Learning English Podcast - March 08, 2025
29:57 Share

Welcome to Learning English, a daily 30-minute program from the Voice of America. I'm Katie Weaver. And I'm Mario Ritter, Jr. This program is designed for English learners, so we speak a little slower and we use words and phrases especially written for people learning English.

On this program, we answer a listener's question about the terms coast, shore, and beach. We explain usage of adjectives and adverbs in conversation. Next, learn the health effects of daylight savings time. Then, hear the open boat on American stories. But first...

this week on ask a teacher we answer a question from doyoun in korea about the usage of three similar words here is the question hello i want to know the differences between the beach coast and shore thank you you ask a useful question

beach shore and coast are related words but they have some important differences beach the word beach is the most specific of the three words the collins on-line dictionary defines beach as a nearly level stretch of pebbles and sand beside a sea lake c

often washed by high water ocean beaches are popular places to visit we often use the phrase at the beach to express the idea of spending time in the general area of the beach as in the following example they will vacation at the beach this summer

We usually say "on the beach" when describing specific activities we do there. She went for a walk on the beach. I'm going to spend my afternoon on the beach. They are playing football on the beach. coast The Learning English word book defines coast as "land on the edge of the ocean."

We can use the word to describe a wide area, however. For example, Baltimore, Maryland is an east coast city even though it is several kilometers from the Atlantic Ocean. Here are more examples of how we can use coast in a sentence. The Florida coast has many nice towns and beaches.

The coast of California extends over 1,300 kilometers. Like the expression "at the beach," we can say "on the coast" when describing the general area, as in the following example: Her mother has lived on the coast for 30 years.

We can use the expression off the coast of to describe an area of ocean or sea relative to a place on land. The island is about 60 kilometers off the coast of Africa. Shore. The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines the word shore as...

the land bordering a usually large body of water shore can sometimes mean the beach but not always for example you might swim to shore and come out of the water on to a beach but you could also come to shore at a port with no beach in sight

And we can use shore when discussing the general area, just like we do with the word coast. The following example shows this meaning. The northern shore has many nice towns and beaches. For our readers and listeners, what are your questions about American English? We want to hear from you.

Do you like to spend time at the coast? Send us an email at learningenglish at voanews.com. And please let us know where you are from, too. And that's Ask a Teacher. I'm Andrew Smith. From VOA Learning English, this is Everyday Grammar. Imagine two American students are talking outside of their school.

Let's listen to the imaginary conversation. Today is going slow. Yeah, I guess we should study for our grammar test. That sounds like a terrible idea. Yeah, but if we don't study, we won't do good on the test. Fine. Let's go study our notes quick. Then we can play video games. These bad students may hate grammar.

but they just taught you some common grammatical structures in conversational American English. In today's report, we will study how conversational grammar differs from written and formal grammatical structures. We will show you how some Americans use adjectives and adverbs in casual conversation.

Adjectives are words that give information about nouns. They generally appear before nouns, although they also appear after linking verbs. Here are two examples: You are a good student. Learning English is fun. In the two example sentences, the words "good" and "fun" are adjectives.

They are telling you something about a noun. Adverbs are often used to modify adjectives or verbs. They give information about reason, manner, time, and so on. For example, the adverb "loudly" appears in this sentence. We sang loudly. The adverb "loudly" modifies the past tense verb "sang."

It tells about the way in which the subject, we, sang. Adverbs often have an -ly ending, but there are many that do not. You can read more about adverbs in past Everyday Grammar stories. Let's think back to the conversation we heard at the beginning of the story. Today is going slow.

Yeah, I guess we should study for our grammar test. That sounds like a terrible idea. Yeah, but if we don't study, we won't do good on the test. Fine. Let's go study our notes quick. Then we can play video games. Notice that the words are used differently from what might be taught in an English class. In casual conversation,

Americans often use adjective forms in place of adverbs. They may use adjective forms to modify verbs. For example, the students use "good," a word that is normally an adjective, as an adverb. One student says, "We won't do good on the test." In writing and in formal conversation,

Americans generally do not use the word "good" this way. Instead, they use the word "well." In formal writing or speaking, you would be more likely to see or hear the sentence "We won't do well on the test." Americans also may use an adverb but choose not to say an -ly ending. For example, the student says,

"Today is going slow" instead of "Today is going slowly." You would be more likely to read slowly in academic writing, write Susan Conrad and Douglas Biber, two English grammar experts. These grammatical structures are not necessarily slang. They are not necessarily impolite either.

You might hear some of these structures in a restaurant, at a job fair, or even at work. For example, a boss might tell an employee, "We need to do this quick," about a project that must be completed quickly. This is the same pattern that the students used in their conversation. Conrad and Biber say that in formal speech and writing,

Adjective forms are almost never used to modify verbs. In addition, adverbs with -ly endings are more common in writing, particularly in academic and news writing. The good news is this: we are not asking you to memorize any of the patterns we have talked about today.

What we hope to do is show you that the grammatical patterns in conversation do not always match the patterns used in formal writing or speech. There is more flexibility in casual speech. Understanding this idea will help you understand Americans when they speak, and it will help you sound more natural when you speak to Americans.

You might also be pleased to know that Americans will not judge you severely if you use an adjective in place of an adverb. In fact, they probably would do the same. I'm Jill Robbins. And I'm John Russell. Much of the United States springs forward on Sunday, March 9th for Daylight Saving Time.

Worldwide, many other countries also observe daylight saving time, starting and ending, on different dates. The time change can leave people tired and perhaps unhappy the next day, but it also might even harm health.

Some studies have found an increase in heart attacks and strokes right after the March time change. However, there are ways to ease the effects of the time change, including getting more sunshine. The light helps reset your circadian rhythm for healthful sleep.

In the U.S., daylight saving time begins Sunday at 2 o'clock in the morning. The time change will reverse on November 2nd, when clocks fall back as daylight saving time ends. The state of Hawaii and most of the state of Arizona do not make the spring change.

Those areas remain on standard time, along with Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Some people try to prepare for the change to daylight saving time by going to bed a little earlier two or three nights ahead.

But with a third of American adults already not getting the suggested seven hours of nightly sleep, catching up can be difficult. The brain has a kind of clock that is set by exposure to sunlight and darkness. This clock, known as the circadian rhythm,

is on a roughly 24-hour cycle. It governs when we become sleepy and when we are more wakeful. The rhythms change with age. This is one reason that early-to-rise young children turn into hard-to-wake teenagers. Morning light resets the rhythm.

By evening, levels of a hormone called melatonin begin to increase, leading to tiredness. Too much light in the evening, that extra hour from daylight saving time, delays the melatonin increase. As a result, the cycle gets delayed. The circadian rhythm affects more than sleep.

It also influences heart rate, blood pressure, hormone releases, and other systems. I'm Katie Weaver. Our story today is called The Open Boat. It was written by Stephen Crane and is based on what really happened to him in 1896.

Crane was traveling from the United States to Cuba as a newspaper reporter. One night, his ship hit a sandbar. It sank in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida. Most of the people on board got into lifeboats. Crane was among the last to leave. There were three others with him, the ship's captain, the cook, and a sailor,

These four men climbed into the only remaining lifeboat. The boat was so small that no one believed it could stay afloat for very long. None of the four men thought he would ever reach the shore. But the men fought the rough seas bravely with all their strength. Would they finally reach land? Here is Shep O'Neill with the first part of the story.

The small lifeboat bounced from wave to wave in the rough seas of the Atlantic. The four men in the boat could not see the sky. The waves rose too high. The waves, with their white tops, pushed at the open boat with angry violence. Every man thought each wave would be his last. Surely the boat would sink and he would drown.

The man thought that most adults would need a bathtub larger than the boat they were sailing. The waves were huge, and each created a problem in guiding the direction of the boat. For two days since the ship sank, the four men had been struggling to reach land, but there was no land to be seen.

All the men saw were violent waves, which rose and came fiercely down on them. The men sat in the boat, wondering if there was any hope for them. The ship's cook sat in the bottom of the boat. He kept looking at the 15 centimeters which separated him from the ocean. The boat had only two wooden oars.

They were so thin, it seemed as if they would break against the waves. The sailor, named Billy, directed the boat's movement with one of the oars. The newspaper reporter pulled the second oar. He wondered why he was there, the boat. The fourth man was the captain of the ship that had sunk.

He lay in the front of the small boat. His arm and leg were hurt when the ship sank. The captain's face was sad. He had lost his ship and many of his sailors. But he looked carefully ahead, and he told Billy when to turn the boat. "'Keep her a little more south, Billy,' he said. "'A little more south, sir,' the sailor repeated.'

Sitting in the boat was like sitting on a wild horse. As each wave came, the boat rose and fell, like a horse starting toward a fence too high to jump. The problem was that after successfully floating over one wave, you find that there is another one behind it, just as strong and ready to flood your boat.

As each wall of water came in, it hid everything else that the man could see. The waves came in silence. Only their white tops made threatening noises. In the weak light, the faces of the men must have looked gray. Their eyes must have shone in strange ways as they looked out at the sea.

The sun rose slowly into the sky. The men knew it was the middle of the day because the color of the sea changed from slate gray to emerald green with gold lights. And the white foam on the waves looked like falling snow. As the lifeboat bounced from the top of each wave, the wind tore through the hair of the men.

As the boat dropped down again, the water fell just past them. The top of each wave was a hill from which the men could see for a brief period a wide area of shining sea. The cook said the men were lucky because the wind was blowing toward the shore. If it started blowing the other way, they would never reach land.

The reporter and the sailor agreed, but the captain laughed in a way that expressed humor and tragedy all in one. He asked, "Do you think we've got much of a chance now, boys?" This made the others stop talking. To express any hope at this time, they felt to be childish and stupid. But they also did not want to suggest there was no hope, so

They were silent. Oh, well, said the captain. We'll get ashore all right. But there was something in his voice that made them think, as the sailor said. Yes, if this wind holds. Seagulls flew near and far. Sometimes the birds sat down on the sea in groups near brown seaweed that rolled on the waves.

The anger of the sea was no more to them than it was to a group of chickens a thousand miles away on land. Often the seagulls came very close and stared at the men with black bead-like eyes. The men shouted angrily at them, telling them to be gone. The sailor and the reporter kept rowing with the thin wooden oars.

Sometimes they sat together, each using an oar. Sometimes one would pull on both oars while the other rested. Brown pieces of seaweed appeared from time to time. They were like islands, bits of earth that did not move. They showed the men in the boat that it was slowly making progress toward land.

Hours passed. Then, as the boat was carried to the top of a great wave, the captain looked across the water. He said that he saw the lighthouse at Mosquito Inlet. The cook also said he saw it. The reporter searched the western sky. "'See it?' said the captain. "'No,' said the reporter slowly. "'I don't see anything.' "'Look again.'

said the captain. He pointed. ''It's exactly in that direction.'' This time the reporter saw a small thing on the edge of the moving horizon. It was exactly like the point of a pin. ''Think we'll make it, captain?'' he asked. ''If this wind holds and the boat doesn't flood, we can't do much else,'' said the captain.''

It would be difficult to describe the brotherhood of men that was here established on the sea. Each man felt it warmed him. They were a captain, a sailor, a cook, and a reporter. And they were friends. The reporter knew even at the time that this friendship was the best experience of his life. All obeyed the captain.

He was a good leader. He always spoke in a low voice and calmly. "I wish we had a sail," he said, "to give you two boys a chance to rest." So they used his coat and one of the oars to make a sail, and the boat moved much more quickly. The lighthouse had been slowly growing larger.

At last, from the top of each wave, the men in the boat could see land. Slowly, the land seemed to rise from the sea. Soon, the men could see two lines, one black and one white. They knew that the black line was formed by trees and the white line was the sand.

At last, the captain saw a house on the shore, and the lighthouse became even larger. The keeper of the lighthouse should be able to see us now, said the captain. He'll notify the life-saving people. Slowly and beautifully, the land rose from the sea. The wind came again. Finally, the men heard a new sound.

the sound of waves breaking and crashing on the shore. "We'll never be able to make the lighthouse now," said the captain. "Swing her head a little more north, Billy." "A little more north, sir," said the sailor. The men watched the shore grow larger. They became hopeful. In an hour, perhaps, they would be on land. The men struggled to keep the boat from turning over.

They were used to balancing in the boat. Now they rode this wild horse of a boat like circus men. The water poured over them. The reporter thought he was now wet to the skin, but he felt in the top pocket of his coat and found eight cigars. Four were wet, but four were still dry. One of the men found some dry matches. Each man lit.

And that's our show for today. But join us again tomorrow to keep learning English on The Voice of America. I'm Katie Weaver. And I'm...