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This lesson will look back on the previous four lessons. You will get a chance to remember and use idioms you have learned.
Introduction
Recall the language you learned in previous lessons. What was your favourite idiom from each lesson? Have you had a chance to use it?
Your teacher will help you to remember at least two idioms from each unit.
- Competition
- Failure
- Success
- Progress
Practice
A. Real-world examples
For each short passage below, do the following:
- Read the passage and predict the idiom.
- Listen to the audio, identify the idiom and compare it to your prediction.
- Explain in your own words what it means.
Note: don't try to grasp the full context; just focus on the idiom being used.
- A speaker at Stanford University (California, U.S.) talks about entrepreneurship and beginning a technology company.
"If you want to invent a new technology, then to ___________, you may have to have that expertise yourself."
- A politician talks about winning a compromise versus failing to compromise.
"In every compromise, some people give, and other people give to get to where you need to be. And, if you post a question where there's opposite ends and no compromise, you put yourself in a ___________."
- An interviewer asks an artist about her work, and the balance of tough times and success.
"At the end of the day, you're very hopeful. That's what I got from a lot of your work is, yea, everything's terrible, but there is ___________."
- An ex-diplomat talks about the toughest negotiation he was involved in.
"In diplomacy, so, I worked with some pretty bad guys when I was in Serbia. To beat this guy, because I wanted not only to see him lose, but I also wanted the country to go in the direction of being oriented towards Europe. And so I got to ___________."
- Education advocate Geoffrey Canada describes how the Western education calendar fails poor children.
"Look! If the science says―this is science, not me―that our poorest children ___________ in the summertime; you see where they are in June and say okay, they're there. You look at them in September, they've gone down."
- A professor at Bristol University (Bristol, U.K.) welcomes students and talks about finding success in school and in life.
"Fourthly, for some of you, life may not be always ___________ during your time with us."
- A conference speaker talks about a DNA research team.
"But they have been doing some fantastic work, at least to ___________ to figure out what we would need to do if we were going to bring a mammoth back to life."
- In a panel discussion, an expert talks about competition in the art world, and why he helped create a generous subsidy.
"It was created because there was a feeling that the marketplace should not be the only determinant of what is seen, of what art survives and what art gets presented. That this is not capitalist, ___________. That there's art that's worth doing that has to be subsidized."
B. Discussion
Now, speak naturally about the following topics.
- Describe an industry that has fierce competition.
- Which players in that industry are succeeding in making progress?
- Which players are failing to make progress?
- Describe an emerging industry.
- Which players in that industry are succeeding?
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What progress has been made?
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What degree of competition is there?
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Has anyone failed in that industry yet?