English Conversation Course - Improve Your English Speaking Skills

1. English Conversation Course: Did you learn English as a second language, but always find yourself struggling when trying to have a conversation in English? Hi. My name is Shervin and this is my English conversation course. As an immigrant myself, I know firsthand how tough and discouraging it can be, when you're trying to have a conversation with a neighbor, a coworker, a friend, or even just a stranger. But you're always struggling to find the right words, the right phrases, or the right sentences. When we learn English, we learn how the language works on a fundamental level. But we don't quite learn how to use it on a day to day basis. We don't learn how to put into words what we want to get across. We don't learn how to pronounce like a native. And we don't learn idioms, expressions or slags, and we suffer because of it. With this course, I wanted to show you step by step, how I was able to overcome these adversities, how I learned to correctly pronounce words, how I learned to put into words what I wanted to get across, how I learned to think and speak in English, rather than translate my thoughts and struggle in getting my point across. So you no longer have to be embarrassed about your speaking skills. You no longer have to dread conversing in English. You can just follow me and let me show you step by step, how you can go about improving your speaking skills. Okay. So if you want to improve your English conversation skills, then what are you waiting for? Sign up for the course, and I will help you become an amazing English speaker. 2. What We Cover Together...: Welcome You guys. Welcome to the English conversation course. Super excited to have you here. Together. We're going to work on your conversation skills and we're going to take your English level wherever it's at right now. And we're going to improve it so you can speak more comfortably, right? So you can make sure you speak more like a native. We may be fixed on your pronunciation is a little bit. We also focus on some of the other stuff like using connective words, using slang, using other things like idioms and expressions in your conversation. A lot of material that really makes you feel like much more of an experienced speaker, right? So what we wanna do is we want to start with fixing some of the problems first. So I'll be addressing some of the most common mistakes people make specifically in pronunciations. I feel like there are a lot of specific things that needs to be pointed out so you are aware of it. And what we will do is we will learn how they should be done. We will practice together. And I will also tell you how you can go ahead and practice in real life, right? Because It's not about just practicing here with me and learning from me. It's also about making sure that what you learn here in this course is the clickable throughout your life, like wherever you go and you have a conversation, we wanna make sure that there's a last thing impacts with all the things that you'll learn here. So I will tell you exactly how to go about doing that and how to make sure you implement all the stuff that you learned into your day-to-day conversations or just day-to-day interactions with other people. So follow me into the next videos where I will go a little bit deeper into all of that. And of course, super excited to have you here. So go ahead, enjoy the course, and I will see you in the next video. 3. How I Improved My Conversation Skills: All right, so before we get into the meat and potatoes of the course, and we'd get down into all the practical stuff we want to do together and just want to give you some general advice first. Because I feel like this is important to know in order to make sure that you get the most out of what we learned together in this course. Now, I want to talk first about the way that I improve my English the most when I first immigrated to English-speaking country because English is the second language for me as well. Just like you've maybe who are taking this course, I'm guessing that English is also a second language bringing That's why you have taken this course. So what did I exactly do when I first went to a new country and I needed to make sure I'm able to speak English as well as everyone around me because, you know, speaking is a huge asset, whether it's a social interactions or if you want to get a job or whatever else you want to do, you always have to interact with people, right? You always have to be able to speak. And of course, the better you are at it, the more successful you are going to be in whatever you're trying to do. So it was very important for me to improve my English as soon as possible and as much as possible. And there are two main takeaways that I had in my own experience. Number 1 was that listening actually improves your English a lot if you're actively listening. All right, so that's one thing that some people actually don't do it like they don't listen to, just hear stuff, but they don't actually listen to it. What I found was that all the information about how to pronounce stuff or how to structure sentences was already all everywhere around us, basically, like whatever I talked to anyone, they were speaking exactly how you're supposed to be speaking, right? They would use the right words. They would pronounce everything correctly because it's their native language, right? They didn't know how to speak it. And I just realized early on that information is right there. I just need to pay attention to it, right? And of course it's not as easy. And of course, I'm going to break this all down for you in the course. But as a general tip, it's good to know that actively listening at all times is the best way for you to improve your English. Whether you're talking to people, just listening to how they're speak. Whether you listen to an audio book or a podcast, where do you watch movies? Just pay attention to how people pronounce words. Pay attention to the way they structured their sentences. Pay attention to the idioms they use. They're all over the place. And if you just pay attention to it, and even if you just grab one out of every 10 idiom that use one out of every 10 interesting pronounciation that you were not aware of, the forehand or a one out of ten new words that you hear. Even if you pick out one out of 10 of them, that's still a lot of new words, a lot of much better pronunciations that you are now aware of. And it's all from just actively listening. You didn't even have to go out of your way to learn that stuff, right? Like the information is all around you. It's just that you have to pay attention to it and make sure that you derive that information and actually learn from it, right? So a good habit to get into, and I do this even to this day, honestly like you might, you might look at me and say, Well, you're speaking English very well, like you don't need to improve your English, but like that's the thing. No one, even if you're a native, no one's perfect. No one knows all the vocabulary. No one is perfect at pronouncing everything. No one has perfect grammar. Yeah, we're probably pretty close to perfect, but no one's exactly perfect, right? We all make grammatically grammatical mistakes. I've just made one right there. So case in point, you whatever you do, you always have slip-ups, you always have words that you're not sure how to pronounce. You always have words, you're not sure how to write. There's always going to be new vocab you've never heard of, but a lot of people are using, so it's probably something that you should learn about because you're probably going to be encountering it a lot. So no matter how good you are at English or how weak you are in English, or how experienced or have any experience. You can always learn new stuff just like pay attention to what's going on around you. And I highly recommend specifically for people who are like you who have just started like maybe you've just going to a new country or are just trying to just started trying to get their language skills a lot better. I highly recommend that you always do this in conjunction, of course, to studying and taking courses like this and practicing your own material, learning vocab on your own in addition to that, right? So this is not to replace that of course, because, you know, studying actively and actually going out of your way to learn new vocabulary, learn how to pronounce things. Of course, that's beneficial. But on top of that, aside from that, you can also get a lot from just actively listening to what's going on around you. Listening to audio books, listening to podcasts about any can be about anything you don't have to listen to stuff you're not interested in. If you're interested in sports, listen to sports broadcasts. If you're interested in books. Listen to audio books. If you're interested in, I don't know, politics and politics or podcasts on politics or whatever. You can find, whatever you are interested in online, super-easy at no cost. It's all for free. You can just put it on your phone, listen to it anytime whether you're driving or when you're going for a run, you can always do this and you can always just actively listen and try to get the most out of it, whether it's the pronunciations with idioms, they use whatever they do. So I highly recommend you do this. I do this even to this day. So definitely go out and try to do this as well. I highly recommend. All right, hope that helps and I'll see you in the next video. 4. Follow Me For More...: All right guys, hopefully you're enjoying the course so far. I just wanted to quickly mention that if you're interested in checking out my other material, you can find my YouTube channel, youtube.com, slash shirts and house, where I have a lot of free videos they can check out. As well as that you can follow me on social media, on Instagram and Twitter at Chevron house. So go ahead and do that and I will see you over there. 5. Pronouncing "Th": All right. So as promised, we're going to start with pronunciation a little bit. And we're going to cover some of the stuff that I feel is what most non English speakers struggle with. And we're going to start with TH. TH is that one pronunciation that almost anyone, no matter where you're from, if English is not your mother tongue and it's not your first language, you're always going to struggle with that because it's such a specific thing to English that TH And a lot of people, whether you're German or you're French or you're from the Middle East or you're from Asia or you're from Africa, no matter where you come from, no matter what language you speak. Almost everyone struggles with learning the TH, when it comes to English. People pronouncing in different ways. Some people pronounce it more like a T. So people pronounce it a little bit more like an S. People will pronounce it like a D. A lot of people struggle with how to actually pronounce the TH. And I'm going to walk you through how you actually do it. So you've probably heard this before, but it's very important that I repeat this for you. The way you pronounce the TH is by putting your tongue below your front teeth, just put it here, and you just pronounce it out. It's like you're spitting out. You just go. Imagine if you're just going imagine you're doing that, but instead of just doing it normally, you're putting your tongue below your middle and your front teeth. Just put it there, and then you just produce a sound. Right? Now, there are two different ways you can do this. You can do it a little bit harder and you can do it a little bit softer. So the harder one will be like du, du, du. It's like you pronouncing D or something, but instead of just saying du you're first putting your tongue below your teeth, and try this with me, actually. Just try putting your tongue below your teeth and try it. Try to see how you feel about it. A with me one more time? And if it feels like a du, that's totally fine too. We just to make sure we puse it hard and strong, right? So one more time, tom underneath the front two teeth and go du. Just try out with me. Du The other one is the softer one. So for the softer one, what we do is we do the same thing. We put the tongue underneath the front two teeth, and then we just go a little bit of a softer one. So it's kind of like we're going to come of that kind of sound, right? So let's go one more time. Tongue underneath the front two teeth and go, right? It doesn't sound great, I know. But just trust me. Just try this with me. Try performing it. It's very important because if we don't learn how to actually do this, then it's going to be hard for us to pronounce it, right? So we're going to build on top of this. This is very important to learn. This is fundamentals. And think of it this way, right? Like when you were learning your own language, when you were a baby, It took a lot of trial and error. You definitely don't remember this, but every time a baby's learning a language, the baby star has to start with making weird sounds. If you have had a baby yourself, you've seen them do this. They just go. They do stuff like that. And the reason why they're doing it is not just to do stupid sounds for the sake of it. They're actually training their muscles and their tongue muscles specifically in order to pronounce the words that they're hearing, right? So they perceive what people are saying around them, and then they start emulating the process of putting the tongue in the right place and putting your lips in the right arrangement. They start emulating that, and that's why they're making all those weird noises when they're little babies, right? They make all kinds of weirdness of they go. They make all those noises because they're training their muscles. So it's very important that we do the same thing, right? If you want to pronounce properly, you need to learn just like a baby, okay? So, that sounds weird, but trust me on this. Just with me, do this with me, try to learn like a baby. So first one was put the tongue underneath the front two teeth and go du. Right? That's the first one. The second one, put the tongue underneath the front two teeth and go, Just try those two. And what we're going to do, and I'll just show you how you actually go about doing this is you take those two sounds that we made and you use that depending on whether it's a harder TH or a softer teach. Some words have a little bit a harder teach. For example, this, that those, right? As you can hear the sound that I'm making. That's exactly the same thing, right? We just combine it with other stuff that come after it. We basically take the dup, we combine it with a vowel that comes right afterwards, and then we continue the rest of whatever we're saying. So for example, let's say those. The way we say those is we start with du and then we continue that into an because is the next vowel. So we say, right? So We say. We have it, we combine that together. We say though, and then we continue because that's the rest of it. We say those. That's how you go about pronouncing the TH for the harder ones. There are also softer ones, for example, Thoughts thousand, stuff like that. Those ones use a little bit of a softer TH. Th. We have. Remember the sound. We take that combine it with the vowel that's coming afterwards. So for example, forth, we're saying three, th, th, th, continue that with Nick, right? So Think. Try with me. Try. Try combining that with the saying fit, and then add k at the end. Think. Thoughts. Try that one. Thought. Thoughts thousand. Try that one. To in the beginning. To Z. One more time, try it with me. Thousand All right. And that's how you go about pronouncing these ones, right? We'll practice together a little bit more. But just for now, I just want to make sure that you completely understand how we go about producing this sound, right? Because first, we've got to make sure we know how to do it, right? And then once we know how to do it, we can go about practicing it and reiterating that, right? Making sure that the muscle memory is set in. So we don't have to every time think about, Oh, how do I go about pronouncing this? You have to start there, obviously, But over time, hopefully after a little bit of practice, we can get to a point where we're just pronouncing that sound without even thinking about it. And the only way to do it is by learning how to do it and then practicing. There's no other way to do it, right? I wish there was a faster way. I would have loved to tell you, This is how you do it and you can do it right now, and you don't have to worry about it ever. I wish I could do that. But the practical way is to learn how it's done just like a baby. And then keep doing it, keep practicing it, keep saying it again, just like a baby who's learning how to speak. And then after a little while, you start speaking just as if this was your mother tongue, right? As if this was never a problem for you. So that's how you go about learning how to pronounce. One more time, just to make sure you got this. The TH, the harder one was du du tongue underneath the front to teeth, du combine those whatever came afterwards, for example, if we want to say those, we say those All right. And then the softer one was and we combine it with the next vowel and whatever came afterwards. So for example, think, we said think for 1,000, we said thousand. All right. Hopefully, that makes sense. Just try it out a couple of times on your own, and I'll see you in the next video. Okay. 6. Practice With Me - "Th": Alright, so now we're going to practice together. Well, we just learned in the previous video, we're going to practice pronouncing the words that have THE on them. And we're going to practice pronouncing it properly. So let's start with the ones that have the harder teach this. Chart out with me. You have the combining vowel the. And then we continue with this. Try it one more time. This, one more time. Try with me. This. All right. Next one is the very common word, right? Like this is one of the most common words in English. Very important that we know how to pronounce it. So try with me. We started with and we can continue with. Right? It's unjust. I know there's only an E, so you might think, oh, it's just at, but it's little more like a. Alright, so the try with me, the continued, continued with the, the right, sometimes might say v. So let's try that as well. Same word, it's just that we're going to continue with u0, v0. And this depends on what the next word that we're saying, this Bohr comes, problems and whatever that has starting out. A lot of times, if you're saying something and then you continue with the specific involved, you have to choose this. This is really just more of a case to case basis, but it's good to know the two different ways they would pronounce that THE word. So it's V and VI. One more time, the v. All right, so just keep those in mind. Those are the two ways we pass that. The word. Next one is those. Those. So th, the tongue underneath the front two teeth continue with 0. So though. All right. Try with me those those one more time. Those. All right. Next one that that that that alright, so those are a couple of different ones and we try it together. Just keep those in mind. I'll put a list of a couple of words that sound the same and use the same couple of Seaway of pronounciation basically. So you can practice those as well. Okay. And if you ever struggle with a specific work, as you know, we're not going to go over every single word that has th in it. But if you ever come across a specific word that has Th at it and you're not quite sure how to pronounce it, you could always look it up on Google or on a dictionary.com or Merriam Webster, some one of these websites, you can just look it up and just listen to the way it's pronounced. They all have an audio track, just says backward, so just listen to the way it's pronounced and identify as one or two 0s. Software wasn't, isn't one of these harder ones and how it's combined with the balance, okay? But once you know how the mechanism works, it's a lot easier to unpack it, right? Like if you before I've told you how it works, you might have had a harder time, but he listened to it, but you're not quite sure how to emulate it yourself. But now that you know, now that you know how we go about producing this out, it should be a little bit easier, okay, So if there's a specific word that you want to know how to pronounce. You can always just look it up in one of those websites. Listen to it, and just see how you go about pronouncing it. Right now let's talk about some of the softer teaches. And so the words that use those, Let's back to some of those. Let's start with the one that we just learned. 1000. Alright, so some Bao, Xin and try with me 1000. Very nice, I think. Think, think, think thoughts. I have thoughts. I mean, you say that thought. Thought. Let's try one more time. Thoughts. Thank you. Try it out on that very common one, right? It's a very important one to know. Thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it's a softer one in the beginning just to make sure that it's on. Thank you. Thank you. Another variation that fix, fix. Thanks. Last but not least, it's another one that has the soft th, that's theatre. Theatre, fee, editor, theatre or attack, PHY header, child with people in wartime theatre. All right, So hopefully it's a little bit easier to pronounce these. Hopefully you're starting to see the patterns of how we actually go about producing the sounds. Specifically when we start with a th. And again, if there's any other words, I'll reiterate this one more time. Definitely use one of those websites, Google dictionary.com or something. Just listen to how they're pronounced and you can emulate that yourself. Okay. So hopefully that made sense. Hopefully you were able to use as practice to do a little bit better if you want to practice again, the same words. Just rewind the video, right? You can just go to the beginning of the video and you can see how I pronounced all of these and try pronouncing in with me and just try doing it as I'm doing it with you. Okay? So definitely use this video again if you want to. It's not meant to be just watched once and then that's it. You can definitely come back and practice again. And you could come back to Max again. If after a couple of weeks you just forget how the sound and you can always come back here as well. That's why they're recorded right there. Recorded. So they're there for you to use anytime you want. So decimal if you want to practice with me, do it. If you want to try this on your own, that's totally fine to do it. Just make sure you practice. Okay. It's very important. All right, so that was the T-H words. I'll see you next video. 7. Pronouncing "t" or "tt": Alright, in this video, we're going to learn how to pronounce the letter T in the English language. Now, literacy is probably the most complicated letter to pronounce because there's so many different ways that you should pronounce it. And usually when they're taught English, you're only taught the first way that you can actually pronounce it, but kinda sounds like the letter itself. And that's by descent, right? Because it's the letter t. However, in a lot of different contexts, you don't pronounce it like that. In fact, there are four different ways you can pronounce the letter T depending on what word or what contexts it's being used in. So all we're gonna do is we're going to cover all four of those. So you're aware of how you are supposed to pronounce those. And then we're going to practice together. And of course, beyond the words and practice together, it's very important that going forward we pay attention to how these words are pronounced so that we can recognize how we're supposed to pronounce it. And once you know how you can pronounce t in different ways, then it should be really easy to just redo what you hear, right? So when you hear how a word is pronounced, you can just redo it yourself because now you know how to actually pronounce literacy. So let's go through it. So the first way is a double t or t sound at the beginning of any word. All right, For example, top, it's hack, tattoo. These words are basically pronounce a way that you have been taught with a strong T. And it just sound like a T. There's just nothing crazy about it, right. So anytime you have a double tee, like attack or tattoo, or anytime you have t at the beginning of a word, for example, top, That's what you end up with. Just a normal pronunciation of the letter T that you're used to, just a simple sound. The second way is a soft D. Now what do we mean by soft D? It's basically like you're saying d instead of saying T, but you say it a little bit softer. So examples of this would be computer. So you don't say computer is a computer. It's like a duck. It's the, right, it's a little bit with software D. Alright, so that's a second way you can press a T cell depending on the word. And there are a lot of different words that he uses. For example, water. You don't say what her right. A dosing wonder. It's neither a nor D. It's somewhere in the middle. It's a little bit of a softer D, but it's not a T either, right? It's little bit softer. It doesn't have as much of an edge to it. Water bottle. Right? Now. Of course, there are some double tees that don't follow the rule that we just learned with the other ones. For example, bottle, that's a double tee, but that doesn't actually, it's all pronounced as bought tool, right? It's bottle. Computer. Same thing. Compute der Computer. Neither of those are correct computer. All right, so a very, very tough one to learn at first, because again, when you're learning English, no one really explains this stuff to you, right? No one explains what a soft d pronunciation is. But now that you're aware of it, it's very important that you just try it yourself. And of course we're going to practice together in the next video. But just be aware of that. Some words are pronounced like that water computer, right? We have that soft D that we're just kinda grazing against our teeth. But we're not quite saying a D, right? We're saying Nerd. So my tongue is basically just grazing my teeth but not doing it part-time because when you press D pronounce Di herself, right, see how you're pronouncing it now, try to do at Lewis software D. Alright, so think of, instead of saying D, you're seeing me, right? Do you see the reference? Hopefully you do. And that's the second way to pronounce it. A T. The third way is with a lot of stop. Now a glottal stop is when you stop the flow of air. At a moment's notice. Alright, so and it's usually back towards your throat. That's where the glottal is. And you just stop and look up. I think that that way when the air is flowing out, just stop it immediately. Right? So the error is blind and you just stop up, right? What are some examples of them? Curtain certain. Make, make sure, you know, say curtain, curtain. It's uncertain, right? Curtain certain. Right. It kinda sounds like I'm not saying the whole thing. It kinda sounds like I'm trying to not pronounced as much. And I completely understand that. That can sound a little confusing, but that's actually how it's pronounced. And if you pay attention to any native speaker, that's how they speak. All right, it's called a glottal stop and that's how you pronounce some of these other teas. And of course, last but not least, we have the silent t and some words that T is silent, meaning they do not pronounce it. Examples of that would be Christmas. You don't pronounce the T and Christmas. It's not Christmas. It's just Christmas. Ballet. You know, it's a ballot that was just ballet. Fasten. It's off faster than, it's just fasten. Listen, that's another one. Very common one. This one makes sure you don't say Listen, it's listen. All right, so let's review the four that we learn together. First one was a normal T sound, just a tub. That's a lot of words and have double tees or anytime we have T in the beginning of a word. Second one was a soft D, let computer, water. Third one was the glottal stop. Curtain. Certain. We just stop it and the glory. And the fourth one was the silent t. 8. Practice With Me - "t" & "tt": All right, Now we're going to try and practice together. So let's take some words that have T in them. And we're going to try and first identify which of the categories they are fitting into. And then we're going to pronounce them together. So let's start. First of all, I'm gonna do butter. Now which one goes off it into butter and saw the t sound? And it's on the glottal stop on all of these things on the silent. So it's gotta be the soft butter, right? So think of saying butter. But as I say bugger, you're saying butter, right? So a little bit softer. Better. With all this effort into it's the exact same. It's the soft D. Better. Try saying r3. Better, does on better. Very important. This is something that a lot of people make a mistake on. Like, it's very easy to just pronounce ABT like a tub. But obviously that's not how it's pronounced. Better. Try with me. Better. Very nice. Top. You remember which one that fit into its correct? That's the first one which was just this t sound because it's at the beginning of the word try with me. Top. Top. Makes one up. Computer. Do you run relational nephron into its correct? That was also the soft D computer. Try with me. Computer. Computer. Over time. Computer. Fantastic. Try the next one. Certain. Do remember which one that fit into. It's not a t sound and sort of hard D or soft D, I should say. And it's not the silent one. So which one is it? It's the glottal stop. You got it. Certain. Try one more time. Try saying it. Try saying, sir, and they say, right. So it's like you stopped the glottal and then you just say, oh, right, it kinda make that sound. And I know this might sound a little weird when you're trying it, but just try it. Don't worry about it. This try it. I promise you if you practice a couple of times, it'll become a lot easier and much more natural to just try certain. One more time. Certain. Mixed up, frightened. Which one is that? It's not the soft D, It's not the t, Frampton. And it's not silence. Right. And because it's all as if it wasn't there, It's a glottal stop. All right, so it's not frightened, frightened, frightened, frightened. While we're talking. Frightened. All right, hopefully this is making sense to you. Next one up. Ballet. Which one goes up and into, remember, of course, a silent t. Because it's one of those tease out. We do not pronounce ballet. When we're done. Ballet. Very nice. Listen. Do you ever wish all the effort into that is correct? It was the silent one. Listen. It's all you're going to glottal stop. Don't make it, don't you fuse these ones together. And as I listen, right? It's not a got global south, it's just the silent t. Listen. It's as if it's he wasn't even there. All right. So those were a couple of different examples of how you could pronounce different words that have different types of t's in them. Now go ahead and practice these. I'll also include a bunch of other letters that you can practice yourself. And also I'll make sure to note which of these categories they fit into so that you know how you're supposed to pronounce them. And if you want to look up their pronunciation, obviously, you can always just put them into Google and just ask Google to say it for you. And then you can just listen. You can just go to dictionary.com or some other resource like that, and they will all provide you, and of course, any other word that you hear yourself and you want to check up on, you want to make sure. But is this a glottal stop or is this a silent t, or how, how do I say this exactly? You can obviously always look that up. But it's very important to know these different types and hopefully now especially the glottal stop now and the soft D as well. Those are a little bit tougher to perform it first because, I mean, the normal T, We already know how to make that sound and the silent t, It's pretty easy. You just don't say the T, right? But the other two, I feel like a lot of people who learn English as a second language, there are taught how to pronounce the soft D, how to pronounce the glottal stop? Some of you might have been, but the vast majority of people are definitely not so very important that you just practice this yourself so that when you hear a new word or when you learn of the pronunciation on the specific word, you know how to pronounce it. So go ahead and practice those words and I'll see you the next one. 9. Pronouncing the Short "i": All right, In this video we're going to go over the short i. And how reasonable is it, perhaps a shortcut? Now, this is a very common mistake. I see that a lot of people pronounce it short. I mourn like an E rather than a. Alright, so that's how you're supposed to pronounce it. I'll give you an example. Trip. Lot of you process trip or a trip, little bit more of an E side, right? Whereas it's very important that we keep it a little bit longer and a little bit more direct. So trip, It's not tree is a tree IEP, That's trip. Ship. Make sure you don't confuse it with sheep, right? It's, it's a very common thing in a lot of people who learn English as a second language. That their ship class I was like sheep, right? Obviously two very different things. You don't want to confuse these two. Ship it, right? And of course, it is really pronounced with a soft D, so I shouldn't even say it. But if you, if you're struggling with that for in this video, are obviously focusing more on it. So just make sure you pronounce it correctly. But if you want to pronounce the whole thing correctly, remember from the last videos where we talked about soft, deep. It is pronounced short. I, soft be. Alright, So it or type it. Sit. Same thing. Sit as an S, short I and a soft dy. Let's write all the time. Sit. Hit your hip. Edge I P, and the I is short. It hit when you hit someone. It's our hits. Again, remember, it's a soft D if you want a browser correctly. But if you're struggling, at least make sure that you're promising that I correctly hit. Again. Make sure you don't confuse on the heat. Very different word, right? Hit and he very different hit. All right. So hopefully that's making it a little more sense. And if you are pronouncing it the wrong way, then just be aware of that and don't get discouraged by the way, I feel like I need to reiterate this. We're here to learn and improve our English, right? So there's likely a lot of things that you are not pronouncing correctly or you need to work on. And that's perfectly fine. That just means that now we know what to work on so we can actually improve on it, right? So if you are pronouncing that, I love it incorrectly, that's totally fine. You can start doing it correctly from today. All right, Now you know how to pronounce it and we're going to practice together in the next video. So you'll be a little bit more enabled to do so as well. So join me in the next video where we practice the short I. 10. Practice With Me - The Short "i": All right. Time to practice the short i together. So repeat after me. Sit, sit, sit. Hopefully you're getting a sense of it. Again, I'll just reiterate. S. Short I and a soft D SIT hit. Yeah, I remember H. And of course the H's problems that have short I soft D, hit hit one more time, hit hip, edge short. I hit him in the pose a little bit of a softer a it's a drip. Drip. Drip. I was a tough 11 more time drip. Fit. Fit something in. Fit. Again, remember that T is a soft E and the I is a short eye. If you can browse it altogether, that will be even better. But at least make sure that you're getting the right fit. Fitness to build on top of fit, fitness, fitness rate, break bread, brain. All right, so those were a couple of words that we want to practice together. Hopefully you were able to keep up. This is a little bit of an easier concept to gather because there's like four different pronunciations, right? There is the short I, and of course there's the vowel, which is all we're talking about here. We're just talking about the short I hear. And in the cases where we have the short, I want to make sure we pronounce it like that. So if you can just get used to pronounce it up and start implementing that into all of these words that have this kind of a sound, then you're good to go. All right, so practice these words. As always, I'll include a bunch of other words so that you can practice on yourself. And of course, anytime you hear any word that you think, oh, is that how the I is pronounced or not? You can always look it up as I keep mentioning over and over again, all these videos. But at least now you know how to pronounce it. So go ahead and I'll see you in next video. 11. Why Learn Idioms?: All right, In this section of the course, we're gonna go over idioms and expressions, and we're going to cover together 50 must know idioms and expressions that are used on a day-to-day basis. And I myself hearing me all the time. If I didn't list that, I compiled myself specifically for you guys, I made sure to pay attention for a couple of weeks and see what are the idioms that I hear from other people most often where it was that I also use a law and just various interactions with different people, whether it's my neighbors or co-workers or friends or family. Or whether if I'm listening to a radio show or a podcast, what are the idioms that everyone's using? So I made sure that I write it down every time I hear one. And I put them all together. And I compiled a list of the 50 that are the most used. And obviously broken them down into a bunch of videos, so it's a little bit easier for you to digest. So in the next couple of videos, we're going to cover those. We're going to go over what the mean, wider set the way they are. So if there's a backstory, I'll make sure to include it so it's a little bit easier for you to remember how the phrases go and we're going to learn it together. Now, what are we learning idiom? So I feel like I need to clear this up a little bit. Idioms are very important in making sure that you can have a really nice flowing day-to-day conversation. Lot of times you want to make it points or you want to just say something a little bit more deliberately, or you want to make sure you touch on something without pointing it out to obviously or being a little bit too confronting about it. So a lot of times, idioms are very useful tools and they're used all the time. And of course, other people use them all the time as well. So it's important for you to understand them so you can understand what other people are saying. So you don't have to constantly ask. What do you mean by that, right? Like if you know what they're already saying, it's a lot easier for you to understand their points. And of course, you can also make your own points by knowing these idioms. And it just makes your conversation a lot more skillful. And people will notice that people will notice that you actually are aware of these. And you're speaking just like a native would because, you know, you're very skilled English speaker. Let's just put it that way, I guess. So follow me in the next couple of videos where we go over the 50 most used idioms and expressions, at least according to my opinion. And the ones that you need to know, there must nose and you'll probably use a lot in your day-to-day. 12. Idioms & Expressions - Part 1: All right. So in this video, we're going to start learning a bunch of idioms that you can use in your day to day conversation. And we're actually going to break them down into about ten or so per video so that they're in sizable packages, right? That you can make sure you learn. Because I don't want to put them all together in one video just in case Uh, you know, it could be really overwhelming to learn a bunch of new stuff and not know how to use them and then try to incorporate them all at once. I want to try to avoid that. So what I've done here is I've put ten in each video, right? So we're going to start from this video with the first ten that we're going to learn together. And what I challenge you is to try and recall and see if you remember how to use them after each video is over. So, for example, after we finish this first video, just take these ten that we learned together, and just try using them in normal conversation, right? So first, I reiterate them, maybe practice them a couple of times and then see if we can just incorporate them into your own conversations, and then you can watch the next videos where we learn even more. So let's just start off right off the bat. We first have rip off the bandaid. This is a very common one. I use this one all the time myself. It basically means to get it over with as fast as possible, right? Just like a band aid. Like when you have a band aid, it's obviously the best way to get rid of it is to just rip it off super fast, right? You don't want to, like, take your time peeling off the band aid slowly, that's not going to be the ideal situation. It's probably going to hurt a lot more. It's going to prolong the pain of removing it, which is why I'm assuming a lot of you do this, when you're removing your bandaid, you just rip it off, right? Rip it off instantly, and you get it over with as fast as possible. Well, the idea behind this dim is also the same thing that you get it over with as fast as possible, whatever it is that you're doing. Another way to say this is bite the bullet. So, for example, I would say, Hey, like, you're trying to do this thing. You keep delaying it. Just rip off the band aid, man. Just go for it. Just do it, right? Or I would say, bite the bullet. Just bite the bullet. Do it, right? And basically, just do it, get it over with as fast as possible. Right? Off the next one. We're in the same boat. Now, again, this one is a very common one. I use this a lot myself. It basically means that we both have the same problem, we're in the same situation, right? Like both facing the same sorts of things. Another way to say it is that we're on the same page, right? And obviously, we're on the same beach is a little bit different than we're in the same boat, because it could also say it could also imply that we have some sort of an understanding, right? Was, we're in the same boat doesn't really imply that. So we're on the same beach a little bit different. It's not exactly the same as we're in the same boat, but they could be used interchangeably with within some reason. But we're in the same boat, essentially means that we are both in the same situation, right? So we basically have to pretty much work together because we both have the same thing, the same common problem, right? Like, for example, if I'm having trouble with, let's say, I don't know. Let's say I'm having trouble with my garden because the weather has been really bad this week. And my neighbor is having the same problem. I could tell them, well, we're in the same boat. We both have the same problem. Like, the weather is really bad. Let's say it's raining super bad. And it's just ruining our garden. Well, in that case, we're both in the same boat. So the best way to go forward is to try to work together. Like, maybe we look up how we can go about resolving the situation. Maybe we can get something to cover all of our flowers and all the stuff in our garden so that we protect it against the bad and harsh weather. And we just try to protect and we both collaborate with each other and help each other because we're both facing the same problem or situation. Essentially, we're in the same boat. Next one is jump ship, right? So jump ship is basically, as you can see in this image right here. It basically means to get out of something that could be potentially disastrous, right? So, when do people jump ship? They usually jump ship when their ship is about to like, just sail into an iceberg or something, it's going heading for a disaster. And in those cases, you just have to jump ship, jump out of the ship into the water just to, you know, avoid getting hurt. And that's what essentially what it means. Anytime, let's say you're working in a company and the company is going bankrupt, you might say just jump ship, get out of here, like, quit, make sure you're not associated with this company anymore or something like that, right? And another way to say it is abandon ship. These are both terms that are used by But people in the naval industry, right? Like, it's very common to say, it's time to jump ship or it's time to abandon ship, especially when it's the ship is heading for a really danger in a really dangerous situation, basically, whether it's hitting an iceberg or the ship is just sinking for whatever reason. In those cases, they just jump ship, meaning that, you know, just cut your losses, just get out of this thing immediately because it could be potentially disastrous. And as you can see here, you just jump over jump ship. Next one up, staying with the theme of ships. Turn the ship around. Now, turn the ship around means to change something around for the better, right? So, for example, let's say, I'm performing really bad at my job. And what I'm saying is that, don't worry you guys, I promise you, I will turn the ship around, meaning that I promise I will turn this around. I will improve my performance. I will do a lot better going forward because, you know, I'm getting a lot better. I'm getting more comfortable in my job. I'm getting more experienced. I will turn the ship around, right? Another way to say it is to say, write the ship. I will write the ship, or I will turn the ship around. Either way is fine. They're both used interchangeably. And essentially, think of it this way. Think of it as the ship is heading for disaster. But when we turn the ship around, we are no longer heading for disaster, so we're actually in safe waters now. So you can think of it that way. It basically means to change something around for the better. Again, another one with the ships, that ship has sailed. So this is a very common one. You've probably heard this one before. It means that the opportunity is lost. In other words, it's too late to do something, right? So, and as you can see in this picture, that ship has literally sailed. So this guy who wanted to get on the ship no longer has that option, right? And that's basically what it means. It means that an opportunity that was probably good for you is now lost, and now it's too late to get in on that thing. And that's essentially what it means. Throw in the towel. Now, this is one that originated from wrestling, because in wrestling, when you want to indicate that, hey, this guy has had enough, just want to end the fight. We accept the defeat. There's this way of signaling the referee, which is just throwing in the towel. Usually, the coach, if they determine that the fighter is in bad shape, they throw in the towel, meaning that, hey, we can see the game, we accept the loss. Let's just stop the fight, you know? Like, that's what it means. Like you don't want your wrestler to get hurt. It basically means give up or quit. And that's how it's used in common language. A lot of times when you want to give up or quit or, you know, you just no longer want to be part of something, you say, Hey, I'm throwing in the towel, or other people might accuse you. They might say, Wait, are you throwing in the towel already? Like, you've only been doing this for a couple of weeks. So you can use it either way. And it's a very common one. It's a very good one to use highly recommend to use this one. Dial it up to 11. Now, dial up to 11, dialing up is when you basically dial up any sort of knob and you basically turn it up, right? So you go in this direction from the lower numbers, so the higher numbers, and dial up to 11. The reason why they say 11 is because usually dials go to ten, right? So 11 is basically saying, Hey, you dial up even further than ten, maybe some number after ten, maybe, like, 11 or something. Essentially, meaning that you're going to the absolute highest possible degree of something. Like, for example, if I say, Hey, For this job, I want you to dial up your efforts all the way to 11, right? So basically saying that, Hey, I want you to put maximum effort into this. I want you to put everything that you can. Like, if you have to stay up every single night, if you have to work late, you got to do it, right? You got to dial it up to 11. And that's basically what it means. It means it's essentially a way to over exaggerate how much you're basically dialing something up, essentially saying that, hey, you're doing something to the highest possible degree, whether it's your performance or whatever else that you're referring to. Rising Tide raises all ships. Again, back to the ship one. There's a lot of ship idioms, as you will see. It basically means that success for one person or one entity leads to success for others in the same area or field. For example, let's say, I don't know, a Tuber, for example, right? If one Tuber does better, that essentially leads to other Tubers also doing better as well, because Hey, they can get new people introduced into the platform. And then those new people can, hey, find other people that are essentially producing content on YouTube or whatever other platform. And essentially one person success is making other people more successful as well. And that's basically what it means. A rising tide raises all ships. And as you can see in the image down here. The rising tide that has raised this ship and has given it so much success, it's not bringing these other ships down. Of course, these are not as high as that one, but they're still getting a little bit of the benefit. They're getting a little bit of that kickback from this ship and the way it's essentially benefiting from this rising tide. And that's exactly the point of this idiom is that a rising tide is ships, meaning that success or fortune for someone in the field essentially leads to At least some success for others in the same field. So it's never a bad thing for someone to have success. I never means that other people are like, you know, they're getting hurt or their business is getting hurt because of it. On the contrary, it actually means that they're actually getting some of that success going towards them as well. Where there is mountains of smoke, there is fire. What that means is that when there are too many signs pointing towards something, it's probably for a good reason, it's probably indicating that there is a cause for it, right? So where there is mountains of smoke, meaning when there's a lot of smoke apparent, where you can see a lot of smoke, you know, that smoke didn't come out of nothing, right? It probably came from somewhere. So if you can see a lot of smoke, then probably that's because there is a fire that's causing that smoke. And essentially, that's the same thing. It's saying that if you see a lot of signs of something, for example, smoke is a sign of fire, or whatever other signs you see, you see a lot of suspicious activity around something or you see a lot of different people speculating that something is going to happen. Well, it's probably for some good reason. It's probably not just a random coincidence that all these signs are pointing towards something. It's probably because there is an underlying reason, whereas there was with the smoke and the fire. And last one for this video, so this is the tenth that we're going to cover together. Dot the eyes and cross the Ts. Now, what that means is to finalize something or, you know, come to some kind of an agreement or to sign a contract. And the reason why that is is look at an. In an, we have a dot. So when we say dot the Is, basically, we're saying to, you know, finalize writing the letter. Cross the Ts. Again, take a look at letter T. You have some sort of a cross shape, right? With this bar going through this rod over here, right? And form kind of a cross shape with the T. And that's essentially what it's saying. So when you say dot the Is and cross the Ts, it's basically saying finalize writing the letters, and the letters T. And the reason why we're saying that is basically to imply finalizing writing some sort of an agreement or some sort of a contract, whether it's a business contract or a social contract or whatever it is. It's saying dot the s and cross formalize it, get it done. And another way to say it is, of course, put pen to paper, which means that, you know, once you put pen to paper, you're actually writing something, right? So you're writing it down, so it's no longer just something that you've said or something that you've verbally agreed on. It's now concrete. It's official. It's written down, and it's good to go. All right. So that's what it means to say dot the eyes and cross the Ts. All right. So those were the first ten words or first ten phrases, I should say, that we learned together. Go ahead and practice those and make sure to, you know, at least try to use a couple of them in your normal day to day conversation and just see how it goes, right? And always be on the look, 'cause a lot of these, you will hear normal conversations, whether it's in movies or in TV shows or when people are talking on TV or like in YouTube videos, maybe in podcasts, whatever. Like you will see a lot of these come up in different contexts, or whether you're listening to the news or you're listening to someone. Like, talking about something on the log, you will hear a lot of these idioms come up. So always be on the lookout, see if you can spot some of these and also practice on your own. Be proactive about it, try them out and see how you feel about them in normal conversation. Okay? So go ahead and try those out, and I'll see you in the next video. 13. Idioms & Expressions - Part 2: Alright, we're onto our second set of idioms and expressions that we're going to learn together. And this one starts with set and Stone. Now, set in stone means that something is unchangeable, right? Because, think of it this way. When you write something in stone or when you carve something out in stone. Well, that's not going to be easily changed because now you have to carve something out of it, right? Like, you can't change anything with hand. You can't can't probably you can't even hammer it, right? Because the stone is very concrete and it's very stable in its condition. So it basically is saying that it's unchangeable. So if you write something in stone or if you set something in stone, it will be it will be that way for the foreseeable future, and it will be unchangeable unless you put an exorbitant amount of effort into changing it, right? So, essentially, when you say something is set in stone, it means that something is for sure the way it is, and it's unchangeable. For example, you can say, Hey, our policies are set in stone, meaning that the policies that we have are unchangeable. We cannot change them to accommodate for you. So even though, for example, you would like an exception here, we unfortunately cannot afford you an exception because our policies are just set in stone, right? So that's how you use set in stone. What goes around comes around. Now, I love this graphic. It's such a nice graphic to see this. And I'm sure you've heard this before, but essentially what it means is that what you do to others, good or bad, it will eventually come back to you in some way. And as you can see in this image, this guy just pushes these blocks of dominoes thinking that, hey, whatever, it's on me, right? I'm just pushing these. But what he doesn't know is that in the greater context of everything, those dominoes actually come back to hurt him later on. So it's a lovely graphic. I really like this one, so I had to include it here so you guys can see it. But it's a very common one, and it's very It's a very good one to use because there will be a lot of situations where someone will do something, usually something that's not so great, and they will be negligent about the effects of it and how that will affect other people. And in those cases, you can say, Hey, what goes around comes around, like, you know, if you put something bad out there, it'll probably come back to you in some way, directly or indirectly. And that's essentially what's happening here with this guy. Blessing in diskies. Now, I didn't really put any image for this because this is a little bit more of a conceptual thing. But a blessing in diskies when there's something that seems to be about outcome, but it actually ends up being a good one for you. So let's say, I don't know. Let's say you get fired from your job, right? And when you get fired from your job, that's terrible, obviously. You probably feel terrible about it. You obviously have been relying on your job to, you know, make sure you have your income, make sure your livelihood goes on, and that could be a terrible thing, right? But let's say you get fired from your job, but a couple of weeks later, you find a job that's even better for you that pays even better, that you like doing even more, and you get a lot more opportunities with that job, and you don't have to work as many hours for that job, and it's just wonderful. And it works out perfectly. Well, Once that happens, you kind of reflect back on getting fired, and now all of a sudden getting fired doesn't look all that bad. And even though it looked like a really terrible thing that happened to you at the time, turns out it was a blessing in disguise, because even though it was bad, actually was perfect for you because it enabled you to go ahead and find this even better job. That pays even better, that's even better for you that you don't have to work as much on. You were able to find this because you were fired from the other job. If you weren't fired from the other job, you would still be doing that job. You wouldn't be doing this better new job that you have right now. So that's what we mean by blessing in disguise. That's something that seems like a really bad outcome. But in the long run, and eventually, you will see that, hey, that actually ended up being a really good thing for me, and if it wasn't for that, a lot of good things wouldn't have happened in my life, right? So that was a blessing in disguise, and that's how you use blessing in disguise. Beating around Bush means to avoid getting straight to the point and just, you know, just trying to think about or talk about other stuff that don't really have anything to do with the point that we're talking about. And obviously, this graphic is awesome. I love this that way, they're they're literally beating around the bush. But that's essentially it, right? So, whatever the topic is, whatever the point is, if you just wear off of it and you go into other things over and over again, that's what we call beating around the bush, because essentially what you're doing is you're avoiding talking about the main thing, and you're just talking about other stuff, you know, whether it's intentional or not, whether you want to avoid the point because, you know, maybe the point doesn't benefit you at all. It doesn't matter. If you are Wasting time. And if you were just talking about other stuff, trying to wear off the conversation into different avenues that really don't have anything to do with the main argument, that's what we call beating around the bush. And you can say, Hey, like, why are you beating around the bush or you can accuse someone of beating around the bush, if you use them in those ways. And again, it's a very common one, so you will hear it a lot. In the same ballpark. Now, this is a very useful one. And, you know, a lot of times you want to say, two things are approximately the same thing, or they are nearly the same thing. That's what in the same ballpark means. And of course, a ballpark is it refers to a baseball court, right or a baseball stadium. That's what we call a ballpark. And when you say it's in the same ballpark, it essentially says that it's pretty much in the same vein of things. It's pretty much the same thing, it's nearly the same thing. It's approximately the same thing. That's what we mean by the same ballpark. And obviously, there are a lot of times when you want to compare two things and you want to say, Hey, they're nearly the same thing. They're nearly in the same area. They're nearly in the same price. Whatever. You can always say, Hey, those things, there are prices in the same ballpark as each other, or hey, those things they are in the same ballpark of the neighborhood. Or you can just refer to anything about them or their performance is in the same ballpark. They're pretty much the same thing. That's how you use in the same ballpark. You can use it in any context, where you want to say two things are nearly the same or approximately the same. Let someone off the hook. Now, a hook is obviously this thing right here that's used for fishing. And when you say let someone off the hook, it means because think of it this way. When you are fishing and when you're using a hook, what ends up happening is that the fish bite onto the hook and you pull them out, and then you've fished, right? Now the fish is yours. Now, letting someone off the hook means that essentially, think of it this way. Think of it as taking that fish. Pulling it off the hook, and you just let it off. You just throw it back into the sea, right? Sentially what you've done is that you did not punish that fish. Let me put it that way, for getting caught in your hook, and you just let it get back into the sea. Now the reason why I'm using the word punish is because how we use this idiom. Letting someone off the hook means to forgive them or not punish them or just forgive them and not punish them. Basically saying that, Hey, I got you red handed, like you are responsible for something terrible or maybe like you've done something wrong. And I've caught you when you've done something, but I'm going to let you off the hook or I'm going to let him off the hook, basically saying that, hey, I'm going to forgive you. I'm going to let this one go. I'm not going to punish you for this one. But basically, maybe you say, Hey, I'm going to let you off the hook, but you have to do something for me or something along those lines. But essentially, that's how you let someone off the hook. Like let you off the hook, let them off the hook, let this guy off the hook. You can use it anyway you want. Straw that broke the camel's back. Now, the straw that broke the camel's back is when a small action causes a huge and unexpected reaction because that small action was repeated numerous times, and it essentially built up to a disastrous outcome. Now, sometimes you just use a simplified version of this, and you say that was last straw, but essentially think of it this way. And this image actually shows it very well. Think of it this way. When you put a lot of small weights on the camel, for example, The camel can probably sustain the weight up to a certain point. Essentially, at some point, it's going to be too much, and when it's too much, the camel's back is probably going to break or something along those lines. And that's what we're talking about. We're talking about that tipping point, right? Eventually, there's going to be one of those straws that is just one straw too much, and that's what causes the camel's back to break. And that's what we're talking about, right? We're talking about the straw that broke the camel's back. So that small thing that Because it was repeated so many times or because it happened so many times, it eventually built up to a disaster. So, for example, let's say, I don't know. Let's say I annoy my brother, right? Me and my brother are sitting somewhere, and I just keep making sounds, right? At first, he's not going to care that much, he's going to be saying, like, that's weird, but whatever, right? And let's say I keep making weird sounds, and I keep bothering him, and I keep poking him, and I keep saying, Hey, like, you're stupid or something. I don't know. I just keep annoying him, right? Eventually, it's going to build up to a point where he says, Okay, that was the last straw. Like, I've had enough of this stop, right? And that's what we're talking about. We're talking about that tipping point or Maybe something that, you know, wasn't that big a deal, but it still wasn't great. Was happening. Eventually, it built up to something that was just it was impossible to be okay with, for example, right? So the straw that broke the camel's back is just that tipping point. And that's how we talk about it. We say, Hey, that thing that you did was the straw that broke the Camel's back or that thing that you did, that was the last straw, because now I tried to not worry about it. I tried to let it go, but now that was the last straw. I'm done, right? Like, I don't I can't take this anymore. And stop, basically. So that's how you can use that one. Add insult to the injury. Now, when you say add insult to injury, obviously, means that, there's something bad that's happened, for example, the injury, and we're adding something even worse to it, right? We're adding insult to it as well to make it even worse. And basically, that's what it means. It means to make something worse than it already is. Don't cry over spilt milk. Now, obviously, spilt milk is a weird term to use. But what it's essentially referring to, and I've put an image of spilt milk here is that, wait, when you spilt your milk, now, that milk is no longer good. Like, you can't drink that anymore, right? And you can't put it back in the glass and use it again. So it's basically gone, right? There's no change in it. And that's what we're essentially talking about with this idiom is that we're saying, Hey, there's no point in being upset or being worried about something that's happened and cannot be changed, right? Like, when you spill the milk, that's unfortunately. But hey, that's happened, and you can't change it. You can't unspill that milk, right? You can't put it back in the glass and use it again. So don't cry over it, right? There's no point in being upset about it. And that's essentially what it's referring to. All right, so that was the second set of words that we had in here. Hopefully you guys were able to learn something, learn a couple of new words that you didn't know before. Again, just take your time. Practice these a couple of times, make sure that you're comfortable with them, make sure that you know the meanings. And then once you are comfortable with them, just go out there, try using them and also be attentive and see if others are using this. I'm going to keep repeating this, but very important that you keep listening to what people are saying around you, to other people, to TV shows that you watch, to podcast, that you listen to the radio shows, whatever, and see if you can spot some of these. I guarantee you spot if you listen closely, you will see a lot of these being used all the time. And once you do, it'll be like, Hey, I know that thing. I learned this from the course that I was taking the other day, and it'll just feel awesome. So definitely be attentive and see if you can spot a couple. Okay? So go ahead and do that, and I'll see you in the next video. 14. Idioms & Expressions - Part 3: Alright, let's get into the next set of idioms and expressions that we're going to cover it together. And we're going to start with putting all your eggs in one basket. Now this is a very common one. I'm assuming you guys have heard of this before. And probably some of you even know what it means. It basically means don't risk everything on the success of 11 venture alone, right? Like you don't want to put everything into one entity, right? Like for example, let's say you unless all your money into one type of stock or a you like, put all your money into the success of one business venture, right? And that's something that you generally want to avoid because when you put everything into one basket, all it takes is for that one thing to fail and you've lost everything right. Like there is no kind back from that. Which is why diversification is very important. You always want to make sure that you spread your risks around so it's not congested onto one thing. And that's exactly what putting all your eggs in one basket is talking about. And you can use them in a lot of different ways. You can say, Hey, why are you putting all your eggs in one basket like that just doesn't sound like a smart thing to do. Like you can tell others that they're doing this. Or you could just say yourself, you can say, hey, for me, it's very important that I don't put all my eggs in one basket, which is why I'm going to put my investments into different categories and stuff like that, right? You use putting all your eggs in one basket. Next up is hit the nail on the head. And hit the nail on the head basically means you're exactly right. Like when someone is exactly right about something, you say, Hey, you hit the nail on the head with that one, right? And something along those lines basically means because like you think of it this way, when you're hammering in the nail, what you need to do is you need to hit it on the head and you need to hit it exactly right. Like if you hit it a little bit to the side over here or over there, it's all going to go in. Nice and easy, right? It's going to have trouble going in or it's not going to move, or it's going to bend the nail, it's going to cause a lot of problems, right? So you need to hit it exactly on the head. Which is why it's very important that you hit it on the head. And that's why when you're exactly right about something and this is the expression that they used. They say, you're hitting the nail on the head, meaning that you're exactly right with the way you're hitting it. All right, Onto the next one playing devil's advocate. And I love this image right here. It's a really nice one. But basically what the playing devil's advocate means is that it needs to argue for something that you don't personally agree with, usually in order to be fair to the other side of the arguments, right? So obviously the devil is not the right study argument. So if you are devil's advocate, meaning your lawyer, what you're essentially doing is you're defending someone that you don't essentially grew at someone or something or some idea that you don't personally agree with, you don't think is the right argument or the right idea. However you're doing it. And you're usually doing it in order to just to be fair to that other side of the argument so that like all the argument isn't just one-sided. But yeah, obviously, most of the time we don't personally agree with this. Okay. So you can accuse people of being devil's advocate or you can say yourself that hey, like I don't agree with what I'm about to say, but hey, just playing devil's advocate, maybe we can all take a look at it from this other point of view, which I don't agree with, but hey, it's a valid point of view that we should probably address just to be fair to the other side, right? So playing devil's advocate, very common expression to use elephant in the room. I'm guessing you guys have heard of this one before. This one is super common. And one of the elephant in the room refers to, is that the problem that everyone knows about? But no one's speaking about, right? Because it will be a little awkward maybe to bring it up or something. So for example, let's say something, something's happened between you and someone else. And it's a real big problem, real thing. Maybe you guys fought over something real serious or I don't know, something, something really major drastic happened. And next time we see each other, you're just not talking about it at all. You would like talking to other something you're pretending like that thing never happened. That's what we're talking about, the elephant in the room. And a lot of times people say, hey, maybe we should just address the elephant in the room here, right? Basically saying, Hey, there's something that happened and you guys are not talking about, maybe we should address that. And that's how they say the elephant in the room or you can say, Hey, is it just me or is there an elephant in this room, right leg or something along those lines? Basically saying that, Hey, these guys are trying to pretend like that big thing that everyone knows about and it hasn't happened. And they're trying to like, pretend like everything's good. And that's what not addressing the elephant in the room basically means. So very common one, I'm guessing you guys have heard of this one before because this one is like one of them, one of the most common idioms that is used in the English language and very, very useful, obviously. Piece of cake. So a piece of cake means that something is very easy. All right, so for example, let's say I assign you some job. And you say, Oh, that's a piece of cake. Basically saying that, Oh, that's super easy, I'll do it. No problem. All right. Another way to say it is a walk in the park, right? And you can say, Hey, let's say, I give you this course and I'm like, Hey, watch this course, learn as much as you can and try to improve the way you speak English. And you're like, Hey, that's a walk in the park, No problem. I basically saying that that's super easy. I'll just watch the videos and I understand what's going on. And then voila, we're good to go. All right. So that's what a piece of cake or a walk in the park is saying. It's saying that something is basically very easy, right? And you can just save, like I gonna say. Hey, this thing is a piece of cake, or that thing is a piece of cake. That's a walk in a park. You this is a walk in a park. You can just use it like that. Judge, a book by its cover. This is also a super super common one that I'm guessing you guys have heard about. It means to judge someone or something without knowing much about it, right? So basically just like, just like judging a book by its cover. If you take the literal meaning of that, think of it. Think of seeing a book in the bookshelf. And then you just take a look at the cover and you say, right, you probably don't know anything about that book. You probably haven't read anything about it. You probably haven't had the synopsis. Maybe you haven't even heard of that book before, right? But because you don't like the image that's on the cover of it, you just dismiss it. Right. And that's basically what it means, judge. A book by its cover is whenever you judge someone or something without really knowing much about them, let's say maybe you take a look at someone and you don't want their appearance. So you just judge them and say, Oh, that's that guy is probably a loser or something, right? That's judging a book by its cover. For all you know that could, that could be an amazing guy, that could be a real nice guy who was very successful like that. That could be the case, right. But because you don't know that you just made a judgment call and you just said, Oh, I don't like his appearance off. I'm just gonna say guys probably a loser is probably not a nice guy. He's probably broke, right? And you just make those judgments. And that's what we mean by judge a book by its cover, is that you're not actually making a good judgment based on what you know, you're making judgment based on just the first impression or just based on the appearance of the person. Cut corners. So cut corners, that basically means taking shortcuts and think of it this way. Think of a hedge where you just cut the corners and you just walk through them, right? And that's basically what it means. Cutting corners is when you add also think of it in terms of driving like a rod. A lot of times when you're learning how to drive and you're making right and left turns. The instructor tells you not to cut the corner and actually the score around like, like for example, let's say this is a right turn that I want to make here. The instructors usually tell you not to like go like that and cut the corner here. You see how I'm cutting the corner over there. If I move like that, you don't want to call the corner. You want to make sure you go forward and then you turn to right, right. You want to kind of go in a little bit of a forward and then straight to right direction rather than just cutting a corner and kind of going in a bit of a semicircle kind of direction. You don't want to do that. You want to make sure you fully go forward and fully go to the right. Same thing is, that's also basically cutting corners. And it applies to everything, right? It's not just driving anytime you try to make something just happened faster and you're trying to like, kind of cheat your way to getting a faster way towards something. That's what we mean by cutting corners, right? Like for example, let's say you, you don't study for your exam. So instead you ask your body to help you cheat on the exam, for example, right? Like that's cutting corners because you're not actually doing the work. You tried to take a shortcut. You're trying to get the easy way out rather than actually putting in the work. So that's what cutting corners means. And you can accuse people of cutting corners. You can say, I don't like to cut corners. You can just use a variety of different ways. Very useful idiom. Like riding a bicycle. Now, obviously riding bicycle isn't super easy thing that I'm assuming you're able to do. Most people are able to do. And that's because riding a bicycle is one of those things that once you learn it, it's never forgotten. You know, you have that skill set forever. Even if you don't ride a bike for ten years. If you pick it up after 11 years, you just still write it. Write it like it's no problem because your body is just used to it and it's learned how it works and it's never going to forget it. And that's what we refer to. Writing. Like riding a bicycle. Anytime, there's something that you learn once and you never forget. And it's always there for you to use. You can just say it's like riding a bicycle. It's another way of saying something is really easy, but it's not as simple as that. That's why it's a little bit different than a piece of cake or walking apart. This one is a little bit more associated with the skill. That's a little bit, that's quite easy and it's easy because you've learned it once and it's never forgotten, just like riding a bicycle. Okay, so a little bit of a complicated one, this one, but hopefully that makes sense and you can probably see how people use it and then you will see the association of it. So keep an eye out for this one. See how others use it too. Get a good grasp of where you use it yourself. Jump on the bandwagon. Now, this is a really, really good one. I really like this one. It means joy, something popular so that you can share in its success, right? So for example, let's say some team is doing really well in the, in the tournament. And like you're not really a fan of that team, but because you see they're doing well, you just say, Oh, I'm a fan of that team too, so that you can also share in the success. And that's what we call jumping on the bandwagon. I love this picture, but it's like the band is playing that all the fun is going on here. And this guy's like, Oh, well, I guess I should get on there and like Please let me jump on the bandwagon, right? And this is what this is what a bandwagon is. And that's pretty much what it means. It means that you are not a part of something, but because you see it's become popular. You tried to say, Oh, I am part of that thing because you want to share in the success. And last but not least, for this video, is drinking the Kool-Aid. Now this one is a little bit of a dark one. So it has a little bit of a backstory to it. So I'll explain that to you in a second. But first, let's talk about what it means. It means to accept something due to popularity, social pressure, or persuasion, right? So it's kind of similar to jumping on the bandwagon, but a little bit of a different way. Whereas in jumping on the bandwagon, you just wanted to join something because it was popular. Drink the Kool-Aid is a little bit defense like something is popular and the social pressure and people are trying to persuade you to join it and do that thing as well. All right, so that's a little bit of a difference here. With the jumping on the bandwagon. You are the one who wants to go and jump on the bandwagon and join something popular so that you can share in that success. Whereas with the drinking the Kool-Aid, it's more like the popularity is trying to grab onto you. And it's like the people who are trying to say, Why are you not doing this thing? You should totally do this thing, right? That's what drinking the Kool-Aid needs. And where does comes from is from this massive murder spree in November 18th, 1978, where what has actually happened was Kool-Aid. That first of all, let me just explain that Kool-Aid was a beverage, coulda Coca Cola or something, right? It was a popular beverage in North America. And what happened in 1978 was that there was this cult that poisoned all the collates, all the drinks that they had, the poison them and then they distribute them among their members. And they just said, Oh, everyone has to drag these. And what was happening was that hundreds of people died from drinking the Kool-Aid. So that's where the story and where the ADM comes from, drink the Kool-Aid. It's basically something that's kinda has a negative connotation with it as well. It's probably something that's not good for you, but people are telling you that you should do, right? Like this is what happened right in the cult. Because everyone around them, we're doing it. Everyone was drinking the Kool-Aid. Their superiors, their fellow breadth runs. They were all drinking the Kool-Aid and participating in the mass suicides. People started doing it as well as some people were forced, but some people also chose to do it because others are doing it and doing it. And that's basically what he means. Drinking the Kool-Aid means that you are accepting to do something because everyone around you is doing it, or because everyone that you know or is doing it, or because it's super popular. But anyways, little bit of a dark note to end on. But that was this video's 10 idioms and expressions. And we come back together again and make sure you practice these and repeat them to herself and see if you can spot them. As always, if you can spot them, it's just really cool when you see other people are talking in and they drop one of these idioms. And you're like, hey, I learned that in the course. And it's, it's pretty cool. But anyways, that's about it for this video and I'll see you in the next one. 15. Idioms & Expressions - Part 4: All right, onto the fourth set of idioms and expressions that we're going to cover together. And this one starts out with a game of chicken. And again with chicken is when two people are trying not to chicken out. So chicken out itself is another AD and then we're going to learn. So this is a two-in-one, if you will. So chicken out basically means getting scared or like quitting because you're afraid of something. And when two people are trying to not kicking out, that means that they're both trying not to quit. They're both trying not to get scared off. So they're essentially bolt waiting for the other did quit. So for example, take a look at this picture. It's a very good picture to illustrate this point. Let's say two cars are heading at each other and they're both going super fast at each other. And what they don't want to do is they don't want to check it out. They don't want to be the car that goes on the scared. I'm going to get away from that. So I'm going to push the brakes. They want the other to do it, right? Because it only takes one of them to pump the breaks or get into a different lines so that they don't they don't collide with each other. However, they both are trying not to chicken out. They're both telling themselves I'm not going to check it out. So essentially what we have here is a game of chicken, which means that both people are trying to take an hour. It could lead to disaster if they both keep doing this. And obviously this is just an example to prove the pointer a lot of different ways this can work like in business, for example, let's say two people are not going anywhere in negotiations. Let's say one person once, like a $100 for the deal. The other side wants $80 for the deal. And they're both now moving off of those numbers. And that's what we call a game of chicken because they're both waiting for the other to move and neither of them wants to chicken out and actually give into the other person's demands. And sometimes this gets resolved by eventually one person is ticketing out, if you will, and at least coming in for further negotiations. Or it just ends with the deal breaking off. Or in this case, I guess the cars colliding with each other and disaster for everyone. So that's what a game of chicken is. This is very common, again, not so much in terms of car racing or anything like that, but in terms of politics or in terms of business, it's very common and it happens all the time. Burn bridges. So burning bridges basically means to destroy a relationship, whether it's a personal relationship or a business relationship and just go back there. Yeah. Whether it's a personal relationship or a business relationship in a way that there is no chance of returning to the way things were. Essentially like burning actual bridges, like when you burn an actual bridge. And then that's it. That bridge is no longer useful. So you can no longer go back on that bridge like it's probably going to collapse, right? So there's no longer going to be a bridge there, so you can't go back to the other side anymore. And that's essentially what it means. It means that you are destroying that relationship so bad by, let's say, maybe insulting them or any other way. Like, let's say you betrayed their trust or something. What you're doing is you're strong that relationship, whether personal or business relationship so bad, there is no chance of ever returning to the way things were with that person. In essentially what you're doing is you're burning the bridge you had together so you are no longer able to reach each other basically. So that's what it means. It's very useful term. This one is actually not used all that often, but it's a very good term to use. And sometimes it is actually used when they want to say, hey, you should probably avoid like doing anything to damage your relationship. They say, Hey, you probably don't want to burn any bridges, right? Like that's really the way it's used. But you can definitely use this a lot and it's a very good idiom to use. Say, I don't want to burn bridges with this person for example. So I'm going to like not, not be, i'm, I'm going to be nice to them. I'm going to make sure I don't betray that trust and just stuff like that. Give someone a run for their money. Now, give someone a run for their money basically means that you make it hard for someone to compete with you because of how well you're doing, right? So if you are doing you very well in your job, for example, where you're doing is you're giving everyone else in that building or in that office a run for their money. Basically saying that, Hey, you're doing so well, that everyone else, it has to make sure they raise their game so that they can compete with you and they can actually stand a chance of being accepted as a worker in that company, you are in that office. And this applies anywhere like this. So it doesn't just have to be in business. It can be in anything. Let's say you're playing soccer with your friends and you're doing so well, you're dribbling everyone, you're taking shots, you're doing very well in the game. What you're doing is you're giving everyone else a run for their money, which means you're given, you're making, making everyone else think that, hey, they need to raise their games if they want to stand a chance of playing against you or even with you. Because you're doing so much better than them. And so that's what it means to give someone a run for their money against very useful one and it's used a lot actually. You can say, I gave that person to run for their money. You can say this guy is giving me around for my money. I use them a lot of different ways. Bleeds something dry. This is one of my favorites. When you say I'm bleeding something GI bleeding someone drive, it means that you're draining that something or someone of welfare resources, right? For example, let's say you're using all of the company benefits and you're using other company. Let's say that they, they allow you to have business dinners or or stuff like that. And then you just keep doing that every single day, right? Like you go out to business dinners every single day on company money. When you're doing is you're bleeding the company drive because you're basically draining all of those wealth and resources that they're offering to your right. And that's what it means. It really is only used when you're overdoing it, right? It doesn't mean like if you just use that option once that doesn't that's not bleeding him dry. That's just using an option that you have available to you. But if you'd like doing it constantly every day or you're constantly draining someone's a welfare, someone's resources, and you're doing it over and over again and you really overdoing it. That's when we say you're bleeding them dry. Going back to the same, well, now this is a very, very good, good one to use. And it really is used when someone or something is trying to repeat something successful over and over, because it don't have anything other to do and they don't have anything on anything else to offer basically. And as you know, a well is why these structures where you basically have a bucket that goes down so you can grab some water from underneath water sources. And you basically just use that to bring water up. And you know, in like in olden times when they didn't have all the water coming in from their from their sank because there was no planning or anything like that at the time. What they did was they went to a well nearby where they could just dump their bucket in there, grab some water from under, underneath or underground water sources and just bring that up, use that water for whatever they want to use it for. Right. And going back to the same, well, it's essentially saying the hang, you have no other way of, for example, getting water in this example. So you have to keep going back to the same. Well, that's the one thing that you need to know. They know how to do in order to get water. And that applies to anything. Use this idiom for it. Going back to the same, well, basically means that you have this one thing that you can do. And just keep doing that thing over and over again because that's the one thing that you know how to do successfully. Write it like let's say, if you're a comedian and you keep repeating the same joke over and over again. Or if you keep repeating this similar version of that joke over and over again, one could say You're going back the same well over and over because you don't have any other jokes that you can tell because you don't really know if any other jokes that are that would be funny. You only know that one type of job that you are successful at. And this applies to anything. Obviously, it's not just for comedians or anything in any type of job performance or any type of any performance. Really. If you just keep using the same thing that you're successful at over and over again. That's going back to same all flushing something down the toilet. Now I love this image. It's such a good one to show. And as you can probably tell from the image, it means to waste something, right? Whether it's money or resources or anything, it could be your time. It can be anything, any resource that you have and you're wasting. You can say, you're flushing it down to like you'd say, you're flushing or talent down the toilet or you're flushing your career down the toilet by basically making sure that you fulfill all the potential you have. And that's what it basically means. You can use it for yourself. And you say, I've been flushing my, my time down the toilet. Flushing my money down the toilet by, for example, buying too many unnecessary things that I don't meet. Or you can use it for other people. You can say, Hey, that person is really flushing their career down the toilet because they're just not being a nice person to their co-workers. And as a result, they just keep getting fired from her job, for example, right there, flushing down their career. And that's basically how you use it down to the wire. Now, that's the wire. It refers to a situation that is not resolved until the very last member of the very last second, right? And of obviously comes from sports. For example. As you can see this image right here, these two races are so close to each other that this race is down to the wire means that we can't tell who's going to win until we get to the wire. Which wire basically means that finish line, right? Until we get to that wire, we cannot quite tell who's winning. And then once it gets it out wide, then we have a winner, right? Whereas if it wasn't a close race, then it wouldn't be down to the wire. Like because it would be there'll be one person in the lead and you could tell that that person is most likely going to win. Like obviously it's not guaranteed, but like there's 95 percent chance the guy who's in the lead is going to win. However, if it's a very close race like this one, there's no saying who's going to win. It's down to the wire. And the last second or in the last moment. When they get to the finish line, then we can tell who's one and that's basically how we use it. Any situation that is not resolved until the last moment. By the skin of your teeth. And now by the skin of your teeth means that you're barely accomplishing something. You can say, Hey, you pass this test by the skin of your teeth. What that would mean is that let's say you pass that as a passing grade is 50 percent, you pass it by 52%, right? So you barely passed the exam. So you would say you pass the exam by the skin of your teeth or let's say you made made it into university by the skin of your teeth. Because if they were accepting, let's say 1000 people, you were the 995th person that the accepted. So you got into it by the skin of your teeth, right? So when you barely accomplished something, that's when you use by the skin of your teeth. Take a page out of Sagan's book. This is a very nice one. It basically means that you take an inspiration from someone in a certain area, whether it's like fashion or business choice or anything, my career path, or even just daily routines, anything. It doesn't have to be anything specific. Whatever you take inspiration from, and whichever area. You can just say that you're taking a page out of someone's BAC. Let's say, I admire Bill Gates and I really like his work ethic, right? So for my own work schedule, I take a page out of Bill Gates book, which basically means that it doesn't have to be an actual book, by the way, taking a page out of their book. It's like saying, Hey, I'm for example, if there was a book, I would take a page and do what's written on that page, right? But obviously that's an idiom, that's not what we're actually doing. What we're doing is we're observing some kind of behavior or some kind of way of doing things in someone that we admire. And we are inspired to do the same in order to be more successful in our own lives. So for example, let's say, I really like the way someone dresses up. And I can say, hey, the way I dress is that I've taken a page out of this person's book. Which means that, hey, I'm dressing kinda like that guy. 16. Idioms & Expressions - Part 5: All right, Now we're onto our last set of idioms and expressions. We're going to cover a whole bunch, basically all the stuff that's left. And then after this, we're done, recently learned all the idioms that we're going to cover in this course. So let's get right into it. Let's start with bite the dust now, but the DST means to fail or come to an end. So anytime you fail at something or something that you're doing to an end, you can say you bit the dust or you are biting the dust. As you can see in this picture, it's not exactly showing you a lot of success. It's showing someone who's probably been thrown off of a train or something. And he has quite literally biting the dust because his faces on the month basically, right? And so any kind of failure, any kind of coming to an answer. And an example of that would be, let's say you've started a new business, but it's not doing so well, it's about to go bankrupt. So you could say, I'm biting the dust on this one or I'm about to bite the dust. Or if you want to say in past tense, you can say that investment really bit the dust didn't workout. And it just means that you've failed or it came to an end. Sit this one out. This is a very common one and the one that you probably use a lot. Because it basically means it's very basic and ordinary and kind of an everyday type of idiom. And it basically means to now participate in something, right? So anytime you don't want to participate or anytime you want to refrain from participation for whatever reason. Like if you just don't believe in doing something or if you don't want to do something or if you're not interested for whatever reason, you just say, I'm setting this one out, right? And that's basically what it means. It means that you are taking your taking a rain check. That's another way you can say it. I'm thinking a rain check is another idiom. I guess I should just mention here because it's kind of similar. Taking a rain check means that you are not willing to participate in this May 1 be you will do it another time, right? So it's a little bit different than singing this one out, seeing this one, I'll just means that you are not n, you're not doing this and you're just going to sit it out. Whereas taken a ring shape means that I'm not doing this right now, but maybe it's sometime in the future, I'll reconsider. Okay, so that's another good one to know. One trick pony. Now, I love this image. That's why I put it here. As you can see, it's a horse or pony, I should say saying pick a card. And this guy is like not this again. So what a one trick pony means, it's, it refers to someone who only has one skill or talent, or at least in only one specific way and not much else to offer. So for example, a guy who just says pick a card and that's the only thing he knows how to do. That's a one trick pony, right. Because there's no other skill or town that they can exhibit, so they keep going back to the same. Well, if you remember that idiom from the last time, from the last video, if you do keep going back to saying well, over and over again, then you are a one-trick pony. So those two really go together really nicely. Going back to the same well and one-trick pony. So the person that does keep going my two same all over and over again. That person is a one-trick pony if that makes sense. And you can use this in a lot of different contexts. So you can say that guy, I don't like that guy. He's just a one trick pony or something along those lines. Or you can say, Hey, I want to do different things today. And I want to do different things in my show, for example, because I don't want people to think I'm just a one-trick pony. I want to exhibit that I have a lot of different talents and a lot of terms, skill sets, right? So you can use it that way. So you can use it as an insult. You can use it as something that you don't want to be. Or you can just say, Hey, you know what? If you're a one trick pony that's better than not doing anything right? So you can use it in that sense as well. It's not necessarily an insult, but it could be used as an insult, I suppose. Catching lightning in a bottle. Now, obviously it goes without saying that catching lightning in a bottle literally is pretty much next to impossible, right? Just catching some of that lightening inside your body and keeping it there. Yeah. That's pretty much impossible, right? So and that's basically what it means. It means to accomplish something extremely hard and challenging, right? So anytime you have a task that is next to impossible to do, or at least it seems that way. It seems super hard, super difficult, super challenging. And you just have no idea how to do it. Or maybe you have an idea of how to do it, but you know that it's not going to be easy. You can say catching lightning in a bottle. And, and another way that this phrase is actually used is when we do accomplish something and you want to repeat it, right? So for example, let's say director makes an amazing movie, right? And people might say, Oh my God, that's an amazing movie. I loved that movie. And then you hear that they're making a follow-up movie, another movie. So let's say they make an amazing, Let's say that make the godfather. And then they want to make Godfather Part 2. And you could say is, Oh, it's going to be very difficult to catch lightning in a bottle again, right? Because you could kind of put it that way as they did something extremely hard and challenging in the media. An amazing movie the first time around. But didn't get a, again, that's an even more impossible, right? So you can also refer to something that has been done that is very impressive or something that was extremely hard and challenging. And then repeating it, you can say, Oh, they're trying to catch lightning in a bottle again. Or it's going to be very difficult to catch lightning in a bottle again, and it's probably not going to happen or something along those lines. So two different ways that you can use this one as just on its own as something that is very, extremely hard and challenging to accomplish. And you can say, hey, that's like doing that as like catching lightning in a bottle. And you can also use it for the times where you have done something and you want to repeat it. And you can say how? Well, it's going to be very difficult to catch lightning in a bottle twice or something along those lines. Plead the fifth. Now, I plead the fifth means to refuse to answer a question. And the reason why I have put a picture of a courthouse is the reason is because pleading the fifth comes from the fifth amendment in the US. But basically in the United States. Amendments basically right? So the Fifth Amendment goes by. You have the right to refuse answering any question that might put yourself in trouble, right? So that's the Fifth Amendment in the Constitution of the United States. And it basically is saying that you don't have to answer any question that you don't want because some questions might lead to yourself getting into trouble. So if there's a question about you, they might incriminate you. You have the right to refuse answering it, and you do it by pleading the fifth. That's what it's called, is you invoke the Fifth Amendment. You say that, Hey, I do not want to answer that or I refuse to answer that question under My Fifth Amendment rights, right? So that's what they send the United States. Now, this idiom comes from that pleading the fifth basically means that you refuse to answer a question. Now it doesn't necessarily have to be refusing to answer a question because you might get incriminated or because it might put you in trouble. That's what it is in court, but in day-to-day use, you can plead the fifth anytime we don't want to answer any question for any reason, let's say you you asked me what my favorite movie is and I'm not sure what my favorite movie is. I could say, hey, I'm going to plead the fifth on that one because I'm not sure myself. Right. Or something along those lines. It doesn't have to be anything serious. It doesn't have to be anything dramatic. It doesn't have to be anything with a lot of consequences. It just has to be some sort of answer or some sort of question I should say that you don't want to answer for whatever reason, right? And when you don't want to answer, you've refused to answer. You just say, I plead the fifth or if someone else's refusing to answer a question, you can say, Oh, that person's preceding the fifth for some reason, right? Like you can say something like that. So that's how I use plead the fifth. The cherry on top of cake. Or you could also say the cherry on top. And you can also say the icing on the cake, right? So a bunch of different ways that you can say this. What it basically means is something extra that is nice to have, but it's not a must have. Just like a cherry on top of a cake. The cake itself, on its own, it's more than good enough. It's delicious, It's filling. Its, it has everything that you want. Like when you go out, go out and buy a cake. You don't buy it because of the chair, you buy it because of the cake itself. That said, the cherry on top is, uh, something that's nice to have, right? So It's there. You are going to be like, Oh, get rid of that chair. You're gonna like, oh, that's cool. There's a cherry on top of that kick. And that's basically what cherry on top of a cake is. It's something extra that is nice to have, but it's not a must have. So for example, let's say you, you get, you get a new job, and at the new job has a certain salary. And then they say that. And there's also a cherry on top of the cake, which is you get to drive the company car, for example, right? So you're not taking a job because you get that company car. You get the job because you want to have that salary, because you want to have that work experience, because you want to get involved with that company. You believe in their vision, you believe in what they're doing, and you want to further your own career. You have your goals in mind, you have to pay your bills. That's why you're taking the job, right? It's not because of the company car. But that said, that company car is still nice to have. So it is what we call a cherry on top of the cake, or we can say the icing on the k. So for those of you who don't know what icing is, the icing is basically the glazing on top of the cake, right? So that is also the same thing. The idea behind the icing is the same as the idea behind the cherry, where you don't need that icing on the cake itself, on its own is perfectly fine. But that, I think makes it that extra bit more delicious, that extra bit cooler, the extra bit more nice-looking, extra bit more appealing. And that's the idea behind the same as the cherry, right? So what did we say? The icing on the cake or the cherry on the cake? Or you can just say the cherry on top. You don't have to put the cake word in there. What you're basically saying is that this is a nice to have, does a nice job, acid or a nice to have thing that we're getting, but it's not a must have an, it's another reason why we're doing what we're doing. Alright, so hopefully that makes sense. An uphill battle. Now this one kind of goes without saying, I think is pretty clear and this illustration is very nice to see as well. It basically refers to a difficult task where there is something or someone working against you. So for example, in an uphill battle, what is working as you obviously gravity and the way the hill is going because you are fighting uphill, meaning that you are facing up the hill, right? So behind you is going down and in front of you, the hill is going up, right? And obviously that's much more difficult because your opponent, if you haven't battle, let's say, and this is not a battle per se, but if you were having about it, Let's see, we're having a sword fight or something fun. What would happen is that because your opponent has the higher ground and they can be a lot more assertive onto you because of that height advantage, your task is going to be even more difficult than it would have been if you were finding on a level field, right? So here the nature of the hill, the nature of gravity, and the height advantage that your opponent has is working against you. And this is the same idea behind this idiom. Anytime you have a task that is harder than it normally would be because there was something or someone working against you. You call it an uphill battle. For example, let's say you get a job. But in your job, you have a terrible boss. You have the quantity worst bosses that's working at that company. And the guy just really hates you. And he just wants to give you more nonsense assignments that don't get don't go anywhere. And he just keeps punishing you for no reason, right? That's what we call an uphill battle. It's not that you just have to do your job well, but you also have to navigate this less than favorable bus. Let's just put it that way. That is not exactly helping you out here and you have to try to find a way to still put out, put up that same level of performance that is expected from you. Even though there are so many things working, guess you'd like that terrible bus or the bad assignments and stuff like that. And you just have to roll with, and that's what we call an uphill battle. So you can say, I have an uphill battle, but the shrub or taking this job as an uphill battle, or just use it any which way can fit that situation. Put the nail in the coffin. Now, as you guys know, coffin is where you go when you're dead, right? So when you're be buried, the first put you in a coffin and then they bury that confident, right? So putting a nail in the coffin, obviously when you're putting the body in the coffin afterwards, you just have to nail it down just to make sure you know, the body doesn't come out or anything or the coffin doesn't open for no reason. And that's what you do, right? So putting the nail in the coffin is basically way of saying you're closing that coffin forever. You, and you're basically bringing upon by about the end of something, right? And that's exactly what this ADM is referring to or refers to when something or someone helps bring about the end or failure of something else, right? So for the example of the nail on the coffin and when you nail the coffin while you're doing is you're basically finalizing that this person is now dead and buried and that's it. You can't get it out of the coffin anymore, like it's nailed and sealed. And that's exactly what this idiom refers to. So anytime you see something or someone brings about the end or failure of something, let's say, I do a terrible job and I destroy my career. What, what, what I would say is I'm putting a nail in my own coffee or something along those lines. So if you're putting nail in the coffin, that's basically signifying that you're bringing about the end or the failure of something else. Stick the landing. Now, stick the landing means to finish something very well, right? As you would see with an airplane when it's landing, it has to stick the landing right? If you just go headfirst, obviously you're going to have very, very troubled time trying to land the plane. So you have to make sure you go smooth and nice and you stick the landing and like a professional, right? And that's exactly what it means sticking a landing or also in gymnastics or stuff like that, where you have to make sure you land well and you stick it basically lengthen your feet and you don't like fall to the ground or anything like that. That's what we referred to as sticking the lining. And it's also used in a lot of other contexts as well. And that's where the EDM comes from. And anytime you've finished something very well or you finish, very strong, Let's say, for example, let's say that the movie has a perfect ending and it ends really well and it leaves you wanting more. We could say, oh, that move, you really stuck the landing, right? Like basically saying that hey, that movie, it was okay, like it was doing not so bad. Like throughout the movie, I was liking it but it wasn't that great. But man, they stuck the landing that end. The ending was so good, like the twists and the turns and all of that, the way it came about and that final scene, they just really stuck the landing right? So you can use it that way. Or you can say, Hey, sticking the landing is very important for this project. I'd like we've started this project very well, but we've got to make sure that we stick the landing in order to have maximum effect, then you can just use it that way as well. So a number of different ways you can use thick landing. Set up shop. Now, what setup shop means is it means to establish yourself like either in a business context. Or in a social contexts, anywhere, you establish yourself as someone to be reckoned with that basically set up shop and doesn't have to obviously be a literal shop. But think of it that way. When you do have opened a literal shop, you are establishing yourself, right? So any other example of us establishing herself would be setting up shop. So let's say for example, you become a famous person for the field that you are working in. What you've done is you've established yourself. So you could almost say, Hey, that guy is really sad setting up shop in that corner of the market, for example. And that's how you use set up shop. Basically anytime anyone is establishing themselves in some sort of a context, water something down. Now this is a very useful one, used all the time. I personally use it all the time. And he's to reduce the value or quality of something, right? And another way you can use it, as you could say, if there's something that has poor quality or poor value, you could say that this thing has been watered down, right? Because think of it that way. If you add water to any other liquid, it's going to bring down its value and its quality, right? Like if you add water to wine or if you add water to Coca-Cola, for example, what you're doing is you're watering it down, meaning that you're adding water to bring down inequality. And what essentially happens is that you basically reduce the value or the quality of that thing. And you can use this for any other contexts, but it doesn't have to do with water per se. Let's say if you are, if you have a product that costs you just too much money to make and you want to make it a little bit cheaper to make. So you use some lesser, some lesser, let's say, less than a material to start building your product. Then in that case, you are watering down the quality of your product because it's not as high quality as it used to be, because you're using cheaper material to build it. And that's basically what it means. So you can use it in a lot of different contexts. You can say, this thing is really water down or I don't like watering down my products or let's say the Coke machine at the, at the local McDonald's. What really waters down the Coca Cola's and stuff like that you can just use in a lot of different contexts. Okay? So that's basically what it means is anytime you are reducing the value or the quality of something, you are watering it down by more than you can chew does the last one that we're going to cover together. It means basically to be overambitious to the point where you can't realistically fulfill those ambitions. Just like biting more than you can chew. And he can see in this image, it's such a cute image where this, I think it's a hamster isn't. I think that's a hamster. And a hamster is trying to chew and entire baby carrot. And obviously the baby carrot doesn't even fit in his mouth. So it's going to have a very tough time chewing that thing because There's just no room left in his mouth to chew that baby carrot, right? So that's basically what biting morning Can Shu means. Anytime you try to do too much basically or tried to accomplish too many things at the same time. And it's to the point where it just not realistically possible and you just are not able to handle all those things at once. So you end up basically disappointing yourself and maybe even disappointing other people who are trusting you to do those things. And if there's a negative connotation that comes with biting already Chu and the connotation is usually that because of the fact that you were overambitious, you are unable to fulfill those ambitions. You actually end up failing at all of them, right? So that's a connotation, doesn't have to be the case. But usually when you say you really bit more than you can chew, it means that hey, you were too ambitious, you took on too many things and because of that, you failed. You weren't able to keep track of all those things at the same time and you ended up not doing any of them basically. Alright, so that was it. That was our last idiom that we cover together. Hopefully you guys have enjoyed these videos. Hopefully you've been able to learn a couple of things. Again, makes sure I know I said this at the end of every video or something. Please make sure to practice these. Also, just keep an ear out. I will guarantee you that you will hear some of these at some point from someone around you that these are used all the time. At least a lot of them are. And they're just very good idioms to use, like in normal conversation, Day-to-day conversation. So you will hear a lot of them if you just pay close attention to what people around you are saying, what people on YouTube, people on the TV, people on radio shows are saying, you will see a lot of these used all the time. So keep an ear out. Also practice yourself. Hopefully you enjoyed it and I will see you in the next video. 17. Don't Overuse And, But, Then, & Also: All right, so in this module we're going to be talking about connective words. Now, with connective words, we're talking about words like and, but also stuff like that, right? So that connect different sentences together or help you transition from one sentence to the other one. We use this all the time. And frankly, what I see a lot in people who are, lead a more of a beginner in English, or people who are still struggling to speak English. Maybe they know English very well as far as like just knowing the language and how to put sentences together and everything. But when you're just trying to have a conversation, sometimes it's hard for people to connect their sentences together because they're like, Oh, this sentence and this sentence also, this thing, you know, like they don't really know how to connect them will have a nice flowing conversation when they're speaking. And that's very important. Frankly, a lot of people overuse words like and words like, but words like also. These are words that are overused a lot. And that's because like you can use them anywhere to connect sentences, right? And there are pretty well known. They're not crazy words. So people just rely on using these all the time. But the thing is, you can't just overuse them after a while. It gets too repetitive and you have to switch it up a little bit. Which is why we're going to cover an entire module on connective words to make sure you have enough connective words, you know exactly how to use them. And you can basically spice up the way you speak by using different connective words using the However here and they're using yet as well as instead of also or stuff like that, right? So we'll go deep into all the connective words that you need to know and how you can use them, which ones they can replace, and how you basically put it into sentences. We'll go over all of that for the upcoming videos. So check it out. Hopefully you'll enjoy. 18. However, Although, Though, That Said, & Despite That: Alright, so the first set of words that we're going to learn, the first of these connective words are the words that we're going to use to replace, but are basically anytime we want to connect two sentences that are negating each other. And as we mentioned, we don't want to just keep sink. But this, but that this happened, but this happened like you don't want to keep using that same word. And it's very important that we have other words and other connective words or phrases that we can use as well. And this will help us spice up the way we talk. And it also helps us have a much more, much more well-rounded conversation and just a wider vocabulary that we can draw from. So these are the first set of words. Again, like I just mentioned, we use these when we are connecting two sentences where the second sentence is in some way negating the first sentence, right? So for example, I tried my best to ace the exam. However, I was not able to, right. So the second sentence is negating the first one. I tried my best to ace the exam. But in seconds on this we're saying, well, even though I tried my best, I was able to write. And we obviously use, however, think of it this way we could have used, but here we could have said, I tried my best to ace the exam but I was not able to. But but like I said, we don't want to just keep using, but all the time we want to use other phrases and other connective words as well. And however, is actually a very useful one. This is probably the most common, most common connective word when it comes to replacing, but it's a very important work to learn. And this is actually if there's one word that you will learn from this video is, however, definitely tried to use this a lot. And honestly, once you learn how to use this in conversation, It's a very good and nice sounding and a very useful word. I personally use it a lot if you, even in this course, if you pay attention to the way I speak, I see that I use this word a lot just through regular conversation when I'm talking about any kind of topic, I might say, Hey, this is how this works. However, this is an area where this might not apply or something like that, right? So you will see me use this a lot as well. And I highly encourage that you start using this more in your normal conversations as well. Even if you're just talking to a friend or something, just tried to pepper it in there and see how it works. Again, we can just easily replaced with, but it's just that you've got to realize that the phrasing is a little bit different compared to, But in the, as far as the phrasing goes, you kind of say the first sentence, you make a short pause. And then you say, however, comma I was unable to, for example. Another example would be, I love drinking coffee. That said, I don't drink coffee in the evenings as it disrupts my sleep. So again, in the first sentence, we're saying I loved drinking coffee. In the second sentence, we're talking about how we don't drink coffee in the evenings, right? So obviously we're negating the first sentence that said is a very good way to do that as well. Again, this is a very good little bit of a different connective phrase. Also very useful. And it's very, it sounds a little bit more. How should I put this? Sounds a little bit more sophisticated, let's say. And then a word like, however, it's like that said, even though I haven't made the statement, in some areas, this might not apply. And that's basically what we're doing here. We're saying, I love drinking coffee, but in some cases I don't. For example, when it's late in the evening. Sorry about that. He likes dogs a lot. Despite that he has never owned a pet. That's another really good example. Despite that, we're basically saying, despite, despite means that even though this is true, this thing happens, right? So again, we have a first sentence, despite that first sentence, meaning that even though that first sentence is true, sometimes that's not the case. For example, he has never owned a pet. He likes dogs a lot. Despite that despite the fact that he likes dogs a lot, is never on independent. Now let's go to the next slide where we talk about the structure of these. We're going to start with, however, the structure of power, however, is basically like this. We have a sentence, it ends with a semicolon. Then we have however, comma symptoms do. Very simple, right? This is how this works. However, not all the time, for example, right? Or I love coffee. However, I don't drink coffee and evenings, all right, so very simple, nothing crazy about it. And this is pretty much how you will end up using however. Next one is that said, again, remember we had a sentence semicolon that said comma, and then we have the second sentence, right? So again, the reason why I'm mentioning these semicolons and commas is to help you with the way you phrase it, right? Because that's also very important. You don't want to just stroller all these, all these vocabulary on together and stroll dissenters all together and just say it out loud. You want to make sure you're phrasing it properly. So for example, you say, I love drinking coffee. That said, I don't drink coffee and evenings. Again, you see how I pause after I say that first sentence and as a that said. And then let me get a little bit of a shorter pulse, but still kind of a comma in there. And then I say the second sentence, it's very important that we phrased properly. Next one is although and although can be used in two different ways. First way you can use it is similar to the last two phrases that we just went over. You can say. This, although the other thing, alright, so I love drinking coffee. Although I don't drink coffee and evenings. But you can also use, although little bit differently, you can also use it in the beginning. And instead of having a long pause, You can have a shorter pause, just a single comma, and no other punctuation, right? So you can say, although I loved drinking coffee, I don't drink coffee in the evenings. That's another different way that you can connect two sentences without connecting them. You don't put the connective word and between them basically put it at the front. Saying that basically you indicate from the beginning that the second sense is going to be negating the first, then this end. Although this first sentence is true, this thing basically right? Although I loved in coffee, I don't drink coffee and evenings. Last but not least, we have despite and despite also can be used a couple of different ways. Again, you can put it in between the two or put it in the beginning. If you put it in in between, then it's again, pretty simple. It's pretty similar to the last couple that we just went over. You say the first sentence and they say despite this or despite that, referring to the first sentence, that is this thing. So you say, I love drinking coffee. Despite that, I don't drink coffee in the evenings. Now, you could also use despite the beginning of the sentence. And depending on the type of sentences that you are using, you might say despite or say this by the fact that, right, so if you're saying something factual, you might want to use this button, fact that But if you're not using something factual, you could say despite, just use despite on its own. So for example, you can say, and of course this also affects the structure of the sentence a little bit too. So pay attention to how this works. In this example. Let's say you want to use the coffee example one more time. Let me say despite, despite my love for coffee and the first sentence, I don't drink coffee in the evenings. Whereas if I wanted to use the same synthesized the first one, that's a factual statement. Remember, I love coffee is a factual statement that I'm stating facts. If I want to use despite on its own, I can't use a factual statement. I have to use set this that's describing something, right? So I use, despite my love for coffee, despite this thing being this thing like existing or whatever, like my love for this existing or my appreciation for this existing. I'm describing something right? And sort of just saying something factual. If I wanted to say something factual, for example, I love coffee. I could say, despite the fact that I love coffee, I don't drink coffee in the evenings. So I hope you kind of, you can kinda tell the differences between these two. It's a little bit, it could be a little bit confusing whether you should just use despite on its own or despite the fact that so hopefully this explanation helps you out a little bit a gal go over the example one more time. If I wanted to just use the sentence, I love coffee, I would say despite the fact that I love coffee, I don't drink coffee Indeed things. But if I want to use despite, I would say, despite my love for coffee, I don't drink coffee in the evenings. 19. As Well As, Not To Mention, & Moreover: All right. In this video, we're going to go over connective words that we want to replace and also with. Now, and also are very common words, probably the most common connective words in the English language, and obviously everyone uses it all the time. And there's nothing wrong with any of these, right? And obviously, very useful word to use. Same with also. However, we want to make sure that we don't use them all the time. And we don't always connect to sentences with just and also. Like we don't say, Hey, I did this, also, I did this other thing. Also, this happened to me. Like you don't want to just keep saying also also also and between sentences because after a while, it just gets too repetitive, and it just doesn't sound like you're thinking about what you're saying, right? It doesn't seem well thought out and what you're putting out there, which is why it's good to learn some other connective words that are very useful and also just sound very nice. So, for example, the three that we're going to go over together in this video as well as, not to mention, and moreover. So let's go ahead and take a look at these. As we just mentioned, we use these instead of An also. And let's take a look at some of these examples. So the first example says he's very experienced in this field, as well as this. He is an inspiring leader. Now, notice how I could have used either or also in the same space, and the sentences would have connected very nicely. I could have said he is very experienced in his field, and he is an inspiring leader. And that would have made perfect sense, right? And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that you don't want to just keep saying between these kinds of sentences all the time. Same with also, I could have used also here. I could have said he was very experienced in his field. Also, he's an inspiring leader. Again, nothing wrong with that. Grammatically, it's perfectly fine. But look at how nice this sounds. When I say he's very experienced in his field, as well as this, he is an inspiring leader. It just sounds a lot more well thought out. And specifically, if I was using also an end in other sentences before this, it just gives a little bit more variety to it. It doesn't just sound like I'm using the same kind of connective word. And it just sounds a little bit more like I'm actually putting some thought into what I'm saying. And this is something that I've actually considered. I'm not just saying he's very experienced and he is an inspiring leader, just to give some lip service. It sounds like I actually believe this, and I actually want to get this across, right? So again, very important to use very nice and at least a little bit different connective words. Another one is not to mention. So let's take a look at this example. I play tennis every week because I love the game. Not to mention, it is a great workout. Now, I pay attention to how I could have also used and also I could have said, I play tennis every week because I love the game, and it is a great workout. I also said, I play tennis every week because I love the game. Also, it is a great workout. Both of those perfectly fine, like we were talking about with the previous example. It's just look at how much nicer it sounds when I say not to mention because it makes it look like I'm saying this. I'm saying that I play tennis every week because I love the game. Not to mention is a great workout. It sounds like I'm kind of like it goes even without saying that it's a great workout. Like, of course, it's a great workout, right? So it kind of seems a little bit more a part of the first sentence than if I had just said, also, it is a great workout. It just sounds like I'm sloppily putting two different sentences together when I use And also. But when I say not to mention, it just sounds a little bit more like these two sentences are more related to each other if that makes sense. I'm kind of like saying that kind of when I say the first sentence, you should already be aware, not to mention, it goes without saying that it is a great workout, right? It just sounds like they're more put together. Next one, moreover, let's take look that one. Texting while driving is extremely dangerous. Moreover, it is illegal in most countries. Right? And again, it kind of has the same effect as not to mention, where it just kind of makes it seem like it kind of even goes without saying the second part, right? It's like, once you hear the first sentence, you should already be aware of this. But I'm saying it anyways for you, right? Like, I just sounds more like that. Like if I had said texting while driving is extremely dangerous, also, it is illegal in most countries, it kind of sounds like you're not aware of that, right? Like I'm I'm making two different points, and I'm bringing it together instead of making one point, which also contains this other point within it, right? 'cause when I use moreover, it sounds like it's extremely dangerous. On top of the fact that it's illegal, whereas, so it's not adjacent to it, right? It's kind of the whole. They're both kind of the same thing. And you could also say that it implies a little bit more that the reason why it's illegal is because it's extremely dangerous. Whereas if you just use and also, it just sounds like you're making two different points that have nothing to do with each other, right? Like you're saying, sky is blue, and the grass is green, right? Those are two things that have nothing to do with each other. So we're not going to like you say moreover in that kind of a situation. We're not going to say sky is blue, moreover, grass is green. But in this case, because the second sentence is building on top of the first one and it's kind of a part of the first sentence, at least in a little bit kind of an implied way, if that makes sense. It's very organic to use a word, like, moreover, because it's just implying that we're building upon what we just talked about in the first sentence, right? So let's go a little bit deeper into these to learn the exact structure. So for as well as, we can use it in two different ways. We can use it between the two sentences, and we can also use it in the beginning before either sentence. So if we're using it before either sentence, we just say as well, right? We say as well, let's say, what was the example for that one. Yeah. So his experience in the field and an inspiring leader. So if we're just using as well as, we would just say, as well as being an inspiring leader, he's very experienced or something along those lines, right? And then if he wanted to use it in between, however, we have to use another word in the middle in there, this or that, for example, we would say, what was example, one more time, very experienced and inspiring leader. So we would say, he is very experienced, as well as this or as well as that. He is a great leader, right? So that's a little bit of a difference there. If we are using it in the beginning, the sentence structure changes a little bit because we're saying, as well as this being the case, this thing is also the case. Whereas if we're putting it in the middle, we just say the two sentences normally, and we make sure we have a short pause after the first sentence, then we say, as well as this or as well as that, the second sentence happens. Let's take a look at not to mention. Now, not to mention is pretty straightforward. It's used in the middle between the two sentences, and we have a short pause right after the first sentence just to make it sound a little bit more natural. So we would say, who was the example for this one. I play tennis every week, because I love the game. Not to mention it is a great workout. So we say, I do this because I love the game. Not to mention. Notice how I have a short pause in there. I do this because I love the game. Not to mention. I also think it's a great workout, something along those lines. And same applies to moreover. It's just used in the middle between the two sentences, and we make sure to have a short pause before saying moreover after the first sentence could just kind of let the first sentence have its impact, and then we come in with moreover. This other thing also applies. So just to go back to our example of texting and driving, we say texting and driving is extremely dangerous. We have a short pause. Moreover, it's illegal in many countries. So those were the three different or four different, if you want to count as well as the two different things, whether it's at the beginning or in the middle. Just remember that if it's in the middle, we have to add this or that to it, depending on what we're talking about. But if it's in the beginning, we just use as well as. And of course, we talked about how we use not to mention or moreover, only in the middle. We can't use those at the beginning of the two sentences. It's only used in the middle. All right. So those were the connective words that we can use instead of or also, and we'll take a look at some other connective words in the next couple of videos. 20. Not Only... But Also, Either... Or, & Once... Then: All right. In this video, we're going to go over some two parter connective words. Now, the two part of connective words that we're going to go over are not only, but also either or, and once then. Now, these two parter connective words, the way they work is that each of these parts come before each of our two sentences that we're connecting to each other. And basically, what we're doing is we're signifying the relation between these two sentences using these connective words. Now, let's take a look at them in action. So we usually use these instead of using connective words like also or And then, and we're basically using them instead of using them on their own. So it's not that we just take these out entirely. As you can see, I have highlighted over here in this sentence. I have highlighted then, highlighted it also. What we're doing is that instead of just using also instead of just using or instead using then, we combine it with something else that comes in the beginning of the other sentence. So let's take a look at these over here one more time. Instead of also, we had not only before the first sentence, and then but also after the first sentence and before the second sentence. Instead of just using or between the two, we use either before the first one. Or before the second one. And instead of using then and saying, This happened, then this happened. And then, for example, first sentence, then, second sentence, we use once before the first sentence in order to give a little bit more context to this then that comes before the second sentence. So let's take a look at them in action. Not only is he a nice guy, but he is also very successful. As you can see, we use not only but also, and we had to break up this but also to accommodate for this he is over here. We could have said not only is he a nice guy, but also very successful. That would have worked too. But if you want to keep saying that he is very successful and just keep putting a lot of emphasis on he, then you can just mention it here and break apart, also. But we could have also just said, not only is he a nice guy, but also very successful. That would have worked too. We didn't have to break this apart to accommodate for the he is. But in this example, that's what's happened here. The next one, the either or. We say, either I sell my old car or I give it away as a gift. So what we're doing is we're basically saying, I have two different options, right? When you have two different options that you are weighing against each other, you say, either this or the other thing, right? So either option one or option two. For the next one, once and then, again, it's instead of using just then in the middle, we're putting it on beforehand to give it a little bit more context. So the example is once you have committed to doing this, then there is no turning back. Think of it this way. I could have used this without the ones, and it still would have been correct. It just wouldn't have made as much sense, right? I could have said, you've committed to doing this. Then there's no turning back, right? That makes sense. But the point that we want to get across is that generally, this is the case, right? Like, if I had not used once here, it would have been very specific, it would have been like only to this one time that you have actually committed. We're not making a general statement. And that's the reason why we need to contextualize it to make it a liberal more general. When I say, once you have committed to doing this, then there's no turning back. I'm saying that any time you commit to doing this, right? Not just in this one instance, but any time or if you choose to commit to doing this, then there is no turning back. Okay? So basically, we're contextualizing this. And we're kind of setting up instead of just saying when this happens, then this happens, we're saying that If you do this, then this happens. Think of it that way. We're kind of setting up consequences for the first sentence using our second sentence, right? So again, these are a little bit different from each other, not only, but also is referring to the scenario where we have two different sentences that are complimentary to each other. Either or is two different sentences that are different options that you want to choose one of them. Either you do this or you do that one. And once and then, first to a scenario where you're trying to generally establish some sort of consequence from the first sentence to the second sentence. So let's take a look at the structure. Not only, but also. It works very very simply. We don't even have any pause or anything like that. We just have a comma, nothing too crazy. We don't have like we don't have the other stuff that we use for pausing between the sentences. We only use a comma here. So it's a very, very brief pause. We say, not only this thing, but also this other thing, right? Pretty simple, pretty straight to the point. Either or, again, same thing. There's no big pause. There's no crazy maneuvers. Very simple. Either comes before the first sentence or comes before the second sentence. Either option number one or option number two. And once and then also applies the same way, except this time, we do have a little bit of a pause after the first sentence. We say, Once you have done number one, then number two. All right. So again, let's take a look at these one more time in action over here. We talked about how different they are to each other, not only, but also refers to a scenario where we have two complementing sentences. Either or was when we have two different options. So either option number one or option number two. And once then was when we were setting up some sort of a general consequence for the first sentence, which we show in the second sentence. Okay, so hopefully that makes sense. This is a little bit of a tougher lesson because these connective words are a little bit different from each other. But these are the main two parter connective words that you need to know and use on a day to day basis. Okay. And these are very easy to use. A lot of times, for example, if you want to set up some sort of an option, like saying, either you do this or you do that, you need to use either or. It's just the best way to phrase it, right? So it's a very important one to learn. You're going to learn anything, in fact, I would say, make sure you learn either or because that's probably the most common out of all three of them. It happens a lot of times because you need to a lot of times, you need to say, Hey, you need to choose between option number one and option number two. So you have to choose either this or that, right? So it happens a lot of times. You need to be aware of it and also start incorporating it into your own conversation. But also, these ones are very useful as well. And not only this, but also that. And once this happens, then this other thing happens. All right. So hopefully, that makes sense, and I'll see you in the next video. Okay 21. Therefore, As a Result, & Hence: Alright. In this video, we're going to go over connective words that we're going to use to make sure we don't overuse so. So the three that we're going to learn here together are therefore, as a result, hence, very common, all three of them are very commonly used. Very important to learn about these if you're not aware of them. And if you are aware of them, just make sure that you start incorporating them a little bit more. But just let's go over how they're used most of the time. So we use when one sentence is the result of the other. Basically, instead of just saying so, right? Instead of saying sentence number one, I should say. So sentence number two. Instead doing that, we use these other connective words. Let's take a look at the first example. We have, I don't have much free time. Therefore, I rarely ever go to the cinema. So we're basically saying is, I don't have much free time, so I rarely go to the cinema, right? Like, that's how you would usually say it if you were just using so, and you were over using so all the time. But of course, we want to make sure we don't overuse it, and use some of these fancier connective words that just makes your sentence sound a lot more a lot more thought out and a lot more sophisticated, if you will. So we're basically putting therefore, between the two sentences and setting up the second sentence as a consequence as the first sentence. I don't have much free time. Therefore, which means that because of this first sentence, because of the fact that I don't have much time, I rarely ever go to the SMA, right? Hopefully, that makes sense. Ta look at the second example. I bought a coffee maker. You have a pause here. Very important. As a result, I now drink coffee every morning. Right? So again, we could have used so in here. We could have said, I bought a coffee maker, so I now drink coffee every morning. Again, we're basically setting up the second sentence as a consequence of the first sentence. Think of it this way. If I hadn't bought a coffee maker, I wouldn't have been drinking coffee every morning, right? Because I wouldn't have any coffee because I don't have a coffee maker. So basically what we're doing is we're taking the first sentence and saying that as a result of this, and again, hence, what we're using the words as a result, as a result of this, this sentence number one, we have sentence number two happening. So we can just put into words like that. We say, I bought a coffee maker. We have a short pause because we're phrasing it in a way, we're letting that first sentence breathe on its own, because it's a definitive statement. And now we're saying, as a result, I now drink coffee every morning. All right. Hopefully, that makes sense. And last but not least, let's take a look at hence. Here we have. My friend has always helped me in times of need. Hence why I trust them so much. Again, we're setting this up as a consequence. Our trust in our friend is a result of them helping us in times of need, right? Like if they hadn't have helped us in times of need, we wouldn't have trusted them. And that's basically what's happening. Again, we could have used so in here. We could have said, My friend has always helped me in times of need. So I trust them so much, or so I trust him a lot. You probably wouldn't have said so again if you had so in here. You would have said, so I trust him a lot or something like that. But obviously, because we didn't use so over here, we can use it over here. My friend has always helped me in times of need. Hence why I trust them so much. Hence, again, referring to the fact that the second sentence is a result, a direct result of the first sentence and wouldn't have happened without the first sentence, okay? Let's take a look at the structure a little bit more in detail. Therefore, is very simple and straightforward. We have sentence number one, C therefore sentence number two, okay? Nothing too crazy here. Very simple and easy to use. Anytime you have a sentence that is causing another sentence to happen, You can just use their four in between. I could say I love teaching to you guys. Therefore, I am teaching this course, right? Like something along those lines. Me teaching of course is a result of me loving teaching you guys about stuff, and I can use their four in between those two, right? To say that the first sentence, therefore, the second sentence. All right? Hopefully, that makes sense. As a result, has two different ways that you can use this one actually, you could use it in between, very simply, just like therefore. Although it does have that pause in here, but that the phrasing is pretty much the same. We could also use it in the beginning of the sentence as well. But if you use it in the beginning, you need of after as a result part because you're saying as a result of this first sentence, right? Because if it comes between the two, you first say the first sentence, then you as a result, meaning that as a result of what came before, that's implied sentence number two. But if you're putting it before both sentences, if you just say as a result, people are going to be like, as a result of what? You didn't say anything before this, which is why you need to clarify that by putting in of right after, as a result, which is basically saying, as a result of sentence number one, right? That of is leading you into the sentence number one, being the result or being what causes the result, which is sentence number two, right? So again, if it comes in the middle, you say sus number one, pause as a result, sentus number two. But if it comes in the beginning, you say, as a result of sentence number one. Sentence number two, and you don't have to have as much of a pause here. And last one, at least, hence, again, very straightforward. Very simple structure. It doesn't have a long pause or anything like that. Sentence number one, hence sentence number two, right? Sometimes it's nice to say hence why sentence number two. You could also say that, but you don't have to, right? It depends on the scenario. Sometimes you do have to, but you don't have to worry about that too much. Just go with your feeling. I'm pretty sure you can figure it out. Just be aware that it's used in between. You can't use hence at the beginning of the two sentences. And you don't have to have a huge or long pause or anything like that. It's just a simple comma after the first sentence, hence sentence number two. All right, so let's just go through them one more time. We had therefore, which we used in the middle. Very simple structure. We say sus umber one, therefore, synus number two. As a result, there were two different ways we could have used as a result. We could have used it in between the two sentences. Sythus number one, then we have a pause. As a result, senus number two. And we could have used it in the beginning of the sentences. We say, as a result of sentence number one, sentence number two. All right. And last but not least, we had hens which the use of hens is very similar to that four. It's just between the two sentences, not a long pause or anything like that. Sentence number one, hence sentence number two. And depending on the situation, sometimes you can say, hence y sentence number two, right? You can put it y right after hence to just emphasize the point a little bit further. Again, it's a very situation specific, but you don't have to worry about it too much. You can just use the hence on its own for now. And then as you just start using it a little bit, then start seeing when you can add the Y in there just for a little bit extra emphasis, okay? So those are the connective words that we use to replace s or just to avoid over using so, I should say. And yeah, just go ahead and try those out and see how you feel about them. I hope you enjoy the video, and I'll see you in the next one. 22. Practice Thinking in English...: Alright, in this video, I want to talk to you about the importance of learning how to think in English. Now, I imagine when you learn English as a second language, what you start doing is you think about something in your head. You think about it in your first language, then you translate that into English so that you can say it out in English. Well, while that's completely fine when you're starting to learn a language and that's, you know, that's probably the easiest way to start learning language long-term, that's ongoing to be something that you wanna do. Long-term, you want to get to a point where you can start thinking in English and formulating what you're saying all in English without even thinking about your first language. And the reason for that is because think about it this way when you think in your first language and then you have to translate that over. First of all, it takes about a time. It's really hard to have spontaneous conversation with someone and just keep up with them as they say something, it's hard for me to reply back. I've heard a lot of people have this problem, people right into me and say, how do I fix this? Like I have a problem. I very well spoken. I know how to sentences. I know grounder very well. I have a good accent, but whenever I tried to talk with someone, it's very hard for me to just reply instantaneously, like I haven't take a second and just gather my thoughts and then just be like, Okay, this is what I want to say. You know what I mean? Like there's a little bit of a delay. And the reason for that is because your brain has to go through a couple of different processes. It has to formulate an idea or a thought, then produce that into a language that makes sense to you, which would be your first language because you're used to thinking in your first language. And then you need to translate that over to English. It's too many steps, right? You wanna make sure they get to a point eventually, where instead of doing all of those, you can just have a thought and just take that thought and just immediately turn that into English spoken words. Now obviously, that's a lot easier said than done when you are starting out. But it all starts with just practicing and trying it out a couple of times and eventually you will get used to this like you would not believe. Right now. I, it's so easy for me to think in English and speak in English. That's exactly why do I never even think in another language, even though English was not my first language and English was my second language. And when I first started learning English, when I immigrated to another country, it was very tough for me. I was able to immediately generate thoughts. I had to do with thoughts in a different language and then slide down and get my point across. But again, that's too many steps. And also another problem with this is that we're translating from another language into English. It's very hard to do so while maintaining proper grammar, good vocabulary. 23. Talking to Yourself: Are you guys in this video I'm going to tell you about another exercise and that's talking to yourself in English. So Tom do yourself might sound a little bit idiotic, like if you are talking to yourself, people might think, well, what does that guy doing is he's stupid or something was talking himself. But in this case it's actually a really good exercise. And the reason for that is because you're essentially having a conversation with yourself. You're saying something, and then you're replying to yourself. And he replied to that reply and you just keep going, right. So you pretend like you're two different people and just talk about whatever. And this will help you basically be able to respond a lot better because you're aware of the response you're going to get and you're aware of how to respond to that, If that makes sense. So it's a little bit easier than having a conversation with someone else. Because, for example, if I ask someone how their day's doing, I don't know how they're going to answer. They might say, Oh, my day is terrible because I just lost my job or something, right? And you might not know what to say to that, right? But when you're speaking to yourself and having a conversation with yourself, you already know what you're going to say, right? So when you say, how's your day going, you respond, It's pretty good. How's your day going? And then you respond back. It's wonderful. I've been having a great time recently and a respond back. Oh, really, you why, how come what happened, right? You know, like you have control of the entire conversation and you can control both sides of it. So it's not going to go in weird places where you don't know how you react or the weird places where you don't know how to respond, right? So you are in control of both sides of it, so you're able to control the entire conversation. That's why it's such a good practice. It's because it's a lot easier to be able to maintain that conversation without like non-living want to say is actually so just try this with yourself. You can do it in the mirror if it's easier for you. Or you can just do it to yourself, just say the most basic thing. You can just start with, how's your day going? Or I can say, what's the last exciting thing you did recently? And you can make stuff up. You don't have to say anything that really happened. You can just the point of it is not talking about stuff that actually happen. The point of it is to practice being able to converse and go back and forth. So you can say, How's your day going and that you respond to yourself. It's really nice. How's your day going? And then you respond, it's not bad, but it could have been better. I had a terrible time getting up this morning because last night I slept soup relates and, uh, you can respond to yourself. Well, why do you sleep super late, right? Like, you know what I mean? Like you're able to just respond however you want. And if you feel like you can ask a question and have a good answer for it, then you can go ahead and ask that question. But if something is going to be difficult for you to answer, to, then avoid asking that essentially, right? So try this out for yourself. I recommend trying it a couple of times. Some people find this super useful, some others are not big fan of this exercise. So it's not an exercise I would say everyone falls in love with and everyone who uses to their benefit, but try it out, see how you feel about it. Because some people really do like this exercise and it really does help them be able to respond in conversations a lot better and always be able to just navigate the responses. So just try it out, see how you feel about it. I like to say if there's quite a bit, but it's just another exercise I thought I should let you guys know about. It's a fun one. You can do it anytime. If you have five minutes a day in front of the mirror or even just your own time. Just go ahead and try it, right? And preferably do it in a private setting where other people aren't around because it would look a little weird if you're just talking to yourself in front of other people, right? Like if you say how's your day going? Oh, it's pretty good. Thank you. Other people might think, well, what's going on? What is this going to do it, right? So maybe try it in a private setting, maybe in front of your own mirror or in your room or somewhere where you're alone and you're able to comfortably talk to yourself without having to worry about how you look to other people. So I go ahead and try it, see how you feel about this exercise. And I will see you in the next video. 24. Why Learn Slangs, Informal Contractions, & Text Abbreviations?: All right, In this section of the course, we're going to cover it together. Slangs and formal diction and takes abbreviations. Now why is it important to cover all of these? Well, these are also a part of your day-to-day conversation. And all of these little factors will determine whether people think you're kinda like a native English speaker, or you're someone who's struggling to just speak AND gate reports across. Things like slang is very important to know about because a lot of you will use them. So we need to know what they mean. And also if you can use them yourself and pepper them into your conversation, it just sounds like, you know what you're talking about. You're a native speaker. That's how it comes across. Same thing with informal diction. Stuff like instead of saying going to sink Ghana, right? No one ever says, I am going to do this. They say I'm gonna do this, right? If that's just how they say it because it sounds a lot easier and a lot less work. And that's how people are used to talking, right? That's the formal decision. Of course, if you're writing a full formal writing, you're going to put out, I am going to do this, right? And I'm gonna say, I'm gonna do this in a formal writing. However, in just day-to-day speaking, That's on how people operate right there gonna be a lot more informal and they're going to use the day-to-day diction that they're used to. So it's very important that we cover those together as well. So you can also do the same. And of course takes abbreviations, very important, especially if you're not a native English speaker. You might not know some of these, so we're just going to cover all our basis, go through them. So if you're having a conversation with someone over text, or if someone uses this and they're just on day-to-day conversation, then you're aware of what all that stuff needs just in case you're not aware of it. So those are the stuff we're going to cover in this section following the next videos so that we can go over all of this together. See you then. 25. Slangs - The Most Common Ones to Know: Alright, in this video we're going to cover the most important and the most useful slangs that you need to know. And you will probably be able to use in your day-to-day conversations. And of course, we're going to start with slang itself. The word slang is slang for short language. I know it's kinda Meta here, but basically slang is an abbreviation of short language. All right, so that's why we call it a slang. But let's get right into it. So the first one, we're going to cover it together as salty. Right now, when you say someone is salty, you're basically saying that they're angry about something or they're heard about something. An example of that would be that guy was really salty after he lost the game, right? So that's why usually used to describe people and it kinda has a negative connotation, right? And like you're saying that, hey, that guy's not happy, but you're not just saying, Oh, he's sad, like I feel bad for him. You've gotta saying like he's been kind of a jerk by being angry about it, right. So he's like really salty and he's been he's been angered over something that wasn't all that important isn't better way to put it. So that's what, that's what it means to call salty ghosting. Now, ghosting means to ignore someone as if they don't exist. An example of that would be she ghosted me after we broke up or as I walked past this gentleman, I just ghosted him and I just walked straight without saying Hi, something like that, right. When you ignore someone and you pretend like they're not there, and that's what we call ghosting or when you just don't reply to their messages anymore as if they don't exist or something along those lines, right? It's usually used to describe situations where a relationship has been caught off in a way where one person is just ignoring the other person completely. That's why usually when they use kind of the ghosting slang, if you will. And a lot of times it's used to describe bad breakups and self like that where people are just ignoring each other. So ghosting and fun little plankton. Shape. Now shade refers to suspicious or disrespectful behavior. One way to say this is to say throw shade, like this guy's throwing shade on this guy. Or you can say someone is shady, right? An example of this would be, I'm not trying to throw shade here, but Steve did not even bother to give us a call to let us know he will be late. Right? Like he's basically the example of saying that I don't want to be disrespectful to Steve, but come on. Steve didn't even bother to give us a call to let us know who will be late. Like he uses disrespecting us, which is not fair. As basically how you use shade. You can say, Hey, I'm not trying to throw shade. But this thing. Or you can say throwing shade on that guy. Or why are you throwing so much shade? Or you can say, Hey, why are you acting so Shadi, what's going on, right, something along those lines. But very common slang and one that you will hear a law actually if you pay attention closely, this is one that is used all the time. So very important one to know. Fam, this was also a very common ones, especially among young people. They use this term a lot and it's basically short for family. And my family are not just talking about blood relatives. You're talking about any group that feels like family, right? So you can just call them family and be like, Hey, fam, like, How's it going or something like that. Or you can say, Hey, I spent last area with the family basically saying your group of people who are very close to. And again, it doesn't have to be your relatives or like your parents or your brother, or sisters or anything like that. It can be just your friends that you're really close to, or just a group of people that you are very close and attach to and you can just call them fat dope. This is a very common one, obviously, I'm assuming this is the one that you've probably heard a lot. Basically means cool, right? You can say it. Sure, his new album as dopa, dopa is hell is one that's used very common, commonly among young people. You can say something is dopa as hell or dopa has other curse words, which we're now going to discuss here. Uh, but you can just use a lot of different contexts to say something is really cool or really good or really fun. You can just use it like that. Type. Kind of similar meaning to dope. It basically means good or great. But this is a little bit classier, right? Obviously it's not classy. I guess classy is not the word I should be using, but I want to try to say is that it's not as as like down to earth as dope. Your door is more like, oh, something is cool, right butt tight is like something is actually quite good, is the way I would describe it. For example, Let's say your test driving an Audi, right? In the example we have, I trust drove an Audi or out his new car yesterday. It's tight, right? Look, you're basing its quality, so very good. All right, so that's the difference between tight and dope. T. Now, t is basically gossip, Right? So you can say hi ofs and t about this thing or hey, I'm going to share some tea with you guys about what's going on with those guys over there, right? So basically you're just sharing gossip or you're sharing something that is not anything of value per se. It's just something that you want to discuss. And it's usually about other people's business that has nothing to do with you, right. So that's how I use T and example of that. Obviously, I have some tea about Adam and Ashley, alright, so you have some gossip about what they've been doing those two. Or you can use it in some contexts similar to them. Flex. Flex is probably my favorite one that I use a lot and some people use it a lot. Especially among young people. This is very common, basically means to show off deliberately, right? You can say, Hey, where are you flexing or money or something like that, right? Like if you're making a lot of money, then why not flex a little by buying a Lamborghini, right? Like buying a Lamborghini would be you flexing how much money you have, right? Or you're solving a math equation, for example, will be you flexing how smart you are or something like that. A very common word. Again, among young people, especially. But yeah, good one to know. Bay. Bay is basically short for baby. And this is actually common among all, all kinds of age groups because of its use, right? Like you can call your wife, your husband, your significant other. You can call them bay. And a lot of people do actually, you can say, Hey, I took my baby to the reds for the Valentine's Day, right? So little nice treat there. But basically B means ape. Extra. Now, extra means to be over the top, but in a negative way. Alright, so you're essentially, It's the same as being over the top, but being open top is not always in a negative light, right? You can be over the top, but like in a funny way, right? But extra doesn't really refer to that. Extra is just when you are over the top, but in a way that's annoying to other people, right? So you can, for example say, I don't like that guy, he's 20 extra, like HID. Let's say he gets on Non about how everything is bad and everything at life sucks and whatever, or whenever we're trying to have some fun, he always find something to be angry about, like that, that kind of behavior where someone's just being really annoying because of how over the top they're reacting to everything. And that's what we call an extra. And last but not least, we have lit. So that means cool as actually. But it's also used in some other contexts. Usually used to refer to someone being drunk or high, right? So you can use it in the first meaning of the word, which was just cool. And they say, Hey, this party is lit, Thanks for inviting us. Or hey, this, this event has led or evening or something along those lines, right? It's usually refer you used to refer to some sort of gathering or party or some sort of an event being really cool. But also, the second meaning is that if you're referring to someone being drunk or high, you can also say them. So you can say, Hey, I've had too many drinks unlit, right? Or something along those lines. But basically, those were the 10 or 12 slangs that I found to be the ones that are most used. At least from my experience. And the ones that I feel like are the most important for you to know about. All right. So hopefully you've been able to at least recognize some of these from your own experiences, and hopefully you've heard some of these before. And if you haven't heard the other ones, I again encourage you to see if you go on hearing them in the future. Because once you learn something, it's kinda crazy how you start noticing get a lot more like you might not know a word but be exposed to at all time, but you just don't realize it because you just don't know it. But when you learn something and then you all of a sudden see how everybody around you is actually using that word and you were never even noticing. So go ahead, see if you can use some of these in your day-to-day conversation and also keep an eye out or cubic keep an ear out, I guess I should say. For all of these. 26. Informal Contractions: Alright, in this video we're going to go for informal contractions, which are basically informal ways of talking, right? So it's when you take something and say it a little bit more informally. And we're going to see couple of examples of that here. So an example would be gunner, Right? So Gana is used instead of going to when you're talking. But keep in mind that this is only in speaking, right? So you never going to write gun, at least now most of the time, unless you're demonstrating how somebody is speaking. So for example, in a novel, if you want to talk about how someone is tall, again, if you want to show how they are, they prefer a way of street talking, you might use this word, but other than that, you're almost never going to use gunner in a written format. You're always going to go into. And then you're just gonna say it, gunna. Okay? So this is, this is going to happen a lot of times when you are talking to someone and they're going to use this, you rarely hear people saying going to, instead of saying going on because it's just gonna rolls off the tongue a lot easier and it's just a lot more fluid if you will. And now keep in mind that going to is not meant for when you're actually talking about going to a location. Gunna is when you're using going to as a way of talking about what you're planning on doing. So, for example, you say, I'm going to watch a movie tonight, right? That doesn't mean you're going to place it means you're going to watch a movie and I miss you plan on watching a movie tonight, right? So you only use gunna when you're using going to as a way of talking about something you're planning or I'm going to wash my dishes tonight, right? Like you're not talking about going to a location. You're just talking about your dishes. So if you were saying, I am going to the bank today, you're not gonna say I'm gonna bank to the right, that that doesn't make sense. So you only use it when you're talking about making some sort of plan or talking about something that you're going to do in the future. All right, So I'll just keep that in mind so you don't use it when you're talking about actually physically going to from one location to another location, he only use it when you're talking about going too, as a way of talking about your future plans. 12, 10, right? So instead of saying wants to, you usually say you wanna, I wanna do this, I want to do that. I want to go here. I want to make sure I have all the things I need. So again, almost never. You're going to hear people say, I want to do this is just rolls off the tongue a lot easier to say 10. All right, I want to do this. I want to make sure I have everything in place. You want to do this right now? Or Are we sure he wants this right? Like so you don't say it for the third person, but for a first person or second person, you can definitely use this. You can say, I want to do this. So you want to do this. You can use it for day wanna do this. So yeah, that's basically just you, how you use it. You just take wanted to and you say 10, right? It just rolls off the tongue a lot easier and it's a lot easier to incorporate into your speaking. And if you listen closely to how other people speak, you almost never hear people say, I want to write, you always say I want it. And you can start incorporating that into the way you speak as well. Because at first it makes your speech sound a lot more natural. And also it just makes it a lot easier for you to also roll everything off of your tongue. I want to find the best restaurant in town. I went to buy some new shoes. I want to make sure I have enough time to do my laundry, right? So whatever you want to say, wants to four, you can just say 10 instead. Next I've gotta. So again, God is used and sort of guts to, All right, So essentially when you have, when you're using gods too as a way of describing what you have to do. You can just roll that off as gotta, I gotta do this. He's gotta do this. I gotta get the recipe for the soup. Whatever, whatever you have to do and you're using the words got to. You can just combine that together and it'll roll off the tongue a lot easier if you just say got kinda. Now, again, kinda is used instead of kind of, right? So again, it rolls off the tongue. A lot easier to say kinda instead of saying I kind of, right? And again, you're not using this when you're actually talking about a specific kind. You're using this when you were talking about how something is either similar to something else or how you marginally feel about something. So for example, instead of saying, I like this coffee, you can say I kind of like this coffee, right? So which would essentially mean that you don't really like it, but you don't hate it either. So it's, I kinda like it, right? And you would write kind of, but you would say kinda, right? So again, you write this way, make sure you don't write this, okay, So this is only used in speech. This is something I need to make very clear. All of these ones that we've gone over using speech. So I'm just using these examples just to show you how you say it, right? But he, that this is not how you write them. If you're going to write them, you would just write going to over here. If you were going to write the sentence, you would just write, I want to find the best restaurant time. You would just have read it. I want to find the best restaurant in town. Saying over here, I would write, I got to get the recipe for the super. You would read it as, I gotta get the recipe for the soup. Same thing over here. You would write, if you were writing this, you would write, I kind of like this coffee, but you just say, I kinda like this coffee. All right, so that's how you use it in saying essentially none in writing. And again, you can just use this for anything that you feel marginally about. I kinda feel like going up and not really like that would be another way of saying, it's not that I'm super excited by going up, but, you know, I'm kinda in the mood for it. So sure. When you're marginally feeling about something, you just use kinda watch up. Again. You write what are you, but you read it, watch it. Okay. So and again, this is not necessarily always done unlike the other ones were you just always read it this way. This, this one, you could just say, What are you doing over here or something like that. But you're going to hear this, okay, so this is not one that has always said this way, but it's definitely one that you could use if you wanted to. And it does sound natural and it just rolls off the tongue a lot easier. Once you do it over here. What you're planning on doing, right? So stuff like that. And sort of saying, what are you, which would be three different words. You can just roll them all together and say watch. Next up we have eight. Now ain't is a very cool, very cool one. It's one that it's actually not used as much today. It used to be used a lot more back in a day, but usually in south of the United States, it's still used a lot because in that dialect is just very, very much so. It's rolled into everything they say. But you can just say Isn't or hasn't, that'll be fine too. Again, this one watcher and ain't are the ones that are not necessarily always used. And it's totally fine if you say this. But the other ones that we talked about are the ones that you really should cause them that way. But you can just say that incident nice isn't or this is instead of saying this isn't what I signed up for it, you can say the same what I stop sign up for. Right. So you can use them anytime you want and sort of isn't or has it. Okay. So anytime you could substitute that in saying only again, not in writing but in saying you can say instead of isn't or hasn't. Okay. So this are saying the this this isn't what I thought it would be. You can say the same what I thought it would be. Right. So again, it's not one that you have to use, but if you hear it, at least you know what it means. Last but not least, we have Guinea, which is a substitute for give me. Essentially when you're asking for someone to give you something, you can just substitute with gimme, again, not one that you have to use, but you might hear it from time to time and it's good to know what it means. Give me that pen, giving that cup over there, right? So you just essentially you roll these two together and you get Guinea, and then you never write this, but this is how you can pronounce give me, but that's totally fine if you just say give me, that's fine too. This is another one that is always pronounced this way. But pay if you ever hear it, at least you know what you're up against. All right. So those were the informal contractions that we wanted to cover it together. Hopefully you found a couple that you didn't know about before. So just make sure that if it's one of those ones that I talked about, as in, you have to say I'm that way you make sure that you start incorporating that into the way you speak. And if it's one of the other ones that I said, you know, they're not really always used this way, then you don't really have to worry about it. At least just know what they mean and if you ever hear him, then you're not confused. All right. So that's going to be about it and I'll see you in the next one. 27. Text Abbreviations: All right, so in this video we're going to go over, takes abbreviations. And we're going to be covering mostly informal abbreviations, stuff that you see a lot in text messages and Facebook messages and stuff like that. And we have one or two formal ones that are important to know as well. But essentially these are stuff that you just need to know because there are going to come up if you have conversations over text or over messages, they're just stuff that are going to come up and a lot of people use and it's just good to know what they mean. And there might be a lot of them they already know, but I just thought it's good to cover everything that is used a lot these days so that you have all your bases covered so that if there is like two or three of these that you are not aware of and you don't really know what they mean, you are ready to go. All right, so we're going to start with the formal one. Aka, it's a little, I guess it's a little bit more formal than the other ones is what I'm trying to say. It's not exactly like they use this in literary writings or anything like that, but it's not just used in informal speech and slang terms. It's also used a lot in a lot more scientific writing, more formal writing. And it's essentially referring to also known as, and it's used when you want to refer to another way. Something is known or referred to. So for example, let's say you're talking about something that people know one way and they could also know another way. You can say, Hey, this thing, aka this other thing, right? So for example, if someone has a nickname, right, or a name they go by. You can say, hey, I'm talking about Ryan, aka the best soccer player in town, right? Or something along those lines, right? What's one or something is known in a certain way. You could use aka after referring to them. One way you can say aka, this other thing. They are also known as, for example, you could say, when you have a morning cup of Joe, aka a cup of coffee, it's the best feeling in the world or something like that, right? So a morning cup of Joe is another way to refer to coffee. And it's a kind of a slang way of just saying coffee. And what you can do is you can just say one of those ways of saying coffee and then say aka coffee, right? So that's basically how you use it. And it's not really just use informally, It's also used a little bit more formally as well. Next up we have ECG and EEG basically means, for example, right? And again, this is used a lot more in writing. And the way it's used is when you want to show an example of something. So you say, Hey, this thing is happening right now, EG, blah, blah, blah. And then you have the example. You might see this in dictionaries. You might see this one. You'd look up a word like they might give you the definition for the word NSA, EEG, and show an example of that work being used in some contexts. And it can be used in other areas too. When people want to be talking about something generally and they want to show an example for it. So they might say EG, here's this example. It's essentially shown this way, right? And it's not standing for anything in particular, it's unlike towards one of them starts with E and another one starts with a G. It's just a way to refer to example, right? Because example sounds like it starts with ENG, right? Even though it doesn't, it starts with the annex. It sounds like it starts with ENG and that's why it's used as EEG. But alright, getting into a little bit more of an informal stuff that we're going to cover together. We have LOL at LMU right now, these are probably the most commonly used abbreviations in informal speech and formal text. You probably seen these a lot over texts and over messages. Essentially the bait, they both mean the same thing pretty much. It basically means laughing out loud, right? So when you are laughing hysterically about something, and of course LMA amines laughing my ass off, right? So it's pretty much the same thing. It's a lot of them more of an extreme version of LOL. And again, they're just used instead of the laughing emoji, if you will, right? So it's just used to indicate that you find something to be very funny and very hilarious and you're just laughing at it, right? So you see these used a lot. I'm guessing you probably most, at least most of you have already heard of these and know what they are. But, you know, there's probably always someone who doesn't know what they mean. So just thought I'd include it here just in case JK. Jk means just kidding. Right? And it's used to indicate that you are not serious about something and only kidding. All right, so you use this anytime you say something and you wanted to make it clear that you were kidding, you weren't actually serious. For example, I might say something very hurtful. And then just right afterwards, JK, hey, I'm actually being hurtful. I'm just kidding around, right? So don't take it too seriously. Itk ITK basically means I don't know. Right. And it's a shortened version of I don't know. You take the idea and the k you get, I don't know. And it's used when you don't know something, right? It's pretty self-explanatory. It's usually used in a single, single word like you don't really put it after saying something, you just say ITK, right? Like someone might ask you, hey, where's my hat? And then you just reply with ID K, meaning that I don't know whether you had was like, how am I supposed to know? Right. But it's usually not used in a sentence or anything like that. It's just used on its own. And more than that, more often than not, at least, you could use it in a sentence if you wanted to, but it's very rarely done. So l m, k, Now Ellen, k-means let me know. Alright, and it's essentially used when you want, when we want someone to inform you of something in the near future. And again, it's very important that it's in the near future. That's a key part of this definition because it's not really used for like when you're asking for some information right now. Usually it's used when you're asking about something that hasn't happened yet. Like for example, like Can you come tonight? I might I might ask him come to my party tonight and then you might reply that, Hey, I don't know, I have to see what my situation is like. And then I could reply with wel l m k. Right. So like it's actually let me know whenever you figure out what your situation is, let me know. So I know if you're coming or not, right? So l m, k is usually used when you want someone to inform you of something in the near future, not in the present. Prb, very common one. It's essentially means Ruby right back, right. It's essentially used when you're going to be unavailable or you're not going to be able to respond for a little while and you have you will come back in a short period. All right. So let's say I'm texting back and forth with someone and something comes up and just have to pay attention to something else momentarily for the next couple of minutes. I might just say, hey, once we are be right. And basically I'm saying, hey, just 1 second, I need a couple minutes to take care of something. I'll be right back. Bff that BFF means best fence forever, right? And it's essentially used to indicate very close friendship. Essentially saying that this is my absolute best friend like ever, right? And that's pretty much it. That's used quite often it over texts and even in speaking and informal discussion, this is not one that is just used over text. A lot of people refer to their best friends as, hey, this is my BFF or all of those guys are total DFFs. It's definitely used in speaking as well. Talk to you later. Now this one is exclusively over text and it essentially is what it's saying, right? Ttl talk to you later, obviously the EU being the standard for you, right? We're not, we're not using a Y, we're just using you because that's an easier way to just represent you. And it's essentially just a way of saying goodbye at the end of some sort of discussion. You just say bye, Talk to you later, and you can just use Talk to you later like that. And last but not least, we have k or k. K, which is just another way or a shortened version of saying, okay, right. It might seem a little bit weird that we're shortening ok, which is already only two letters. But you know, you see a lot of weird things and today's world, so that's just how people are talking, right? So if you ever see you don't have to use this yourself, but you might sometimes see other people just think k are just saying kk, right? And you might be like, What does I mean, right? So I just want you to be confused. That's essentially another way of saying, Okay. All right, so that was a couple of these shortened versions of saying the most random things ever that I thought it's good to cover. So you know what you're dealing with. If you ever see these come up in texts or if you hear of them in normal conversation, it's important to at least know what these things are and basically be aware of them. All right, so just a couple little things. Nothing crazy, but I thought it would be good for you guys to know. So hope you enjoyed it and I'll see you next one. 28. Practice Word Vomiting: Are you guys? In this section of the course, I'm going to introduce you to a very powerful training exercise called word vomiting. Now, word vomiting is essentially when you start talking about something, just do not stop no matter what you're saying, right? So essentially the only things that matter is that your grammar is proper grammar and your pronunciation is as accurate as possible. In fact, that's what we're exercising, right? Or exercising to make sure we pronouncing well, our grammar is correct and we also are able to just keep talking nonstop. It doesn't even have to make sense what you're saying. It doesn't even have to be anything that intellectual. It can be the most basic things or the most nonsensical things. The only thing that matters is that your grammar was good and your pronounciation was good. Here's an example of me trying this exercise. The sky is blue up there because the sun is shining bright in the sky and the weather is so nice that I want to go for a swim because when I swim, I'm able to enjoy myself in the nice weather and I'm really glad that I'm able to swim every other Friday because Friday is are they I don't have to work and I'm able to get together with my friends and we all party together. We maybe have some drinks, we have some nice food, and then we go for a nice swim. It's wonderful and it's one of my favorite hobbies in the world to do. I wish there were other hobbies that I loved as much, but I don't really enjoy skiing because mean is associated with cold weather and it's not really all that fun. I'm not really good at it, so I don't really know what I'm doing. You see where I'm going with this, right? So essentially you just keep talking. It doesn't even have to matter when you're talking about, but you talked about skiing and he talks about jumping off a cliff. You can talk about how dirty your rulers. You can talk about anything, doesn't matter. And it doesn't even have to make sense. And you don't even have to have a nice transitions from one topic to another. Like I just transitioned from swimming to skiing very awkwardly, right? But it doesn't matter. It's all about making sure that I'm pronouncing law and my grammar is proper. And I'm able to just keep talking and talking and talking to saying things. This is a very important practice because essentially what you're doing is you're training, producing stuff. How no however nonsense they aren't producing stuff that you want to say in your mind and immediately getting it out there, right? So this is kind of similar to the other trainings size of learned together, but the difference is that it doesn't have to even make sense. It doesn't have to be a nice flow. All that matters is that you keep talking. You have good grammar and good pronunciation, right? So just try this yourself. Try it, see how it is. I guarantee you at first, it might seem a lot harder than it really is, but I guarantee you it will get a lot easier after you try it a couple of times. And after you see that you can just see anything, it doesn't even have to make sense. You can start talking about swimming and then talk about how dirty your carpus and if you dumped your carpet and the lake, maybe a look nicer. Again, it doesn't have to make sense. It doesn't have to be anything intellectually correct or whatever. It doesn't have to be anything at all. It could just be the most nonsensical thing ever. As long as you're using proper grammar and proper pronunciation, I keep repeating these because these are very important to maintain the whole time. But as long as you have those two, you're good to say whatever, right? So I will do a couple of exercises with you so you can practice along with me and you can kinda get a feel for how this goes, but this is essentially how it is. I want you to try it yourself first before watching the next video. So take a minute before going to the next video. Try it yourself. See how long you can sustain it. See how long can keep talking without having to just stop talking and just think about, okay, what do I say? No, just try it. The longer you keep it going, the better. But again, I keep repeating this. Very important to not sacrifice your pronunciation or your grammar, okay, so try to do those things correctly the whole time. Try your best. Obviously, like if there's some words that you are having a hard time pronouncing. I'm not telling you to go learn how to pronounce them then come do this. No, try your best to do the best pronunciation you possibly can and the best grounded you possibly can. And just keep talking, keep saying things. He'd go from one topic to another. Doesn't have to be smooth transitions. Just keep talking and talking and talking and talking and see how long can have that go. You can even try it yourself. Maybe that'll help you have a goal to beat next time, like if you can for, let's say a minute and a half. Now, you know, okay. Now next time I want to try and do a minute and 40 seconds and then time after dominant and tried to minutes, right? So you have some sort of goal to work towards if you time yourself and see how you can do right now. So go ahead and try it, see how you do. And once you've tried it once or twice yourself, Germany in the next video where we're going to try this exercise to get there. 29. Practice With Me - Word Vomiting: Are you guys hopefully you had a chance to try word vomiting on your own. If you were able to sustain That's for more than a minute or so, then that's great. That's a really good starting point. But if you were not able to make it to one minute and you were just not able to just keep talking for more than a minute, then no worries at all. We're going to practice together to make sure you get better and better at this. So I will show you one more time how I do it. So that you have a little bit of a better idea of how you can improve as well. Once it that I would give you is to just slow down the way you're talking. So if I speak super fast, if I say, the weather is really nice out there, right? All of a sudden, I've finished that sentence in a very short time, and I don't really have too much time to really think about what I'm going to say next. So what I do instead is I slow it down. This helps me one, focus more on the way I'm pronouncing and to have more time to think about what I'm going to say next. So for example, I would say the same thing like this. I would say, Oh, it's very nice out there. I love the weather. I love the way the sun is shining in the sky and everything looks beautiful. You see, I'm able to focus more on my pronunciation, making sure I'm pronouncing everything properly. And also by myself, more time to think about what I say next. So a really good idea is to slow down and speak very soft and moderately and not to rush it. Okay. So I will show you one more time how I do it. So you have a better idea of how you can improve as you tried more and more. My room is extremely messy and I need to clean it up today. And the reason for that is because I haven't cleaned that up in a while. In fact, I need to clean up my entire house. My kitchen is super messy. I haven't been Washington dishes for the past couple of days. It's mostly because I've been super busy working on my project and I really haven't had any spare time to do anything. I haven't relaxed at all in the past couple of weeks and I really need to take some time for myself to relax a little bit. Maybe I can go to the beach one day, just take the day off work and just go to the beach. Have a good time to relax, you know, refresh my muscles, make sure that I'm able to get back to working full time without any problems and also need to get all these Aaron's out of the way. I need to make sure I clean up my house, my room, my kitchen, maybe my living room a little bit. I need to vacuum in, wash couple of the windows, make sure everything looks shiny and beautiful because, you know, the way my house looks reflects on how I feel as well. If my house is super messy and it's getting darker and it's getting very dusty. That I'm going to in return, fuel little bit less up to doing big tasks. And I'm not going to be as energetic as I normally am. So it's very important for my own well-being and for my own mental health, and for my own productivity when it comes to my work that I clean up my house as soon as possible, starting with my room, then go into the kitchen and everywhere else. Now once I have accomplished those tasks, I am confident that I will be much more energetic and I were able to just finish all the tasks. I need to finish as soon as possible and I'll be back to my best stuff. All right. So that was an example. I could have kept going even longer. I'll just talk around things, but that's a good place to stop so that you guys see how I went about doing this. All right. So again speak a little bit with a little bit less temple if you will. Don't rush it, take your time. Pronounce well, make sure your grammar is good and just keep thinking about the next thing that you're going to say. Ok, so now that you've received the East couple of tips, hopefully you should be able to do a little bit better on your next try. So go ahead and try it were to vomiting one more time. But keep what I told you in mind. And again, if you are struggling to see how you can just keep transitioning between different things. Just watch how I did it, right? So I'll just start off with something. I think about the other things that are kinda associated with that. And I just go back and forth with me them. And if I ever run out of things to say, I may be just repeat one of the things that I said earlier so that it buys me more time to think about what I'm going to say next. So if I don't know what I'm going to say, I would like go back to how I'm going to clean up my kitchen or whatever, and just give a little bit more detail on that. Even though I had talked about it earlier, right. So because it didn't really know what to say, I just went back to that and just provide a little bit more detail about how I'm going to wish a wash a Windows or whatever, right? So it's really not about just cheap saying new things all the time. If you are not sure what to say, just go back to something you said earlier and maybe just flush it out a little bit more and just give a little more detail about how you are going to do that thing that you said earlier. And just that way you will never run out of things to say is basically what I'm saying. So go ahead and try it one more time. Hopefully you'll do better this time. And I will see you in the next video. 30. You Made It...: All right, you guys, you made it to the end of the course. Hopefully you guys enjoyed the experience. Hopefully I was able to teach you some stuff about how you can better converse in English. And whenever you're talking to someone, hopefully now you're a little bit better at pronunciation. Hopefully, you have a little bit more of a vocabulary more of an expanded vocabulary when you're talking with other people. And hopefully, now you're on a path where you are constantly improving your English by actively listening to whatever you're listening to. Also practicing on your own, speaking to yourself, word vomiting, all that stuff, right? Monologue to yourself, all the practices that we talked about, hopefully you're incorporating those, and of course, hopefully you're incorporating all the idioms and expressions that we talked about. Make sure to do this, actually, make sure you go out of your way to use all the stuff that you learned in the course, because if you don't use what you learn, you're actually going to forget it a lot easier, right? So if you learn something, It's only going to be in your memory for a limited amount of time, right? It's not going to be there forever. So you need to keep practicing it, keep using it in conversation. And of course, it'll make your conversation go a lot better as well because you see a lot more a lot better at speaking English, if you may. And it's just a much better experience for the person who is listening because they can tell that you're very well versed in what you're talking about. So go ahead and use all this up you learn Hopefully you enjoyed the course. If you want, you can check out the other courses that I have on this platform. I have a ton of courses here on different subjects. I have some courses for music students. I have some other courses for English. Go check those out if you want. Feel free to follow me. If you want to see what else I'm putting out there, and if you want to check out my other courses or the new stuff or basically anything for me. You can just follow me on any social media or whatever. You can find me all over the place. So go ahead and do those things. Again, make sure you keep practicing what you learn. Very important. And hopefully, you guys have a blast. If you haven't left a review, I would love it if you could leave me a review and let me know what you thought of the course. It helps me out a lot, and I really appreciate everyone who leaves a review. It's very helpful because the more reviews, the more other people can see what people are actually thinking about this course, how they feel about the course, and they can see if this is a course for them, right? So if you left a review, thank you so much for doing that. I really appreciate it. And if you haven't, if you could just go ahead and do that real quick, I'll really appreciate it. It only takes a couple of seconds to leave one. So really, really appreciate it if you could do that. But with that said, that was it. Hoping you guys enjoy the course, and I will see you hopefully in another course. Cheers.