Hello and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast. My name is Anna and you're listening to Week 33, Day 5 of Your English Five a Day. This is the series that is focused and motivated to explode your active vocabulary and improve your English listening skills by focusing on five items of vocabulary every day of the working week from Monday through to Friday. So, let's start today's list with the noun common. But I'm not talking about the common use of common. I'm talking about common meaning land. So, you can either say common land or simply the common. We're spelling this C O M M O N, common. So, as a child, I always used to go and play on the common. Common is common land that everyone is allowed to use. So, when I was growing up, we had, in one of the houses I lived in, because I moved around quite a lot as a child, in one of the houses that I have very fond memories of during my childhood, we had a patch of lawn right in the middle of the kind of residential estate where I was living. And there were houses all around it, and it was just this big square patch of grass, quite large, maybe about a third of the size of a football pitch, right in the middle of all these houses. And it was where we could all run around and do whatever we wished. I'm guessing some people would walk the dogs on there. But mostly it was for the children. We would all just play around doing cartwheels and handstands, picking daisies, and some of the boys would be digging for worms and things like that. But it was common land that everyone could use. No one was barred from using the land. Here's an example sentence,"The villages used the common land to graze sheep." You could also say,"Hey, we're going to have a picnic on the common later. I'll bring the sandwiches. You bring the cakes." Fantastic. Let's move on to our next item. We have a verb and it is assign. Assign. We spell this A S S I G N. Assign. So, that G is silent. To assign is to allocate or designate a task, a responsibility, or a role to someone or something. So, it's like to give someone a job or to give someone a responsibility. When I was a lot younger, still an adult, but when I was a young adult, I worked a lot doing kind of hosting jobs and kind of bits and bobs jobs. I worked for an agency and basically, I didn't know what I was going to be doing from day to day. Some days I'd be sent off to go and hold trays of hors d'oeuvres or to give out drinks. On other days, I was asked to stand with an illuminous, fluorescent yellow vest and direct people to wherever they were supposed to be going. On other occasions, I would have to dress up in a very smart outfit and be escorting celebrities to their tables in big celebrity auctions. So, I didn't know what task or responsibility I would be assigned each day. I would just turn up and wait to be told what I was going to do and what role I would be assigned that day. Here's another example sentence,"I'm going to assign you all an individual task, but I need you to work together in order to complete the overall project effectively." Next on the list is the adjective fervent. Fervent. We spell this F E R V E N T. Fervent. Fervent describes someone who is intensely passionate or enthusiastic. So for example,"The fervent supporters of the local football team cheered tirelessly throughout the game." Now I have experienced a lot of football supporters or rather football fans and most of them are fervent supporters. I don't know what it is about football, but there's something about that particular sport that really, really stirs the emotions of its supporters. It gets people going. Especially when there's a big championship or the World Cup, for example, people get so passionate. I've seen people crying and screaming. I've seen people completely lose themselves, overwhelmed with emotion, good or bad, depending on what their team has done. It's both wonderful and frightening. Are you a fervent supporter of anything? Are you fervent about anything at all? Are you intensely passionate or enthusiastic about something? Okay, moving on to the next item, we have another verb, and this is flounder, flounder. We spell it F L O U N D E R, flounder, flounder. To flounder is to experience great difficulties or to be completely unable to decide what to do or what to say next. Sometimes I flounder. I'm not a very decisive person, and sometimes when someone asks me,"What should we do?" Or"What should we have for dinner?" And I've got no idea, I just go,"Oh, I don't know. Don't ask me. I'm so bad at making decisions." So, I don't like to make decisions on the spot. If someone asks me to make a decision on the spot, I usually flounder. Here's another example of the word flounder,"Her career floundered after she got fired from her job." Very good. Next we have another verb. Wow. We are verb heavy today. This verb is speculate, speculate. We spell it S P E C U L A T E. Speculate. To speculate is to form a theory or an opinion without sufficient evidence or knowledge. So, when you don't really know something, you're just kind of guessing. You're just coming up with an opinion without being fully informed. That is speculating. So, you hear a few rumours about the headmaster having some difficulties. The headmaster is always at assembly, but suddenly the headmaster doesn't appear for a couple of the assemblies. And then you receive a notification that there is going to be a big announcement that's very important that everyone needs to be present for."At the end of the day today, please everyone go to the hall because there's going to be a big announcement." Then you're going to come up with a theory. You might have your own opinion about what's going to be said. You might think,"Hmm, I bet this has got something to do with the headmaster. I heard some rumours about him having problems at home and struggling with his work-life balance. I think the big announcement is going to be that he's stepping down and someone else will be replacing him." But you're just guessing, you don't really know. There's just a few things that might give you that idea, but nothing that gives you proof or backs up your theory. Not really. Here's another example,"The financial analyst speculated that the stock market would continue to rise." Very good. Okay, so that's our five for today. Let's do a quick recap. We started with the noun common referring to land. The common. Then we went on to the verb assign, which is to give or allocate a task, role, or responsibility to someone. We had the adjective fervent, fervent, which is describing someone who is intensely passionate or enthusiastic. We then had the verb flounder. To flounder, which is to be unable to make a decision or decide what to say next or to experience great difficulty in something, to flounder. And we finished with the verb speculate. To speculate, which is to form an opinion or a theory without sufficient evidence or knowledge. Alright, let's now do this for pronunciation. Please repeat after me. Common. Common. Assign. Assign. Fervent. Fervent. Flounder. Flounder. Speculate. Speculate. Very good. Alright, let me test your memory now. Can you remember what verb means to give someone a responsibility, to allocate a task? Assign. Yes, that's right. And what noun do we use to describe a patch of land that everyone can use? Common. Common. Absolutely. And what verb do we use to describe forming an opinion without sufficient evidence? Speculate. Speculate. What adjective describes someone who is intensely passionate? Fervent. Fervent. And finally, what verb do we use if you are experiencing great difficulty or if you're unable to decide what to do? Flounder. Yes, flounder, which always makes me think of the little mermaid because there's a poor little fish in The Little Mermaid called Flounder. If you're a Disney fan, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. If not, don't worry. OK, let's revisit these items once again in today's storytime. The village of Greenwood had a huge common, in fact, it was one of the best in the country. Crops grew easily and the village had an abundance of food. What villagers didn't eat at harvest time, they preserved and stored to survive during the winter. No one ever went hungry. But one day, the crops started to flounder. Vegetables hardly grew. Cereals hung limp in the fields. Fruit rotted on the trees. But they had enough food stored to get them through the winter. For this year, at least. The villagers speculated about what had caused their common to stop producing so much food. Fervent churchgoers were convinced it was a punishment from God. Others thought that a witch had cursed them. Some believed that jealous people from other villages had poisoned the land. One day, a wise old woman named Eliza gave a different suggestion."Perhaps, the land needs a rest," she said."We've been planting the same crops year after year without giving the soil a chance to recover." The villagers were sceptical but willing to try anything. The village council assigned each family a small section of the common to experiment with crop rotation and resting the soil. Some fields were left empty. In others, the villagers grew different types of plants to help replenish nutrients in the earth. Over the next few months, the villagers watched and waited. To their delight, the land began to recover. The following year, the harvest was bountiful once again. The crops grew strong, the cereals thrived, and the fruit trees were full of colour. The villagers learned a valuable lesson about respecting the land and working with nature. From that year on, they practised crop rotation and let parts of the fields rest. Just as before, the village of Greenwood continued to enjoy abundant harvests. And that brings us to the end of today's episode and the end of Week 33. Remember that you can get access to the database, the Master Sheet, that includes all of the Five a Day vocabulary, the definitions and example sentences that you can access with a quick click of a button. All you have to do is sign up for my free English Newsletter where I send you mini lessons on a regular basis and I'll give you access to this free database. It's constantly updated and you can even copy and do your own thing with it if you so wish. I'll leave a link in the show notes. Until next time, take very good care and goodbye.