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

  • Are you ready to expand your vocabulary with pictures?

  • Let's do it.

  • The more words you know, the easier it will be to express yourself and feel like yourself

  • in English.

  • Today I have a special treat for you.

  • I've prepared over 70 pictures in 10 different categories, so that you can really express

  • yourself in different areas in life.

  • It's really important to be able to look around you and talk about what you see in English.

  • I hope that these vocabulary words that you learn today will help to enrichen the words

  • that you can say and also the words that you can understand.

  • We're going to be taking a look at these pictures together.

  • You're going to see me small in the corner, while we talk about emotions, textures, housing,

  • weather, all these different categories and I'm going to share some useful expressions

  • for each category with you.

  • You're going to be able to look at the picture visually and know what I'm talking about.

  • I hope that it will help you to connect the word and also what you're seeing.

  • Alright, let's get started with the first category, which is actually our biggest category.

  • There are the most words for this one, and it's personality.

  • Let's get started.

  • All right, let's start with the first picture for the category of personality.

  • We're going to be going through all of these pictures pretty quickly, because there's a

  • lot to say.

  • Feel free to write down in a notebook any new words that you hear.

  • When I look at this picture, I see everyone is not smiling and because their arms are

  • crossed, because the way that they're standing, they seem snobby, stuck up, maybe too cool.

  • Sometimes we use the full expression too cool for school.

  • It's just a slang expression that means you think that you are better than the situation.

  • "I am too cool to smile in this picture."

  • These people don't look like really friendly folks.

  • We could use those expressions snobby, stuck up, too cool.

  • This is Napoleon Bonaparte.

  • Of course, it's not the real Napoleon, but it's someone who's play acting him.

  • If we are to talk about Napoleon's personality, we might say that he was a bold, brash, sensitive

  • to criticism, and a way that we can say that in one word is touchy.

  • If someone corrected him, I imagine that he might be a little bit upset, maybe a little

  • bit angry.

  • We could say that he was touchy, he was sensitive to criticism.

  • If you've ever seen Star Wars, you know who these two people are.

  • This is...

  • I guess they're not really people.

  • This is Chewie or Chewbacca and he is a loyal friend to Han Solo who is the other guy.

  • For Chewbacca, we could say that first of all, he's loyal but also we can use the expression

  • a softy, he is a softy.

  • That means that on the outside he looks scary, but on the inside, really he's just a nice

  • guy.

  • He's a softy.

  • As for Han Solo, if you've seen these movies, you know that he is also like Napoleon, bold

  • and brash, but also he's a bit of a scoundrel.

  • Scoundrel is someone who doesn't follow the rules.

  • Maybe they don't really care what other people think.

  • They just want to be risky or just do something for money, do something for adventure.

  • He's also pretty adventurous.

  • But even though he's a scoundrel, he's the scoundrel we all want to be.

  • A final expression we can use to describe Han Solo is cocky.

  • Cocky means someone who is certain that they will succeed, even though they might not succeed.

  • It's overly confident.

  • In this situation, in these movies, Han Solo is often cocky.

  • "Of course, I can do it.

  • Of course, I'm the best guy for this project."

  • This is overly confident or cocky.

  • Here you see the three famous friends from the Harry Potter book series and movie series.

  • Hermione, Ron and Harry.

  • Let's start with Hermione, who is the girl.

  • Hermione at least at the beginning of the series, she is a smarty pants.

  • This means that she's smart, but she also wants everyone to know that she's smart.

  • This isn't really a popular characteristic.

  • Usually people don't like other people who are smarty pants.

  • If you're smart, that's great, but just don't be a smarty pants.

  • At the beginning she is also a know-it-all.

  • This has a similar meaning that she thinks she knows it all.

  • Maybe she does.

  • She does know a lot.

  • She knows a lot more than the other people her age, especially school-related knowledge.

  • But it's not a very popular characteristic.

  • You don't want someone to say you are a know-it-all.

  • Negative.

  • We can also say that she is a goody two shoes.

  • This is a weird idiom, but it means that she's a rule follower and she's not willing to really

  • go outside of the rule.

  • She's worried about getting in trouble.

  • She's a goody two shoes, she always follows the rules.

  • Of course, if you have read the books or watch the movies, you know that her character evolves

  • and changes throughout the different books.

  • She's not like that throughout the whole series.

  • But this picture is from the beginning of the series, and that's how she's portrayed.

  • Our second character Ron, the guy in the middle, we can see from the look on his face, that

  • he is definitely a worry-wart.

  • Or we could just say a worrier.

  • He worries about a lot of things.

  • He worries that he's going to get in trouble, that his friends are going to get hurt, he's

  • worried that he's going to get kicked out of school.

  • He's worried about a lot of things.

  • Even though he's not naturally bold, he often tries to be bold because he's a loyal friend.

  • But he is a worrier.

  • As for Harry, the hero of the story, he is certainly considered brave.

  • But also I feel like he has a strong sense of duty.

  • When he was a small child, he had his destiny created for him.

  • He didn't really have a choice about what he was going to do in his life.

  • I imagine pretty much everyone knows the story of Harry Potter at this point, but I don't

  • want to spoil it too much.

  • But we could say he has a sense of duty, he has something he needs to accomplish, and

  • he's going to do it.

  • This is a strong sense of duty.

  • Next we have a picture of the famous couple John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

  • John Lennon is firstly famous because he was part of the group the Beatles.

  • He is a charismatic person.

  • When he speaks and when he does things, others want to follow him.

  • He's charismatic.

  • Of course, he's also peace-loving.

  • He was wanting peace in the world, but at the same time, we can look at a negative side

  • of that and say that he needs to be needed.

  • He really wants other people to need him.

  • In this way, it's a cycle.

  • Because you want other people to follow your message, but you also need their approval.

  • In this way he kind of needed to be needed.

  • As for his partner, Yoko Ono, she was more of a utopian dreamer.

  • She had some dreamy ideas, some maybe unrealistic ideas about peace and the earth and we could

  • say that she was a utopian dreamer.

  • This isn't always a negative thing.

  • It's not really grounded in reality, but it's just a way to talk about someone's personality.

  • Next, we have two characters from the movie Titanic.

  • If you have not seen this, then you should probably watch it to just understand something

  • important from our culture in the last decade or two.

  • But here the female character who is played by Kate Winslet, she is seen as someone who's

  • ahead of her time.

  • That means that other women, during this time period, just wanted to marry a rich guy.

  • They didn't really have their own dreams and their own thoughts.

  • At least they tried to hide those things if they had them, but for Kate's character, she

  • wanted to really be herself.

  • In this way, we could say that she was ahead of her time.

  • Ironically, she still ends up with a guy, maybe not some rich guy who all of her friends

  • were also going for, but it's still goes back to that stereotypical idea.

  • We might also say that she was adventurous.

  • She didn't care what other people thought.

  • She was willing to just live on the edge.

  • As for Leonardo DiCaprio's character Jack, he is seen as more someone who is optimistic.

  • He has nothing to lose.

  • He is a dreamer.

  • He really doesn't think much about the future.

  • He just went on the Titanic and, "Okay, I'm going to a new country.

  • I don't know what's going to happen.

  • Let's see."

  • He has no plan.

  • But he's still hopeful that good things will happen which is the characteristic of someone

  • who's optimistic.

  • Next we have Martin Luther King Jr or MLK.

  • He was a famous leader during the Civil Rights Movement in the US.

  • Because he was the face of the movement, many people knew his face.

  • They knew his speeches.

  • He was we could say, willing to put himself out there.

  • This means that he was willing to take a risk he was willing to get outside his comfort

  • zone.

  • In the end, he paid the ultimate price because he was assassinated, but in this situation,

  • he wanted his message to be heard.

  • Like Napoleon, like John Lennon, he was courageous, brave and charismatic.

  • He was determined that his message would get heard.

  • But he was also willing to put himself out there.

  • Our final picture for the category of personality is Forrest Gump.

  • If you haven't seen this movie featuring Tom Hanks, stop everything.

  • Watch it right now.

  • It is amazing.

  • But this character of Forrest Gump can be described as simple, straightforward.

  • He says what he says.

  • He means what he says.

  • There's no confusing language about what he says.

  • If he likes something, he says it, if he doesn't like it, he says he doesn't like it.

  • He's very straightforward in this way.

  • We can also say he is naive.

  • Naive is usually a character trait that we associate with children.

  • This means that they're innocent, but also maybe they are in a difficult or risky situation

  • and they think, "Everything's going to be fine.

  • Nothing bad will happen."

  • In this movie, a lot of possibly bad things can happen to Forrest Gump and he doesn't

  • really feel fear.

  • He feels like, "Okay, I'm just going to do this.

  • I'm just going to give it a try and hopefully it will be okay."

  • This is naive sense.

  • But everything good happens to him pretty much in the movie.

  • He's a very lucky guy.

  • Our second category is emotions.

  • You're going to hear a lot of words that are synonyms.

  • That means that they mean the exact same thing.

  • There are different ways to describe the same feeling.

  • In this picture, people are excited, overjoyed, ecstatic.

  • Someone is getting married, I imagine it's probably the guy in the middle with his fist

  • in the air.

  • Everyone here is having a great time.

  • We could use those three synonyms, excited, overjoyed, ecstatic to describe this picture.

  • In this picture, we see two ladies kindly listening to whatever this guy has to say.

  • We could say that they are interested in what he has to say.

  • They're curious about what he has to say.

  • They're thoughtful.

  • This means that they are thoughtfully listening.

  • It's kind to listen when other people are speaking.

  • They are thoughtful people.

  • On the other hand, we have these two people who look concerned, irritated, annoyed.

  • All three of these things mean the same thing.

  • Look at their face.

  • Neither of them are smiling.

  • Their brow is furrowed.

  • They're not talking together.

  • Yes, their arms are touching but they look like there's been some problem.

  • They're concerned, annoyed, irritated.

  • In my opinion, these two kids seem carefree, relaxed, joyful.

  • Make sure that when you're describing the emotions of kids, you don't say careless.

  • Careless and carefree seem like they should have the same meaning, but children are carefree.

  • They are free of any kind of worry, they're free of any kind of cares.

  • Hopefully that would be the ideal childhood.

  • But when you say careless, that means that you often forget something.

  • "Oh, she's so careless.

  • She always leaves her notebook at home.

  • She's careless."

  • These have quite different meanings, but in this situation, these kids seem carefree.

  • Does this guy look happy to you?

  • Not really.

  • He seems either worried, bored, or maybe he's just somewhere else.

  • When we say he is somewhere else, that means that his body is here, but his mind is thinking

  • about something else.

  • If someone says, "Wait, did you hear what I said?"

  • You say, "Oh, I'm sorry, I was somewhere else."

  • This probably means that you were thinking about another problem or what you're going

  • to do later.

  • Your mind wasn't here, it was somewhere else.

  • This guy also looks like he's got some problems.

  • We could say he looks upset.

  • He looks defeated.

  • Maybe he thought something good was going to happen and then it didn't.

  • He feels defeated, or he might simply be frustrated.

  • "Oh, I can't believe this is happening.

  • I feel frustrated."

  • He might be any of those three things.

  • Our final picture in this category emotions, these two guys look lost, confused, or baffled.

  • Baffled means they have no idea what's going on.

  • They're lost.

  • All of these things have similar meanings.

  • Maybe they're trying to walk around a new city, and they thought the bus was going to

  • come and then it didn't come or maybe it just drove right by.

  • "Huh, what?

  • Why did this happen?

  • I feel baffled.

  • I feel confused.

  • Why did this happen?"

  • Our third category is textures.

  • Or we could talk about the general feeling of something that might not be the physical

  • feeling but I use the word texture to cover this whole category.

  • Here you can see a clothing shop or a fabric shop.

  • There are a lot of different textures here.

  • We might say, "This looks soft."

  • Or, "It looks flowy."

  • Flowy means if the wind blows, then it will go up with the wind.

  • We often use this to describe curtains.

  • The curtains are flowy.

  • The things you put in the window.

  • Or maybe, "Her dress is flowy.

  • The bottom of it moves with the wind."

  • Or we could say that something here is this thick texture.

  • Here this blanket or maybe this wool blanket, they are thick.

  • The texture is thick, it feels like it's something that would be useful in the wintertime.

  • In this room, we get the feeling that there are a lot of smooth textures.

  • This couch doesn't have dog hair on it, it's not been ripped up.

  • It's all one yellow color.

  • It's smooth.

  • We can also talk about the feeling of the room.

  • We could say, "It feels airy," because there's a lot of natural sunlight that's coming in

  • and there's not a lot of heavy bookshelves or heavy furniture in the room, we could say,

  • "It feels airy."

  • You could simply use the word clean to say, "This is an extremely clean room."

  • Or, "There's clean lines.

  • This bookshelf is pretty unique.

  • There are some clean lines.

  • The couch has some clean lines."

  • It's the texture.

  • When I look at this picture, I get the opposite feeling as the previous picture.

  • It's not smooth and airy.

  • Instead, it looks scrappy, rough, abrasive, these different textures, especially here

  • in his vest, that might be a scratchy rule.

  • It might be abrasive.

  • It might be rough.

  • All of these different kinds of feelings and textures we're getting in this picture are

  • the opposite of the previous one.

  • It's not smooth and airy and light.

  • No, instead it's a little bit rough and abrasive.

  • In this picture, you see an art project there's a pumpkin with some colored paint on it.

  • We could say that it's bumpy.

  • If you touched that paint, it would be bumpy.

  • Or we could say, "The pumpkin has ridges has ridges."

  • I want you to know the difference between something that is rigid, and something that

  • has ridges.

  • The pumpkin has ridges, but if something is rigid, R-I-G-I-D, that means that it's stiff.

  • It doesn't move.

  • "When the deer saw the car, the deer became rigid, it didn't move."

  • Also in this picture because this is a paint or glue, as the paint is drying, you might

  • say it's sticky.

  • The texture is sticky.

  • Here's another craft project.

  • We could say, "It is metallic.

  • The texture of these chains is metallic."

  • Also, it's flat.

  • The texture is flat because these buttons don't really have ridges, like the pumpkin.

  • Instead, it's pretty flat and it seems durable.

  • These pieces don't seem breakable.

  • If this chain is taken off of this art project or these buttons are taken off, you can't

  • easily break them.

  • They're durable.

  • That's the texture.

  • Here we see a snail.

  • Some people love snails, some people don't.

  • I think they're pretty cool.

  • I don't really want to hold them because they are sticky, slimy, gooey, or if we want to

  • be a little more casual, you could say goopy.

  • You can use this for talking about food.

  • You can use this for talking about snails.

  • But it's that idea that it's sticky, slimy, gooey or goopy.

  • For the first picture talking about colors, let's take a look at this picture.

  • We can see that the water is a beautiful aqua color.

  • Aqua, or we could talk about the sand and say it is pure white.

  • Yes, there's some variation here.

  • Maybe it's a little tan.

  • Maybe it's a little bit speckled with some shells, but overall it is a pure white.

  • As for the sky, this is a funny expression, but we often just say it's sky blue.

  • To describe a blue you could say, "It is a clear blue sky."

  • Yes, of course.

  • Or, "It's pure blue sky."

  • But the color of the sky can be described as, "Its sky blue."

  • You could say, "Her shirt is sky blue."

  • It's that light, beautiful pure blue color.

  • We can describe this bird by saying, "It's made of primary colors."

  • Do you know what the three primary colors are?

  • Red, yellow, and blue.

  • With these three colors, we can make all other colors.

  • They're called primary colors.

  • This bird is made of primary colors.

  • These kids have wonderful colors on.

  • This boy's pants are Maroon.

  • This boy's shirt can be called...

  • Do you remember?

  • Sky blue, or his pants can be called light blue.

  • You might say his shirt is light blue too, but if we wouldn't be a little bit more specific,

  • we can say sky blue and light blue.

  • For her shirt, you could say bright pink, or depending on how you feel, you might even

  • just say light pink.

  • You can see here we often use bright and light or dark to describe other colors.

  • You can use those adjectives with color and it will help you to expand your vocabulary.

  • In this picture, their skirts are salmon pink, the color of the fish salmon, we often used

  • to describe color.

  • Salmon pink, or we could say light blue for their shirts.

  • What about these shirts that are darker blue.

  • We often call this royal blue.

  • It's a really bright, vibrant color.

  • It's beautiful.

  • It's a royal blue.

  • For the yellow, we could say it's gold or you could just simply say it's yellow.

  • Here's a lovely table spread with different types of food.

  • We can describe the color of this lobster by saying he is burnt red.

  • This is when you burn food.

  • Usually it becomes black, right?

  • But we often use burnt red to talk about this kind of dark, rich red color.

  • Burned red, or we could say rust red, because it's the color of rust.

  • What about this food, these muscles, I would just call them cream.

  • It's a cream-colored muscle.

  • Funnily enough, these olives can be described as olive green.

  • If you have a shirt or if you have a wall or something else, that's this color, you

  • could say, "It's an olive green shirt."

  • Or, "I forgot my coat.

  • Can you grab it?

  • It's olive green."

  • So that someone knows which coat to get.

  • It's olive green.

  • For the different types of brown, we often just say, light brown and dark brown.

  • These walnuts are light brown and these Brazil nuts are dark brown.

  • We've got some different options here, but we can just use light and dark to describe

  • them.

  • In this famous painting, we can describe the red using a familiar word you just learned,

  • burnt red.

  • It's that dark rich burnt color.

  • Or in this situation, it almost looks like orange.

  • We could say orangey red, or orangish red.

  • When you're trying to combine two colors like orange and red, we can either put a Y at the

  • end of it, or I-S-H.

  • You could say bluish green, or bluey green.

  • Usually we say blueish.

  • That's more common.

  • Bluish green, we could say orangish green or orangish red I guess for two similar colors

  • when you're trying to talk about something that's in the middle.

  • For the green, I would call this, especially this darker green, forest green.

  • The forest, the woods is this beautiful dark green color.

  • But if you want to be a little more descriptive than just dark green, you could say forest

  • green.

  • As for the yellow, I would say this is a pleasant shade of yellow.

  • Pleasant is obviously a personal preference word.

  • Maybe you don't think it's pleasant.

  • Maybe someone else thinks it is pleasant.

  • But you can use this to describe any color.

  • "It's just a pleasant shade of red.

  • It's just a pleasant shade of yellow."

  • Just means in general, this is a pleasing color.

  • Next, let's go on to our category of weather.

  • In this picture, there's a lot of waves, but people are still enjoying the weather.

  • I would say it is sunny, warm and windy.

  • Simple words, but you know what, sometimes we stick with those when we're describing

  • things.

  • Sunny, warm and windy.

  • The opposite of the previous picture, here, there is a downpour.

  • We might even say, "It's a nasty day."

  • This means it's not a day where you're going to go out for a walk.

  • You're probably not even going to get an umbrella and a raincoat because it's not going to be

  • an enjoyable experience, it's raining too much.

  • It's a nasty day.

  • Or if you look out the window, and you see this, you might say, "It's really coming down.

  • It's really coming down."

  • What is it?

  • The rain.

  • When you say, "Oh, it's really coming down out there.

  • I think I'm going to need to drive to work instead of riding my bike."

  • That means it's raining a lot.

  • Another type of weather that you wouldn't really want to take a walk in, I would say

  • this is gloomy weather.

  • It could be the middle of the day.

  • I don't know.

  • It looks so dark though, that it feels gloomy because there's dark clouds.

  • We might also say simply that there's a thunderstorm.

  • There's also lightning, but we often just say thunderstorm.

  • We don't really say, "There's a lightning storm."

  • Because usually thunder goes with lightning, so we just say it's a thunderstorm.

  • Or if you don't see the lightning yet, you only see the dark clouds, you can say, "It

  • looks threatening."

  • Threatening.

  • Who is threatening you in this situation?

  • It's really just the sky looks like it is probably going to have terrible weather.

  • If you're hiking and some big dark clouds come in, you might say, "It looks threatening.

  • We need to go home.

  • We can't go up this mountain because it looks too threatening."

  • This looks like a lovely fall day to me.

  • It is cool, crisp, and partially cloudy.

  • There's a lot of blue sky but it's also cloudy too.

  • When we say that a day is crisp, if you live somewhere that has four seasons, winter, spring,

  • summer and fall, then you have experienced this crisp, usually dry, beautiful feeling

  • of fall.

  • If you live somewhere that doesn't have four seasons, then that might be a new sensation

  • to you, the having a cool, crisp fall day.

  • This picture is not partially cloudy.

  • Instead, because we're looking at a city, I would say, "It's smoggy."

  • You might say, "It's foggy."

  • Foggy is from natural occurrences, because the air is cooler or warmer.

  • But really if this is created because of pollution, then you can say, "It's smoggy."

  • Or you might use not just one word, but you could use the phrase, "The air is thick."

  • That means when you go outside, it's not really that the air is tangible that you can touch

  • it and it's thick, but instead it just feels like that.

  • "Ah, the air, there's so much in the air that it feels like it's thick."

  • Unfortunately this winter, this did not happen to my city.

  • We had a really warm winter but if this happened to you, or if you visited somewhere that had

  • a really big snowstorm like this, you could say, "It's bitterly cold."

  • If it's more than cold, and you're wrapped up and you're really hurrying to your next

  • destination, it is not a pleasant type of cold.

  • You could say, "It's bitterly cold."

  • I imagine that this picture is also in the dead of winter.

  • You might say, "It's the dead of winter."

  • That means the middle of winter.

  • You've passed half of winter, but you still have half of winter to go.

  • It's the dead of winter.

  • Let's go to our sixth category, which is nature.

  • Here we have a really beautiful scene, I would love to visit this spot.

  • We can call it a rocky outcrop.

  • That means that rocks are coming out of the water and it's an island you could say, "It's

  • a peninsula connected to the mainland."

  • It looks like maybe it's connected at the bottom a little bit.

  • It's a peninsula.

  • Or you could just say, "It's a rocky outcrop."

  • That means it's small, it's mostly made of rocks, and it's in the water.

  • Also around this rocky outcrop, as usual for most rocky outcrops, there are cliffs.

  • Straight down, not safe, stay away from them.

  • There are cliffs all around this rocky outcrop.

  • In this picture we can see snow-peaked mountains in the distance.

  • Down at the bottom, there's not snow, but at the top, at the peak, there is snow.

  • We can say, "There are snow-peaked mountains."

  • In the foreground, in the front of this picture, we can say, "There's an evergreen forest."

  • It's something that is green throughout the year.

  • During the winter it's green, during the summer it's green.

  • It's a beautiful evergreen forest.

  • I would love to go here looks like some people are riding their horses.

  • Seems like paradise, right?

  • This is a treeless rocky mountain ridge.

  • The Ridge is the top part and it's treeless.

  • There are no trees maybe because of the elevation, maybe because of some other things that happened.

  • But it's a treeless rocky mountain ridge.

  • We can also say, "There are mountains as far as you can see."

  • You look into the distance and all you see are mountains.

  • As far as you can see, there are mountains.

  • Another wonderful destination, you can see another rocky outcrop, or just some rocks

  • or a rocky formation coming out of the water.

  • We can say, "There is a chair on the beach."

  • This is the beach.

  • I know there's a lot of different words to describe the beach, the shore, the coast,

  • but they all have slightly different meanings.

  • Here, the chair is on the beach.

  • If we said, "The chair is on the shore," we don't really use this that much in American

  • English.

  • The shore is often the place where the water comes up.

  • Directly where there's water, that's the shore.

  • Here, the beach is the sandy area.

  • We use this to describe the place in general, "I'm going to the beach."

  • Maybe you're just going to the general area where there is the ocean and the sand.

  • Maybe you're not really going to sit on the sand.

  • Maybe you're just going to go shopping.

  • But you might call that whole area, the beach.

  • "I'm going to the beach."

  • Here is a lush jungle.

  • Lush means thick.

  • It's hard to see through, you don't know what's there.

  • It is a lush jungle.

  • This house also seems to be isolated.

  • You might live somewhere that's isolated, you might go somewhere that's isolated.

  • You could even feel isolated away from other people.

  • But we can say here that this is an isolated location in the jungle.

  • If you've ever been in the jungle, you know that they're usually humid.

  • This is not a dry place.

  • Because it's lush.

  • We imagine there's lots of moisture in the air, which is called humidity.

  • You could say, "I had a great vacation.

  • It was so humid though.

  • We went to an isolated cabin in the lush jungle, but it was so humid that I had a hard time

  • going outside of the air conditioning for a long time.

  • I'm not used to this type of weather.

  • It was humid."

  • On the other hand, we have an arid landscape.

  • This is extremely dry.

  • We could say it's in need of water.

  • You might simply say, "I'm in need of water.

  • I'm really thirsty.

  • I'm in need of water."

  • This tree looks like it's in need of water.

  • The land is in need of water, because it's an arid landscape.

  • All of these plants I hope, are probably local plants.

  • They're used to living in this extremely dry desert type of climate, but occasionally they

  • do need water.

  • When I see this picture, my first feeling is, "Wow.

  • This is powerful Mother Nature."

  • This volcano and no one can stop.

  • Hopefully you can predict a little bit, but Mother Nature, which is what we use to describe

  • nature in general sometimes is powerful.

  • It is an unstoppable force.

  • We can also see some lights at the bottom and that tells me that there are humans living

  • here.

  • We might say, "The volcano, it is a looming volcano."

  • Or, "It is looming over the village."

  • This has a dangerous sense.

  • It's threatening the villagers, it's threatening the people, we don't know when it's going

  • to explode.

  • It is looming over the village.

  • You could use this to describe people too like, "Ah, the teacher is always looming over

  • us."

  • We don't use it for people as much, but we can use it in that same dangerous, ominous,

  • threatening sense.

  • For our seventh category, we're going to be talking about cities and how to describe different

  • aspects of a city.

  • This is the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where I was born.

  • I spent just a couple years at the beginning of my life here.

  • But I have a lot of family who still lives there.

  • We could say, "We're looking at the skyline."

  • This means the overall view of the city from up on a hill usually, or maybe on a tower,

  • you can see the skyline.

  • This city is also built on a river.

  • In fact, this city is built on three rivers, but most big cities are built on a river.

  • It's just practical, especially a long time ago, they needed rivers for industry for survival.

  • A lot of cities are built on a river or built on several rivers.

  • Because there are rivers, we need bridges to cross the rivers.

  • We can say, "There are a lot of bridges that span the river."

  • They go across the river or we can use one word and simply say, "The bridges span the

  • river."

  • This is a lovely outdoor cafe on the corner.

  • It seems like a busy area.

  • There's a lot of people walking around.

  • Because it's a busy area, it's a good place to people watch.

  • Have you ever been people watching before?

  • It's like bird watching, but you just watch people walk by.

  • If you've never done this, it's pretty fun.

  • It's not rude or intrusive, especially if you're somewhere like this that's really public.

  • You just sitting back, enjoying a cup of coffee, a cup of tea, and you're just watching people

  • walk by enjoying being part of the city.

  • You are people watching.

  • It's not pretty, but there are parts like this in every city.

  • We can call this an alley, or we could say it's an alleyway.

  • It's like a small street, between houses or between buildings.

  • Usually you probably don't want to walk there at night because we can say, "It's sketchy."

  • Or, "It's a little risky."

  • Because there's a lot of trash here, I imagine that this is just no place where all of the

  • trash bins are, but we could also say, "It's grungy."

  • Or if we're to describe the whole area of town, maybe that whole area is a little bit

  • full of trash, it's not very well taken care of.

  • We could say, "It's a grungy side of town."

  • That's a polite way to say it's a dirty, dangerous area.

  • But you could just say grungy.

  • This is a typical view in the suburb of the US.

  • We could say, "It's a suburban setting."

  • These houses don't have much land, they're side by side.

  • Sometimes when you're trying to buy a house, or when you're talking about housing, you

  • might say, "The houses are built on a postage stamp."

  • A postage stamp is what you put on the letter when you send it in the mail.

  • That's really small, right?

  • It has to be this big and it goes on your envelope.

  • But when you say a house is built on a postage stamp, it means that the land is extremely

  • small and they're close together.

  • Usually it's seen as a negative thing when you use that expression, but it could just

  • be a way to describe the area of town.

  • Yeah, that area is really close to town, land is expensive, all of the houses are built

  • on a postage stamp.

  • Also, you can see some cars parked on the street.

  • There aren't...

  • I don't really see maybe there's one garages, or driveways where people can park.

  • We call this just street parking.

  • "There is street parking where I live.

  • I always have to look for a spot."

  • Or maybe if you're trying to go to a local restaurant and there's no parking lot nearby,

  • you might tell your friends, "Hey, there's only street parking, so try to arrive early

  • because you're going to have to look around for parking.

  • It's a little tough to find a spot because there's only street parking."

  • Here you can see a lovely night skyline I believe this is Tokyo.

  • A night skyline.

  • This is an urban setting.

  • The previous picture was suburban.

  • That means somewhere where people live, it's mainly residential.

  • But here we have an urban setting that is a bustling metropolis.

  • We often use the adjective bustling, which means extremely busy.

  • There's lots of movement to describe city's, busy cities.

  • It's a bustling metropolis.

  • Metropolis is a huge city.

  • I would not at all, describe the city where I live as a metropolis.

  • It is just a city, maybe even a town.

  • But Tokyo is certainly a metropolis.

  • It's huge.

  • It's bustling.

  • There's a lot going on.

  • For our eighth category food, there are really endless words we can use to describe food.

  • This is just a limited view of a couple of those.

  • But here we have a wonderful scene.

  • I want the scene to be in front of me every day, but maybe that would be a little dangerous

  • for my health.

  • Well, we can say, "Here are some sweets.

  • Here are some breads.

  • Here are some pastries, probably in a bakery."

  • There's a lot of different words we can use to describe sweet bread foods.

  • Sweets, breads, pastries from a bakery.

  • Before those pastries are finished, this has to happen.

  • Here are some bakers and they are letting the dough which is the uncooked bread, they're

  • letting the dough rise, important thing, they are kneading the dough which means pounding

  • it and smashing it, kneading the dough.

  • Because this is not just for their house for their family, this is for a bakery, for a

  • shop, they are making it in bulk.

  • In bulk means a large quantity.

  • There are a lot of different loaves of bread that are being made.

  • They're making it in bulk.

  • We often use this expression when you go to the grocery store, and instead of buying rice

  • in a bag, you can go to the bulk section and there's some big containers and you bring

  • your own bag or they have some paper bags available, and you pull a little handle and

  • you can get as much rice as you want.

  • There's some alternatives, pre-bagged or in bulk, and that's what they're doing.

  • They're baking bread in bulk.

  • Have you ever eaten bugs before?

  • I have one time but I've never eaten crickets.

  • These could be described as crunchy, possibly spicy, unusual, but we can also say that it's

  • an adventurous food.

  • You might say, "I'm an adventurous eater," talking about your own self, your own type

  • of taste.

  • "I'm an adventurous eater.

  • Sure, I like to try adventurous foods."

  • These are foods that don't seem normal to a lot of people.

  • You're going to get out of your comfort zone and try them.

  • This meat I imagine some kind of steak is sizzling, it is grilled.

  • Sizzling is the sound that you hear.

  • Grilled is what's happening.

  • It is being grilled on this type of grill.

  • Because there is red inside of it, it's not bleeding, but it's pretty red.

  • Still, we can say it's medium rare.

  • We've got a lot of different categories for meat, we could say, "It's rare," which is

  • very, very, very red, basically raw, maybe the outside is seared, a little bit briefly

  • cooked.

  • Then there's medium rare, medium, medium well and also well done.

  • There's different ways that you can have food cooked.

  • If you go to a restaurant, what I usually do when I'm ordering some meat I ask the server,

  • "What's recommended?

  • If they ask, "How would you like your steak cooked?"

  • Well, if it's lamb or some unusual meat that you haven't had before, or you haven't had

  • often, you could ask them, "What do you recommend?

  • What does the chef recommend?"

  • Usually I say, "Okay," to whatever they say for it because I don't want the meat to be

  • too cooked or undercooked.

  • There's important ways that we can have the meat and enjoy it at the same time.

  • This stew looks spicy, it looks hardy and filling.

  • Those two words mean the same thing.

  • Hardy and filling.

  • We do not say, "A salad is hardy."

  • A salad is usually light.

  • It is not hardy.

  • Hardy means lots of meat, probably lots of carbs like potatoes or rice or bread.

  • It is hardy and filling.

  • That means your stomach feels full when you're done.

  • It is hardy and filling.

  • This also looks pretty spicy for a stew.

  • What a lovely scene.

  • A towering pile of fruit.

  • Or we could say, "They look sweet."

  • Some of these are sour, and it's probably local fruit.

  • In the US, we don't really have scenes like this with a lot of variety all together in

  • a market.

  • I imagine this is probably somewhere where all of these fruits are grown locally.

  • We could say it's local fruit, or we could just use that for food in general.

  • "This is local food.

  • It comes from a destination or a farm that's close by the city where I live."

  • It's local.

  • These guys are doing food prep.

  • The word prep is short for preparation, but we often just say prep when we're talking

  • about food.

  • You might say, "I need to prep the meat before I cook it."

  • Maybe you're going to season it, maybe you're going to marinate it for a while.

  • "I need to prep the meat."

  • You could say, "I need to prepare the meat," but that sounds a little more serious.

  • Usually for cooking we just say, "I'm going to prep the ingredients in the morning.

  • That way when I come home from work, all I have to do is throw it in the bowl and I can

  • cook it.

  • I need to prep the food."

  • They are doing food prep.

  • This is also, I think this looks like a soup kitchen to me.

  • A soup kitchen is, they don't always serve soup, but a soup kitchen is a place that gives

  • food to people who don't have food, maybe homeless people, maybe people who are poor,

  • people who need food.

  • A soup kitchen provides food to people in need.

  • If you want to volunteer when... if you live in the US and you want to volunteer somewhere,

  • you might look for a local soup kitchen where you can volunteer.

  • Or if you need food, you can look for a local soup kitchen and you can go there and you

  • can eat the food, usually completely for free because this is a charity type of work.

  • We can also see this guy, he's cutting these onions into very small pieces.

  • This is called dicing.

  • There's a lot of words to talk about different cuts.

  • But when you cut something really small, you are dicing it.

  • Also in the this bowl, they are seasoning the meat.

  • They are seasoning, they're dicing, they're pouring the oil and they're probably going

  • to saute it.

  • I could talk for 10 hours about the different types of specific cooking expressions like

  • this.

  • Maybe I'll make that in another video.

  • Let me know if you'd like a video about that.

  • But that's what's happening in this video or in this picture.

  • For a knife category housing, we see a picture here of some apartments or some buildings

  • that are close together.

  • We can also say they are within shouting distance.

  • That means that if you shout, "Hey neighbor," that neighbor can hear you because your window

  • to the next window, it's not a very big space.

  • You can even use that expression within shouting distance for someone who's close to you in

  • the grocery store.

  • Or maybe if they're on the other side of the grocery store.

  • You might say, "Yeah, I saw you in the grocery store last week, but you weren't within shouting

  • distance, so I didn't say hi.

  • I didn't want to yell, 'Hey,' because you weren't within shouting distance."

  • That's not a specific measurement, of course, but it's just that idea.

  • We can also see a close line.

  • Notice the pronunciation for this word is very similar to just close the door, a close

  • line.

  • In fact, there are many close lines between the houses here.

  • I would call this a side street.

  • I know we already talked a little bit about cities and alleys and alleyways, but here

  • it's a side street.

  • This is not the main street.

  • But you could say, "Oh yeah, I live on a side street within shouting distance to all my

  • neighbors.

  • There's not much privacy."

  • This is a fun bird's eye view of the suburbs.

  • A lot of these houses look the same.

  • They look like they were probably built within the last 50 years, maybe less.

  • We could say, "It's a bird's eye view."

  • You're looking down like a bird, bird's eye view of the suburbs.

  • This is outside the city.

  • Or we can say it's far from town.

  • This isn't really a rural housing community.

  • There's too many houses for this to be rural.

  • But instead it's just the suburbs.

  • It's not in the middle of New York City.

  • It's outside the city.

  • Because a lot of these houses look the same, we often use the adjective cookie cutter.

  • Have you ever used a cookie cutter before?

  • When you make, for example 50 cookies in the shape of a star, you will use a metal or plastic

  • cookie cutter.

  • Pup.

  • Pup.

  • Pup.

  • Every single cookie will have the exact same shape.

  • Because you use a cookie cutter.

  • We use this as a negative term to describe houses.

  • The houses are all cookie cutter.

  • They don't have any unique qualities.

  • Every house looks almost the same.

  • They are cookie cutter houses or you could say, "It's just a cookie cutter neighborhood.

  • I don't want to live there.

  • I want to live somewhere that has more character or more history."

  • Or maybe you like cookie cutter neighborhoods because it's predictable.

  • This is a word that's often used to describe houses.

  • Here is a brick apartment building on a corner with some iron fire escapes.

  • Those stairs on the outside are just in case there's a fire and you can't go inside the

  • building to get out.

  • You need to go outside you can use the fire escape.

  • But these ones are probably iron or metal on the outside and iron fire escape on the

  • corner in this old brick apartment building.

  • Houses like this are common in the south of the US, especially in historic areas of each

  • city, because these are colonial style houses.

  • If you go on a road trip to the east, especially the east of the US, that's the oldest settled

  • area by Europeans, you're going to see some colonial style houses, we can call them estates.

  • Sometimes they are plantations, a plantation means that slaves used to work there in the

  • past, so there's probably a lot of land like a farm.

  • We could call them a mansion in the US.

  • Some other countries some of the languages have different definitions of the word mansion.

  • But in English, a mansion is a big amazing, beautiful house.

  • This is a mansion.

  • This house is a typical American suburban house.

  • It's got a big front lawn, lots of grass, it's got a nice front porch.

  • This is a pretty nice house.

  • It's got a flag, it looks a little bit sterile.

  • Sterile is not cookie cutter.

  • The houses in this neighborhood probably all look a little bit different.

  • But sterile means there's not many personal touches, so there's not a vegetable garden.

  • There's not toys out front for the kids to play with.

  • It just has a few plants, a couple trees and lots of grass.

  • In this way, it's a typical American suburban home.

  • For our final category, our 10th category, actions.

  • In this picture, we see people who are not paying attention instead, what's the opposite

  • of paying attention, they are zoning out.

  • This might be just a look on your face where you are not focusing or it could be that you're

  • looking at your phone, you're looking at a book, you're just closing your eyes or listening

  • to music.

  • You are trying to block out everything around you.

  • You are zoning out.

  • Maybe you are distracted.

  • They're not paying attention to what's going on.

  • But when you're on the subway, it's not a very big deal.

  • You can just zone out.

  • This picture makes me smile.

  • This guy is taking... we could even use the Spanish word siesta, taking a siesta.

  • Or in more casual terms, we could say, "He's taking a cat nap."

  • This is a short nap.

  • He's taking a break.

  • He's taking a cat nap.

  • We can also say, "He is precariously resting on his motorcycle."

  • Precarious means it's dangerous.

  • He could fall off.

  • He's not steady.

  • That's a wonderful adjective to use.

  • When something's not steady, it's precarious.

  • "Don't put your water glass at the edge of the counter.

  • It's too precarious.

  • It could fall off.

  • Instead, put your water glass in the middle of the counter somewhere far from the edges."

  • What a busy scene.

  • There's a lot of action happening here so we can say, "There is a lot of hustle and

  • bustle."

  • For popular public destinations like a train station or the middle of the city, we could

  • say, "There's so much hustle and bustle, it just makes me feel overwhelmed."

  • Or, "I love the feeling of the hustle and bustle of the city."

  • That's the action that's happening.

  • We can also say, "A lot of people are coming and going."

  • That means they are arriving and leaving.

  • A lot of people are coming and going because there's so much to do here.

  • There's a lot of hustle and bustle.

  • In this picture, these guys are working out.

  • You can say they are working out, they are exercising, but this trainer looks like she's

  • pretty serious.

  • We could say, "They are getting their butts kicked."

  • That means that she is making them work so hard that at the end of the workout, at the

  • end of the exercise, they're probably going to lay on the ground and go, "Oh, that was

  • so hard.

  • This was an intense exercise."

  • They could also say, "She is kicking our butts."

  • That means she's making us work really hard.

  • Or you could just say, "Wow, they are getting their butts kicked."

  • They are having to do a lot of exercises because this trainer is really serious.

  • On the other hand, these three people are taking a leisurely walk in the park.

  • Leisurely means they don't have a destination.

  • They don't need to be somewhere at a specific time they are taking a leisurely walk in the

  • park.

  • We can also substitute the word walk and say stroll.

  • They're taking a leisurely stroll in the park.

  • Or you could just say, "They are strolling in the park."

  • Just having a nice time walking around chatting, no agenda, nowhere to be, just enjoying the

  • day.

  • This is a similar picture, just a different setting.

  • These people are going for a walk, and they are also walking their dog.

  • Because this dog is not equal with the humans, you can say, "I'm walking the dog."

  • You would never say, "I'm walking my child."

  • You could say, "I'm walking my child to school."

  • That's fine.

  • You have a destination.

  • But if you just say, "I'm walking my child," feels like they're on a leash, like a dog.

  • But you can definitely say this for dogs, "I'm walking my dog."

  • They're going for a walk.

  • They're walking their dog.

  • What a sweet scene.

  • They are cuddling, snuggling and bonding.

  • Bonding means they are creating an important deep relationship.

  • When you cuddle or snuggle with someone, you are bonding with them.

  • This guy looks like he might be studying, he might be focusing, or he might simply be

  • watching a YouTube video.

  • We don't know.

  • But in this situation we could use any of these actions, studying, focusing, or just

  • watching a YouTube video.

  • This girl is not impressed with the food.

  • We could even say, "She is grossed out."

  • This is a really casual way to say she thinks the food is disgusting.

  • She is grossed out.

  • What is she physically doing here?

  • We could say, "She is spitting out the food."

  • "Bla.

  • Bla."

  • She's spitting it out, "Pooh, I don't like this.

  • I'm going to spit it out."

  • Finally to finish this actions category and this extremely long vocabulary lesson, these

  • guys are taking it easy.

  • They are basking in the sun.

  • Basking in the sun is not necessarily sunbathing, but they are basking in the sun.

  • They're enjoying the warmth of the sun.

  • They are swinging on a hammock.

  • I hope you have a chance to swing in a hammock sometime because it is extremely relaxing.

  • It's a wonderful thing to do at the beach, at your house, anywhere that you are just

  • to swing on a hammock.

  • How did you like this vocabulary expanding lesson with pictures?

  • I hope you enjoyed it and I hope that a lot of these words were new for you.

  • I recommend writing down the new words in a notebook trying to make a sentence with

  • them and integrating them into your daily conversations.

  • Now I have a question for you.

  • Write a comment in the comments below and answer, can you describe the colors and the

  • textures around you in your room?

  • Wherever you are, try to describe some of the colors, some of the textures that you

  • see.

  • I'm looking forward to reading your comments and also make sure that you read each other's

  • comments, to just review the things that we've learned.

  • Thanks so much for learning English with me and I'll see you again next Friday for a new

  • lesson here on my YouTube channel.

  • Bye.

  • The next step is to download my free e-book: "5 Steps To Becoming A Confident English Speaker".

  • You'll learn what you need to do to speak confidently and fluently.

  • Don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel for more free lessons.

  • Thanks so much.

  • Bye

Hi, I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.

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