Name: Improve Your English Vocabulary: SHAPES
Uploaded: 2021-03-21T21:00:12.000Z
Duration: 21 min 54 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Present continuous

Hey, E, I see you're measuring yourself for a new suit, and I notice you have the descriptive

To-infinitive

A lot of times in English we use shapes to describe things.

For most students, they have the classic shapes: Square, circle, and triangle; and I'm going

to today teach you a few other shapes that we use, which are sometimes a combination

of shapes that we can use to accurately describe real-world things.

If you don't... if you don't know what I mean, give me a second; we're going to go to the

All right, so, E, you're going to get yourself a new suit, and it seems you have a cylindrical

body, and you're talking about your head is oval.

Well, I guess it is kind of egg-shaped, isn't it?

Okay, so let's look at the usual suspects: The square... sorry.

The circle, the square, and the triangle.

Many students say, you know: "Teacher, it's like a square; it's like a circle", they don't

We use "round" to describe something that's circular.

Oops, I just told you one of the words you're going to learn, but you'll see what I mean.

And these are pretty good for describing the world, but the world we live in aren't nice,

In fact, sometimes they're mixed, so I'm going to try to give you as much as I can.

And you see me looking around for objects I might be able to find in the real world

that you use every day that you can actually start going: "Wow, I can use my English and

it's actually... these strange words have real meaning."

So, let's look at the first one: A "cone".

So, when you look here, you put these two together-okay?-and they form this weird kind

of, I don't know... you might say... sometimes you've seen in the old movies when they would

They pulled me out, and my head was kind of like that.

I don't have anything for a cone, unfortunately.

But I know something all of you enjoy in the summertime.

And when you go for ice cream, you will say: "Can I have a blueberry ice cream, please?

And I want it on a cone", and they will give you a cone.

Didn't think I could do it, but there you go: Ice cream cone - that's the first one.

And, really, it is a circle with a triangle mixed together.

So let's look at the next one: "Semi-circle".

Well, if I'm from Jamaica, man, you know what I mean, because it's a patty.

A "patty" is a food in Jamaica, but a "semi-circle" is half a circle.

But I have a better one for you for that.

A lot of times when you have... because I do teach kids when I'm not here, and I want

them to sit down, I ask them to sit down in a semi-circle or a semi-circle, okay?

And it means they sit in a half-a-circle formation, so I can stand here and talk and then they

Because I don't want them behind me in a circular formation.

Another word for saying "semi-circle" is... to describe this, you would say: "semi-circular".

So, a semi-circle is what it is, but it's a semi-circular shape; half of a circle.

The next one I have something for you: A "cylinder".

In some cases what we have is things are mixed together in reality because you cannot get

just a square, and a triangular, or a circle shape.

A cylinder is: Take a square and pull it out, and then make it round, and you have a cylinder.

And I'm sure you're saying: "Okay, what are you talking about?

And if that's not good enough for you, your bottles of water are cylinders.

We cut them off at the ends, but it's a cylinder.

And for those of you, like my French friends, you'll know a cylinder that makes you very

You might even say this is a bit of a cone here, so we've got the two shapes together;

but really we're looking at the cylinder - it's round.

And that's why I said in many real-world objects we talk about, you would say: "But I wouldn't

And you're right, because you're going: "James, that's not really a cylinder."

I go: "It's not, but it is... it is cylindrical, like a cylinder."

You'll notice when we have the cylindrical and you go circular, they're descriptive,

so I'm giving you what it is - the shape.

Because if someone told me this is a cylinder, I'd say they're wrong.

If they told me it's cylindrical, I'd go: "Yeah, it's round, it's long.

It's a square that's been pulled, and it's got circles; it's cylindrical."

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Improve Your English Vocabulary: SHAPES

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