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• Mechanic | Upper Intermediate

Mechanic

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M: Hello English learners! Welcome back to EnglishPod! My name isMarco.
C: And my name is Catherine and today we’re talking about being on the road.
M: Yeah, we’re gonna be on the road, but we’re gonna encounter a little bit of a… car
problems.
C: Uh, my favorite kind.
M: Oh, yeah, I think it’s happened to everyone. You’re on the road or maybe you’re coming
back from work, you get a flat tire or something happens to your car, right?
C: And it’s always when you’re in a rush.
M And most of the time it’s raining.
C: Yeah.
M: Hehe.
C: Or snowing, so all the circumstances definitely… well, they don’t help, let’s just say.
M: Yeah.
C: Right, so before we listen to this dialogue, let’s take a look at some of the… the words on
today’s “vocabulary preview”.
Voice: Vocabulary preview.
M: Alright, so we’re gonna take a look at two words. Um, they’re kind of strange, I don’t
know, kind of difficult to understand, so that’s why we’re gonna explain them. Um, the first
one is spew, to spew.
C: It’s a verb, okay, to spew. Um, well, what can spew? Volcano can spew.
M: Exactly.
C: An engine can spew.
M: Uhu.
C: A person can spew.
M: Yeah, that’s not very nice.
C: No.
M: Hehe. So basically, it’s to like expel or to…
C: Shoot out.
M: Shoot out from, uh, your mouth or something… liquid, so in the case of a person, right?
C: So if a person spews, it means a person throws up.
M: Uhu.

C: But it’s usually very forceful.
M: Uhu.
C: Alright, it’s very messy. Uh, a volcano can spew lava.
M: Exactly, so a volcano is spewing lava. Now, uh, for the next word that we have it’s, um…
it’s an informal way of saying that something is broken.
C: You could say it’s busted.
M: It’s busted. My DVD-player is busted.
C: Man, my phone is busted.
M: Uhu, so it’s an informal way, very popular, very common, I would say, uh, to describe
that something is not working. I don’t think many people actually say, well, “it’s broken” or
“it’s damaged”.
C: Yeah, they’re pretty… pretty much mixed I think, but you’ve…
M: Uhu.
C: You will definitely hear busted if you’re talking to native English speakers.
M: Or even like, for example, your arm: “Oh, he’s got a busted arm”.
C: Exactly, so busted.
M: Uhu. Alright, so let’s listen to our dialogue for the first time. Let’s see what’s going on
with, uh, this car trouble and then we’ll come back and explain some things.
DIALOGUE, FIRST TIME
C: So if I were the mechanic, I would not be very happy to be dealing with someone like
this girl.
M: Hehe. I think it’s, uh… well, maybe it’s a little bit stereotypical that we put it as a… as a
girl, because guys and girls, so many people don’t know anything about cars or mechanics,
right?
C: And in the States there’s a lot of female mechanics too, so it’s…
M: Yeah.
C: You know, it’s mixed.
M: Yeah, yeah. Uh, but definitely it’s a… it’s something that happens all the time and
probably the mechanic will overcharge her as well, because apparently she doesn’t know
what she’s doing.
C: And that’s one of the reasons we wanna give you the vocabulary to deal with this
situation, so let’s look at some of those car words in today’s “language takeaway”.
Voice: Language takeaway.
M: Alright, so we’re gonna take a look at very specific words related to cars and… and the
engines and everything, so, um, let’s start with the first one.

C: Radiator.
M: Radiator. Alright, so the radiator of the car.
C: So radiator is something that you normally find in a front of the car, near the engine. It
usually gets very, very hot, right?
M: Yeah.
C: So one of the big issues is radiators getting too hot, because there’s no way to cool them
down.
M: Uhu. So if you live in a place that’s very hot, the radiator keeps your engine cool,
because it has water in it. So if it overheats or maybe you didn’t put enough water in
there, then it’ll start spewing,steam like in this dialogue.
C: And if you have a problem with your radiator, you could actually do a lot of damage to
your engine, which is why this is important.
M: Exactly, and that’s what happened in this dialogue. So a radiator. Now, because the
radiator wasn’t working well, it overheated the engine and he said they had some busted
pistons.
C: So broken pistons. Pistons are important, because they’re kind of like valves that go up
and down.
M: Right, so inside your engine you have mini explosions and the pistons move up and
down and that’s what actually moves your car.
C: Right, and so pistons, in general, are things in mechanics, so like atrumpet has pistons…
M: Uhu.
C: Things that go up and down and allow for the flow of…
M: Air…
C: Air.
M: Or something like that.
C: Uhu.
M: Very good, so that’s a piston. And, well, another very common mechanic term is
the transmission.
C: Alright, so the transmission. What happens if your transmission dies? Can you still drive?
M: You basically can’t move or maybe you only have one gear or two gears.
C: Alright, so think about transmission as coming from the word totransmit, it means “to
transfer”
M: Uhu.
C: Right.
M: So this is the part of the car that transfers energy or the power to actually move the car.

C: Uhu.
M: So the transmission.
C: And we’ve got the mechanic who says “Well, we’ve got to order you some spare parts”.
M: Uhu.
C: So first, let’s look at the word spare.
M: Uhu.
C: What’s another word for spare?
M: Uh, additional, maybe…
C: Extra.
M: Extra.
C: Right, so spare means extra parts or… well, pieces.
M: Uhu.
C: So, he’s talking about ordering a new transmission, new pistons – the things to replace
the broken things.
M: Uhu, spare parts. So this is why you go to the mechanic to get some spare parts…
C: Cause…
M: And get them installed.
C: You probably don’t have many spare parts at home, right?
M: Hehe. You probably…
C: You’ve gotta… transmission lying around.
M: Well, yeah, so spare parts. And the last word that we’re gonna take a look at is a fuel
pump.
C: Okay, so a pump is, uh… you could have a bike pump…
M: A water pump.
C: Water pump, so these are something… these are some things that we use very, very
often, but a fuel pump is something that allows f… gas, gasoline to get into your engine.
M: Uhu. So it’s basically a device that pushes gasoline into the engine, so you can start. And
that’s the same thing with a water pump. It… it’s a device that pushes water.
C: Or an air pump is something that pushes air into your tires in your bicycle.
M: Uhu. Exactly, so a fuel pump, water pump, et cetera.
C: Wow! I feel like we know a lot about cars.

M: Yeah, apparently we do, see? Alright, so, uh, now that we’ve taken a look at all of these,
uh, great words, uh, let’s move on to a couple of phrases in “fluency builder”.
Voice: Fluency builder.
C: Alright, these are phrases that you hear sometimes when you’re talking about
electronics, but in today’s lesson we’re also talking about specific car phrases, you hear
these all the time at mechanics.
M: Right, and the first one is the car suddenly died on me.
C: Alright, to die on. So we keep these two words together – die, on.
M: Uhu.
C: Oh, man, so while you were driving your car died, it’s stopped moving.
M: Uhu. So that means that it… it doesn’t work anymore. And it’s not only for cars, right?
You can say “My mp3-player died on me today”.
C: Exactly, and what it means is it’s not like you left it and you forgot about it and you tried
it again and it didn’t work. It means, while you’re using it, it dies.
M: Exactly.
C: Doesn’t work.
M: Uhu. So I think this phrase is a… is a good one to give some other examples, so let’s
listen.
Voice: Example one.
A: My CD-player died on me and I had to listen to the radio.
Voice: Example two.
B: Get that medicine over here faster, this guy is gonna die on me.
Voice: Example three.
C: I forgot to charge my mobile phone; it’s gonna die on me soon.
C: So this next one is a phrase you hear, the first thing you hear maybe when you tell
someone you have a car problem.
M: Right, you tell them to pop the hood.
C: Or let’s pop the hood.
M: Uhu.
C: So, this means let’s open the front part of the car, the hood to look at the engine,
transmission - all those parts.
M: Exactly. So you can say “open the hood”, but… but the most common one is pop the
hood.
C: So the reason is because there is a little spring.

M: Yeah.
C: And you have to pull inside the car and it goes “pop”.
M: Yeah.
C: And the… there’s a little… there’s a little jump.
M: Yeah, exactly.
C: There's a little ??? jump. So it’s… it’s literally popping.
M: Right, or you can also say the trunk, right? The back part of the car