E012 A Fan Boy

Welcome to English with Kimberley.

In this episode, I want to talk to you about how we become more sophisticated in our English by joining sentences together.

– But it’s not just sentences, it’s thoughts too – however, that’s another podcast in the making.

Shall we have a little fun quiz to start with?

Which of these isn’t right?

a) I’m wearing some white cotton shorts, red ‘T’ shirt and black sandals.

b) Australia is sunny and amazingly?

c) Kangaroos can go forward yet can’t go backwards?

or d) We could catch a train or plane to Sydney?

Well, here’s the question again…

Which of these isn’t right?

a) I’m wearing some white cotton shorts, red ‘T’ shirt and black sandals.

b) Australia is sunny and amazingly?

c) Kangaroos can go forward yet can’t go backwards?

or d) We could catch a train or plane to Sydney?

So, did you get that it’s ‘b’ – ‘Australia is sunny and amazingly.’

Oh, by the way, some people think that kangaroos (and emus too) can’t go backwards, but Wikipedia suggests that they can – but only very rarely! Perhaps they are always seen on things like Australian passports because they are just Australian – rather than, the story about Australia is always going forward never backwards – or so the story goes.

But to get back to joining sentences together. The reason why ‘b’ is incorrect is because it is trying to join an adjective (that is, ‘sunny’) with an adverb (that is, ‘amazingly’).

So, do you know how we can make ‘b’, ‘Australia is sunny and amazingly’ work?

Yes, you’ve got it, we can change it to, ‘Australia is sunny and amazing’ – which are two adjectives: ‘sunny Australia’ and ‘amazing Australia’.

Anyway, if we have sentences and want to join them together we often used words like ‘for’, ‘and’, ‘nor’, ‘but’, ‘or’, ‘yet’ and ‘so’.

This can easily be remembered as ‘FANBOYS’.

If you want to know more about ‘FANBOYS’ just look it up on the internet – it’s spelt: F-A-N-B-O-Y-and-S – ‘FANBOYS’

So, to our fun final quiz:

What do think we call the picture on the front of an Australian passport?

Is it a…

a) hard cover?

b) shield of protection?

c) coat of arms?

or d) special design?

Let’s hear that again.

What do think we call the picture on the front of an Australian passport?

Is it a…

a) hard cover?

b) shield of protection?

c) coat of arms?

or d) special design?

Did you get ‘c’ – ‘a coat of arms’

A coat of arms is a picture that represents a country, an important family, organization or company.

Does your country have a coat of arms and do you know what it represents? Did you also notice that I just joined my definition of a coat of arms with ‘or’ and the question with ‘and’!

You can leave your feedback about this podcast on iTunes.

You can also find a script of this podcast at www.goaustralia.biz

I hope you have enjoyed this podcast and you’ll join me again.