Inglês Favorito Podcast #6: Car vocabulary

Before getting into collocations for cars, it's good that we learn about the parts of it. Face this as though we took a car apart to figure out some of its pieces. And here are the parts we're going to see: headlight, windshield, handle, roof, trunk, steering wheel and brake light. Is there any word you haven't heard of yet? If so, keep listening. So let's start with the headlight. Headlight is that powerful light at the front of a motor vehicle mostly used as a lighting source. The windshield is a pane of usually curved glass in front of the occupants of a vehicle to protect them from the wind. The handle is anything designed for holding, moving or carrying. In the case of a car, it's the part used to open the car's door. The roof is the structure forming the upper covering of the vehicle. The trunk is at the back of the car and it's a covered space for storing things in. The steering wheel is inside the car and it's basically the part used by the driver who turns it in order to make the car go in a particular direction. And finally brake lights are the red lights at the back of a motor vehicle that light up when the car is braked. To make things easier for you, I left a picture on my blog illustrating all the vocabulary we have just learned. You can see it at inglesfavorito.blogspot.com.

So now that we've been familiarized with some of the many parts of a car, let's learn some collocations with the word car. If you don't know what a collocation is, try to think of it as only two or more words that usually go together. In other words, we're going to learn the words that sound natural with the word car. For example, what can you do with a car? You can drive it, right? But you can also travel into the country by car. But before you go on a trip like that, you need to take the car in for service, just to make sure it is repaired and ready to go. Only then you can get into the car, start the car, maybe accelerate a little but not too much and finally set off for your dream trip. But before I forget, make sure you stop at a gas station and depending on what your car runs on, such as gasoline or diesel, you can fill the tunk up.

Ok, now we're in the car on our way to a great trip. During that trip, many unforeseen events can happen, like your car breaking down in the middle of the road for example. That's bad right? That's why it's so important to take the car in for service beforehand. In a car accident, the car may leave the road, collide with a tree or another car, hit an animal. There's an expression in English involving cars that describes an accident, which is "to wrap one's car around something". For example, "She wrapped her car around a light pole. If he hadn't wrapped his car around a tree, he'd be here with us tonight." When you wrap your car around something, you drive it into something at fairly high speed. Okay, that's all for today guys. Talk to you next time!