Idioms- Running off into the blue

Running off into the blue (0:29)- Leaving without any direction, not knowing where one is going.

Idioms- Line of work

Line of work (0:23) - the type of job someone has; the area in which someone works.

Idioms- Ready to mingle

Ready to mingle (1:21) - prepared to socialize with other people and get to know them.

Idioms- Pull a Fast One

"The Bucks are trying to pull a fast one."(0:18)- This means they are trying to do something they aren't supposed to do (cheat) and get away with it.

Email Advice

This was written for an English class by a student of mine who is an architect from Colombia, Sofia Suarez:

1.  Use the recipients fields as required (To: Main recipient, Cc: Carbon Copy, and Bcc: Blind Carbon Copy).

      2.  Fill in the subject with a suitable title. If no more information needs to be written, simply write “EOM” meaning “End Of Message” at the end of the subject title.  The recipient then doesn’t need to read any further, as this indicates that all the necessary information has been provided and there is nothing in the body of the email.

      3.  Begin with a salutation, word or phrase, or start with a “please” or “reminder” leading the reader directly to the email’s main issue.
   4.  Include the main idea in the opening sentence.
   5.  Use full sentences and be specific.
   6.  Do not use all capital or lower-case letters.
   7.  Avoid the use of “textspeak” (abbreviations and acronyms).
   8.  Be concise and respectful. Consider creating an attachment if your text is longer that three paragraphs.
   9.  Include words like “please” and “thank you” and do not be sarcastic in their use.
  10.  Specify the response you want.
  11.  Add your signature, including your name, (telephone and company’s name for a professional email).
  12.  Proofread, edit, use the spellcheck, and if is necessary use a dictionary.
  13.  If you are sending an email and you have the option, use the tool for delivery or reader verification, as this way you know if the email has reached its recipient and it is also a way to encourage him/her to respond promptly.
  14.  Reply promptly, and if you need more than 24 hours to collect information or make a decision, send a response explaining the delay.
  15.  Keep in mind that your email could be public information and be aware of the vocabulary that you use.

Idiom- goin' down

You're Goin' Down (0:52)- You are going to be defeated.

Idioms- Sick Perv

Sick Perv (1:16) - short for "sick pervert" it refers to a person who is sexually perverse (sick), and not conforming to normal sexual standards, such as regarding sexually explicit behavior for children as being unacceptable.

Idioms- peaks

"Your happiness peaks at five..."(0:28)- to peak is to reach the highest point of something.  Your the most happy you can be at five years of age.....

Idioms- Caught up

Caught up (0:09)- heavily involved in something to the point of being distracted by it, and as a result delayed.   Michael Bolton was "caught up" watching a Pirates of the Caribbean program because he likes it so much, and as a result was late for his appointment with the band.

Idioms- Snap Out

"...snap out of study mode..." (0:47)- snap out means to experience a sudden break in a stream of concentration.  If someone is in study mode, they are experiencing a time of focussing on studying, and when they snap out of it, they suddenly stop being able to concentrate on studying.

Idioms- Blind Optimism

Blind Optimism (2:39)- Believing that everything can be good without any reason or evidence.

Pronunciation- Why is the "tion" ending pronounced "shun"?

"Tion" is pronounced "shun" because of Mr. Noah Webster who created the first dictionary of English for the American People.


A little history: He noticed that the people living in the new nation of United States spoke very differently from each other - so different that often times there were misunderstanding that resulted in violence. He was determined to remedy this situation by giving Americans a 'mother tongue' of their own.


To that end he traveled the land listening and writing down pronunciations of various words and standardizing them and publishing them - thus encouraging the way the words were pronounced and spelled.


For example: he changed the word "musik" to music and the word "plough" to "plow" and the word "centre" to "center". He wanted to change the word "women" to "wimmen" and the word "tongue" to "tung" - but people hung to the old versions of those words and he had to give in.



Now why is "tion" pronounced "shun". Mr. Webster found that people were pronouncing words with "tion" like "salvation" like this "sal VA she un". He suggested it would better to pronounce it as "sal VA shun". People found that easier to say and began do that with all the "tion" words.


Note that the old pronunciation of "tion" sort of followed the romance languages until Mr. Webster's involvement. For example the same word "salvation" in Spanish is written as "salvación" and pronounce "sal va see ON".


Latin in the origin of the 'tion words. The original form of the word was "salvatio" and is pronounced "sal va TSEE io". How did it get the "n"? That would require me to explain how Latin nouns work. If curious, Google "latin nouns declensions"


Anyway as far as I can tell this is why we pronounce "tion" as "shun".

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_is_the_suffix_-tion_pronounced_shun#ixzz24jV2C1gT

Idioms- Busted

"We're so busted." (0:10)- We have been caught doing something wrong.

Idioms- Gut Wrenching

"...me and my gut-wrenching drama..." (0:12)- gut wrenching means something is so emotionally charged, it affects you physically making your stomach (gut) cramp up (wrenching).

Idioms- Hooked on

Hooked on a journal (0:22) - couldn't stop reading the journal, was addicted to reading it.

Idioms- Burned through

".....a deadly virus burned through our civilization." (1:02)- affected and killed a lot of people in that civilization.

Idioms- Hand outs

Hand Outs (0:53)- donations to people who are in need.

Idioms- Fresh Start

Fresh Start (0:19) - the opportunity to start anew,  to be able to start over again.

Idioms- nice guys finish last

"How to hit on girls" (0:01)- How to talk to girls to try to get to know them and try to get them to like you (flirt with them).
"Nice guys finish last" (0:08)- If a guy is nice, he doesn't go anywhere- he doesn't succeed.

Idioms- Pushing the envelope

"Apple is always about pushing the envelope" (00:05)- Pushing the envelope means doing the very most you can.

Idioms- raise their ugly heads

"Greed and deceit raise their ugly heads" (0:00:02)- Greed and deceipt become a problem and an issue.

Learn English Online!

Idioms- Stacked Fight Card

Stacked Fight Card (0:21)- a fight card is a program airing a contact sport such as boxing or kickboxing. A Stacked Fight Card has one good fight after another (this event was "stacked" with three exciting matches).

Idioms- All In One Fell Swoop

All in one fell swoop (1:29) - All at once; all at the same time.

Idioms- Don't get cute with me...

Aaron Sorkin is a writer who is known for reusing (using more than once) some of his popular lines.

Don't get cute with me. (1:53)- Don't be sarcastic or say something you don't really mean.

Idioms- Strange sounds heard!

"Are people in Clintonville buying that explanation?"(0:57) Buying that- believing that

Idioms

Give me a smooch (0:36)- Give me a kiss
You complete me. (0:47) - You are my other half, the person I love, the person I want to spend my life with.

Language Mystery

Living without Numbers or Time


By Rafaela von Bredow

The Pirahã people have no history, no descriptive words and no subordinate clauses. That makes their language one of the strangest in the world -- and also one of the most hotly debated by linguists.

Linguistics generally focuses on what idioms across the world have in common. But the Pirahã language -- and this is what makes it so significant -- departs from what were long thought to be essential features of all languages.

The language is incredibly spare. The Pirahã use only three pronouns. They hardly use any words associated with time and past tense verb conjugations don't exist. Apparently colors aren't very important to the Pirahãs, either -- they don't describe any of them in their language. But of all the curiosities, the one that bugs linguists the most is that Pirahã is likely the only language in the world that doesn't use subordinate clauses. Instead of saying, "When I have finished eating, I would like to speak with you," the Pirahãs say, "I finish eating, I speak with you."

Equally perplexing: In their everyday lives, the Pirahãs appear to have no need for numbers. During the time he spent with them, Everett never once heard words like "all," "every," and "more" from the Pirahãs. There is one word, "hói," which does come close to the numeral 1. But it can also mean "small" or describe a relatively small amount -- like two small fish as opposed to one big fish, for example. And they don't even appear to count without language, on their fingers for example, in order to determine how many pieces of meat they have to grill for the villagers, how many days of meat they have left from the anteaters they've hunted or how much they demand from Brazilian traders for their six baskets of Brazil nuts.

The debate amongst linguists about the absence of all numbers in the Pirahã language broke out after Peter Gordon, a psycholinguist at New York's Columbia University, visited the Pirahãs and tested their mathematical abilities. For example, they were asked to repeat patterns created with between one and 10 small batteries. Or they were to remember whether Gordon had placed three or eight nuts in a can.

The results, published in Science magazine, were astonishing. The Pirahãs simply don't get the concept of numbers. His study, Gordon says, shows that "a people without terms for numbers doesn't develop the ability to determine exact numbers."

English Online

Consonant Clusters

Idioms

Every man for himself (0:16)- Each person will have to fight for their own survival; no one will help anyone else.

Idioms

0:18 turn off- lose power

1:14 black out- lose electricity in a city or large area

Idioms

WOW! They talk FAST!!

Totally pimped out (00:21) - it will have a lot of extra features and is very nice.

International Business Tips

Idioms

Full ahead (short for full steam ahead) (0:45)-we are going to make the ship go as fast as we can.  The ship was powered by steam, and they would have to heat the water as much as they could to create as much steam as they could, for the engine to be run at full capacity.  For more information on the engine of the Titanic click here.
Put your backs into it (0:46)- Work as hard as you can, with all the strength you have.

Idioms

Batten down the hatches (0:51)- this expression originates from nautical terminology meaning to literally close the hatches on a ship in preparation for a storm.  It's used in the idiomatic sense to mean: get ready for difficult times.

Pronunciation- THR

Idioms- The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games Trailor

Take off (0:13)- leave a place or location, usually quickly without specific intent or plans.
Take off can mean a lot of different things.
A few examples are:
Take off your hat- Remove your hat
The plane will take off soon- the plane will leave soon
Her career will take off- she will have a successful career

English Online

The Twenty-first Century classroom is no longer in front of a dusty blackboard, but behind a crisp, clean, high definition computer screen.

The advantages are innumerous. 

Globalization is occurring in all aspects of life, and communication is the key to success.  The international language is English, and the race to learn it is on.  However with busy lives, hectic schedules, and rising gas prices, language schools may not be the answer. 

A wealth of information is now at our fingertips, the internet a portal to vast resources, and instant connections.

Skype has fast become the most popular VoIP software around the world, with over 100 million users, and is an excellent teaching tool.  VoIP stands for voice over internet protocol, and simply means communication through the spoken word using the internet.  Other VoIP software programs include Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger, and TeamSpeak.   

Along with being able to talk to people for free, the option of seeing them using video is also offered.  There is a text box, which can be used to type in information while simultaneously speaking or teaching.  The benefit of this over teaching in person is that weaknesses can be identified and addressed instantly by the teacher.  In the case where a student is having difficulty in a certain area, such as properly using the present simple tense, the teacher can send links to online resources that they can go over together during the lesson, and can also be referred to later by the student on his/her own.  Other free resources online include dialogues, idiom exercises, TOEFL preparation, and even current event articles, with practice exercises following.  Breaking News ESL is an excellent resource, with recent news stories written for speakers of English as a second language.  Topics of interest hold the student’s (and teacher’s) interest, new vocabulary is learned, and sentence structure improved.  Conversation flows easily, providing the learner with the opportunity of having a real life discussion with a native speaker, and pronunciation issues can also be addressed by the teacher as needed.  Utilizing the text box for this, words can be written down (often while the student is speaking without him or her knowing so as not to interrupt the dialogue) and then sent to the student.  For example, if a student is having difficulty pronouncing the word “thorough” the teacher can type the word in the text box, along with a phonetic spelling (not necessarily using the phonetic alphabet as not everyone is familiar with this) “thur- o” and then go over the word with the student, practicing it together.  The student then has the word saved in his text box for future reference, and can practice the word for the following week. 

Writing can be worked on as well, as files can be sent via the text box, and corrections can be made and explained during the lesson, providing the student with conversation and structural instruction simultaneously.  And as the teacher identifies repetitive mistakes or problem patterns in the writing, links to work on these areas can be sent to the student providing him/her with innumerous resources instantly.  No more time is wasted hunting through bookshelves, or making photocopies. 

International conference calls are now commonplace in the boardroom, and most often made in English as the global economy expands, and foreign markets merge.  Skype becomes more than just a convenient, effective teaching tool for the executive, but a common source of communication at work and school. 

Most companies have their own VoIP system they use for conference calls, however Skype also provides this feature, and it’s free for all Skype users, making group lessons online possible as well. 

Talk and Write is a free software program provided by Skype for business and education.  Providing a mutually shared white board and meeting room, it enables users to communicate instantaneously, as they can write in the same space at the same time, point out certain areas on the screen, highlight texts, and erase annotations. 

Payments for lessons can be made using Paypal, bank transfers, or other methods as agreed upon by the student and teacher.  Teachers should be experienced professionals, and native speakers.  A fifteen minute free trial lesson is often offered to make sure students are comfortable with their new teacher.  If lessons are being offered at a very low cost, the buyer should be wary.  However, people living in large cities like Tokyo and Hong Kong may be surprised at how much less the cost for an online lesson is, when doing comparative shopping with local language schools, which can run up to twice the amount of an online lesson.

Convenient, effective, and efficient, online lessons with the right teacher can be an enjoyable and lucrative experience for anyone wanting to get a head start in the global race of international communication. 

Rebecca Wolbach Silva
http://www.blogger.com/goog_449582381

Idioms

Cowboy (1:54) - a person taking a lot of financial risks (day trading, for example).

"That's when I draw the line." (1:55) -that is the limit and that's the point at which I won't tolerate anymore (of this behavior).

Idioms

"Everybody's drinkin' the same Kool-Aid"

-Everybody’s completely buying into (believing in/participating in) an idea or system, whether good or bad.

Pronunciation- TH

Silva English Online: You tube English lessons

Silva English Online: You tube English lessons: Mike and Molly- Victoria's Birthday This video is hilarious but they do speak very fast in this clip. Look up the vocabulary words and rea...

You tube English lessons

Mike and Molly- Victoria's Birthday
This video is hilarious but they do speak very fast in this clip.  Look up the vocabulary words and read the questions before watching the video.  You will subconsciously make more of a concerted effort to listen, and your listening skills will improve faster!

Vocabulary:    Folks, bouncer, pop-up camper, long-term, Winnebago, hot dog truck, extension curb, half-eaten bun, curb, load

Questions:

1.       Why is Victoria upset?

2.       How old is Victoria?

3.       When she says, “the same man a bunch of nights in a row” what does Molly say another name for that is?

4.       Molly asks if the bouncer in the pop-up camper was a long term thing.  What is Victoria’s response?

5.       What does Victoria say happens when you show up for a second date with a guy who lives in a Winnebago, pop-up camper, or hot dog truck?

6.       She says they don’t leave a note, but what two things do they leave behind?

7.       Molly tells Victoria she shouldn’t pin her happiness on what?

8.       Victoria tells Molly that’s easy for her to say because she has a what?

9.       Victoria tells Molly that at least she has someone to be ____________ in?