Hello. I'm Margot Politis. Welcome to Study English, IELTS preparation.
Today we're going to talk about acronyms, abbreviations and names, and then we'll do
a bit of vocabulary building as well.
The boy in today's clip is about to have a test to see whether he has Attention Deficit
Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD.
While you're watching, listen for some other abbreviations.
How do you know if your child does have ADHD? An EEG brain scan helps answer that, say the
Swinburne researchers.
Jacques Duff is a psychologist and one of Richard's PhD students. A computer programme
will compare Xavier's brain scan with a database of scans of ADHD sufferers. If he does have
the condition, the ADHD diagnosis will be automatically triggered.
Xavier was having a test to see if he has ADHD.
ADHD is an abbreviation.
An abbreviation is the short form of a phrase or a word.
We often abbreviate phrases using the first letter of each word.
Notice that you use capitals letters for these types of abbreviations.
ADHD stands for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. ADHD is much quicker and easier
to say, and to write.
You might recognise some of these common abbreviations:
UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object
ASAP means As Soon As Possible
Other common abbreviations are:
PC, Personal Computer
TV for Television
and CD-ROM - that's a Compact Disc with a Read Only Memory!
Notice that each letter in the abbreviation is pronounced separately, but the last letter
is pronounced more strongly because it carries the primary stress.
So we say USA, ASAP, ABC, and TV.
Listen for another abbreviation here.
Jacques Duff is a psychologist and one of Richard's PhD students.
Jacques Duff is one of Richard's PhD students.
PhD stands for Doctor of Philosophy.
Another abbreviation you'll recognise is IELTS.
IELTS stands for International English Language Testing System.
This form of abbreviation is called an acronym. With an acronym, we don't pronounce the individual
letters, we pronounce it as a word.
So we say IELTS, not I - E - L - T - S.
Some other examples of acronyms are:
AIDS, that's Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome
and RAM, Random Access Memory
Another example is ASEAN - that stands for the Association of South East Asian Nations.
There's one more common shortening in today's story. Listen for whether it's an abbreviation
or an acronym.
An EEG brain scan helps answer that, say the Swinburne researchers.
He says an EEG. That's an abbreviation. We don't pronounce it eeg, we say E-E-G.
EEG stands for Electro-Encephalograph.
That's a type of brain scan, but you can see why we shorten it to EEG.
Notice that in formal academic writing, it's necessary to write out an abbreviation in
full the first time you use it.
So if you wanted to write about an EEG, you'd write it out in full the first time, and place
the abbreviation in brackets, like this.
An Electro - Encephalograph [EEG] can help treat patients.
After that in your paper, you can just use the abbreviation on its own.
OK. So let's listen to the clip again, but this time, listen for words to do with universities.
How do you know if your child does have ADHD? An EEG brain scan helps answer that, say the
Swinburne researchers.
Jacques Duff is a psychologist and one of Richard's PhD students. A computer programme
will compare Xavier's brain scan with a database of scans of ADHD sufferers.
He refers to the Swinburne researchers.
Swinburne is the name of a university in Victoria.
There were also some other university-related words.
Jacques Duff is a psychologist and a PhD student.
A great way to learn new words is in themes like this, and by organising them into word
trees.
Let's look at university words.
Students might study for a Diploma, a Bachelor degree, an Honours degree, a Masters degree
or a PhD.
Jacques Duff is a PhD student, so that's where he fits into this tree.
There are number of different people and places mentioned in today's story. We don't see them
all, but we hear their names.
Listen for the names in this clip.
An EEG brain scan helps answer that, say the Swinburne researchers. Jacques Duff is a psychologist
and one of Richard's PhD students. A computer programme will compare Xavier's brain scan
with a database of scans of ADHD sufferers.
The people he mentions are Jacques Duff, Richard and Xavier.
If someone has an uncommon name, people will often ask how their name is spelt.
For example, Xavier is an uncommon name in Australia. So if I met Xavier, I might ask
him, "How do you spell your name?"
So it's a good idea to get used to spelling out your name.
Xavier is spelt like this: X-A-V-I-E-R, Xavier.
Jacques is also an uncommon name in English, because it's a French name.
In this case, we have both a first and a last name.
His first name is Jacques, and his last name is Duff.
A first name is sometimes called a Christian name. It's also called a given name. It's
the name your family chooses for you.
The last name is also called a surname, or family name. That's usually the name of one
parent that's passed on to their children.
Jacques's first name is spelt J-A-C-Q-U-E-S, and his surname is Duff.
Notice that if you asked someone in Australia to spell out the name Duff, they would say:
D-U-double F.
But in North America, people would spell it like this D-U-F-F. They don't use the word
double. They say the letter twice instead.
So if we asked Jacques Duff to spell out his surname, he would say: D-U-double F. Or, he
might say D-U-F-F.
You'll need to be familiar with both ways of spelling out double letters. You should
also make sure you know exactly how to spell out your own name in English.
That's all for today.
I'm Margot Politis - that's M-A-R-G-O-T P-O-L-I-T-I-S.
See you next time.