The Big Bang Theory

This is one of my favourite TV shows. The main character, Sheldon, is a super intelligent physicist. He is a 'geek', or a 'nerd', which means someone who is super intelligent at science, or information technology. Because he is super intelligent, he is not very good at interacting with people. His friends have to be very patient with him.

The show is very interesting because it contains lots of very high level academic English. You can learn a lot of academic English by watching the show.

In this episode he is learning Chinese. It made me laugh because he has the same problems learning Chinese that I have sometimes. It's easy to get the tones wrong and say something completely different from what you intended.

This scene has subtitles, so you can read what Sheldon is saying in Chinese.

Vocabulary:

• assume that  = believe that something is true
• obligation = duty
• idiosyncrasies  = strange personal behaviour that everyone has
• subject matter = the stuff you are learning
• Szechuan Palace = their local Chinese restaurant
• passing s/th off as s/th = lie about something