7 Super Useful Idioms to Improve Your Fluency

so right now we're gonna walk right out that door and i'm gonna find some super useful and common idioms to help you improve your fluency let's go [Music] everyone my name is wes this is interactive english which is the place that you want to be to practice and improve your english and today i am out and about i'm outside and i'm gonna try to find some different idioms to help you improve your overall fluency so let's just go let's go let's get out of here second i should probably take you with me and the camera here we go so here we have some bushes and the next uh idiom that i want to teach you is to beat around the bush and what it means if somebody is beating around in the bush it just means that let me have a seat real quick it means that somebody is not speaking directly or they're speaking indirectly so instead of saying what's on their mind instead of just saying it straightforward they beat around the bush and they kind of maybe give you clues and sometimes the reason you do this and you don't say things directly is because you're trying not to upset someone and i think this is very common in certain environments like work or home if you're talking to a colleague and you don't want to upset them and you have some news that you need to tell them you might beat around the bush or at home something happens and it's bad news and you don't want to tell your mother father husband wife you might uh beat around the bush instead of just coming right out and saying it directly so i think this is something that well i think a lot of us do it uh some of us i think are very direct and we don't beat around the bush but i think a common way this idiom is used is somebody is speaking indirectly and the other person would say stop beating around the bush just tell me tell me what you have to say stop beating around the bush please i will never beat around the bush like that come in have a seat like i'm not gonna beat around the bush here well you don't have to beat around the bush i know exactly what you're getting at another great idiom is to bark up the wrong tree and what this means is that you're trying to tell someone that they're making a mistake that whatever they're saying or doing is wrong and it's almost like you know what the the right answer is or what this person should be doing and they're making a mistake and you could tell them look you're barking up the wrong tree this is a mistake you shouldn't be barking up this tree you should be barking up that tree over there i've got my bdi on you you're parking up the wrong tree and there's heaven but who's that confucius boy have i been barking up the wrong tree so you can see right behind me here is the river and a river well a river will flow so the next idiom that i have for you is to go with the flow and what this means if you say well i'm gonna go with the flow it means that you are going to accept a situation and kind of relax you're not going to try to to change things you're just you're just going to go with the flow so i think this is a a great idiom that can be used if somebody might be asking well what are you going to do you're going to enter a situation and what what's your reaction going to be and say well i'm just going to go with the flow i'm not going to try to control things i'm going to relax i'm going to see what everybody else is doing and i'm just going to accept what is going on i'm going to go with the flow when i'm traveling especially with a group of people and everybody maybe they want to do different things i like to just go with the flow but you know what we're not going gonna rush this time we're just gonna go with the float so you're on board now yeah i just go with the flow a good fighter needs to know how to improvise to go with the flow oh i don't care you know me i just go with the flow all right so let me show you this right here is a bud all right and that's going to help you understand the next idiom which is to nip something in the bud so if you think of like um well like a flower like we're looking at right now before a flower blossoms it it's in these the bud and then the bud will blossom so to nip something in the bud is to stop something at an early stage and you're stopping it before it becomes established and most of the time you're going to use it and say okay you know the situation you know what you need to stop and you might say we need to nip this in the bud we need to stop it we need to stop something at this early stage before it develops before it grows before it becomes a thing something that's established and then you cannot stop it anymore and you want to nip it in the bud i never should have let her do this maxim thinking in the first place going to nip this thing in the bud is going to make a public apology tomorrow on hardball yeah i i got to nip this in the bud this has catastrophe written all over it and you can expect the same thing from everyone in this office if you don't nip this whole employee of the month situation in the bud so the next one that i have for you it's actually an expression and that is to knock on wood and if somebody says this it means that they are just hoping for good luck to happen and you could say it to somebody else and just say you know knock on wood and actually i don't know this is real wood but you you will hear this quite often if you want to we'll wish someone luck or hope that they have good luck for a performance or a test or basically anything and you just say you know knock on wood or maybe you want to you're you want to give hope to yourself for something you're getting ready to do so i i wish for the best i hope i do well knock on wood actually this would be my first foray into the trial process i haven't had to go to court yet knock on wood let him see he's not the only one who built solid houses you know i think he'll be pretty impressed knock on wood so all along right here these are well these are rocks actually they're kind of like uh they're more like pebbles but it really has to do with the the next uh idiom that i want to teach you and that is if you say that someone is living under a rock and if somebody says this if you hear it it means that if somebody has been living under a rock it means that this person is ignorant to something that is well known that there is some event something is happening that you think everybody should know about and if somebody says well i don't know about this thing then you could ask like whoa what's wrong with you have you been living under a rock so if you hear this expression it means that yeah they're referring to somebody who is ignorant to some news some information that is very well known that you think everybody should know about to be living under a rock they all work together god have you been living under a rock no david guetta have i been living under a rock yeah that song is my jam i am the beastmaster from the movie beastmaster what rock have you been living under this what have you been living under a rock this is the new meme cat bretta taylor swift reporting so we're outside having a little bit of a picnic right now and you can see that this right here is grass uh there's there's quite a bit of it and i have it's it's actually not an idiom it's a phrase that i want to teach you and that is grassroots because i think this is a very useful uh phrase to know and especially it's something you may hear if you're listening to the news and what it means is it's talking about the the basic level of some activity or organization or even some cause and i think that's how people use it quite often if you're talking about some grassroots campaign and it's happening at the most basic level people getting informed people becoming motivated to create some change and you could say that their their campaign it's it's grassroots it's happening at that basic level so i wanted to teach you that phrase because well we're outside and there's plenty of grass the tea party presents itself is a grassroots movement uh which means it should be fiercely resistant to central control i understand that grassroots activism actually runs in your family so i opted for a more grass roots approach to get the word out so i'm not going to beat around the bush those are all the idioms i have for you this lesson and i hope you learned some new ones if you did please hit that like button we are now going to play in these fountains right here thank you guys so much for watching and i will see you next at time

Channel: Interactive English

Views: 41,808

Keywords: interactive english, learn english, learn english idioms, american english, idiom lesson, advanced idioms, idioms in english, learn vocabulary in english, learn vocabulary idioms, useful english idioms, improve fluency in english, to beat around the bush meaning, beat around the bush meaning, bark up the wrong tree meaning, knock on wood meaning, nip it in the bud meaning, living under a rock meaning, grassroots meaning, american idioms

Id: NbxxchddqwE

Length: 9min 22sec (562 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 18 2020