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Bob's Short English Lessons

By: Bob the Canadian
  • Summary

  • If you want to learn English with short easy-to-understand lessons then you've come to the right place. I'm Bob the Canadian and I make videos on Youtube (Just search for "Bob's Short English Lessons" on Youtube!) as well as podcasts right here to help you learn English. Four times each week I upload a short English lesson with a complete transcript in the description. During these lessons I teach one or two curious phrases from the English language and answer a listener question. Thanks for joining me and I hope your English learning is going well!
    © 2024 Bob's Short English Lessons
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Episodes
  • Learn the English Phrases "makes sense" and "doesn't make sense"
    Jun 12 2024

    Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases MAKES SENSE and DOESN'T MAKE SENSE

    In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase makes sense. When something makes sense, it just means it's logical. If it's something that someone designed, they design it in a logical way. In a way that makes sense. There's a store in North America called Costco. It's a large store and everything there makes sense. The size of the shopping carts makes sense. They're larger than a normal store. The way the parking lot lines are put out makes sense. They leave extra room between vehicles, probably because the carts are wider. The way the store is laid out makes sense. Everything just makes sense when I go there. It's a really cool place to go. It's designed to be efficient and logical, and I'm usually happy when I'm shopping there.

    WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"

    If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadian

    But you know what doesn't make sense? Government offices. I'm sure this is the same in every country around the world. I went to a government office today to renew one of my cards. You know how you have driver's license and health cards and all that kind of stuff? I went to renew a card and the way that that office was set up just doesn't make sense to me. There were numbers like I got a number, but my number was like PC 801. But then there were numbers that started with t and s and all different letters. And then for a while there, everyone with numbers with the same letters in front as me. We didn't get called up. I was there for, I think it was almost 3 hours. Sometimes stuff just doesn't make sense. I'm not sure how well that place was designed.

    So to review when something makes sense, it's very logical and easy to understand. When something doesn't make sense, it's just very confusing and you don't understand why it was designed that way. Anyways, I got everything done I needed to, but I was a little frustrated.

    But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Aerosmith77 also known as Judit. I loved when I could take the long way home, but not nowadays. Thanks for the lesson. I gotta go. And my response, from my understanding, you have quite the commute now. I hope it's going well. So Judit, thank you for that comment and for using the phrase long way home from the previous lesson. Very cool. But yeah, I understood from another comment you made. I think you changed jobs and I think you drive for over an hour each way now to work. That's a long ways to drive, so hopefully you have lots to listen to, some good music. Maybe you listen to a few podcasts on your way there. I just hope it's going well because that's, that's a pretty long drive to, to go every day.

    But hey, what was I going to talk about today? Well, I can talk about my commute. It's exactly eleven minutes every day. My commute, because I live out in the country and I work in a town, not a city. There's just not a lot of traffic out this way, there was just a big tractor that went by. Those sometimes slow down my commute a little bit. But I have appreciated the fact that there's no real commute where I live. It's just awesome. So I feel bad.

    I did, though, a few years ago. A few years ago, like over 20 years ago, I worked at a school. Okay, that's exaggerating. About 18 years ago, I worked at a school in a nearby city just for a couple of years. And it was a 45 minutes drive and the road that you drove down, you couldn't pass anybody. It was just like one lane each way and you couldn't pass. And so you would drive the speed limit all the way to work and all the way home from work. And that didn't make se

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    4 mins
  • Learn the English Phrases "Why the long face?" and "the long way home"
    Jun 7 2024

    Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases WHY THE LONG FACE? and THE LONG WAY HOME

    In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase, why the long face? This is a question you might ask someone if they look sad. Like if their face looks sad, if they look sad, you might say, hey, why the long face? Now, I haven't actually used this question a lot lately, but I did hear an older person use it the other day. So it might be an older phrase. If you see someone who is the opposite of happy instead of smiling, they have a really long face. Trying to... my acting skills aren't the best. I tried to make a dirty look the other day and I don't know if I pulled that off, but this is a long face. So when you're very, very sad, we say you have a long face. And if you see someone, you can say, why the long face?

    WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"

    If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadian

    The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the long way home. Sometimes when you go somewhere, you take the shortest path possible, or you take the shortest way possible. But sometimes you take the long way home. So think about this. If you're going to see a movie, you drive there quickly. You get there on time. But when the movie's done, you might take the long way home because there's other things to see and you're not in a hurry anymore. So when you go somewhere, you go as quickly as possible. But when you're done, you might take the long way home. You might take the scenic route. That's another way to say it.

    So to review, if you were to say to someone, why the long face? You're asking them why they look sad. And if you take the long way home, it means you go a direction or you go a way that isn't the shortest, but maybe it's more enjoyable.

    But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Ruslan. Cool baseball cap and sweatshirt teacher Bob light gray suits you very well. Your style is beyond compare. Well, great example phrase as well. By the way, beyond compare, my response, the shirt is a sunshirt. I like wearing those instead of putting lots of sunscreen on. The hood and long sleeves really help block the sun. So thanks, Ruslan. Yes, beyond compare was the last phrase and great use of it. But yeah, these shirts. Jen and I both wear these shirts. In fact, you can see Jen over here way in the distance. She's planting dahlias, she's wearing her shirt, and I'm wearing mine. By the way, these shirts are nice. You don't have to put sunscreen on when you wear these. And it does have a hood that you can put up to cover your ears as well. So if we're going to work outside a lot, we often wear these shirts.

    Um, yeah, there's some chickens behind me. Should I give you a better look? A few weeks ago, we got some fencing. This isn't electric fence. It can be electrified, but we don't have it electrified. And we put our chickens outside. They're in this, which is called a chicken tractor. You might want to call it a chicken coop, but because it has wheels and you're able to move it. For some reason in English, we call this a chicken tractor. So we've been moving this along. We've been using the chickens to kind of combat some of the problems we have. They are loud, aren't they? Um, so they go out and eat something called a cut worm. Jen's very happy about that because the cut worms like to eat the plants and that's not very nice.

    So we have this chicken tractor. The chickens, I think, like being outside more than they like being inside anyways. I think they're really enjoying their time outside. They're a little... I hope you guys aren't scared of chickens. They're a little timid right n

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    5 mins
  • Learn the English Phrases "above and beyond" and "beyond compare"
    Jun 5 2024

    Read along to practice your English and to learn the English saying ABOVE AND BEYOND and BEYOND COMPARE

    In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase above and beyond. When you go above and beyond, it means you do a really, really good job. If at work, my boss said to me, Bob, can you work on this project? And if I worked on it for like, ten or 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for three weeks, he might say, wow, you really went above and beyond. You did more than I was expecting you to do. Maybe you're studying for English, and you, one week you decide instead of studying 30 minutes a day, you're going to study for 2 hours a day. You would then be going above and beyond. You're doing more than you expected even yourself to do.

    WANT FREE ENGLISH LESSONS? GO TO YOUTUBE AND SEARCH, "BOB THE CANADIAN"

    If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadian

    The second phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase beyond compare. When something is beyond compare, it means it's just awesome. My sister makes really good desserts, and they are beyond compare. It basically means that no one else I know makes desserts that are as good as the desserts that my sister makes. That was a little bit of a tongue twister. So when something is beyond compare, it means it's like the best. It's like the best version of whatever it is that you're doing or eating or whatever you are not comparing.

    So to review, when you go above and beyond, you do more than what people are expecting you to do, or even more than what you're expecting yourself to do. You go above and beyond. And when something is beyond compare, it simply means that it's awesome.

    That's. But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from... I'm laughing because it's very early in the morning and I kind of lost track of what I was doing. But hey, let's look at a comment from Silvia. Hope you have a fantastic time at the market. The peonies are just gorgeous. And it's incredible to think about all the hard work that goes into growing those beautiful flowers. Jen's dedication is truly remarkable, by the way. Here in Argentina, we do have personal days, and it depends on the jobs and the contract you sign. And then my response, personal days are something new for me. We only started to have them a few years ago. Sometimes I feel guilty taking one, but hey, it's in the contract now.

    So, yes, a couple things to respond there to Silvia. The market was good. That was already a week ago now, almost. But yes, the market was awesome. We did well. We really, really enjoyed it. And about personal days, yeah, that is something very, very new for me. Personal days didn't exist till about six or seven years ago where I work. So it still feels a little funny saying to my boss, hey, can I take a day off next week, Thursday? And then the boss just says, okay, you have one personal day left. It's no problem.

    But, hey, here I am walking on the path that I created so that we can get down to the river every year in our field. If I turn, you can see where I am on the property. The house and barn are up there. But every year we try to mow a path down to the river so that we can come down here with the dogs, or we can come down here with the kayaks when we bring the kayaks to the river. And it's just a little easier than walking through the deep grass. So I'm just kind of giving you a sense of what it's like for me to walk down to the river on, like, a Saturday afternoon or a Sunday afternoon.

    It's just nice to have the grass nice and short. And then we usually also mow this area down here. It's a little brown now, but it will green up again. I think I cut the grass a little short, and the river is a

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    5 mins

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