LESSON NOTES

Upper Intermediate S1 #20

At the Heartbreak Motel in the US

CONTENTS
2 English
2 Vocabulary
3 Sample Sentences
4 Vocabulary Phrase Usage
4 Grammar
5 Cultural Insight

# 20
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 ENGLISH

1. SHEILA: Hey, Dave, you look quite the sight. What's the matter?

2. DAVE: Isabel broke up with me today. Never have I felt more miserable.

3. SHEILA: Oh, you poor thing. Do you want to talk?

4. DAVE: We went out to dinner last night to celebrate my new job and got in
a quarrel.

5. SHEILA: What about?

6. DAVE: Well, she just said that she was upset that I was leaving so soon. She
was hesitant to get in a relationship in the first place, and no sooner
did we start getting close that I decided to leave.

7. SHEILA: Such is life... You'll be back post-election though, right?

8. DAVE: Yeah, I thought a few months apart would be no big deal. Little did I
realize! When I got home I checked my voicemail and had a
message from her saying it was over.

9. SHEILA: I'm sorry, honey, do you want a hug?

10. DAVE: Thanks, but I'd rather have a drink...

VOCABULARY

V oc abular y English C lass

deal situation, issue, problem noun

very; exceptionally; to the

quite utmost, entirely, wholly adverb

miserable unhappy, very discontent adjective

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 to break up to end a relationship phrasal verb

quarrel an argument, a fight noun

upset unhappy or angry adjective

cautious, slow, careful,

hesitant unsure adjective

post- after something prefix

a virtual mailbox for

voicemail telephone voice messages; noun
a message left in said box

SAMPLE SENTENCES

The deal is that we have only seven dollars This food is actually quite delicious.
and three people that are hungry…

He was miserable when his girlfriend She was known to be pretentious and
broke up with him. miserable.

He broke up with her during their trip. They fought so much that in the end they
broke up.

My brothers and I used to always have You look upset. Is something wrong?
quarrels about who got to sit in the front
seat of the car.

They were all upset about the change in Everyone told the Senator to run for
plans. president, but he was hesitant because he
didn't feel a strong desire.

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The post-surgery recovery usually lasts 3-5 I called you yesterday—did you get my
weeks. voicemail?

VOCABULARY PHRASE USAGE

"quite"

Sheila says, "Hey Dave, you look quite the sight." As we know from the vocabulary, "quite"
means "to a heightened degree" or "absolutely." We can use "quite" combined with a noun
to emphasize that a person seems a particular way. "Quite the sight" is a phrase to say
someone's appearance is surprising.

For Example:

1. A: "Oh dear, have you gotten sick? Your hair is all messed up and you're so pale."
B: "Ugh, yes. I know I'm quite the sight right now."

2. A: "Wow, he is really fast!"

B: "Yeah, Jim is quite the runner."

"deal"

Dave says, "I thought a few months apart would be no big deal." As we learned in the
vocabulary, a "deal" is a "situation," "issue," or "problem." When we say something is "a big
deal," we mean that it is an important issue or situation. Similarly, we use "no big deal" kind of
like we use "no problem" to mean that it's okay.

For Example:

1. A: "Hey, sorry that I'm late."

B: "That's okay, it's no big deal."

GRAMMAR

The Focus of This Lesson Is Using Inversion to Add Emphasis.

"Never have I felt more miserable."

Inversion is a somewhat tricky grammatical structure that is not very common in spoken

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English, but it is nevertheless important to understand it for when you do hear or read it.
Inversion means "upside down," so when you see the use of inversion, you see something
with its normal order reversed. Most commonly, we change the regular word order of a
sentence to emphasize something. We do this by putting the most important thought first.

For Example:

1. "Under no circumstances should an employee leave early."

Here, we could have said, "An employee should leave early under no circumstances," but we
want to emphasize that it is never all right to leave early, so we use inversion to put the "under
no circumstances" first. That way, we make it clear that this is the most important part of the
sentence.

For Example:

1. "Rarely have I been so tired."

In this case, we could have said, "I have rarely been so tired," but if we wish to stress that it is a
rare or uncommon event, we can use inversion to make this clear.

There were two examples from the text where Dave spoke using inversion constructions. Let's
interpret what he meant by them.

1. Dave: "Never have I felt more miserable."

Because "never" comes first, we know that Dave is choosing to emphasize it. He truly has
never been more miserable than right now.

2. "Little did I realize!"

Dave here is emphasizing "little" to show how he didn't realize much at all and was very
surprised by the result.

We need to be careful when we use inversion as a technique because it can make us sound
overdramatic. It is more commonly used in literature than speech, but it is important to
understand for when we hear it. We usually use phrases such as Dave's "Little did I realize" or
"Never have I dreamed of doing that" in situations where people are acting emotionally. Try to
avoid using inversion in normal conversation, but it is appropriate when you are upset or
defending yourself.

CULTURAL INSIGHT

Expressions of Friendship in the United States

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Every culture has its own way of expressing friendship and understanding. When you look at
the language that Sheila used in this dialogue, you may think that it is not very appropriate for a
friend to use such language. A lot of the language made it seem that her relationship with
Dave was more like a romantic relationship than a friend relationship. Although this may be
true in some situations, especially when we are comforting a friend who has gone through a
difficult emotional situation, we can use this type of language safely. Just because Sheila used
words like "honey" and offered to hug her friend did not mean there is any kind of romantic
relationship between them. In particular, hugs are very common greeting and parting
gestures between friends, including male friends, female friends, and mixed friends. When
we see two people hugging, we cannot assume that they are in a relationship.

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