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Vox Pop – Home Edition #2
Afraid of your English getting rusty? No need to worry! While there are certainly more obstacles around at the moment with interaction reduced to a minimum due to social distancing, we hope to provide you with some ideas & resources to stay motivated.Here is what we are doing: Today’s recommendation is talking with friends in…
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Exercise: General english idioms
Idioms are an integral part of a language and English is no exception (according to Wikipedia, English has approximately „twenty-five thousand idiomatic expressions“). As we have pointed out on our Idiom of the Week posts, these expressions are used in a figurative sense, even when many of them initially appear to only have a literal…
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Idiom of the Week: Burning that bridge when you get to it
The goal of Idiom of the Week is to showcase some of the many commonplace idiomatic expressions found in the English language in order to help you understand them better. This week, however, we have chosen a more unconventional expression to show you: “I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it.”
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Idiom of the Week: Baseball Idioms
This week we’ll look into four idioms which share a common origin: baseball. These are most prominently used in American English, although they have spread to other varieties of English mostly through cultural osmosis. The prominence of these idioms in American English makes a lot of sense considering baseball – colloquially known as “America’s pastime”…
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Idiom of the Week: Silver linings
For something to have a silver lining is a common English idiom to express that a certain negative occurrence can also have a positive side to it. This idiom likely originates from John Milton’s 1634 masque Comus which contained the lines, Was I deceiv’d, or did a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on…
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Idiom of the Week: Herding cats
“Like herding cats” is an expression you may have heard at some point. Although the meaning of idioms is generally not transparent, thinking about the literal meaning of this particular saying quickly establishes a sort of mental image which showcases the near impossibility of the task. It is already difficult to get one cat to…
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Language, attitudes and repertoires in the Emirates: Audio Interview
Language, Attitudes and Repertoires in the Emirates (LARES) is a sociolinguistic study that aims, among other things, to find out how the languages spoken in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are used and by whom. The project concentrates on the relationship between English and Arabic specifically in Sharjah and Dubai, as well as on the…