Hey, it's Annemarie with
Speak Confident English. This is exactly where you want to be
every week to get the confidence you want for your life and work
in English. Recently, I received a great request or
question from Serj who said, "I'm very curious about
little words, adjectives, which are used in collocations
for emphasizing emotions like sheer guts, utter crap, brand new blatant
stupidness." I loved this question and the examples provided. If
you've been following me for a while, you know that I absolutely love
collocations because they are a brilliant way of learning effective,
natural sounding vocabulary. Now, if you're not sure what
collocations are, don't worry. I'm going to give you a super
quick explanation. Plus, I have multiple lessons on this topic. Collocations are groups of words, two
or more words that go together often; they sound natural together. They're
like words that are best friends. If you want to get a full overview
of what collocations are and why learning them is such an effective
way to grow your vocabulary. I recommend reviewing my lesson
titled Smart Ways to Learn Vocabulary - 15 Collocations About
What You Think. In that lesson, I provide all the details you need to
understand what collocations are and why you should be learning them.
In addition to that lesson, I also have Confident English lessons
on collocations related to progress, the word say, stay and many more. I'll include links to all of them
in the notes below this video, but let's get back to this awesome
question. In the examples provided, sheer guts and utter crap, these collocations are formed using
an adjective with a noun. When I saw those examples
using sheer, utter, blatant, I also thought of the word absolute. These are wonderful collocations
to use to help you speak with impact when you want to intensify
or emphasize something that you're saying. So today you're going to learn
52 new collocations to help you speak with impact using
intensifying adjectives. Alright, in today's lesson, we're going
to focus on those four intensifiers: sheer, blatant, utter, and
absolute. With each one, I'm going to give you multiple
collocations that can be used. And I'll give you some examples of how
they're used in sentences as well. Now, before we get started, there
are a lot of collocations here. 52 of them. I do not want you to try
to learn all of them today. Some of them you'll probably already know. So you don't have to worry about
learning them. You already know them. But for the ones that are new to you, I want you to go through this
process slowly, be consistent, be intentional about
learning new vocabulary. I have a full lesson on how to best
learn advanced level vocabulary. I want you to follow that
method. If you haven't seen it, I'll leave a link to it in the notes
below this video. It's really important. If you want to learn and
remember vocabulary to learn it progressively. So today, as you learn all these new
collocations to speak with impact, I want you to find two or
three that you really like, maybe you like the sound of them or you
like what they mean and practice using them over the next few days. Find opportunities either in
your imagination or in real conversations to use this
collocation that you really like. As you get more comfortable with
it, as you begin to use it easily, without having to think about it, then you can go on and find
two or three new ones. Again, follow the method that I talk about in
my lesson on how to learn and remember advanced vocabulary. But now
let's go ahead and get started. And we're going to start
with sheer. Sheer means pure, absolute. And one of my favorite collocations
with this one is sheer joy. In that picture, she has a
look of sheer joy on her face. Pure joy. You might also hear someone talk
about sheer happiness or sheer delight. Super positive language to
describe how someone might feel. You might know someone who
has sheer determination or sheer perseverance, sheer persistence. For example, she became the CEO of the company
within three years through sheer determination. Those are powerful combinations of words
and wonderful when you're describing someone's character. Another
positive one, sheer genius. If someone has a great
idea in a business meeting, a fantastic way to respond
is to say that idea is sheer genius. Let's do one more positive one, sheer perfection. Someone could look like sheer
perfection or last week my mom made a dinner that
was sheer perfection. It was unbelievably delicious. Now that we've got some
great positive language, let's look at some negative
examples as well. Sheer desperation. I called my neighbor at 2:00
AM out of sheer desperation. Sheer enormity. The team was overwhelmed by the
sheer enormity of the problem. Number seven, sheer panic. Have
you ever been in a sheer panic? Or do you know someone who
has ever given up in sheer frustration? Or have you been shocked by
the sheer number of people who attended a particular event or party? You've already got multiple
examples of collocations using the adjective sheer with a noun. Here are several more that follow
that same pattern and can be used similarly in sentences. Now, if you want to get this full list
so that you can review it easily, I recommend that you visit my
Speak Confident English website, where I have this lesson available
and you can see it in writing as well. And now let's move on to
using the word blatant. I love the sound of that word. Blatant. Blatant means complete or
obvious. And as you'll see, it's typically used in a negative way. Someone might tell a
blatant lie, an obvious lie. For example, her excuse for
missing work was a blatant lie. Number two, with blatant
is blatant disregard. Disregard is the lack of
attention or ignoring someone or something. An example sentence might be, there is no excuse for such blatant disregard of the rules.
And similar to those two, we have blatant discrimination, blatant disrespect, a blatant violation and blatant racism or sexism. For example, the company was accused of
blatant discrimination or his behavior was a blatant
violation of our company policy. All right, there's a lot of
negativity with that word, blatant. Those are great collocations
to know and effective to use, but let's move on to the word. Utter utter means absolute total or to the highest degree. And like the word sheer, this is used with language that is both
positive and negative. For example, utter amazement. To stare at something
beautiful in utter amazement. If you're someone who practices
mindfulness or meditation, you might appreciate
opportunities to sit in utter stillness or utter silence. If you've ever lost an opportunity
that you really wanted, you might have felt utter
disappointment or even utter shock that you've lost the opportunity. Have you ever listened to someone
explain something that was so confusing and so weird, you thought
this is utter nonsense? Once again, just like we
had with the word sheer, there are many more examples where
you could use the word utter. If you want the full list. I recommend visiting the lesson on the
Speak Confident English website so that you can review it easily. And now let's move on to our final
list for today using the word absolute. A fantastic impactful collocation
to use in a business meeting is absolute agreement. We are in absolute
agreement on this issue, or we're in a hundred percent agreement.
When we reviewed the list with utter, we had utter stillness and utter silence. We can use absolute there as well. We could even add absolute
solitude. I'm curious, do you enjoy moments of absolute solitude? As a language learner, you might have times when you feel
like you are an absolute beginner, even after many years of studying. But if you watch this video and
you understand most of what I say, you are definitely not an
absolute beginner. Instead, you might be on your way
or aiming toward absolute mastery or absolute confidence. The next one on our list
is absolute highlight. I want you to think back
to your last vacation, what was the number one absolute highlight of your last vacation? Now, just like with all the other
examples we've provided, we do have some negative
collocations as well. For example, absolute waste. An absolute waste of time. Or absolute mess. After a vacation, sometimes I come home and
after unpacking my suitcase, it is an absolute mess, an absolute disaster in my
home. As I mentioned earlier, there are so many
collocations available here. So if you want the full list of
52 collocations to help you speak with impact using intensifying adjectives, visit the online lesson at the Speak
Confident English website to get all 52 of them and review them over time. Again, if you want my method on how to best
learn and remember advanced level vocabulary, check that lesson out
next. Now, before we finish today, I do want to know what
are your two or three absolute favorite collocations
from today's list. Share your favorites with me in the
comments below and try using them in your own example sentences as
well after you do that, review the other comments. It's a wonderful way to learn from
others in the Confident English community with that. Thank you
so much for joining me. And I look forward to seeing you next
time for your Confident English lesson.
