Learn five of the most common English idioms
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| Hi everybody, and welcome back to Weekly Words. My name is Alisha, and this week we're going to look at some common English idioms. Let's begin. |
| The first word, or phrase rather, is ‘about to’. |
| ‘About to’ means you're going to start something; you’re going to begin doing something. For example, “I'm about to start explaining this idiom to you”. Hey, hey. |
| Okay, the next word or phrase—idiom. The next idiom is ‘by the way’. |
| The word here they've used is ‘incidentally’. It's a way to transition to another topic that's related to what you're talking about. For example, “This week I'm going to a party. By the way, did you hear about the party happening next week?” So they're somewhat related. |
| Okay, the next idiom is ‘in a way’. |
| ‘In a way’.“In a way, it was a good thing that the burrito shop was closed, because otherwise, I would have eaten way too much.” And you can use this to show that there may be two sides to a situation. Maybe some things are negative, maybe some things are positive. |
| Next is ‘on the other hand’. |
| I hear this a lot. ‘On the other hand’ is a way of just saying “however”, or to share two different sides of a story. For example, “I think my co-worker is really irritating. On the other hand, at parties he's really funny”. So you can show two different sides to a point with this phrase. |
| Next is ‘as a matter of fact’. |
| ‘As a matter of fact’ as an idiom. This is a long way to just say “actually”, or “really”. It's a little bit more formal sounding, so you might use it in a business meeting, for example. Everybody at the business meeting might feel a little bit unsure about the previous month's sales, and you can begin your presentation by saying something like, “I know everybody was a little bit unsure about last week’s, or last month’s, sales performance, but as a matter of fact, things improved”. |
| And that's the end. Those are some common idioms that you might hear in English. Give them a try, they're pretty useful and you might hear a lot of them in conversation. Thanks very much for joining us this week and we'll see you again next time for more information. Bye. |
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