English with AJ

06/06/2023

Dyned Neo, new batch 2023.

04/09/2021

It is funny when people are critical only when they critisize the people who they don't like, but the same people will not criticize the very same mistakes made by those who are very close to them or have some connections with them. If you are fair and honest, you will always stand for truth and justice, if not, you are a double standard person with some personal vengeance on people.

12/08/2021

Quotes about language learning

"A different language is a different vision of life."
Federico Fellini

"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world."
Ludwig Wittgenstein

"One language sets you in a corridor for life. Two languages open every door along the way."
Frank Smith

"He who knows no foreign languages knows nothing of his own."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart."
Nelson Mandela

11/06/2021

167 New cases reported in Jaffna yesterday.

2759 Covid patients identified today in Sri Lanka. Follows are the area details of Covid patients identified yesterday.

13/10/2020

The idioms and expressions in today’s post come from a range of national newspapers that were published on the same day. We write a post on phrases used in newspapers every couple of months in order to give you a regular supply of contemporary, frequently used English expressions.

Of course, COVID-19 features very prominently in all the newspapers. One tabloid claims that a city in the UK is ‘on the brink of lockdown’. If something or someone is on the brink of a bad situation, it is likely that the situation will happen soon. The paper also reports that a country in Europe has now ‘got the all-clear’, referring to the fact that it has now been removed from the UK’s quarantine list. Someone who gets or is given the all-clear has been told that they are healthy again.

Elsewhere in the same newspaper, there are claims that a popular news programme ‘faces the axe’. Something that faces the axe is going to be stopped, even if it is planned. Still in the same paper, students whose exam results haven’t been released yet are said to be ‘in limbo’. People who are in limbo are in a situation where they don’t know what is going to happen and they can do nothing about it.

In the sports pages of a different tabloid, a journalist observes that a famous Italian football team have always ‘had a soft spot for’ players from a particular country. To have a soft spot for someone is to like them very much. In the same pages, the England cricket team are said to be ‘rolling out the big guns’ in their latest match. Big guns are people or organizations with a lot of power and ability.

Another tabloid reports on a horse racing festival that is ‘in full swing’. An event that is in full swing is at its busiest point. It also quotes the England cricket captain saying ‘The sky is the limit.’ for his team. If the sky is the limit, there is no limit, (in this case, to what they can achieve).

A broadsheet refers to a trail in one of London’s botanic gardens in which the public can discover ‘hidden gems’. A hidden gem is something special that few people know about. In the sports pages of the same paper, a journalist writes that the England cricket team’s winning strategy has ‘fallen by the wayside’. If something falls by the wayside, people stop doing or using it.