Learn the English Terms "bad attitude" and "positive attitude"

10/25/24 • 4 min

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases BAD ATTITUDE and POSITIVE ATTITUDE

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English term bad attitude. If someone has a bad attitude, it means they think something's going to go badly before it even starts or even while it's happening. Here's a good example. Maybe you go to watch your favorite sports team, and as the game is starting, you say, ah, they're going to lose tonight because the best player is injured and the other team's too good. That's just a bad attitude. It's not a very positive way of thinking to just say, oh, we're going to lose because of that. It's best to wait and see. Sometimes students have a bad attitude. They might say, oh, I'm going to fail this class because the teacher doesn't like me and there's too much homework, and I don't feel like doing what I'm supposed to be doing. That's just a bad attitude. As you can tell, I don't like it when people have a bad attitude.
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I like it when people are a little more positive when they have a positive attitude. Now, you might have thought, as I teach this phrase, as I teach the opposite, that I would say good attitude. And we do sometimes say that, that, oh, you should have a good attitude. But often, more often, we say a positive attitude. I'm not sure why we don't say negative attitude, but we usually encourage people to have a positive attitude. Even though the best player is injured, I still think my team is going to win tonight. I'm going to have a positive attitude. I'm going to think happy thoughts and good thoughts about my team. I was going to say something else about this good attitude. Positive attitude. There's another term. It's not coming to my mind right now. Maybe I'll think of it later.
Anyways, to review a bad attitude would be to say something like this, oh, I don't know if I'm going to make an English lesson today. Hardly anyone's going to watch it. Maybe I'll just not do it. Bad attitude. But a positive attitude would be to think, you know, I'm going to make an English lesson today, and some people will watch it, and those people will hopefully learn a little bit of English.
But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. It's in my back pocket here. Let me see if I can find it. The comment is from Emerson. Oh, it's from the last lesson isn't more or less outdated. So I taught the phrase more or less in the last lesson. And my response, not at all. Almost every phrase I choose for these lessons is from real life, and I heard someone use it just four days ago.
So, no, not at all. In fact, I did a little bit of research. I'm not sure if you know what Google trends is, but Google trends kind of identifies the things people search for. And if you look in a moment, probably right now, there should be a graph on the screen for the phrase more or less, and you can see it's actually going up. Now, this doesn't mean people are actually using it when they talk. It simply means people do still search for that phrase, more or less. So, to me, that graph probably means that people are still using that term.
And then Emerson as well, just so you know. Yes, I do. Listen as I go through my day and I try to hear people using phrases and or sometimes I observe behavior, and that helps me decide what I'm going to say or what I'm going to teach in the next lesson.
So you might wonder, where did bad attitude and positive attitude come from? Well, I want to keep that a secret, but as you know, I'm a teacher. Sometimes I see students in my classroom, and sometimes they have a bad attitude, and s

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Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases BAD ATTITUDE and POSITIVE ATTITUDE

If you enjoy these lessons please consider supporting me at: http://www.patreon.com/bobthecanadian

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Previous Episode

Learn the English Phrases "more or less" and "less is more"

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases MORE OR LESS and LESS IS MORE

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase more or less. In English, when we say more or less, it means almost or sort of. If you asked me if I was done cleaning my house, I might say more or less. That means I have most of the work done. Maybe there's a couple little things here and there that I still need to clean up, but I'm kind of done cleaning the house, more or less. Another example would be, if I was packing for a trip, you could say, hey, are you done packing? And I could say more or less. This means that I got out my suitcases, and I packed my clothes and some soap and a toothbrush, and I'm pretty much done packing. I'm close to being done packing. I'm more or less done packing, but I probably still want to check things. So when you say more or less, it means something is kind of done or sort of done. I was going to say more or less done, but I don't want to use the term to define the term.

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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is the phrase less is more. In English, when we say less is more, it means that sometimes doing a few simple things is better than doing a whole bunch of complex things. A good example would be to wash your vehicle. Sometimes just a little bit of water with some soap in it is all you need. You don't need a whole bunch of expensive products. Sometimes less is more. You can use this to describe a job as well. Sometimes in teaching, if I try to do 20 or 30 things with a class, they might not remember all of it. So sometimes less is more. Sometimes it's better to do about two or three things well, and then everyone remembers what you did. So sometimes less is more.
So to review, more or less means almost or sort of. So, are you almost done this video, Bob? More or less? Actually, less than more on that one, that was probably a bad example. If it was close to the end of the video, I could say more or less. And if you say less is more, it simply means that sometimes doing two or three parts of a process well is better than doing ten or 15 things badly. Sometimes less is more. Did I say more is less? Less is more.
It's a little distracting out here, but, hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is all crumpled up in my pocket. Let me find it here. This comment is from can't get the paper open. See, I'm struggling here. Hello. How are you? Good. How are you? Good. How do I get to Service Ontario. I think I've driven past it. How do you get to service Ontario? It's actually right over there, just on the other side of the pharmacy. So I can park here? You can actually, if you go out the back of this parking lot and go around, there's a little parking lot right there. And then walk back to this road and it's right on the corner. Thanks very much. Yep. You're welcome.
Hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. Sometimes you have to help someone find Service Ontario. That's where you renew your license. This is from the.user-kun. As always, the optimistic Bob, wonderful lesson. Thumbs up for you. And my response, you're welcome.
So, yes, optimism. I am a fairly optimistic person. I think I've mentioned this a lot on my live streams. Sometimes people will say, Bob, you seem very positive. You seem like a very optimistic person. And my response is always this, as long as I'm eating healthy food, as long as I'm getting eight or 9 hours of sleep every night, and as long as I'm getting some exercise, either walking or shooting my bow and arrow, that's good exercise, by the way

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Learn the English Phrases "to rub off on" and "to rub someone's nose in it"

Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases TO RUB OFF ON and TO RUB SOMEONE'S NOSE IN IT

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase To rub off on. Now we use this phrase to describe when the behavior of one person starts to be mimicked or copied by another person. Sometimes one person can rub off on another person. So here's a good example. If your boss is mean to everyone, that can rub off on you. And you might start to be mean to other people. Maybe one of your kids or a nephew or niece is hanging out with a bad kid and the bad kid's behavior is starting to rub off on the kid that you know that's not a good thing. You don't want bad behavior to rub off on the other kid. You don't want that kid to copy what the bad kid is doing. So when we describe someone's behavior, it can rub off on someone else. This can be a good thing too. When new teachers work with excellent, veteran, well qualified teachers, you hope that the older teacher's knowledge and wisdom will rub off on the younger teacher.
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The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is to rub someone's nose in it. So this means to mention someone's failures or mistakes over and over again so they feel bad about it. Let's think of an example here. Let's say that I accidentally drove my van, it's sitting over there, Let's say I drove my van into the barn wall and every day Jen mentioned it, day after day she would be rubbing my nose in it. When you rub someone's nose in something, it means they did something embarrassing or something that was a mistake and you just continually mention it. Not a very nice thing to do. To review. To rub off on means when someone's behavior starts to be copied or mimicked by someone else's. And to rub someone's nose in it means, you know, we all make mistakes, but you don't need someone to constantly rub your nose in it. You don't need them to constantly mention the fact that you made a mistake over and over again. Once is enough.
But hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from Padma. Colorful trees behind you are so beautiful. Amazing nature. And I said yes, it was a beautiful fall day.
And it still is. You can see a little bit of color here. I'll give you a little bit of a color tour if you look here. Oh, where is that? There it is. This tree. Let me walk this way so you can see the whole thing. These trees look amazing right now. These are the trees in front of my house. Let me pivot slowly and walk forward again. If we walk far enough. I'm walking backwards now. You'll be able to see them nicely in front of my house. They look beautiful. But if we turn all of the leaves from these trees are pretty much on the ground.
If you look in the distance where I was in a previous video, most of those leaves are on the ground. This tree, a lot of the leaves are on the ground. This tree here, a lot of the leaves have fallen on the ground and created a carpet. I think by my house it's a bit of a micro climate. I think what that means is it's a little warmer in front of my house. Maybe it's a little less windy and a little warmer and I think those trees just turn color a bit later. Or Jen was mentioning this the other day. They might just be a different variety. It's.
Can you hear the crunching? I'll show you the ground again. They might just be a different variety. So here you're going to see my crocs. If I do this, I'm wearing my old. We actually call those the barn crocs. I don't know if you know what crocs are but those are the slip on shoes that are just made out of plastic that are really. You don

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