I know the feeling. I have been there. You have studied English really hard this year. You have been willing to go the extra mile a thousand times because you knew it was going to be worth your while. You have even burnt the candle at both ends staying up too late and getting up too early when studying for finals. Now you feel really happy with your effort, and it is time to take a breather. At last, after struggling for a long time with English pronunciation you are able to communicate in English fluently and understand native speakers pretty well, at least in an academic context.
Just by sheer luck, at a party, you are introduced to a British person and you feel it’s your opportunity to shine. You feel confident. You have a little chat and everything is going well. You are beginning to relax when all of a sudden, you are like…
- “Did he just say something about the skin of my teeth?”
- “Hot potato? Where are the potatoes? I can’t see any! Oh my God! Is this English?”
- “Did he just say “you rock!”?, and now what ? Am I supposed to take him to a rock concert or maybe he wants me to sing rock?”
Yes. I’ve been there. I know how you feel. Native speakers use idioms all the time, just like you do in your own native language, probably without realizing it. The good news is that you can do something about it. It’s true that it’s quite difficult to feel confident using idiomatic expressions when you’re speaking a foreign language, and I wouldn’t dare suggest that you use them, but you need to know what they mean if you want to follow a conversation.
In this quiz you’ll find some very common idioms used by native speakers.
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Tool used: Riddle
So happy you find the quiz helpful!
Yeah! I already know some of them! But thanks to you, I got to find out some more and very helpful.
I really pleased to find this site on bing, just what I
was searching for 😀 also bookmarked.
Thanks. Very kind of you to leave a comment!
Christina, you are great by forming this quiz.
Yes. I agree. Some idioms can be misleading, but most of them are easy to learn.
Thank you for yor comment
I’m happy you find it helpful!
Yeah! It rings a distant bell! hahahah
Excellent!
Does it ring a bell Cristina?
This idiom was posted yesterday.
https://www.instagram.com/corkenglishteacher/
https://www.instagram.com/p/BKBE_0Bh-q7/?taken-by=corkenglishteacher
Very useful. Thanks!
The quiz is very useful, some idioms are tricky and misleading to the wrong meanings. Anyway it is very interesting. Thanks
Good! I” m happy you find it useful!
Yeah! My students already now some of them! But thanx to you they got ot find out some more 🙂 Спасибо!
🙂
Nice! Thanks.
Hi Christina,
I switched from being an Engineer to English Teacher, some 5 years ago. Actually I retired early, after being made redundant as there was a recession in the Telecom Industry towards the end of 1999. I was creating websites, House Design Plans and other jobs but not ‘involved’ with people enough (and not making enough money).
I have been working in China as a Native English Teacher for the past 4 years and will be teaching at HNU (Hunan University in Changsha) from 11th September).
Chinese Students, do not seem to learn many IDIOMS but its useful for any student wanting to become FLUENT in English (and help improve IELTS Grade to learn some of the more popular IDIOMS that are most common.
This is a really good Quiz Christina – thank you very much for this.
I will try and make good use of it in China.
Teacher David.
Hi Amal
I am glad you found it useful!
I hope you’ve learned some new idioms!