ESL, Idioms’ Fun!

With the power of light and the magic of night, let’s together do something right! 😉 Welcome back dearest friends and readers from the US, Turkey, Brunei, Finland, Belgium, and Algeria! 😉

As it is said: “Go with your guts“, meaning if you felt it was right to do something, don’t hesitate, and do it. Rhonda approached me when I said that suggesting to complete a topic that was started while ago about idioms and their importance in our language.

It felt right! ESL as one of your interests has a whole section focused on idioms. I remember that one of my students’ favorite part of our classes was idiomatic activities. Some of them were funny and when you try to guess its meaning, in some cases, you’d end up to a totally different one.

The best way to do that was to have my team engaged ending up with these 7 examples, which I hope that they would be new to you, so that you’d be adding to your English language, rather than repeating what you already knew.

Why don’t you cover the meaning with your book and try to guess the meaning, then check it up, and laugh a little bit. May be you can do that with your kids or your students too.

. Keep it under your hat: My mom told me to keep it under my hat (keep it secret).
. on pins and needles: Anna was on pins and needles during her game (nervous).
. cold shoulder: Antoine wanted to fit in with that group, but they gave him the cold shoulder (ignored him).
. by the skin of your teeth: Steve avoided an accident by the skin of his teeth (just barely).
. chicken feed: The prize was chicken feed to some attendants.
. hit a home run: Rhonda hit a home run with her speech (did well).
. spilled the beans: Janet realized that she spilled the beans (revealed a secret).

Although the term “addiction” usually refer to things that have bad influence on you such as drugs or alcohol; things that you want to get rid of but you can’t because they have become so strong in your life to an extent that you’d completely resist any attempt to separate you from them, writing is not one of these unwanted habits.

That is why writing-addiction does not carry any negative attribute that would make you feel guilty of doing. It is not similar to smoking, for example, and how you might be eating yourself if you smoke at the presence of your kids knowing that you’d be harming them with your negative smoking of nicotine.When you’re an addict of writing, the predominant sign is that you’d be writing all the time: in your car, in your office, in your mind, even in your dreams!