Unit 7с Book

While reading the transcript in the coursebook (or listening to the recording), you might have noticed that some of the explanations were not intended for experts but for lay persons. Sometimes it is necessary to be able to explain technical issues to a non-expert. Study the language box on p. 56 in the book to see some phrases that are used to introduce these explanations. You can see that words like:

• …, or… (nebo)

• …; in other words, … (jinými slovy) 

• That is / that is to say / i.e. (to jest, tj.) 

are used to explain or rephrase single words or short phrases, 

While:

• Another way of putting it is that… Další způsob, jak to vyjádřit, je, že… 

• To put it simply, … jednoduše řečeno

• To put that another way, … jinak řečeno

• To put this in everyday terms, … vyjádřeno v každodenních termínech 

• To put this in everyday language, … vyjádřeno v běžném jazyce

• To put that in layman´s terms, … laicky řečeno

• To put that in layman´s language, … řečeno laickým jazykem

are used to introduce longer explanatory passages.

Now, do this task to see how technical terms can be explained easily by using non-technical words. However, as you can see, the task only asks you to match explanations to some technical terms, without linking these two parts by using some linguistic means. Therefore, this follow-up task asks you to insert suitable phrases to introduce explanations intended for lay persons. Finally, in this task, you can see an example of an explanation given to a lay person.