AEE 2694: We're Ahead of Schedule With Michelle's Exciting News

This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2694. We're ahead of schedule with Michelle's exciting news. Welcome to the All Ears English Podcast, downloaded more than 200 million times. Are you feeling stuck with your English?

We'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection, not perfection, with your American hosts, Michelle Kaplan, the New York radio girl, and Aubrey Carter, the IELTS whiz, coming to you from Arizona and New York City, USA.

And to get your transcripts delivered by email every week, go to allearsenglish.com forward slash subscribe. You don't want to miss my exciting announcement in today's episode. We'll also share three ways to describe something that arrives early.

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Plus you get your English level. Take it today at allearsenglish.com slash fluency score. That's allearsenglish.com slash F-L-U-E-N-C-Y-S-C-O-R-E. Hello, Michelle.

How are you? I am doing well, Aubrey. How are you? I am great. Quick question for you. Have you ever had an Amazon delivery that came way earlier than expected?

Yeah, sometimes Amazon, it's weird. Sometimes they're not as fast as you would hope. And sometimes all of a sudden you think it's going to take much longer and then it just arrives earlier than expected. So yeah, that has happened to me.

That's always a special surprise. But speaking of special surprises, I have had something else come earlier than expected. I did not even get a chance to announce on the show that I was pregnant with another baby

And I already had that baby earlier than expected. Congratulations, by the way, on behalf of all the listeners. I'm sure everyone's excited and also probably very surprised because the baby came very early. So you hadn't even had a chance to announce that you were expecting.

Yes. I did not have a chance. So I had a baby just pretty early on in my third trimester. And so I have three children. Now I'm a mother of three. I have a little baby girl.

She's been in the NICU for quite some time, but I wanted to officially announce it. She's doing well, hoping I'll have her home soon. But yes, earlier than expected. Yeah.

Yes. Oh, it's so tricky because sometimes things are so exciting when they come so early. And then with something like a baby, it's kind of scary. So I'm grateful that there are NICUs that can provide the medical care necessary.

I'm glad you've been able to be with her in the hospital. And so yeah, and I'm glad you are sharing it with us now. Congratulations. We're so excited for you to welcome a third baby into your...

Thank you. Thank you. And, you know, I'm sure that we've had listeners who have had something like this happen. I mean, maybe a NICU stay or something like that.

NICU, it's like that's where the babies go when they need a little extra support or maybe they've been born early. So, yeah, I'd definitely be curious if you have experience with that or questions about that. Let me know. Definitely feel free to write us your questions.

Yeah, definitely. And in celebration of Michelle's early baby, we thought it would be fun to share an episode with vocabulary when things do come earlier, happen earlier before we're expecting it. So we're excited to share some of this fun vocab because what a great way to connect if something like... Certainly not about babies.

Lots of different things could happen before you expect it, right? Getting a job, maybe getting into a certain university. If you're immigrating, sometimes things take longer than we want, but sometimes it happens earlier than we expect. Yeah.

And yeah, so we are going to talk about, you know, just we're going to share three ways that you can talk about something arriving early. And so we're going to get into it in just a second. But we want to remind you, wherever you're listening to the All News English podcast or watching us on YouTube, hit the follow button or subscribe so that you never miss anything. Awesome.

Yes. All right. Let's dive into this, Michelle. Our first phrase is ahead of schedule. Yeah. We use this a lot at work, right? But it could be for anything that's planned.

It's generally positive, right? If something's ahead of schedule, that's a good thing that it happened sooner than you would expect. Right. I mean, you could say it in a bit of a sarcastic way, like, oh, my baby came, she was ahead of schedule, you know, and so, but a lot of times, it is more about kind of a positive thing with we've done extra planning, we worked hard.

So, you know, we're ahead of schedule. So that's a lot of times you'll hear it. But you could also hear it with, you know, you're the train or something is just ahead of schedule.

But I would say that when you hear ahead of schedule, it does kind of sound more positive, don't you think? Yeah, I agree. For example, you might say we finished the meeting ahead of schedule. So we all were able to go home earlier, right?

It's like you have this schedule, a set plan for when things should end. And that's usually positive. It's usually exciting when something happens ahead of schedule.

Or the package arrived ahead of schedule, which made my son happy. So I don't know if you ever have this with your kids, Aubrey, where you order something for them and then every day, is it here? Is it here? Is it here?

Yes. And my daughter has started taking my phone to look. She wants to track on Amazon to see when it's coming. So yeah, often if I can't find my phone, it's because one of my kids took it to try and track an Amazon package.

That's funny. Yeah. So if all of a sudden you could say it's actually here, then it can definitely make someone happy. Or what's another example? Flights, right?

We're all used to flights being late, delayed, but sometimes they're running ahead of schedule, right? You might say the flight is running ahead of schedule. So we will be there early. The pilot might announce that, right?

And sometimes it's just a few minutes, sometimes a little more. But if it's going to arrive before the announced, the expected time, that's when we would use this ahead of schedule. Mm hmm. So, again, of course, it depends on the context.

Right. If you I mean, I imagine if your flight is running ahead of schedule and you have your friend with you and there was going to be a surprise party, you might be like, oh, the flight ran ahead of schedule.

And, you know, we have to come up with a plan B. So, of course, it's we're not going to say it's always positive. But a lot of the scenario. Depends on the scenario.

But if you're trying to think of, you know, a basic way to keep this in your mind, like generally, I would say it's a kind of a positive thing. And now we're going to move on to the next one, which is earlier or sooner than expected. So...

This one, I would say it's a little bit more neutral, like it could be used for either. But, you know, it's just the reality of what actually happened versus what you were guessing would happen or when you thought something would happen. I agree, right? You don't know if it's good or not, right?

If someone arrives early, that might be great if you're ready to go. If you needed that extra 20 minutes to get ready, then it's not great if they arrive early. So these are very neutral. It really depends on the scenario.

Mm-hmm. So, for example, the rainstorm ended sooner than expected, so we were still able to enjoy the day. So, yeah, like, do you ever – I mean, how – I mean, how much do you check the weather on your phone? That's the question I was trying to say.

Oh, not often. Yeah, but – Oh, I think we've talked about this because you said something about being in Arizona. Yeah, it's just always sunny here. So then it surprises us.

If it rains, it's like, oh, wow, weather. It always catches us off guard, right? But if we're going to float the river, we're doing something outside, then sometimes I will check. And I do feel like that happens.

If rain is forecast, then it's always either earlier than expected or later than expected. Yeah. And yeah, whenever I know that rain might happen, I'll be checking the hourly forecast because here it's, you know, different all the time. I mean, you never know.

Actually, I'm just looking outside now. It's supposed to rain. I don't see any rain. I believe it when I see it. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Just recently, we took a little weekend trip to Cape May.

Actually, I'm wearing a shirt. Oh, I love Cape May. We went there when I went to New York. Oh, do you? I love Cape May. That's awesome. It's so nice. It's so cute.

It's so adorable. So we were there, and unfortunately, it rained on. most of the time it was terrible weather and um i feel like it rained when i was in cape may too we had all these plans and then it was just raining the whole time yes that was years ago but i remember it just being so rainy the whole time we were there funny Right.

So like if I were looking at the forecast, and then the rain ended sooner than expected, okay, that's a great thing. But if the rain started sooner than expected, that's not a bad thing. Exactly. Or for example, at work, you might say, we knew the layoffs were coming, but they were definitely earlier than expected.

So maybe everyone thinks they're going to happen in six months. And then two weeks later, layoffs are starting. So yeah, that would definitely be a bad thing for that to happen earlier than expected.

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That's allearsenglish.com slash f-l-u-e-n-c-y-s-c-o-r-e. All right. What about premature? This is more often problematic, right? Yes, exactly. It wasn't, it's not ideal how early something happened.

So, you know, and it could, you know, potentially cause some sort of issue. Of course, you have the word like for a baby for what I had, it was a premature problem.

So, you know, not what was anticipated, not what was planned at that time. So typically, I would say that this is not like a great word, because it may be because there were some sort of problems. Luckily, my daughter is doing okay, knock on wood. But, you know, when you hear premature...

Michelle, a question. I have heard babies, premature babies referred to as preemies. Is that still a thing? I feel like I haven't heard it recently. Have you heard that?

Do you use that? It is still a thing. Yeah, a preemie. So yeah, because that's actually like when you buy clothes for a baby who's premature, like it would be called like the preemie size.

And it's funny that you asked that question because it almost sounds like it should be kind of a politically incorrect word. word doesn't it like just sort of i was worried i'm like is that okay to say that i don't know right because that's what dan said to me too when it first happened it was like do we still say preemie and seems that it's fine but for some reason it feels like it might i mean i i'm fine with it i don't think it actually is like uh i was very prepared for you to say no please don't call my baby a preemie i was like okay no I don't know. I mean, I don't know.

I don't know what it is about the word that made me think maybe it was. No, but Dan said the same thing. But the actual clothes are called like the preemie size. So very interesting.

But it just there's something about the word that sounds like maybe this is not okay, but... Right. But we do use this in other contexts too, right? We might say premature judgments, premature decisions, something that hasn't been considered enough or happened before everyone was ready, right?

So for example, I don't want to make any premature judgments, but I feel like I know how this is going to end. Yeah. Right. Or I know you want to throw an engagement party, but it would be premature to start planning when he hasn't even proposed yet.

Right. Right. That's a really good example, right? Sometimes you want to plan your whole life. Okay, this is a little premature means like it's too early in a negative way.

Right. Exactly. So this is not just about babies who arrive early. It's used in many different contexts. You know, it's like kind of I mean, I think we've talked about the show is like jumping on the show before, like jumping the gun, right?

Like doing something a little bit right. So it might be premature to order the wedding and don't order the wedding invitations when they're not engaged. Right. Exactly.

yeah all right i remember oh sorry i remember before dan proposed um you know we like we were all excited and you know that's the thing is i know you got engaged very quickly after meeting cole so your your situation was a little bit different but i remember you know waiting to be proposed to and my parent we even took dan to like a wedding venue and we said it was for something else just to get him in the mind frame of weddings that's funny

Yeah, exactly. And so you might have been planning, you know, making some premature plans, but you're like, I feel like it's going to happen. So I'm ready to plan our future. Yes, exactly.

So all right, should we do a role play? Yeah, let's do it. You and I are friends catching up here. Do you want to start us? Here we go. All right. Good news.

The contractor called. My kitchen renovation is ahead of schedule. Really? I thought it would be finished next month. Me too. They said we'll be able to move back a week early.

Speaking of surprises, my bonus from work came sooner than expected. Oh my gosh. Congratulations. Thank you. Did you get yours yet? We should go out and celebrate.

A celebration would be premature, I think. I just found out we may be dealing with budget cuts soon. Oh, no. Yeah. Oh, this is great. We used all of them here.

And you can see how it wasn't strange to use all of these in the same conversation because they mean just a little bit different. They have a little different connotations.

So first I said, good news. My kitchen renovation is ahead of schedule. So this is a positive thing. We talked about how this is generally like something was planned well, something went well.

It's generally positive. And it's about expected dates, right? You, your contractor had told you something would be done by a certain date. And if they get it done before that, they're running ahead of schedule.

And then I said, my bonus from work came sooner than expected. This reminds me of Christmas vacation where the whole movie is waiting for his Christmas bonus, right? But this it's exciting when they come sooner than expected and really nerve wracking if they come later than expected.

Right, right, exactly. And then I said, congratulations, you asked if I got mine yet, we should go out and celebrate, celebrate. And I said, celebration would be premature. I just found out we may be dealing with budget cuts soon.

So right, I so saying it was premature. It's like, that would be kind of problematic. Like, we're not ready to do that. I would be jumping the gun as we've talked about.

Exactly. So you might be implying here that you're worried you'll get laid off if there are budget cuts that are going to make some people get fires. You're like, I don't want to be celebrating and then find out something like that, right? Yeah.

Yep, exactly. Well, this is fun. I'm glad we went over this. And guys, you should check out episode 2690, a recent episode that was have the last laugh with these English idioms.

Yes. And Michelle, congratulations from Allers English and also all of our listeners. I know they all wish they could congratulate you personally. Guys, leave a comment on the YouTube video for this episode to give Michelle your congratulations and your best wishes.

And we're so excited for you to have thank you and just a shout out to my strong baby girl and I hope you come home soon and one day I'll play you this episode yes absolutely awesome thank you Michelle for sharing your exciting news thank you so much bye Aubrey bye guys

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