In your time studying English have you ever heard the expression “to learn something by heart?” Maybe you had to learn an English song by heart. Or maybe it was verb conjugations, or a list of vocabulary that your teacher made you learn “by heart.” And maybe you know that learning something by heart means memorizing it, which is kind of strange when you consider our memory is in our brain, not our heart!
But “to learn by heart” is an idiom. And English has thousands and thousands of idioms. It’s one thing that makes English really hard to learn. But you’ll find that英语成语tend to rely on certain themes or metaphors, like body parts. And today we’ll look at some idioms that refer to brains, ears, hearts, hands, lips, fingers, and even heels.
In this lesson, we’ll rejoin a conversation between Maria and Trevor. They are friends and former colleagues who are meeting for coffee to chat about their work situations. In their conversation they use many different idioms related to human body parts. See if you can spot some of these idioms as you listen, and I’ll explain them later in the debrief.
Listening Questions
1. How does Maria describe her CEO? 2. What does Trevor say when Maria tells him she has a secret? 3. What has Maria seen happen to other companies that makes her afraid of starting her own?
欢迎回到Business English Pod，今天的课程 英语成语related to different parts of the body.
Now you probably already know that when I said “head over to” the website, I meant you should go look at the website. Even if you didn’t know that particular expression, you could probably guess the meaning from my sentence. “Head over to” is a kind of idiom, and English has a lot of idioms, as you’ve probably noticed!
实际上, there are many common sources of idioms. And one interesting source is the human body. There are a few body parts in particular that have generated a lot of idioms. English has dozens of idioms just with the words “head” and “hands.” But there are idioms using all different parts of the body, and that’s what we’re going to learn about today.
In this lesson, we’ll listen to a conversation between two friends and former colleagues: Maria and Trevor. They’re meeting for coffee and are eager to catch up after not seeing each other for a while. Maria and Trevor talk about their different work situations. 在他们谈话期间, they use many英语成语related to the human body. See if you can spot some of these as we go through the dialog, and we’ll explain them later in the debrief.
Listening Questions
1. How does Trevor agree with Maria’s assessment of her old boss Roger? 2. How does Maria describe her ten years of working at Trevor’s company? 3. What does Maria say about the attitude of the people she works with?
