Do you ever find yourself looking at your smartphone just a little too often? If so, you might be a tech addict! In this Simplified Speech episode, Andrew and Maura get to the bottom of addiction to technology. Join them as they talk all about their technological weaknesses!
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Expressions Included in the Learning Materials
- to plug something
- to spread the word
- word for word
- an eye-opener
- quite the something
- to turn out
- –esque
- to feed an addiction
Sample transcript:
| Maura: | Andrew, how’s it going today? |
| Andrew: | I’m doing very well. Thanks for asking. How are you? |
| Maura: | I’m pretty good. I’m a little bit tired, but nothing that a good coffee can’t help. |
| Andrew: | Have you been looking at your phone too much today? Maybe that’s why you feel tired. |
| Maura: | Today I actually have been using it more than I usually do, so maybe you’re right. |
| Andrew: | Well, it’s funny that we’re talking about phones because the topic for today’s episode is technology, and specifically using technology a little too much, relying on technology too much, being an addict. |
| Maura: | It’s interesting because I think that it’s hard to say if a person is addicted or not. I think that many people would say that they’re not addicted, but they actually use technology—specifically their cell phones—a lot. |
| Andrew: | You know, recently something happened to me that I was a little bit sad about, and that is: I broke my cell phone. I can’t use it anymore because I broke it. And, you know, when I broke it I took a little break from using my cell phone until I got a replacement phone, and that is when I realized how addicted I was to my phone. All of a sudden, in this little break, I’ve read more books, I’ve had more conversations; it was a real eye-opener for me. |
| Maura: | That makes me feel sad because I haven’t had a break, but I do like to use my cell phone, and when I do, I try to make sure I’m not spending too much time on it. I don’t want to be on my phone 24/7, but it’s interesting that it could be negatively affecting my productivity. |
| Andrew: | Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes we just don’t realize how involved we get with some certain types of technology, and I think phones are the easiest example to think of because everybody is obsessed with their phones these days. |
| Maura: | You know what just happened to me earlier today? |
| Andrew: | No. |
| Maura: | I was waiting in line at a store and the cashier was talking to the person in front of me about a place, and the cashier said, “You must go to this place. You must visit it.” And because I was listening and curious, and I had never heard of this place, I decided to Google it and see where it was, because if it was so good, I wanted to go. |
| Andrew: | And you did this while you were waiting in line? |
| Maura: | Yeah, I had nothing else to do so I thought, why not? Well, it turns out this really cool place to visit is nowhere around Montreal and I’m not going to be going there. It turns out this place is in Florida. |
| Andrew: | Florida. Whoa, that’s quite the recommendation. It must be an awesome, awesome place if you would go all the way to Florida to visit. |
| Maura: | Well, I missed the beginning of the conversation. Probably they were talking about Florida and this is why the cashier recommended this spot. |
Audio/Learning Materials: