English Idiomatic Expression: “To The Best of My Knowledge”
Here’s how to improve your English listening skills when listening to my video: put the headphones on, playback the video and write it all down while listening to it! Hi guys, hello boys and girls and welcome back to Robby's English Harmony video blog! Today I decided to bring another English idiomatic expression video to you and this time around the video in question is – no, not the video in question, the phrase, the expression in question! Sorry guys for making this mistake but I'm just going to leave it here on record so that you can see that Robby is not really afraid of making mistakes, he practices what he preaches and that's the path that you should be going down as well if you're anything serious about your English fluency improvement that is, right? So basically don't be afraid, don't be embarrassed of making mistakes, saying something wrong, going back, correcting yourself, it's all part of the game. Anyway, going back to the original subject, the expression in question for today is “to the best of my knowledge”, right? So if you're interested in learning how to use this particular English idiomatic expression, just bear with me for a few more moments and everything is going to become crystal clear to you my friends! (more…)
Funny English Phrases: Driving Related Idioms
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snkYnJPNHwQ Hello all YearOfEnglish.com members and just about anyone else reading this article right now! Today I’m bringing you a bunch of English idiomatic expressions originating from and also directly related to cars, driving and commuting in general. Correct me if I’m wrong, but driving is something we’re all directly connected to in some way, shape or form. If you don’t drive yourself, there’s a very good chance you’re being driven to and from work by some colleague of yours. Even if you commute by public transport, you’re definitely seeing cars on the road performing all different sorts of maneuver, and I’m pretty sure you’ve sometimes wondered how this or that particular driving related activity is called. Now, you have a great opportunity to spice up your English by adding on a few driving related English idioms to your active vocabulary! ;-) Just watch the video above (also repeat everything I say to ingrain those speech patterns into your brain!), read its transcript below, repeat and memorize the highlighted expressions, and don’t forget to do some spoken practice on your own! Remember – in order to learn to USE these phrases in your own conversations, you have to SPEAK them out loud many times over until it becomes your second nature! TRANSCRIPT OF THE ABOVE VIDEO: (more…)
Why It’s a Bad Idea to Categorize English Idioms when Learning Them!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x61xJ0pLL_k English idioms are very useful for foreign English speakers like you or me because they allow expressing our thoughts and voice our opinion quickly and using the same phrase in dozens and hundreds of similar situations. Let’s take the following idiom – “Chip on your shoulder”. You can use it in pretty much every situation when someone feels they’re treated unfairly and they’re acting defensively but it’s obvious that there’s no good reason for them to behave that way and they’re acting so because of their own insecurities. So instead of describing the whole situation you can just use this short phrase instead – “He’s always had a chip on his shoulder, that’s why he’s acting that way!” It saves you time and effort, and such and similar idioms are used worldwide – “chickens have come home to roost”, “on the ball” or “elephant in the room”. But here’s what I’ve noticed – many idiom directories like grouping idioms by the actual words contained in those idioms. For example, the two idioms about chickens and the elephant would fall under the same category – animal related idioms. It might sound like a good idea to give all those hundreds and thousands of idioms some structure and make them easy to find. When learning idioms, however, it may do more harm than good, so read the rest of this article to find out why I’m making such claims :!: (more…)
Can You Speak Fluent English Without Learning Idioms?
Idiomatic Expressions: Why I’m Highlighting Some Bits of Text in Red in My Blog Posts
Here’s the short answer – they’re bits of spoken English any foreign English speaker should know to communicate effectively! They’re word combinations used by native English speakers and by using them you’re going to make your spoken English sound more natural and native-like. English collocations, phrasal verbs and sayings all fall under the broad category of these idiomatic expressions, and to put it simply – you can’t come up with these sort of sayings just by sticking the words together; you have to learn the EXACT phrase or word combination to be able to use it :!: There are also typical full English idioms among them, but I have to admit I have some reservations towards learning certain idioms like “It’s raining cats and dogs” or “pot calling the kettle black.” They are typical English idioms that you’ll find on any decent English idiom list online, yet they’re rarely heard in real life, if at all. My take on the whole English idiom thing (like it’s on spoken English in general) is the following – you don’t need to hammer loads of English idioms in your brain that you’re not going to use. You’d much better off using your potential as a foreign English speaker by learning idiomatic expressions because there’s a much bigger chance you’re going to use them in real life! How about the following ones: “for the argument’s sake”, “to jump to a conclusion”, “fit for the purpose”? These are typical idiomatic expressions that have some characteristics of full idioms, but at the same time it would be possible to derive their meaning from the words alone. Also, they don’t even need to be long phrases to fall under the category of idiomatic expressions. “On target”, “straight away”, “I’m all ears”, “big time” and similar short expressions are the ones that can make a difference between you being perceived a so-so English speaker or quite an advanced one! Not that you should care what others think of you, but still it’s nice to be capable of communicating with native English speakers like an equal, isn’t it? ;-) So to help you with learning these idiomatic expressions, I’ve been highlighting them in my blog posts in red color so that you can immediately see which bits are useful to memorize! (more…)