Hello and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast. My name is Anna and you're listening to Week 34, Day 5 of Your English Five a Day. Here I am bombarding you in the nicest possible way with vocabulary, feeding you five items every day of the working week. But don't focus too much on the individual items of vocabulary. Just tune in, come along for the journey and enjoy the story at the end. Your brain will automatically do the rest. So just tune in, enjoy, and you'll be amazed at the progress you can make in your English with regular listening habits. So, let's start today's episode with a noun. And it is addiction. Spell this with me, A D D I C T I O N. Addiction. Addiction. Addiction is the inability to stop doing or using something. It's usually used when the thing that you are addicted to is harmful. So, for example, if you over-exercise, then I might say that you are addicted to exercise because you exercise too much. If you enjoy smoking lots of cigarettes in a day, and you've struggled to give up even though you know it's bad for your health, you're addicted. If you drink too much alcohol, then you are addicted. We can also use addiction occasionally in a positive way, but usually, it just means an excess. It means it's too much. Like you might be addicted to a person, you might be addicted to work. There's nothing wrong with hard work, but if you can't switch off and enjoy your life outside of work, then that becomes problematic. So addiction here is an example sentence,"Natalie had bad experiences with gambling addiction." Now, thinking about yourself, your family and your friends. Do you have any experience of addiction? Perhaps you have your own addiction that you're battling or have battled in the past, or maybe people within your friend circle or within your family have addiction. I can certainly think of a number of people within my circles who deal with addiction. Okay, moving on. Related to the word addiction, we have another noun and it is craving. Craving. We spell this C R A V I N G. Craving. Craving. A craving is a very strong feeling of desire, a strong feeling of wanting something. Now I use this word pretty much on a daily basis. I am always craving for something to eat or drink. So lately we have been trying to cut our costs at home in our personal lives. And so we've stopped getting our Nespresso coffee pods. And our Nespresso coffee was delightful. I loved it. Every day I enjoyed starting my day with a Nespresso coffee. Now we are left with a cheap coffee, a budget coffee that just tastes burnt. Every time we have it, it just doesn't taste very good. And so I'm constantly craving my Nespresso coffees. So I'd say,"Oh, I've got a craving for a Nespresso coffee with coconut milk." Most evenings when I've put the children to bed, I have a craving for cherries, frozen cherries, or I absolutely love truffle chocolates, particularly the champagne truffles, they're so delicate and yet so rich. You only need a couple to hit the spot to satisfy your craving. I never have them of course, if it's a special occasion my partner or my mum might buy me a little box of truffles but otherwise, I never have them in the house because they're too expensive but I still crave them. I still have a craving for them. Here is another example sentence using the noun craving,"Even though she's a vegetarian, when she was pregnant she had a strong craving for salmon, so she ate it." Oh yes, that reminds me. Being pregnant and the cravings you have when you're pregnant are very bizarre. With Jacob, it wasn't so bad. I craved apples. I ate bags of apples every week. So many apples. I remember we visited Italy around the sixth month of pregnancy and I couldn't find cold apples because I like to take my apples out of the fridge and eat them cold where they're crispy and refreshing and juicy. But everywhere I went in Italy, the shops had the apples but out in a basket at the front of the store. And so they were warm, they were room temperature, or they were warm, and it wasn't the same. I couldn't wait to get home to have a nice cold, refrigerated apple. With Caspian, I craved oranges quite a lot. But I also craved these very cheap instant noodles that I never eat. Actually, I used to eat a long time ago, but I never eat these days. And during my pregnancy with him, I just craved these cheap instant noodles to be eaten on a piece of buttered bread so that it made the butter melt and I think it was salt I was craving to be honest but there were around four or five occasions when I gave into my craving even though I knew it was terrible and I had a big bowl of these noodles with buttered bread. And on the last occasion, I was eating and then instantly felt sick, like really sick. And I just thought, I need to stop doing this to myself. So that was it. That was the last time I had noodles. Well, not the last time I had noodles. I've since had noodles, but the last time I had those instant noodles. Okay, moving on. The next word is a verb and it is struggle. We spell it S T R U G G L E. Struggle. Struggle. To struggle is to experience difficulty and make a really great effort in order to do something. Here's an example sentence,"I struggled to learn English when I was at school because the teaching methods were bad." Now the other day, I struggled to move my double bed. I say double bed, it's actually like a king-sized bed. It's a large bed. It's very heavy and it has a very heavy mattress on it. But we have a problem with moths in our bedroom, and so I was trying to move the bed so that I could hoover underneath the bed. I needed to vacuum underneath the bed. And I was alone, and I think that I'm superwoman. And I always try to do things by myself. So I tried very hard to move this bed by myself. I struggled to move it. I did move it because I am pretty strong, but then I couldn't move it back. And I had to admit that I couldn't do it. I had to go and ask for help. I said,"I'm really struggling to get the bed back into its original position. Could someone come and help me, please?" Okay, next on the list is another noun and it is escape. Escape. We spell it. Spell it with me. E S C A P E. Escape. An escape is something that helps you to forget about your usual life or problems. So here we're looking at escape as a noun. Obviously, it can also be a verb, but here let's consider it as a noun. Here's an example sentence,"Reading novels over breakfast provides her with an escape from work and family life." What's your escape? When life gets tough. What do you do to escape? There I used it as a noun and a verb. My escape is squash, definitely. When I'm on the squash court, I can just turn my mind to the game and enjoy myself and forget about life outside. Next on the list is the idiom. On the defensive. On the defensive. We spell this on, O N. The and then defensive, D E F E N S I V E. Defensive. Defensive. If you are on the defensive, then it means you're ready to protect yourself because you are expecting to be criticised or attacked. Here's an example,"Mark is on the defensive because he thinks the upcoming meeting was called to question him on the poor results of his campaign, but that's not the case." Have you ever been on the defensive? I can be on the defensive at times if I feel vulnerable or if I feel that my work is being judged or that my efforts have not been understood properly. For example, when I have in-laws around and maybe if they are criticising my parenting in a very passive way, I might start to feel quite defensive, like they're attacking me. And so then I'll be on the defensive and I'll jump at every comment and I'll work hard to prove that I'm a good mother. It doesn't happen often, but if I'm feeling sensitive then I can be on the defensive. Okay, let's now recap our five from today. We started with the noun addiction, meaning an inability to stop doing or using something, usually something that's harmful. Then we had the noun craving. A craving is a strong feeling of wanting something. We had the verb struggle, which is to experience difficulty and work very, very hard in order to do something. We had the noun escape, an escape is something that helps you to forget about your usual life or problems. And we finished with the idiom on the defensive, which is when you're ready to protect yourself because you expect to be criticised or attacked. Let's now do this for pronunciation. If you're able to, please repeat after me. Addiction. Addiction. Craving. Craving. Struggle. Struggle. Escape. Escape. On the defensive. On the defensive. Okay, what verb should I use if I'm going through a difficult time and I'm trying very, very hard in order to fix it? Struggle. I'm struggling to do something. And what noun describes a strong feeling of wanting something? This is something that I have most evenings for cherries. A craving. Yes, I have a craving for cherries most evenings. And what noun describes the inability to stop doing or using something? Addiction. And what noun would you use to describe something that helps you to forget about your problems? An escape. Absolutely. Finally, what idiom do we use when you are ready to protect yourself because you expect to be attacked? On the defensive. You are on the defensive. Very good. Okay. Let's listen out for these items during today's storytime."Do you think you might have a phone addiction?" Mark asked her gently. The question put Jenna on the defensive. She knew she had a problem with her phone, but she hated to admit that she was struggling."Doesn't everyone have a phone addiction these days?" Jenna replied."You spend plenty of time on your phone too." In fact, Jenna had a craving for her phone right that instant. She wanted to take it out of her bag and check her notifications. It had all started when she downloaded TikTok during the pandemic as an escape from the stress, loneliness and boredom. While stuck at home she spent hours a day scrolling the app to feel connected to the world. But her phone use was starting to affect other parts of her life. She wasn't performing as well in her job. She spent too much time with online'friends', not real-life ones. She was watching#BookTok videos, but couldn't remember the last time she had read an actual book! She appreciated the fact that Mark, her closest friend, was worried about her."I'm sorry, Mark. I know I have a problem," admitted Jenna. But I don't know how to fix it." He took a book out of his rucksack and gave it to her. On the cover, it said,'Digital Minimalist. Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World'."It helped me a lot," said Mark."And I think it will help you too." That night, Jenna read the whole book. The author shared a philosophy of using digital technology to support your values. She followed the advice in the book and deleted all non-essential apps for 30 days. During that month, although she struggled with cravings for TikTok she met up with friends, read books and even created a book club with Mark. Her days of scrolling TikTok were over and she was so much happier and more connected to the people around her than ever. And that brings us to the end of today's episode and to the end of Week 34. Wow! We have covered so much vocabulary and if you are the kind of person who loves to have everything on organised and recorded, then I have made a full Master Sheet, a database of all the vocabulary covered in this episode, as well as every other Five a Day episode. And you can get access to this for free by joining my free English mailing list, where I send you regular English mini-lessons. So, just sign up using the link in the show notes. Until next time, take very good care, and goodbye.