Hello and welcome to The English Like a Native Podcast. My name is Anna and you're listening to Week 40, Day 5 of Your English Five a Day In this series, you are getting a healthy dose of English vocabulary every day of the working week from Monday to Friday. Because the healthy Five a Day keeps your vocabulary growing. I'm going off script here. I should not go off-script. I should stick to the format. Anyway, we are here to improve your listening skills and increase your vocabulary. So, stick with me for the next 15 minutes or so, and we will do just that. We start this exciting episode with the adjective dormant, dormant. We spell this D O R M A N T, dormant, dormant. If something is described as dormant, then it's inactive. Usually temporarily inactive. Meaning it could, at any point, become active again. So, it's not completely gone. It's not dead forever. It's just sleeping. Now, we usually use this adjective when talking about volcanoes, because volcanoes can remain inactive for a very long period of time and then suddenly become active once more. Here's an example sentence,"The volcano, though dormant for centuries, still poses a potential threat to the surrounding villages." Fantastic. I feel like I'm pretty dormant until I've had my coffee. I'm quite inactive in the morning and then once I've had my coffee, I wake up. Okay, let's move on to our next word. It is a verb this time and we have evacuate, evacuate. We spell this E V A C U A T E. Evacuate, evacuate. Notice how it sounds like there's a W in there. When I move from the U into the A jʊeɪt/,/jʊeɪt/. Evacuate. I always think those little details in pronunciation are really interesting. Okay. Let's find out what evacuate means. If you don't know, evacuate means to move people from a dangerous place and you move them to somewhere safe. So, every public building has some form of plan in place to evacuate people in case of a fire or some other emergency. Usually, when you start working for a new company, you will have to go through some sort of training to tell you the plan of evacuation. So, how will you evacuate the building in case of a fire. Here's another example sentence,"The authorities told the inhabitants of the area to evacuate due to flood warnings." Have you ever had to evacuate an area or a building? I have on a number of occasions, but only because of a drill, a fire drill. A drill is when you practise something. So, they do it sometimes without telling you. Other times they tell you that there's going to be a fire drill today. So not to panic and follow the plan, evacuate as you would normally. But I don't think I've ever had to evacuate. Actually, I have, I have, I have. I was in a very scary situation once, but that's a story for another time. Okay, so next on the list is the verb erupt, erupt. We spell this E R U P T, erupt, erupt. Now, to erupt means to explode. If we're talking about volcanoes, a volcano erupting is when the volcano explodes, and flames and lava and rocks come pouring out of it. The volcano erupts. But I could just as well erupt in a fit of anger if I was really, really cross and I can feel my anger building and building inside me. My face is going red and then suddenly I let the lid off and I erupt and start shouting and being a dinosaur,"roar!" Which I do occasionally do, if my children push me to the limit, I will occasionally erupt. I'm only human. I'm not proud of erupting, but you know, it happens to the best of us. Usually, when I haven't had my coffee and I've been dormant for a while, my children are being difficult and I can't cope, then I'll erupt and then I'll apologise and get some coffee and feel better. So here's an example sentence,"As the volcano hadn't erupted for millions of years, it was considered inactive." Next on the list, we have a noun. This is eruption, eruption. We spell this E R U P T I O N, eruption, eruption. The eruption is the moment when a volcano explodes when the flames and the rock come out of it. It's that moment. So we might say,"Did you see the eruption? Did you see the moment when the volcano erupted?""I didn't see the eruption, did you?" Here's another example,"The powerful volcanic eruption destroyed an entire region." Okay, last on our list today is an adjective and it is devastated, devastated. We spell this D E V A S T A T E D, devastated, devastated. To be devastated is to be destroyed. This could be used to describe a place that has been completely destroyed. The building was devastated. The town was devastated. The farm had been devastated. Or you could use it to describe a person. It's quite a common adjective to describe being or feeling completely destroyed. When you hear news that destroys you, that emotionally makes you break down. You know, sometimes we see bad news all the time. If you watch the news, read the papers, there's bad news all the time, but some news stories really touch a nerve, maybe because you have some connection to that story, to that place or to those people. And sometimes you can feel completely devastated by the news that you read or that you see. Sometimes you'll get personal news that's devastating. A family member has passed away. A friend has been involved in a terrible accident or you've lost your job or your house has got dry rot and it's going to cost thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds to repair. Money that you don't have. This kind of news can make you feel completely destroyed, can make you feel devastated. Here's an example sentence using devastated to describe a place,"Two years after the earthquake, the region remains devastated." Okay, so that's our five for today. Did you notice the theme? Can you guess what story time is going to be about? Okay, let's do a quick recap. We started with the adjective dormant, which means to be temporarily inactive, but capable of becoming active again. We had the verb evacuate, which is to move people from a dangerous place to somewhere safe. Then we had the verb erupt. When a volcano erupts it explodes with fire and rocks coming out of it. Then we had the noun eruption, which is the moment when a volcano explodes. And then we had the adjective devastated, which describes being completely destroyed. So, let's do this now for pronunciation purposes. Please repeat after me. Dormant. Dormant. Evacuate. Evacuate. Erupt. Erupt. Eruption. Eruption. Devastated. Devastated. Very good. Okay. How's your memory today? Have you had your coffee? Is your memory dormant? Let's do a little test of that memory then. What noun describes the moment when a volcano explodes? Eruption. Very good. And what verb would you use to describe moving people from a dangerous place to somewhere safe? Evacuate. Yes, fantastic. If a volcano hasn't experienced an eruption for quite a long time, what adjective would you describe this volcano with? It's inactive at the moment. It is... dormant, dormant. Very good. And what verb describes the volcano exploding? Erupt. Erupt. Nice and easy, yes. And finally, what adjective would you use to describe something that's been completely destroyed? Devastated. Absolutely, well done. Okay, listen out for these words once again in today's explosive storytime. Jaden had lived most of his life in the shadow of Mount St. Catherine, a dormant volcano on a Caribbean island. After studying geology in the USA, he had come back to the island to live with his family and study the volcano. His friends and family didn't understand his fascination with old rocks. But Jaden had developed a passion for volcanoes thanks to living next to one. Although it was dormant, he knew it could erupt again one day. It turns out that that day had come sooner than expected. While monitoring the volcano with his colleagues, they noticed signs of a possible eruption. There were more earthquakes happening. They spotted other signs too changes in the movement of heat and the size and shape of the ground around the volcano. The team shared their worries with the authorities, who didn't listen at first. After all, the volcano hadn't erupted since the last Ice Age. But in the Caribbean, people know the destruction that eruptions can cause. They had all seen what had happened on neighbouring islands. Jaden and his team continued to share warnings with the authorities. They recommended evacuating the main island. The inhabitants would have to travel to other islands nearby, taking only their most precious belongings with them. And this included Jaden and his family. As they left, they knew they might come back to a devastated island, with no home left. But it was for the best. Jaden hugged his mum and sister as they watched the island and the volcano get smaller and smaller as they sailed away. The volcano finally erupted just two days after the population had evacuated. Jaden was proud to have been part of the team that studied this eruption and helped evacuate the island. But he was sad to not have a home to go back to. And with that, we wrap up today's episode and Week 40. I do hope you've enjoyed this episode. If you have, then please take a moment to leave a like, a rating, and review. And don't forget to recommend The English Like a Native Podcast to your English-learning friends. Have a wonderful weekend. Until next time, take very good care and goodbye.