Welcome to English as a Second Language Podcast,
number six. Welcome to another edition of English
as a Second Language Podcast, brought to you
by www .eslpod .com. I'm your host, Dr. Jeff
McQuillan. Senior Researcher at the Center for
Educational Development here in Los Angeles,
California. ESL Podcast is especially made for
you, those who are trying to improve their English
listening and speaking. If this is the first
time listening to this podcast, I recommend that
you go to our website, www .eslpod .com. to read
more about how best to use this podcast to improve
your English. ESL podcasts have two parts. The
first part is an interview, conversation, or
story by a native speaker. We recommend you listen
to this several times. The second part is an
explanation of some of the vocabulary and expressions
used by the native speakers. This second part
is optional, but some people find it helps them
understand better. Before we begin today's podcast,
I want to thank one of our podcast listeners
in Japan, Noriko, who emailed us to tell us about
a problem that we had with ESL pod number 4 on
our website. Apparently, we had a problem recording
the audio, and so only one side of the audio
came out. So if you were listening in your headphones,
you may have only heard it out of one ear. We
apologize for that. We may have had that problem
also in our ESL pod number 5. But we think we
have the problem fixed. We want to thank... Noriko
for letting us know, and encourage all of you
to email us your ideas and suggestions, and if
you have problems, let us know. Now let's get
started. Today's topic is bad dreams. We asked
two people to talk about their worst dreams.
Let's listen to what they had to say. I do have
nightmares sometimes. I do have bad dreams. A
lot of my bad dreams are things like I'm being
chased by someone and I can't get away from them
or I'm hiding from them. Some other of my bad
dreams involve not being able to get home. I'm
trying to get home and there are a lot of different
obstacles that I have to get past before I get
home. And I usually wake up before I get there.
So I find it very frustrating. So these bad dreams
make me really tense. And when I wake up, I'm
very, very stressed out. A bad dream that I kept
having over and over again, a recurring bad dream
I had when I was in high school, was a really
horrible one. I dreamt that... My mother had
a knife, a meat cleaver. And I was a child, and
I saw her in the bathroom cutting up a dead body
with a meat cleaver. And she saw me watching
her, and she started chasing me with her knife.
And she never caught me, but I had to hide from
her. And she chased me and chased me, and I was
really scared. I had this recurring dream, probably,
I don't know, for several months. And to this
day, it's the scariest, worst, bad dream I've
ever had. Boy, that's an interesting question.
Bad dreams. Well, I would have to say that...
the worst bad dream I ever had, and this happens
a lot to me in my dreams, is that I was trapped
inside a building or I'm trapped in another country
and I can't get back home. Usually what happens
is that I meet someone there from my past. an
old friend, an acquaintance, a classmate, someone
from high school. And, of course, it seems normal.
It seems just natural when I'm having the dream
that I meet these people. But it's always in
a situation that never actually occurred. But
usually my dreams, like most people's, bad dreams,
I think are related to things that I thought
about or happened to me that day or recently.
For example, I had a very difficult time getting
my car fixed the other day, and that night when
I had a dream, I dreamt that I was broken down
on the highway. And I couldn't get home. And
it was dark. And it was starting to rain. So
I started to get desperate and so forth. So when
I woke up, of course, I was sweating and a little
bit scared. But fortunately, I was able to calm
myself down. And eventually, I actually got my
car fixed. I hope I don't have that nightmare
again. You've just heard two people talk about
a bad dream, including me. And I want to now
talk about some of the vocabulary that they used
that you might have had difficulty with. Remember,
this section of our podcast is optional. If you
want to go back and listen again and again, we
recommend that. But if you want some additional
help, then stay tuned. One word that both speakers
used is nightmare. A nightmare is another word
for a bad dream. When Lucy was talking about
her bad dream, she mentioned that she couldn't
get home because she had lots of obstacles. An
obstacle is something that gets in your way either
when you're walking, running, in a car, or just
generally in life. We talk about obstacles that
get in our way, things that prevent us from going
or doing what we want to do. In the Army, they
have something called an obstacle course. And
sometimes in school, in physical education class,
they'll set up a game called an obstacle course.
And you have to go through all sorts of different
obstacles, different challenges, such as walking
through some tires or climbing up a rope and
so forth. Another word that Lucy used was recurring.
She said that she had a recurring dream. To recur
means to repeat. So she had that dream several
times. During my discussion of nightmares, I
mentioned that my nightmare is about being trapped.
And to be trapped is to be put in a situation
where you cannot leave. But we also use the term
trapped in a more general way. You can be trapped
in a job or you feel like you are trapped in
a situation. This is a situation or a job that
you can't leave or you can't escape from easily.
Another word I used in my description of the
bad dream is that my car had broken down. Now
you probably already know that broken means something
that doesn't work. For example, my radio is broken
or my computer is broken. But when we talk about
motor vehicles, cars, trucks, we use the term
broken down when it stops running, when it stops
being able to move. So broken and broken down,
slightly different meanings. That's going to
wrap it up for today's ESL podcast. I want to
thank you again for listening. I want to urge
you and recommend that you email us your ideas
for topics, suggestions for what you would like
to hear in these ESL podcasts. These podcasts
are made for you, the listener, all around the
world. So we hope that you will email us. You
can email us by going to our website, www .eslpod
.com, or simply send us an email at eslpod at
learningexperts .com. That's eslpod at l -e -a
-r -n -i -n -g. Thank you again for listening,
and please come back again tomorrow to ESL Podcast,
English at the Speed of Sound. ESL Podcast is
produced by the Center for Educational Development
in Los Angeles.