My name is Jeff McQuillan, and let's get started.

Today we're going to talk about family and family members, and in doing so, we're going to go over some idioms and expressions related to expressing likes and dislikes. We focus on two questions today: What family member are you most like, and what family member are you least like?

Well, my family member that I think I have the most similarity to or that I resemble the most would be my sister Therese. There are a couple of reasons why I think that we are most similar. Number one, she likes to read and I like to read. We're both readers. We always have lots of books in our house and are always reading something. My sister also likes to write. She is a writer by profession and I, as a researcher, do a lot of writing myself, so we both share an interest in writing.

More importantly, we are the two members of my family that moved away from where my parents and the rest of our family still lives back in the state of Minnesota. We both live here in California—my sister in Northern California and I in Southern California. I think often in dealing with family members and family tensions and family politics, sometimes it's a good idea to move to another part of the country or sometimes even another part of the world, as I have done, and break away from those family ties to strike out on our own in order to do something different. And that is what both my sister and I did, and I think that's one of the things we have in common.

Now, in terms of my siblings that I have the least similarity with or have the least amount of common interest, that would probably be my brother Mike. Now, Mike is a big sports fan. He was an athlete himself. He taught physical education for a few years. So Mike has a lot of interest in sports, and he spends a lot of time on things connected with sports, both with his own sons as well as his own activities outside of work. I am not a sports person. I don't really like sports that much. I don't watch sports very often. And so this is one reason why we're not very much alike.

Let's start by talking about these terms like, alike, and likes. In English, the word like as a verb, you probably already know, means that you're interested or you enjoy something. For example:

I like to read.
I like to go bowling.
I like watching television.

Like is also used as a preposition to mean that you have a similarity or a resemblance with another person or thing. So, we might say:

Los Angeles is like New York. They're both big cities.
I'm not like my sister Therese in that she likes to drive and I don't.

We use the term like here as a way of describing a phrase or expression that has some similarity with something else.

Another term that sometimes gets confused but is similar in meaning is alike. That's A-L-I-K-E, all one word. Alike is usually used as an adjective. For example:

My sister and I are alike.

This is to express resemblance and similarity.

Finally, there's the term likes. And likes relates back to that first definition we gave of the verb like. Likes as a noun means the things that you enjoy. For example:

Some of my likes are reading, watching television, and surfing the internet.

All of these would be likes, and again, likes serves there as a noun.

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ESLPod002 - Family Members

ESL Pod Official - Speak English Fluently by Listening (with Text)