such a good tractor. All of you from Germany. Um but you might own a car and you might say, oh, I'm going to sell my car. I think it's a 2008, maybe a 2009. I need to check what year it is.

So you would look at your your ownership or your title for the car and you would check what year it is. If someone was selling you a motorcycle you might say what year is it? And then they would go check what year it is. By the way we mean what year it was built. So they might check what year it was built.

might need to check the status of something. If you applied to immigrate to Canada, they don't just say, sure, come on over. Your application has to be looked at by people and you can check the status of your application every few weeks to see if it's approved or not. When I renewed my passport, I

could go online and check the status of the renewal because when you renew your passport they don't just say okay thank you here's your new one they need to check to make sure you are who you say you are so every once in a while I would check the status and then eventually it said your passport is ready to be picked and then as I said earlier sometimes you need to double check things and

The most common thing I double check is my suitcase before I go on a trip.

Um probably even more common than that is keys, phone, wallet, wedding ring, Fitbit. Before I leave the house, I check and double check to make sure I have those five things um because I don't want to leave without my wallet or my phone. You can't leave without your keys but uh I usually double check. I kind of pat each pocket uh to make sure I have it but definitely before you go on a trip, you

you will most likely double check to make sure you have everything. You'll put everything in a suitcase, close the suitcase, open it again 10 minutes later. Do I have my toothbrush? Yes. Okay. Close it. You will double check. Hi, Bob the Canadian here. Thank you for listening to this English podcast lesson. If you would like to support me in the work that I do as an online English teacher, please visit patreon.com slash Bob the Canadian.