We look at ten idiomatic expressions based on the adjective “good.” 

On the new season of KA Wordcast, Idioms and Phrasal Verbs, we will look at some important and very useful English idioms, phrasal verbs, and otehr everyday expressions.  

Today, we will study ten idiomatic expressions based on the verb “FEEL.” 

For the next few weeks, we will be taking a look at all kinds of important English idioms, phrasal verbs, and other useful, everyday expressions.

What do we mean by “idiom”?  The dictionary defines an idiom as “a combination of words that has a figurative meaning separate from the literal meaning.”  Usually, an idiom’s literal meaning cannot be guessed based on its individual parts.  In other words, the phrases must be learned.  There are an estimated twenty-five thousand idiomatic expressions in the English language.  Most have meanings so “separate from” their literal meanings that unless you know them, they can sound like complete nonsense. 

One good example is the cliché expression, “It’s raining cats and dogs.” 

We all know that it will never literally rain cats and dogs.   That really is nonsense.   The expression just means that it is raining heavily.   It is synonymous with pouring down with rain, raining hard, and really raining.  So why do we say it?  Several possible mythological and literal explanations have been offered, but not even the experts know for certain where “raining cats and dogs” originated.  What they do know is that the expression has been in use for nearly 400 years and that over the centuries, we’ve all just learned to accept “raining cats and dogs” to mean a heavy downpour.

What, then, is a phrasal verb?  It’s an idiomatic phrase made up of a verb and another element such as a particle, preposition, or combination of both.  Phrasal verbs have precise meanings and must be used carefully.  For example, if you were to say to your boy or girlfriend, “I think we should “break in,” when you meant to say, “I think we should “break up,” he or she would be taken aback (another common idiom) and wonder what in the world you were talking about.  “Break up,” by the way, means to end a romantic relationship with someone, while “break in” means to force entry into a place with criminal intentions.   Because of these subtle (and potentially dangerous!) differences, the meanings of phrasal verbs, like those of idiomatic phrases, must be learned.   You can’t usually “figure out” what an idiom means just by looking at it [though its context might help to “give it away.”

In this new season of KA Wordcast: Idioms and Phrasal Verbs, each week we will examine a number of useful idiomatic expressions and word combinations that you hear and see all the time in American and British English.   We will give you detailed explanations of and several sample sentences for each new idiom or phrasal verb, as well as some useful synonyms and equivalents.  We want to make sure that you understand each and every expression well enough to put it to good use in your own writing and everyday conversation. 

Today, as our opening song “Take It Easy” by the Eagles suggests, we will “take it easy” and look at ten idiomatic expressions, all of which are based on the verb “take.”  Feel free to download this lesson, which is available in PDF format.   There is also an exercise sheet with a “pre-test” exercise that you can download from the website to test your knowledge before the lesson begins.  Then, after the podcast, you can check to see how well you did and how much you have learned.  We’re sure that you’ve heard it many times before, but it’s always worth repeating: reviewing and practicing over and over again is the best way to improve your English.   And that is “to a T” what these Wordcasts are all about.

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional, London-based “CONSULTING detective” created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  Holmes appears in four novels and in nearly sixty stories, and is best known for solving even the most difficult murder cases using astute reasoning, clever disguises, and forensic science.  The Sherlock Holmes stories have been adapted into numerous films and TV shows, including the current BBC series, “Sherlock,” which offers a contemporary twist on the classic tales.  The hugely popular and critically acclaimed television series stars British actors Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes and Martin Freeman as Holmes’ faithful friend and sidekick, Dr. Watson.   Today’s reading passage comes from a short story called “The Adventure of the Speckled Band.”  First published in 1892, the story was Doyle’s favorite among all those he had written.  He later wrote and produced a play called The Stoner Case based on the adventure.  In today’s passage, Dr. Watson describes Holmes’s first meeting with a woman named Helen Stoner, who asks the great detective to investigate the suspicious death of her sister Julia. 

To listen to a recording of the passage, please tune in to the KA Voicecast website.  

Today, we will be looking at several words from KA’s reader Passages, Lesson 19, which centers around an excerpt from a story called “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.   Sherlock Holmes may not have been the first detective in fiction—that honor goes to Edgar Allan Poe’s amateur sleuth C. Auguste Dupin—but Holmes is far and away the most famous.  In 1887, the Scottish-born writer Arthur Conan Doyle introduced Holmes in a mystery novel entitled A Study in Scarlet. Sherlock Holmes, and the 56 short stories and four novels he was featured in, became hugely popular, and remain so today.  In fact, many people still believe that Holmes was a real person who lived at 221 B Baker Street, London!  Most of the Holmes tales are narrated by Sherlock’s friend and biographer, Dr. John H. Watson.  Holmes, according to Watson, was a brilliant “consulting detective” who was a master at using observation and deductive reasoning to solve his cases. In today’s passage, an enigmatic woman named Helen Stoner comes to Holmes’s room and asks him to investigate the suspicious death of her sister, Julia.

What happens when a group of British schoolboys survive a plane crash onto an uninhabited island in the middle of nowhere and have to learn to govern themselves—with no adults to help them?  What happens when individual rights and freedoms are pitted against the common good?  Nobel-Prize-winning author William Golding explores these questions in his dystopian novel, Lord of the Flies, from which today’s reading passage and our six featured vocabulary items are taken.  First published in 1954, Lord of the Flies was not an immediate success, selling fewer than 3,000 copies in the United States and then quickly dropping out of print.  But by the early 1960’s, the novel had become required reading in many schools and colleges and had been adapted as a film and stage play, and is now regarded as a modern classic.  Over the years, many writers have borrowed plot elements from Lord of the Flies.  One is English author Alex Garland, who rose to fame with his 1996 bestselling “backpacker” novel, The Beach, which was later made into a controversial movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio.  In today’s reading, one of the schoolboys, Ralph, emerges as a natural leader. He blows on a conch shell to summon the other crash survivors to a meeting. Piggy, Ralph’s chubby new sidekick, is with him. 

In Passages, Lesson 18, Part 1, we focused on six essential words from the same reading passage.  Today, we will look at several more words of various parts of speech, important adjectives, nouns, and verbs that you will be able to put to effective use in your own writing and everyday speech. 

To listen to a recording of the passage, please tune in to the KA Voicecast website. 

If you like the TV show “Lost,” you’ll surely enjoy Lord of the Flies, the classic English novel from which this lesson’s reading is taken.  Like “Lost,” Lord of the Flies starts off with a plane crashing onto a deserted island.  And also like the TV show, the plot of the novel revolves around the struggles and adventures of the people who survive the crash.  But unlike “Lost,” Lord of the Flies has no adult survivors—only a score or two of English schoolboys, none older than 13 or 14.  Lord of the Flies is what is known as an allegory, a story that dramatizes abstract ideas or principles using realistic characters and a realistic setting.  In Lord of the Flies, the author, William Golding, who won the 1983 Nobel Prize for Literature, examines what happens when people’s ties to cultural norms and civilization break down.  What, he asks, is the true nature of a human being?  In today’s reading, one of the boys, Ralph, who emerges as a natural-born leader, blows on a conch shell as a way to summon and gather the other crash survivors.  His new friend and assistant, the overweight Piggy, is with him.

To listen to a recording of the passage, please tune in to the KA Voicecast website.  

Today, we will be looking at six words from KA’s reader, Passages, Lesson 17.  As with last week’s Wordcast, today’s reading comes from Treasure Island, a classic young-people’s novel by the beloved Scottish author, Robert Louis Stevenson.  Set in the mid-1700s, the story is narrated by Jim Hawkins, the young son of the owners of the Admiral Benbow, an inn in a small English coastal village.  One day, a strange man named Captain Billy Bones appears at the inn, dragging an old sea chest behind him.  As he checks in, Billy takes Jim aside and asks the boy to warn him if he ever sees a “sea–faring man with one leg.”  But then Billy Bones dies—without paying his bill—and Jim and his mother have no choice but to go through Billy’s sea chest searching for money.  Inside the chest, they find a map of an island where a pirate has buried a great treasure.  Jim shows the map to two of the town’s leading citizens.  They hire a ship, the Hispaniola, and set sail to the island to find the treasure.  From then on, Treasure Island is filled with shipboard mutinies, cold-blooded murders, battles with swords and muskets—old-fashioned adventures of all kinds.  In today’s passage, Jim describes how he feels when he first hears Billy Bones tell him about the one-legged man.  And gives us his impressions of Billy Bones himself.

In Lesson 17, Part 1, we looked at some quite colorful adjectives and some very important nouns from the reading passage.  Today, we will examine some useful verbs from the same reading. You’ll probably recognize a couple of the verbs, since we looked at them in our Taskmaster Wordcasts.  But when learning new words, it’s always good to refresh and review.

To listen to a recording of the passage, please tune in to the KA Voicecast website.

Today we will be looking at eight words from KA’s reader, Passages, Lesson 17, Part 1.  The reading passage comes from a classic young-people’s novel by Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island.  Set in the mid-1700s, the story is narrated by young Jim Hawkins, the son of the owners of the Admiral Benbow, an inn in a small English coastal village.  One day, a strange man named Captain Billy Bones checks in, dragging an old sea chest behind him.  Billy takes Jim aside and asks him to warn him if he ever sees a “sea–faring man with one leg.”  When, not long after, Billy Bones dies without paying his bill, Jim and his mother go through Billy’s sea chest searching for money.  They come across a map of an island where a pirate has buried a great treasure.  Jim shows the map to two of the town’s leading citizens.  They hire a ship, the Hispaniola, and sail to the island to find the treasure.  From then on, Treasure Island is filled with shipboard mutinies, cold-blooded murders, battles with swords and muskets—old-fashioned adventures of all kinds.  In today’s passage, Jim describes how he felt when he hears about the one-legged man.  And also tells us about Billy Bones himself.

All the passages in Passages have been hand picked not only to ensure that you are exposed to a variety of wonderful fiction by some of the greatest writers of all time, but also to familiarize you with hundreds of important words that you can “adopt” as your own.  In Lesson 17, Part 1, we will look at eight rather colorful adjectives and nouns.  Next week, in Lesson 17, Part 2, we will examine six useful verbs.

To listen to a recording of the passage, please tune in to the KA Voicecast website.

Today, we continue our look at key words from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the tale of a pilot stranded in the Sahara Desert who meets a young prince who has fallen to Earth from an asteroid named B612. The French Academy voted The Little Prince the best book of the twentieth century. It has been translated into hundreds of languages and still sells over a million copies a year.  The author, Saint-Exupery (1900-1944), lived a short but exciting and productive life.   He was a pioneering aviator and successful commercial pilot, flying airmail routes in Europe, Africa, and South America.  During World War II, when the Nazis occupied France in 1940, Saint-Exupery went to America to try to persuade the United States to enter the fight against Germany.  He was there for 27 months, during which time he wrote The Little Prince and most of the other works that made him famous.  He eventually returned to Europe and became a military pilot.  In July 1944, he was flying over the Mediterranean Sea when he disappeared.  As we did last week, we’ll close this introduction with another quote from The Little Prince: “All grown-ups were once children.  But only a few of them remember it.”

In last week’s lesson, we looked at seven nouns and their various uses from the reading passage in Lesson 16.  Today, we will examine eight more wonderful words from the same passage.

To listen to a recording of the passage, please tune in to the KA Voicecast website.