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  • Vanessa: Hi, I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.

  • Do you have some technology?

  • Let's talk about it.

  • Do you have a smartphone?

  • Do you look at your smartphone every day, five times a day, 20 times a day, 200 times

  • a day?

  • Today, we're going to be talking about some important words to describe technology in

  • your life, but not only these items, we'll also be talking about some important phrases

  • and expressions or idioms that you can use to talk about your relationship to technology.

  • To help you with this, I have created a free PDF that you can download in the link below

  • this video.

  • This PDF includes all of the phrases, sample sentences and proverbs that we are talking

  • about today.

  • You can review it, download it, print it, study it, put it under your pillow to sleep

  • on.

  • I hope it will be a helpful tool to you.

  • All right, let's get started by talking about some common technology that you might have

  • in your life, in your house.

  • Maybe you're using it right now.

  • Let's start.

  • A computer.

  • I do a lot of work on the computer.

  • This is a desktop computer.

  • Actually, my husband, Dan, built this desktop computer and we have a screen to go with it.

  • Or maybe you have a laptop, a laptop.

  • We usually don't call this a notebook.

  • I think this can be a common mistake a lot of English learners make is they say, "I need

  • to get my notebook," or, "Let me write that on my notebook."

  • But really a notebook is with paper in English, this is a laptop, a laptop.

  • Sometimes I take my laptop to a coffee shop to do some work.

  • A tablet.

  • I don't have a tablet, but a lot of people like to play games on their tablet.

  • What about this?

  • This is a phone, a cell phone or a smartphone.

  • Sometimes the opposite of this, we call a dumb phone.

  • Do you remember those days?

  • Maybe you still have a dumb phone.

  • It's like a flip phone.

  • It can't access the internet.

  • All it can do is call and maybe send a text message.

  • But a smartphone can do almost everything.

  • So, you might say I rely on my smartphone a little too much sometimes.

  • A TV.

  • Sometimes we call this a smart TV.

  • I guess the other old TVs were dumb TVs, I don't know.

  • But we could say that I use a smart TV to stream TV shows and movies, this can be a

  • very useful feature for learning English.

  • You can stream some English movies or TV shows on a smart TV.

  • Do you have a smartwatch?

  • I don't, I have a dumb watch.

  • It just tells me the time.

  • But you might track your physical activity and other important notifications on your

  • smartwatch.

  • What about a game console?

  • Do you have a game console?

  • I don't, otherwise I would show you, but we might say that the teenager thinks he needs

  • the latest game console to play the latest video games.

  • So here we have a game console and video games.

  • All right, let's move on to our next category, which are some specific words dealing with

  • the phone.

  • If you want to talk about something that is always around us in English, it's important

  • to be able to describe your phone.

  • So, let's start.

  • If you are going into a meeting, it's important to turn off your phone.

  • So, we say to turn off or to turn on your phone, it makes the screen turn on and you

  • can start to get some sounds, which maybe is not good for a meeting or if you're watching

  • a movie, it's a good idea to turn off your phone during the movie, and then you can turn

  • it on later.

  • Let's talk about some of the different buttons.

  • To turn off or turn on your phone, you need to push the power button, the power button,

  • usually it's on the side.

  • The other buttons you might have are a volume button to make the volume higher or lower.

  • And your phone might have a charging port.

  • What do you put into the charging port?

  • This, you put your charger in the charging port, the charging port.

  • So, this is my charger and I put it in the charging port.

  • You might also have some other things here.

  • Like this is a headphone jack.

  • Let me show you how it works.

  • I have my headphones here.

  • Can you hear me?

  • I plug in my headphones to the headphone jack.

  • Some people call this an auxiliary cord or an auxiliary port, but I think most people

  • just say headphone jack, that's the hole and you put your headphones into the headphone

  • jack.

  • You could say I put it in or I plug it in.

  • I plug in my headphones and now the music is coming into my headphones.

  • It's a very useful feature so that you don't annoy other people with whatever you're listening

  • to.

  • It can be private.

  • You can plug in your headphones and listen to it privately.

  • If you don't have those fancy noise-canceling headphones, you might have just simple earbuds,

  • earbuds.

  • These earbuds have a wire, but nowadays a lot of people have wireless earbuds to listen

  • to music.

  • I think that's a lot more convenient.

  • You don't have to have a cord dangling around everywhere, but I just have the old-fashioned

  • ones with a cord.

  • These are ear buds for listening to music or whatever you'd like.

  • Some other features of my phone is that I have a screen protector on my phone.

  • Right now, it looks like there are some scratches on my phone, but actually it's the screen

  • protector.

  • The screen protector did its job, it protected my screen from getting a scratch.

  • Also, my phone case protects my phone, so we could call this just the case, my phone's

  • case, or we could say the case, the phone's case, this is for protecting my phone.

  • It's the case and the screen protector.

  • In my opinion, this is essential for every phone, because you are going to drop it, someone

  • else is going to drop it, something's going to happen.

  • And no one wants to pay a crazy amount to have their screen fixed.

  • Just get a screen protector, simple, easy way to protect your phone.

  • I guess this would be a good time if I was sponsored by a special screen protector company,

  • but I'm not.

  • I just think it's a good idea to get a screen protector.

  • All right, let's talk about some other features.

  • You might hear this sound.

  • What's that mean?

  • It means that you have a notification.

  • Personally, I hate notifications.

  • I have every single notification turned off on my phone.

  • Every sound turned off and I have to look at my phone to see if my family has messaged

  • me, that is the only notification that appears on my phone.

  • For every other, Facebook, social media notification, I have to go to the desktop computer because,

  • personally, I think that's one of the negatives, we'll talk about that in a minute, of social

  • media and of phones is that it's always disrupting our moment.

  • It's disrupting where we really are in life and making us go somewhere else in the phone.

  • So, for me, I like to turn off my notifications.

  • What about you?

  • Let me know in the comments.

  • All right, now let's go on and talk about some computer words.

  • These words also apply to a laptop, but we're going to be just looking at the computer here.

  • This is the screen, the screen.

  • Your laptop has a screen.

  • Your tablet also has a screen.

  • Hey, your phone has a screen too.

  • This is the screen.

  • And here I have the keyboard, the keyboard.

  • Because my husband Dan and I share an office, it's a little secret, we actually have two

  • keyboards, a little bit embarrassing to say, I guess, because I prefer one keyboard and

  • he prefers the other.

  • So, this is his keyboard.

  • When he's doing work on this computer, he uses this keyboard.

  • I think that the keys are too clunky and make too much noise.

  • So, I have a different keyboard that I like to use and I plug it in and use that one.

  • A little bit silly, but...

  • Oh, well, you got to make some concessions, right?

  • So, we have our screen, the keyboard, we have some speakers.

  • You can see the speakers here.

  • And in order to navigate around, you're going to need a mouse.

  • This is a mouse.

  • There are a couple of buttons on the mouse.

  • We call these the left click and the right click.

  • So, in the middle, you scroll.

  • So, you might see some directions when you're downloading a program, for example, it might

  • say, "Open the program and left click on start, or right click on start."

  • And that's what it's talking about.

  • Left click or right click.

  • So, if you know your left and your right, that would help.

  • But this is the mouse.

  • And we have a mouse pad, helpful for using the mouse.

  • If you are in the technological field, you might have a microphone, or this is an external

  • microphone.

  • You might just use the built-in microphone.

  • So, on your laptop, for example, there is a built in microphone.

  • You don't need to plug in a microphone for someone to hear you.

  • On your phone, there's a built-in microphone.

  • On your tablet, there's a built-in microphone.

  • On this desktop, there is not.

  • So, I need an external microphone and also for my job to make some beautiful sound recordings