Advanced English Vocabulary - The Letter "A"
In this advanced English vocabulary lesson, I teach 5 English words--all of which start with the letter "A"--that you can use in conversation. One thing that is difficult as an English learner is knowing WHAT words native speakers actually use in conversation, and all of the words that I picked for this podcast are advanced words that I regularly hear native speakers use.
I tried something new this week. My guest on the show is one of my close friends, Ethan. Ethan and I talked about what these 5 words mean, and we used examples from our own lives to show how one could use these words in sentences.
The five words are listed below. There's also a challenge question at the end of this post. Let me know what you think in the comments!
5 Advanced English Words | The Letter "A"
Ambivalent
If you're ambivalent about someone or something, you have mixed or contradictory feelings about that person or thing.
EX: She feels ambivalent about having children.
Adamant
If you're adamant about something, you won't change your mind about that thing.
EX: You were quite adamant before about having pizza for dinner!
Ambiguous
If something is ambiguous, that thing is unclear or confusing because it can be interpreted in many different ways.
EX: The exam wasn’t fair! All of the questions were so ambiguous!
Amicable
The word "amicable" describes relations between people that are positive, friendly, and nice.
EX: The relationship ended amicably.
Accentuate
If you accentuate something, you make it more noticeable.
Carla wears lipstick to accentuate her lips.
My challenge question for you:
At the end of the episode, Ethan and I joked about combining all of these words into a single sentence. The two of us struggled when we tried. Can you do it? 😉
Here’s my answer to this challenge question :
The perks of knowing 5 new vocabularies “Ambivalent, Adamant, Ambiguous, Amicable and Accentuate” are I can practice and improve my listening skills, most of all, I love listening to friends conversation like this.
Thank you for this podcast :)
Hahahahaha, very clever, Nim 😉 I like what you did there. Thanks for the comment!
Great! Since the very beginning on my process of learning English I had an incomon idea in mind, after learning the very basic I changed my focus to difficult words because I knew that the easy ones apear all the time. Then I stumbled upon this Steve Kaufmann post: “Why I Don’t Worry About Common Core Vocabulary” https://blog.thelinguist.com/common-core-vocabulary.
I started clipping real conversations through youglish plus vlc to record small piaces of video, then editing them on Aaudacity and finally puting them on my Anki. The time spend doing that increased my initial attention and consequently improved my recall even if I had not yet reviwed the word (in context).
I think that every self taught student will end up with some kind of squisit way of learning old things in a new way, and this are some of the ideas I developed to make increase my vocabulary, and pronunciation, because each phrase has its real associated audio.
That sounds like a lot of work, Sergio Araujo :O 🙂 Happy to hear that it worked out well for you. Thanks for the comment, and I’m glad you enjoyed the podcast!
My friend was adamant to get marry to her cousin because she was ambiguous about his career/ job therefore, she felt ambivalent when she got marry to him because she has pressured by her parents although her parents that behavior accentuated that they were conservative but later she has amicable relationship with him.
Sounds like a complicated situation, Rukhsana! Happy that the relationship worked out in the end. Thanks for the comment 😉
My adamant ambivalence can seem ambiguous to those who can’t see below the surface, but I won’t accentuate their superficiality because I’d rather be amicable than exposed.
Lovely Sara 🙂 I was very impressed with this sentence. Nicely done!
I’ll write another example, just in case)))
Betty used to be really adamant to dating someone who wasn’t sporty enough, so when she came on that blind date and saw Jack in his old jacket, which accentuated his paunch,she was surprised that deep down she felt ambivalent; and when he addressed her so amicably in spite of her angry looks , apologizing for being a bit clumsy, she didn’t know what to say and just gave him an ambiguous but still charming smile….
Oh my, sounds like Betty is overthinking things a little bit 😉 Nice work Alena. Thanks for the comment!
I feel ambivalent for
ambiguous result of my
amicible friend to accentuate that weak points but she is quite adamant.
Thanks for the comment Htay Htay Swe!
Learn english a
I have to say that your podcast is really funny and it makes me adamant to use new great words in my speech in order to accentuate my intelligence)
Thanks a lot for great time!
And recently I’ve changed my job. But whether to do this or not was a quite ambiguous question, I was ambivalent about my quiting, I thought it might be terrible but eventually broking up with my former company was amicable.
Awesome Dmitry! Thank you for the kind words 🙂 Very happy to hear that you’re enjoying the podcast. Great job using these words 🙂
Better late than never……
I must say that am so amicably fascinated by the way you accentuate your words on this podcast. would love to see more of this, I assure you that I am an adamant follower of your podcast henceforth.
Awesome Bill! Thank you for the kind words 🙂
Ooops, guys,
I’m listening to your podcast again.
It’s cool and useful.
I like to listen to it while working I can get and remember some new words.
the most important that you repeat them a lot and in different ways so there is a huge chance to remember them
Thanks for listening! Be careful hahaha