BBC News Review 上海75年来最严重台风

From BBC Learning English. This is Learning English from the News, a podcast about the news headlines.

In this program was

Typhoon to hit Shanghai in 75 years.

Hello, I'm Phil, and I'm back.

In this

program, we look at one big

new story and

of vocabulary in the headlines that will help you understand it.

You can find all the vocabulary and headlines from this episode, as well as a worksheet, on our website, bbc learning english dot com.

So let's hear more about this story.

So on Monday, shanghai was hit by typhoon Babinka, the strongest since 1949.

Wind speeds of over 150 km an hour were reported, and 25 million people were advised to stay at home.

400000 people were evacuated by Chinese authorities, and hundreds of flights were cancelled.

Now, this is only the 3rd typhoon to hit Shanghai, according to the China Meteorological Administration.

So the 1st headline that we've got is about how Shanghai prepared for the oncoming typhoon.

And this is from Reuters. Shanghai braces for direct hits from typhoon Barbanca.

Yes, that headline again. Shanghai Braces for direct hit from typhoon Babinka.

And that's from Writers. So this headline is from a story published before the typhoon hits.

So we have this expression braces for now.

You might know the word brace.

It's that thing that you have on your teeth which supports them and makes them straight.

And that might help you remember brace as a verb as well.

Okay, yes. So as a verb, brace means to prepare yourself for something, and usually something bad.

So if you think of the noun as being something that supports your teeth, bracing yourself can mean looking for support when there's something bad coming.

Yeah, and that is the literal meaning.

So here in the headline, brace is a verb, and it's talking about the warnings issue, to like evacuations.

We also use brace to mean mentally preparing yourself for something bad.

So e.g., employees in a failing company might be braced to hear bad news about their jobs.

They're thinking about what's coming. We ve looked at brace, which means to prepare for something bad.

So e.g., you could say the police were braced for criticism after the worrying crime statistics were published.

This is learning English from the news, our podcast about the news headlines.

Today, we're talking about the worst typhoon to hit Shanghai since 1949.

What shanghai's preparations were definitely needed as the typhoon hit the city at speeds of over 150 km/h.

And our next headline talks about the impact.

This is from the Weather Channel, people cling to trees as typhoon slams into Shanghai.

And again, that headline from the Weather Channel.

People cling to trees as typhoon slums into Shanghai.

So this headline is mentioning one way that people in Shanghai were dealing with the typhoon.

They were clinging, holding on, tight to trees.

We're looking at the verb slam into so feel, I know, that you can slam a door is when you close it really hard, and it bangs shuts.

Okay, yes. So slam is about force.

If something slams into something, then it hits it very hard.

Now, here, slam into is saying that the typhoon hit Shanghai with great force.

Now, another way that we often use slam is when describing a road crash.

So we could say that a car slams into another in an accident.

Slam is also used in a metaphorical way.

Slamming someone can mean to heavily criticized them for something.

And e.g. you might hear the star's latest film was slammed by the critics.

They hated it. We ve had slam into to hit with great force, e.g.

the tree slammed into the roof of the house, destroying it.

This is learning English from the news, from BBC, learning English.

We're talking about the worst typhoon to hit Shanghai in 75 years.

Now that the typhoon has passed, shanghai is fixing the damage.

More than 1800 trees have been blown down, and 30000 homes have lost power.

And that's what our next headline is about.

This is from the South China Morning Post.

Shanghai mops up as typhoon babinka reaches Eastern china's Jangsu province.

At that headline again Shanghai mops up as typhoon babinka reaches Eastern china's

Jangsu province. And that's from the South China Morning Post.

So this headline is focusing on the clean up operation after the typhoon.

And we're looking at the frasal verb mop up.

Now, a mop is something like a brush

with a long handle that

you use the cleaning

up liquids. Yeah? Exactly like your floor.

And mopping up the frasal verb means using a map to wash and dry things, particularly flaws.

Yeah. And we can also use it in a similar way, to talk about when you use a piece of bread just to soak up the leftover source, or soup on your plate, you mop it up just to get the last few bits.

Yeah, so there's probably a lot of mopping up happening in Shanghai right now, But mopping up here has another meaning.

It can mean to finish dealing with a problem, and that's probably what this headline means, e.g.

you could use mop up in that way to say, we're about to launch a new website.

It's nearly finished, but we've just got to mop up some last few problems.

We ve had mop up to clean up a liquid so, e.g.

you could say the washing machine leaked all over the kitchen.

I'm mopping up all the water.

That's it for this episode of Learning English From The News.

Will be back next week with another news story.

Learning English from the News is one of many great programs that we have at BBC Learning English, and we have a newsletter.

You can sign up on our websites, and you'll discover lots of new programs delivered straight to your inbox every week.

Also, we're on social media, so just search for us as BBC, learning English, and you'll find us by Canal Five.

扫码查看听力音频