Hello and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast. My name is Anna and you're listening to Week 34, Day 3 of Your English Five a Day. The series that's aimed at improving your vocabulary alongside your listening skills. So, come along with me on this journey. You don't have to work too hard. You just have to let me tickle your eardrums. So, let's get started. Today we're going to be focusing on the idiom come as no surprise. Come as no surprise. We spell this come, C O M E. As, A S. No, N O. Surprise, S U R P R I S E. We had that word yesterday. If something comes as no surprise, then it is expected. So, for example, if two teenage lovers are being very silly and frivolous and behaving in an irresponsible way, then suddenly the young lady says,"Oh, I've just found out that I'm pregnant. I don't know what to do." Then you might say,"Well, it comes as no surprise that you're pregnant, you were being very silly and acting very irresponsibly with your lover. So being pregnant comes as no surprise to me." So, that is what this idiom means. Here's another example for you."Given her excellent performance in other competitions this year, it should come as no surprise that she won the Olympic gold medal." Fantastic. So, what else are we focusing on today? Well, we have a couple of verbs. The first is blame. To blame. And this is how we spell it. B L A M E./bl/ Blame. To blame. To blame is to say or think that someone or something did something wrong or is responsible for something bad happening. So, if I walk into the kitchen and there is a huge mess on the floor, my lasagna that I've spent all day preparing is just splattered all over the floor like someone has taken the dish and tipped it upside down and allowed the contents of my lasagna to be spread, splattered all over the kitchen, then I'm going to first wonder,"Who is to blame? Who's to blame for my lasagna being on the floor rather than in the oven? Who is responsible?" Here's another example,"Why do you always blame me whenever something goes wrong?" My three-year-old at the moment has a habit of blaming every little thing that goes wrong on whoever's close to him. So, if his food falls onto the floor, it's everybody else's fault, not his own. If a fly lands on his food, he hates flies at the moment, he gets very upset if a fly is near him, but if a fly happens to land on his food, then he goes berserk and he's like,"Mummy, you made the fly go on my food." It's quite funny, obviously not for him, he gets very upset. So, we try to soothe him as best we can, but he likes to place blame wherever he possibly can. Okay. Next on the list, I said there were a couple of verbs. So, the next verb is prolong. Prolong. Now we spell this P R O L O N G. Prolong. Now you can pronounce it prolong, but often this is weakened and it just becomes/prəˈlɒŋ/,/prə/, prolong. You don't want to prolong something that is unpleasant. So, to prolong something is to make something last longer. For example, if you are about to go on an epic journey that's going to take two years of your life to complete, you're going travelling, but you are also leaving behind a loved one, a lover, a spouse, a best friend, and you're going to miss them terribly. Sometimes it's easier to do a quick goodbye at the moment when it's time to part. But what tends to happen is we prolong this agony of saying goodbye. We might spend our last day with that person that we're going to miss so terribly. And then when it comes to leave, we just can't say the final word so we have a really long hug we embrace for maybe a whole five minutes and as we're walking away we keep looking back and reaching out to each other and saying,"I'm going to miss you. Goodbye, darling. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye." When I was younger, I would often be on the phone, this is before mobile phones. So, I'd often be on the landline, the phone with a wire into the wall. I'd often be on the phone to my best friend. I do not know what we spoke about, but we would talk for hours every day and we were only 10 years old. So, we were probably talking absolute nonsense, but we were terrible at saying goodbye. My mum would be like,"Come on, Anna, get off the phone. We're about to run out of our free minutes." Because in those days, you know, we all paid attention to our phone contracts and we knew that we had a certain amount of free minutes as part of our contract. So my mum would say,"Come on Anna, get off the phone. Come on, say goodbye." And I'd say,"Okay. Okay, my friend, I've got to go.""Okay then. Bye then." And I say,"Bye. Bye.""So go on then. Bye.""Bye.""Bye. Bye.""Bye.""Put the phone down.""No, you put the phone down first.""Okay. I'll put the phone down.""Are you still there?""I'm still here. Why haven't you put the phone down?" And this was the kind of back and forth that we would have spending five minutes saying goodbye. We prolonged it because we found it hard to end it. So, we prolong the goodbyes. Here's another example."The failure of the peace talks prolonged the war." Alright, so what have we had? Come as no surprise. We've had blame and prolong. So, now we have another idiom. Woo! Lots of idioms today. This idiom is to be in a mood. To be in a mood. Mood we spell M O O D. Now, if you are in a mood, it's very different to being in the mood. So that tiny little word change makes all the difference. To be in a mood is what we're looking at today. If you are in a mood, then you're not being very friendly or you're being quite grumpy. There's something wrong with you. Usually because you're feeling angry or irritated about something. For example, I'm reminded again of my three-year-old, if I tell him that he can't have another biscuit or he can't have a fizzy drink after he's brushed his teeth, then he will often be in a mood. Or my five-year-old. If I tell him,"No, you cannot watch another episode of Pokemon." Or whatever it is he's into at the time."No, you've watched 20 minutes of TV today. That's enough screen time for today. You're not watching anymore." Then I can guarantee that he will be in a mood for at least, I don't know, 30 minutes. He likes to lay it on thick. He likes to really punish us for making him so unhappy and taking away screen time. So, he's often in a mood. Here's another example,"There's no point in trying to have a sensible discussion with him when he's in a mood." When was the last time you were in a mood? What were you in a mood for? Okay, last on our list today is the noun effect. Effect. We spell this E F F E C T. Effect is the result of a particular influence. Here's an example,"She took some medicine for her cold, but it had no effect." Oh, I am suffering with terrible mouth ulcers at the moment. This is my plight. I often suffer with mouth ulcers. I've spoken to numerous consultants about it. It's just one of those unfortunate things that I have to deal with. There's nothing we can do to improve my mouth ulcers. I take all the medicines and potions and creams that are available for mouth ulcers, but nothing works. When they start, I tend to get many of them and they are very painful. It's very hard to record these podcasts when my mouth hurts so much. So, despite taking all the medication, the medication has no effect. It's very unfortunate for me. So, I just have to try and stay healthy so that my ulcers don't pop up. Alright, so there's our five. Let's do a quick recap. We started with the idiom, come as no surprise, which means something is expected. Then we had the verb, blame, where you think that someone or something did something wrong. Then we had the verb prolong, which is to make something last for a longer time. We had the idiom to be in a mood, to be in a mood, which means that you're grumpy or you're feeling angry and you're not being very kind and friendly to others. And we finished with the noun effect, which is the result of a particular influence. So, let's do this now for pronunciation. Please repeat after me. Come as no surprise. Come as no surprise. Blame. Blame. Prolong. Prolong. To be in a mood. To be in a mood. Effect. Effect. Very good. What verb do we use when we say that someone did something wrong? What are we doing? We blame. Yes, we blame someone if we say they did something wrong. And what verb would I use if I want to make something last longer? Prolong. That's right. Now, if I'm in a very bad frame of mind, I'm feeling grumpy because something happened and my misery has been prolonged and I'm blaming you and I'm feeling really, really grumpy. What idiom could you use to describe me at this moment? I'm in a mood, aren't I? I'm in a mood. I need to snap out of it. What noun could I use if I'm describing the result of a particular influence? Maybe some medicine that I've used. I'm describing the result, so what noun would I use here? I'm describing the effect, or the effects of a particular medication. And if a painkiller has the effect of removing pain, or dulling pain, that is to be expected. What idiom could I use instead of saying,"Well, that is to be expected?" I could say that comes as no surprise. Okay, fantastic. Let's now bring this all together in today's storytime. Amy was in a mood. And she wasn't the only one. Her mother came home from work to find one of her favourite paintings on the floor. It had fallen off the wall. The wooden frame and the glass covering the painting were broken. It turned out that Amy's little brother, Tom, had done it while practising his football skills in the living room. While'trying to score a goal', he hit the painting with his ball, which made it fall and break. But their mother blamed Amy for what happened."You're the big sister. You were supposed to babysit him and stop him from doing stupid things, like playing football in the house!" her mother had shouted at her. It came as no surprise to Amy that her mother blamed her for Tom's actions. Amy was used to hearing that she had to be responsible for him. She was quite a bit older. She was 13, and he was 8. But her mother's attitude had a bad effect on her. While Tom was playing football, Amy was in her room listening to music with her headphones on. She had no idea that he was doing something stupid like playing football inside. He needed to grow up too! Amy realised that thinking about how unfair it was, just prolonged her anger and frustration. She needed to take action instead. She went to her mum and said,"Mum, I know I need to watch Tom, but I can't control everything he does. Maybe we can set some clear rules for him to follow when I'm babysitting." Her mother sighed, seeing the sense in Amy's words."You're right, Amy. I was just so upset about the painting. I'll have a chat with Tom to make sure he understands the house rules." Amy felt a bit better, knowing that it wasn't all her fault. She knew that this wouldn't be the last time she'd have to deal with Tom's behaviour. But at least now she felt she had a bit more support and understanding from her mother. Fantastic, did you enjoy that? Remember, you can go through this vocabulary once again, along with all the vocabulary from The Five a Day Series, using The Master Sheet, the database that I've created for you that's free for anyone to access. Just click on the link in the show notes and I will send it directly to you. Until next time, take very good care, and goodbye!