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Hello wonderful people!
My clients often ask me 'how can I overcome my level plateau and upscale my skills to more natural, more advanced level?'
What do I tell them?
Vocabulary is super important to upscale your English! No doubt that grammar choices are important, but learning deliberately vocabulary that is higher of your current level - that does magic for your level improvement.
Your English will be more sophisticated, more natural, the more advanced vocabulary you use!
One very important part of advanced vocabulary are idioms. And collocations.
IDIOMS are expressions that don't make sense, even if you know all the words. For example, expressions like 'drive someone up the wall' or 'pick someone's brains' or 'have a change of heart'.
English-speakers use idioms and collocations all the time!
COLLOCATIONS are combinations of words that usually co-occur together. These combinations are often based on convention and usage rather than strict grammatical rules.
IDIOMS:
- Kick the bucket: Unfortunately, her pet goldfish kicked the bucket while she was on vacation.
- Bite the bullet: John knew he had to bite the bullet and tell his boss the truth about the mistake.
- Break the ice: His jokes helped break the ice at the awkward family dinner.
- Hit the nail on the head: She hit the nail on the head with her analysis of the company's financial situation.
- Cost an arm and a leg: Buying a new car can cost an arm and a leg these days.
- Once in a blue moon: We only see each other once in a blue moon since she moved to another city.
- Spill the beans: Sarah accidentally spilled the beans about the surprise party to her brother.
- Piece of cake: Don't worry, fixing this issue will be a piece of cake.
- Under the weather: I'm feeling a bit under the weather today, so I think I'll stay home and rest.
- On thin ice: After missing the deadline again, he knew he was on thin ice with his boss.
COLLOCATIONS:
- Make a decision: She needs to make a decision about her career.
- Highly recommend: I highly recommend this book; it's very insightful.
- Heavy traffic: I was late to the meeting because there was heavy traffic on the highway.
- Run an errand: Can you run an errand for me and pick up some groceries?
- Catch someone's attention: The colorful advertisement caught my attention as I was walking by.
- Close relationship: Sarah and Emily have always had a very close relationship.
- Fast asleep: After a long day of work, I fell fast asleep as soon as I hit the bed.
- Take a break: Let's take a break and grab some coffee before we continue working.
- Reach a compromise: After much discussion, they were able to reach a compromise that satisfied both parties.
- Attend a meeting: I have to attend a meeting with the clients this afternoon.
