[Music] hello everyone and welcome back to English pod my name is Marco my name is Katherine and today we're talking about something that has always been very confusing for me uh for me as well I don't understand very well what this is about we're going to be talking about time zones and a little bit about daylight savings time before we get started though let's take a look at this phrase in today's vocabulary preview vocabulary preview all right so the phrase is is daylight savings time okay so we're trying to save daylight pretty much that's right
so this is the time of year when we change our clocks what does that mean that means in the fall there's a special day and everyone has it on their calendar and we changed the clocks we put them back 1 hour so if it was 8:00 now it's 7:00 okay so everything is earlier starts earlier yes and that's basically to take advantage of the daylight right that's why it's called daylight savings time exactly and so that's for the winter and then when the Winter's passed we change the clocks again we have the Spring Daylight savings
where we change our clocks ahead okay so it it sounds kind of complicated many countries don't have daylight savings time they don't change their clocks at all but we're going to be talking about this in a little bit more so why don't we listen to our dialogue for the first [Music] time did you set your clock forward for Daylight Savings Time what why do we you have to do that well at the start of the spring we usually have more daylight in the mornings and less in the afternoon this is basically due to our position
on the planet and the rotation of the earth in any case to take better advantage of the daylight available we compensate by moving our clocks forward 1 hour I see that's convenient I never understood things like this such as GMT I never know what time zone we are in or when to change my clock that just stands for Greenwich meantime here in California we're in Pacific Standard time that is eight time zones west of Greenwich remember when we were in Beijing well then we were in China Standard time and that's eight time zones east of
Greenwich that's why it was so weird traveling from Beijing to LA because of the huge time difference even though we left Beijing at noon and flew for more than 8 hours we still arrived in La the same day at noon it's like we went back in [Music] time all right we're back so that was a pretty clear explanation of why we do these things but maybe there are a couple of words that you didn't understand so let's take a look at those now in language takeaway language takeaway well Marco what you were hinting at before
this idea that we have shorter days in the winter and longer days in the summer has to do with the rotation of the earth and so the rotation of the earth is our first phrase okay so the Earth rotates what does that mean if it rotates means to spin around um but not just to spin around anywhere it means that if if you draw a line through the middle of something it never leaves that line it just kind of turns okay so it's spinning like the wheels on a car they rotate that means they go
around but they are fixed to the car to the car right so this is one of the reasons why we need to compensate our clocks because of the rotation of the earth and that's our next word to compensate this is a verb to compensate and it's often used with money but it can be used with time as well time or sunlight so with money you'd say uh I paid him $100 but I owed him 150 so I'm going to compensate him for the extra 50 okay means I'm going to fix it okay so to compensate
would be the verb and compensation would be the noun now in this case we're talking about time so how can we compensate time well that means that if we have lost an hour because we changed the clocks we have to compensate we have to try and Gain hour back and so that's why in the spring after the days start to get longer and longer we have to compensate for that by changing the clocks again okay so we're compensating time now related to Daylight savings and this whole time thing is time zones we have time zones
all over the Earth and you've probably noticed this if you've traveled you have to change your clocks or many times you see in hotels what time it is in London in Hong Kong in Berlin Etc and this makes a lot of sense because like we said the Earth is rotating and so if it's daylight in Moscow and it's uh nighttime in New York obviously it's not the same time right so to compensate for this difference we have different time zones and each time zone is pretty much an hour or so and you know half an
hour different from the next one right so most countries actually have different time zones throughout the country unless they're small that they don't really need to compensate any change or for example China just to unify everything it's a big country but they have one time zone China Standard time exactly but in the United States we have four time zones right all right so that's time zone and now related to time zone is time difference okay well think about math here difference is a word that we use in math and a time difference is the amount
of time that means how many hours uh there are between one time zone and another time zone so for example Beijing and New York City MH are very very far away from each other if it's day in in New York it's Night in Beijing so that means if it's 7 in the morning in Beijing it's probably around 7 at night in New York so the time difference would be more or less 12 hours exactly wow but when it's daylight savings time it's 13 so be careful right okay I think that's pretty clear I think we
should go back and listen to our dialogue again and we'll be back soon with fluency Builder did you set your clock forward for Daylight Savings Time what why do we have to do that well at the start of the spring we usually have more daylight in the mornings and less in the afternoon this is basically due to our position on the planet and the rotation of the earth in any case to take better advantage of the daylight available we compensate by moving our clocks forward 1 hour I see that's convenient I never understood things like
this such as GMT I never know what time zone we are in or when to change my clock that just stands for grenwich meantime here in California we're in Pacific Standard time that is eight time zones west of Greenwich remember when we were in Beijing well then we were in China Standard time and that's eight time zones east of Greenwich that's why it was so weird traveling from Beijing to LA because of the huge time difference even though we left Beijing at noon and flew for more than 8 hours we still arrived in La the
same day at noon it's like we went back in time [Music] all right we're back so now let's take a look at three key phrases INF fluency Builder fluency Builder oh let's go back to the beginning of this dialogue the person who's explaining all of these interesting things is saying that well in any case to take better advantage of the daylight available we compensate by moving our clocks forward 1 hour so this is an important phrase you could say to take better advantage of or to take advantage of let's talk about this to take advantage
something so to take advantage of something is to use it efficiently right or to take better Advantage so for example if you drive to work every day and your neighbor drives to work every day and you work at the same place you could take better advantage of your car and the cost by sharing the same car to work exactly or when people started to use computers you could say well they were taking better advantage of their time by speeding things up by making things faster with computers right or many mothers say take better advantage of
your time and read something instead of playing those video games exactly so it means uh it means like you said to be more efficient to do useful or important things that's right and now when we talked about what daylight savings time means or GMT what that stands for this is an interesting phrase it stands for well think about it as a picture so if something stands for something else that means the original thing it's not there anymore and so um in words and phrases like GMT you GMT doesn't mean anything by itself but the G
stands for something the m stand it's an acronym okay so this is an acronym that stands for that represents three big long words okay grenwich meantime right so we use this a lot when we are defining words or when we are defining an acronym like GMT stands for grenage mean time or for example USA stands for United States of America or we can even say someone's name stands for something so Marco what does the m in your last name stand for so your Marco M what does what does the m stand for right and then
I would say Well it stands for Mahia your last name right so you can use this when you see things that you don't understand maybe an acronym or an abbreviation like does Kathy stand for Catherine yes Kathy stands for Catherine it's a short version of Catherine cool all right right and well now talking a little bit more about time you've maybe seen the movie Back to the Future and this is what it's all about to go back in time to go back in time so we went back in time this is what the person says
about the flight from Beijing to La um what's interesting is that to go back in time is kind of a fixed phrase we always say it like this so we could say if you went back in time where would you go what time what what place right so to go back in time you usually use it like this now what if I wanted to say to go into the future could you say go forward in time you could go forward in time or you could go into the future right go into the future so remember
if you want to talk about going back in time is usually traveling to the Past mhm exactly all right so that's all the phrases we have why don't we listen to the dialogue for the very last [Music] time did you set your clock forward for daylight SA savings time what why do we have to do that well at the start of the spring we usually have more daylight in the mornings and less in the afternoon this is basically due to our position on the planet and the rotation of the earth in any case to take
better advantage of the daylight available we compensate by moving our clocks forward 1 hour I see that's convenient I never understood things like this such as GMT I never know what time zone we are in or when to change my clock that just stands for Greenwich meantime here in California we're in Pacific Standard time that is 8 time zones west of Greenwich remember when we were in Beijing well then we were in China Standard time and that's 8 time zones east of Greenwich that's why it was so weird traveling from Beijing to LA because of
the huge time difference even though we left Beijing at noon and flew for more than 8 hours we still arrived in La the same day at noon it's like we went back in time all right we're back and now this is actually something that really does happen right if you take off in an airplane from Beijing you fly for a certain amount of hours and you reach California and it's still the same time you you reach it in the same day it's very strange the same thing happens to me when I go home so I
leave Shanghai and I arrive in Chicago and I arrive at the exact same time I left on the same day so it's like if time never passed no it's the longest day of your entire life because it's not 2 2 4 hours the flight is 14 hours it's really 24 38 hours long right so it's really intense and and exhausting and then what happens is when you do the opposite you go from Chicago to Shanghai then you go into the future pretty much right because you left on a Sunday but you arrive on a Tuesday
or in my case yeah you you leave on a Sunday and you'd arrive on a Monday and you lose half a day of your life right you're just sitting there and all a sudden it goes past you right yeah so it all evens out in the end right right so when you go back or when you come it all evens out you you you recover you you get those hours of your life back pretty much they're not gone forever all right so if you guys have any questions any doubts you can send us an email
at englishpod prais language.com or come to our website english.com we hope to see you there ask away and until next time everyone Bye by oh [Music]
