AEE 2574: Learn This English Well Before You Need It

This is an All-Ears English Podcast episode 2574.

Learn this English well before you need it.

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With your American hosts, Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer,

and Michelle Kaplan, the New York Radio Girl,

coming to you from Colorado and New York City, USA.

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Are you looking for an emphatic way to say that something happens

way before or way after something else?

Today, get a native trick to add to your English

to put more energy into what you're saying.

Picture this.

You're part of the conversation.

Someone jumps in with a fast comment.

Everyone reacts, but you're left behind,

still processing the words.

It's not that you don't understand English.

It's that real conversations don't slow down for you.

Slang, speed, tone.

It all stacks up fast.

The good news, these are trainable skills.

If you know your English level and what to do to move up,

start by taking our free two-minute fluency quiz

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Hello, Michelle.

Good to see you on the mic.

How's it going?

Good to see you too.

Lindsay, everything is good over here.

How are you?

I'm feeling great today, Michelle,

but I have a question for you.

Yes.

So, do you typically wake up well before you start working

or do you just get out of bed?

In pajama pants, go to your laptop and start working.

That's funny.

That you say that.

So, it depends on the day.

It depends if I'm working at home

or if I'm going out to my husband's office.

Yes.

And so, it depends.

But I am not one of those people that wakes up

and has a peaceful morning

and wakes up before my kids.

That I don't do.

It's like you see commercials

sitting in your picture window with your coffee staring at the sunrise.

That's not you, Michelle.

Not as not me.

I wish you could see it.

I wish you could see what my mornings are like.

It's not peaceful.

It's not good.

But we get out the door

and then once my kids get dropped off,

I'm here with them.

I can go and move on.

I think a lot of our listeners have kids and families

so they get what you're saying.

You know, chaos in the home

between 6 and 8 a.m., right?

I mean, that's crazy.

So, Michelle, what are we getting into today?

So, today we are going to teach something that

came from a roleplay that we did

on the Business English podcast.

And we're going to give you the number for that later.

But Business English podcast, guys,

if you haven't checked it out yet,

you were missing out.

Yes.

We teach so much over there relating to business.

But one of the things is that we don't say

this is only Business English

because business is real life.

And your real people,

even when you're at work.

So, this is not, you know,

we teach things that can be good

for out of the office as well.

With the focus on what's important for work.

Yeah, exactly.

On that show, you guys know our main idea

is connection, not perfection.

And what that means in business

is it means relationships.

So, we'll show you how to build relationships

in business over there.

So, guys, open up your search bar right now.

Wherever you're listening,

type in Business English.

You'll see the yellow pop up.

Hit that follow button right away.

And we'll let you know which episode it was at the end.

So, Michelle, what should we do here?

We have a little mini role play.

We want to show it.

Let's do the role play.

So, this is actually how it was used

on that Business English episode.

So, let's read it.

All right.

Yes, he said the shipments will be in early.

Wow, that's great.

Before the deadline.

Well, before.

Okay, that gives our listeners a little context, right?

Yes, so that is how it was used.

It's one of those situations where I didn't plan it

for, you know, with the idea of doing another episode on it.

Sure.

But we realized when we were reading it,

oh my gosh, this is so useful.

Yes.

And that we should do a whole episode on it.

So, Lindsay, what did you mean by well before?

Yeah, so as our listeners probably can see

from the context, what I mean by well is what I meant

is a lot like way before the deadline.

Right?

It's not like it's going to be happening

right before the deadline.

We have a lot of buffer time.

Right?

Yes, before the deadline.

Before the buffer time.

Yeah.

So, I mean, Lindsay, would you say that you typically

might use the word well like this?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, that's why we picked out of that role play

and we said, you know, that feels very natural

so that is meant to be a, you know,

one of our episodes on Business English.

Exactly.

Yeah, that's why we were like,

ding-ding-ding, we're going to take that one

because it is so common.

Yes.

So, to me, it shows, it's very emphatic.

Right?

And, you know, you also have to use the proper stress

right before.

Yes.

And we actually spoke about this

on the Business English podcast

because when we were reading it,

I didn't write it in a way that stressed the well.

Do you remember that?

I think I misunderstood it when I read it

and I almost said the other intonation,

which is like, well, I think dot, dot, dot.

Right?

Is that what happened?

I think that like that.

Something like that.

There was some sort of,

but something where the meaning could have been impacted.

And so, we were saying how important that intonation

that stresses with this word so that you can understand

what the person is trying to say.

Yes.

It would be well before.

Yeah, and we exaggerate intonation a little bit on the show

just to show you guys,

but there does need to be a bit of a punch on this word.

Right?

Again, just to repeat that last line,

you said before the deadline,

and I say, well before the deadline.

So, that well needs to be punched just a bit.

Yes, exactly.

So, let's do some more examples here.

Lindsay, you want to do the first one?

Here we go.

We can say, I bought a new car well before the year ended,

so I missed all the good details.

Or, sorry, I missed all the good deals details.

Deals, not details.

Yeah.

Or I knew her well before she applied to the position.

Or trust me, we will be there well before the wedding.

We don't want to miss the bride walking down the aisle.

Oh my gosh, Michelle, have you ever...

That's a good example of when you want to make sure

you were there well before the time of ceremony starts.

Have you ever walked into a wedding,

a ceremony late?

Has that ever happened to you?

I've walked in like really just like the point on the edge, you know?

And where you're kind of sneaking past.

What about you?

I haven't done it at my own wedding.

There were a couple of couples that snuck in.

And I, in my mind, those couples are always like

fighting with each other, right?

Because there's been something that's happened.

Yes, yes, exactly.

Yeah, not a good thing.

Yeah.

So, guys, yeah, it...

I try to be there well before it starts.

That way you don't miss it.

And it's...

Yeah, that's a...

That's a time when you really don't want to mess it up.

That because you don't want to be walking down with the bride.

Oh my gosh, can you imagine?

Yeah, there's such...

Yeah, there's such...

You know, if we want to build a good life that includes a little less stress, right?

There are certain deadlines we want to make sure we are well before.

Maybe filing taxes, but I don't always do that on time either.

Yeah.

Arriving at weddings.

I don't know.

There are other key things where you know you'll feel embarrassed

if you do show up late, or if you miss a deadline,

or you're too close to a deadline that you'll stress out.

So, this is a personality thing, right?

No, yeah.

I would say also, like, doctors appointments.

Okay.

Because if you're...

If you push it too much...

And I've done this.

I mean, I remember there was a...

I had a doctor's appointment and it was in...

It was for like an ENT and it was in...

I didn't realize it.

It was in a giant building, a giant hospital building,

where you had to drive all around.

And I was so confused.

And I was running around outside trying to find it.

And I ended up calling them.

And they said, well, we were about to just like get out of your appointment.

So, that's the thing is, with doctors,

sometimes then they just have to move on.

Yeah, it's true.

So, that's one you want to get there well before your appointment,

or at least a few minutes, because you don't want them to take away your...

Or your slot.

Right, because sometimes it can take six months

to get a certain specialist, right?

Yeah.

Michelle, could we also use the word way in this context too?

Way before, well before?

Is there any difference here?

Yeah, it's a very similar idea.

In my mind, I would say that way is slightly less formal sounding.

Yeah, I would agree.

What do you think?

Yeah, I totally agree.

It's kind of like the casual version of well.

Yeah, you could still say well before.

That's still casual.

But way makes it, does make it a little more spoken English,

a little more casual, just brings it down and notch in terms of formality, right?

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Okay, so then, I bet our listeners are wondering,

can we put well in front of any other words?

Have the same meaning, Michelle.

What do you think?

Right, right.

Well, one is, if we can do before, we can do after.

There you go.

You could say, well after.

So that's significantly after.

So she submitted this well after it was due.

So I'm not going to give her points.

This is when we have arrived late or we have missed a deadline, right?

The concert started well after the time on the ticket.

It was really irritating.

That's always hard when you go to a concert or a comedy show,

and they have the opening act or especially at a concert

when they're playing music, you know,

they're playing background music and like,

you think every time a song ends,

that the show is going to start.

It's true and especially if you're really excited,

I went to see Madonna a couple of years ago here in Denver.

And I think she came on pretty late actually.

Possibly like 45 minutes late if I remember correctly.

And you're kind of, you're waiting and you're like,

it's well after the time this was supposed to start.

You know, I'm ready to see Madonna.

Come on.

Let's get out.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So, but yeah, you could also just,

you could do it also in a conversation like this here.

Let's show how it would be not just in a one liner.

Okay, did she call you by eight?

She called me well after eight.

It was too late for me.

So there you go.

So it's the same meaning.

You're conveying the same feeling as when we put it before,

but you have some options here.

There's another option too, Michelle, which is well ahead of.

Right?

So similar to well before.

Yep.

Exactly.

So well, since we...

Well, I didn't realize that I wrote well.

Okay, since we were running well ahead of schedule,

let's head out early.

And let's show our listeners the intonation difference between the first

well, which is just conversational.

It's just an opening of a thought, right?

Guys, so don't get confused between these two wells.

They're very different.

So we could say, well, since we're running well ahead of schedule,

let's head out early.

Do that feel right, Michelle, to you?

Yep.

Okay.

It sounded great.

Yeah, two different wells, two different ways of saying it.

Yeah, exactly.

And then there's still one more.

One more option.

What is it?

Well above or well below.

Okay.

So it's, I mean, yeah, the idea of much more or much higher or much lower, right?

So there are well above 50 people here.

Yeah, or this felt well below my expectations, right?

The work fell, and this is when, let's say at work,

you're responding to someone's, someone's what they've done,

their project.

This fell well below.

You don't want to hear that from your boss, right?

Not good, okay?

Because they're taking the time to say the well.

It means it's really bad.

Yeah, yeah, okay.

Yes, it's, it's more, more intense.

Yeah, exactly.

So let's do a roleplay.

So here I put us out of wedding.

Oh, I'm surprising, right?

Not surprising, because this is one of the key moments, right?

Yep.

All right.

Here we go.

Oh my goodness, I was almost late.

Did you leave before rush hour?

Well before.

That's odd.

So much traffic.

I was planning on getting here well ahead of the ceremony,

but it was almost impossible.

Are you staying late?

Yes, of course.

Are you going to be here after the party ends?

Well after.

I'm staying at the hotel.

Nice.

Okay.

All right, so let's see what we did here for our listeners.

Break it down.

So I asked you, did you leave before?

This must be an evening wedding, right?

Did you leave before rush hour?

And I said, well before.

So I could have also said, way before,

but it basically means I left, I'm trying to say,

I left with plenty of time.

I shouldn't have hit traffic, right?

Exactly.

This can happen, especially in certain cities,

Los Angeles, Boston, the traffic's gotten really bad.

I think where you're from, Michelle,

Baltimore, Washington area,

it's supposed to be famous, the beltways.

The beltway, yep.

What else?

What else?

So then I said so much traffic.

I was planning on getting here well ahead of the ceremony,

right?

So much more before it started.

And you could have also said I was planning to get here

well before the ceremony,

but you already said well before,

so you might switch it up there.

Right, right.

And then I said, you said, of course,

are you going to be here after the party ends?

And then I said, what?

Well, after.

So you're staying at the hotel,

so you don't need to head out right away.

Maybe there's an after party that you kind of tend.

And this is kind of a fun conversation our listeners

could get into with, with our friends

or native speaking friends is,

what kind of person are you?

Like, are you a late person?

Are you an on-time person?

Are you an early person?

I think people tend to fall into,

and that's why I can be really disturbing

if you're an on-time person.

And you show up late like to a wedding

that could be really awful.

But like, people tend to fall in these three camps, right?

And yeah, just, it's interesting.

It's really interesting.

It's personally, right?

Yeah, it's true.

It's true.

Guys, remember, this came from the business English episode.

We were talking about, so that is episode 527.

That was called, are you right on time

or running behind?

So as you could tell, this is a really great one

to listen to now that you've heard this episode.

So these kind of work together.

All right, Michelle, what's our final thought

for our listeners today regarding connection?

What do you think?

This is just a really great way to be empathetic.

I mean, instead of just saying,

oh, I left before rush hour, right?

You know, it's just, you're adding a little something more,

a little something extra to the meaning.

We also talked about the intonation here

and how to stress it.

So it's just, it's just a way of showing your personality

and showing kind of a little bit behind the scenes.

Yeah, yeah, like that idea.

Yeah, without, you know, just by adding that one word.

A little spark, maybe a little drama.

Maybe you're showing a bit of your frustration

like you are on the i5

from way longer than you expected to be.

I left well before I needed to,

but I still sat in traffic.

Yeah, I sat in a parking lot and we call

heavy traffic a parking lot, right, Michelle?

Yes, I'm parking lot.

Yep.

All right, good stuff.

All right, we'll come back to the concept of traffic

another day.

I'm sure.

But for now, Michelle, you have a good rest of your day.

Guys, don't forget to go and find the business

English podcast and hit the follow button.

All right, all right.

Bye, Lindsay.

Bye, guys.

Thanks for listening to all ears English.

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