Hello and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast. My name is Anna and you're listening to Week 35, Day 4 of Your English Five a Day. This is the series that is aimed at increasing your vocabulary and improving your listening skills all you have to do is tune in every day from Monday to Friday. So, let's start today's episode. We begin with the noun struggle, struggle. We spell this, and I'm sure you can spell it too, so spell it with me S T R U G G L E. Struggle. Struggle. Struggle. Struggle is the difficult or time-consuming effort that it takes to achieve something, often characterised by hardship and resistance. So, if there is a struggle, then there is a difficult effort going on to achieve something. Lots of things can be a struggle. In the morning, trying to get my toddler, is he really a toddler? Maybe he's a bit older than a toddler now, but my three-year-old trying to get him to eat his breakfast. Oh my goodness, it's such a struggle. He just doesn't want to sit still. He doesn't want to feed himself. He just wants to sing and talk. He wants to get up and play. It's very difficult. Here's another example,"Determined to overcome his financial struggle, Martin persevered and eventually found success in his career." Now today I have a bit of a struggle going on because I have building work happening on the house right next to where I am working. And so if you can, I'm hoping that you can't, but if you can hear whirring, banging and shouting in the background occasionally, then this is something that is out of my control. Trying to control my recording environment has been a constant struggle. If it's not the wind and the rain, then it's the workmen. Okay, so let's move on from struggle to our next item, which is a verb phrase, and it is form a habit. Form a habit. This is three words. Form, F O R M. A, or it would be pronounced as a schwa/ә/, and then habit, H A B I T. Form a habit. Form a habit. Form a habit. To form a habit is to establish a regular practice or pattern of behaviour that becomes automatic and very difficult to break. Have you formed a habit of learning? Hopefully, if you are listening to this podcast on a daily basis, then you have successfully formed a habit. Here's another example,"The coach encouraged the players to form a habit of practising daily to improve their skills." This morning, I woke up before everybody else. So I snuck out, I put on my gym clothes, and I did yoga practice and affirmations before anyone even came downstairs. It was fantastic and I would love to make this my new habit. But forming a habit when I have young children who I can't control is very difficult. So, I will try to form a habit of doing yoga every morning but it is very much dependent on the children. Next on the list is an idiom. We all love an idiom and it is burst someone's bubble. Burst someone's bubble. So, three words burst, B U R S T. Burst. Someone's, so it could be your, my, his, Jennifer's bubble, B U B B L E. Burst someone's bubble. If you burst someone's bubble, then you reveal an unpleasant or disappointing truth, and you shatter, you destroy their optimistic expectations. For example, if you are very excited about the prospect of being promoted, you know that you're in the running for it. You've been interviewed for this promotion and everyone's talking about it and everyone believes you're going to get this promotion. I then learn that someone else has just been given the promotion and it's not yet public news. So, I know about it. Maybe I overheard it, but nobody else knows. And you're still really excited and very optimistic about your chances. If I come and tell you what I've just overheard, that you are no longer actually in the running, that someone else has been offered the promotion, then I'm bursting your bubble. And I might start it by saying,"I'm sorry to burst your bubble but I've just heard that someone else has been given the job." So, to burst someone's bubble. Here's another example,"I couldn't bear to burst Steve's bubble, so I let him continue believing in the impossible." Okay, next on the list is the verb crave, crave. We spell it C R A V E, crave. To crave is to have a strong desire or longing for something, often food or drink. Right now I am craving a coffee. It's quite early in the morning and I'm craving a coffee. When I have a coffee, I will probably crave chocolate because I usually have chocolate with a coffee or something sweet to break up the bitterness in my mouth. So, I like to have a sip of my bitter coffee, and then have a bite of something sweet, and then wash the sweetness away with a sip of my bitter coffee. It's this lovely cycle that I enjoy. What do you crave first thing in the morning? What have you been craving in general lately? I've been craving some more time off so that I can enjoy the rare sunny days that we're having in the UK at the moment. Here's another example of crave,"After a long hike, all I craved was a cold glass of lemonade!" Alright, last on the list is the adjective laborious. Laborious. We spell this L A B O R I O U S. Laborious. Laborious. Laborious. Okay, so laborious as an adjective describes something that involves a lot of effort, a lot of time or work. So I might describe doing my accounts as laborious. When I have to do my tax return and my bookkeeping. Oh, it genuinely is very laborious. It takes a lot of effort. And laborious also has a sense of being boring. That's how I always think of it, laBOR... laborious. It's very boring, laborious work. Here's another example,"The laborious task of cleaning the garage took us an entire weekend." Okay, so that's our five. Let's do a quick recap. We started with the noun struggle, which describes a difficult or time-consuming effort that it takes to achieve something, often characterised by hardship or resistance. We had the verb phrase form a habit, meaning that you establish a regular practice or pattern of behaviour that becomes automatic. We had the idiom burst someone's bubble, which is to reveal a disappointing or unpleasant truth that shatters someone's dreams. Then we had the verb crave, crave, which is to have a strong desire or longing for something. Then we had the adjective laborious, laborious, which means something that is requiring a lot of effort, time or work. So, let's now do this for pronunciation. If you can, please repeat after me. Struggle. Struggle. Form habit. Form a habit. Burst someone's bubble. Burst someone's bubble. Crave. Crave. Laborious. Laborious. Very good. What's the verb that we use when we have a really strong desire for something? Crave. That's right. And if I'm craving a piece of cake that is sitting in my fridge and I say to my partner,"I'm sorry, I'm craving that cake so badly, I have to go and eat it." And he turns to me and says,"I don't want to disappoint you, but I've already eaten it." He has revealed a truth that is very disappointing to me. What idiom could I use here? Burst someone's bubble. He would say to me,"I'm sorry to burst your bubble, darling, but I've eaten the cake already.""Oh my goodness. How could you do that? You ate it without me?" And if he said to me,"Yes, darling. Well, we need to establish a regular pattern of behaviour now we need to make sure that we're not eating in the evening anymore and we shouldn't buy cakes. So let's establish this new regular practice. Is that okay?" What verb phrase could I use here instead? To replace establishing a regular pattern or practice. Let's form a habit. Yes, let's form a habit of buying healthy food only and not eating after a certain time in the evening. That's a good habit to form. And what adjective describes something that requires or that involves a lot of effort and time or work? Laborious. Yes, laborious. And finally, if I am having a difficult time and it's an effort for me to achieve something, what noun could I use? What is this? It's a struggle. It's a struggle. It's a struggle to ignore my cravings and it's a struggle to form a new habit. Especially if I find that new habit quite laborious, and I'm sorry to burst your bubble, darling, but forming a new habit with you is too much of a struggle for me because I crave cake too much. Okay, so, let's listen out for these items once again in today's storytime."I hate to burst your bubble, but it takes over 60 days to form a habit, maybe more. That 21-day rule is just a myth," Jim told Tim."Thanks for the encouragement," said Tim as he lowered his copy of The 21-Day Habit to look at his colleague. The subtitle was Three Weeks to a Better You. He knew that personal development books made exaggerated promises. He also knew his colleague could be a bit of a know-all. Tim was trying to make some changes to his life. He had a lot of habits he wanted to develop, like eating more vegetables or calling his mum more often. But most of all, he wanted to stop drinking alcohol to get to sleep. He had decided to replace his bad habit of an evening glass of wine, with a good one drinking warm milk or chamomile tea before bed. He knew forming a new habit would be a struggle. He had felt encouraged when he saw that he might only need 21 days. But 60 days! It sounded like a laborious task. To motivate himself, he put a chart on the wall. He added a cross for every day he drank something non-alcoholic before bed. At first, he craved his usual evening glass of Bordeaux. And a couple of times, he drank the fruity, purple liquid anyway. But in the morning, he usually regretted it. He had a much clearer head when he drank herbal tea or hot milk. He concentrated better at work and didn't have a headache. And after a while, instead of reaching for a wine glass, he would automatically grab a mug."Oh, it's working," he thought. Tim checked how long he'd taken to develop the new habit. It was the end of May, so it had been 31 days. He couldn't wait to tell Jim that he'd been wrong. But mostly, he was proud of what he had achieved. And that brings us to the end of today's episode. If you have heard all the banging and the whirring and the menagerie of bird sounds in the background, you would be forgiven for thinking that I'm working in the construction of a new zoo. But no, I'm sat in my studio and this is the struggle that I have to deal with. And hopefully, it hasn't put you off. So, I look forward to tickling your eardrums once again tomorrow. If you did enjoy this session, please take a moment to leave a like, a rating, or a review. And don't forget to recommend The English Like a Native Podcast to your English-learning friends. Until tomorrow, take very good care, and goodbye!