Description
Good writing is not just about grammar and academic vocabulary. A well-written essay, like what’s needed on the IELTS and TOEFL, also includes idiomatic language. This means idioms, but also collocations and phrasal verbs. Many students believe that adding idiomatic language to their essays will impress examiners, but this can actually hurt your score if you use it incorrectly or too often. The key is to know these expressions’ meaning, contextual uses, and level of formality. Then you can decide how to use this language effectively in your IELTS/TOEFL essay, or other writing – when it’s appropriate. Test your understanding of this lesson with the quiz: https://www.engvid.com/ielts-toefl-writing-idiomatic-language/
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In this lesson:
0:00 What is idiomatic language?
3:07 formal and informal writing
6:22 collocations
8:24 my advice
TRANSCRIPT:
Hi, everybody. Welcome to www.engvid.com. I'm Adam. In today's video, I want to talk to you about idiomatic language. More specifically, I want to help you understand whether it's okay to use idiomatic language in formal writing. This is especially important for those of you who are going to take the IELTS or TOEFL, but it's also important for everyone to understand what is idiomatic language, okay? And I'm going to give you some examples and explain which ones are okay to use, which ones are not okay, plus a few other tips to help you use this type of language. So, first of all, the thing to remember about idiomatic language - it doesn't mean only idioms. Idioms, sure, they're a part of idiomatic language. That's where the name comes from, but phrasal verbs are also a type of idiomatic language. And some collocations can be idiomatic.
So, what does idiomatic mean? Idiomatic implies that when you take a bunch of words and put them together, the meaning of the new combination of words will be different than the individual words. So, I'll take phrasal verbs as an example. As you must remember, phrasal verbs are a combination of a verb and a preposition. So, we're going to look at "cut out", "cut verb out" preposition. Now, "cut out" can have a literal meaning, meaning like you cut with scissors something out of a newspaper. That's exactly - cut with scissors out of the newspaper. It's very literal. It's exactly what the two individual words mean. But if I say to someone "cut it out", "cut out the noise", it means stop. But you will never get "stop" from the two words "cut" and "out". So, this is now a figurative meaning, right? It's something that is completely different, like the combination is completely different than the two individual words. And the same applies to idioms. Now, the thing about idioms is that most idioms are figurative. There are some that are literal, but most are figurative. And collocations can be - there are literal collocations and there are also figurative collocations. So, when we're talking about idiomatic language, we're talking about expressions that create a figurative meaning, okay? So, this is very important to understand.
And again, for those of you who are taking the IELTS or TOEFL and you're doing the writing section, they want to see idiomatic language. But this does not mean that you have to put a lot of idioms into your essays. In fact, you shouldn't, and I'll tell you more about that in a moment. So, another thing to understand about idioms and about phrasal verbs and collocations, there are those that are okay for formal writing, and there are those that are not okay for formal writing. They're too casual, okay?
So, here's an example. It takes two to tango. This is an idiom. It means that you need two people to work together in order to achieve something. If you're - let's say in business situations, I have one company, you have a company, and it's a competition, but a third company is trying to get into the market. So, I come to you, you're my competitor, but I say, "Listen, let's work together and keep this one out of the market. Don't let him come in because he will hurt both our businesses." And this guy says, "No, no, I don't want to get involved. You do it." And I say, "Well, you know, it takes two to tango. We both need to do it because by myself I don't have enough power. Together, we can do something." Good idiom. You should definitely use it in spoken English, in business situations, in fact, even, but do not use this in writing. This is a little bit too casual, like the tango, the dancing, and all that. And again, in some cases you could probably get away with it, but the reason you shouldn't use it is A, it's a little bit informal, and B, most people will probably not use it correctly. If you're not going to be 100% sure of the meaning or you're not sure how to fit it into your writing, don't use it. […]