Vocabulary

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Lesson Transcript

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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