One of the keys for a foreigner to speaking English like a native is the ability to use and understand casual expressions, or idioms. Casual expressions are widely used in everyday conversations, TV shows, magazines, newspapers and even books. Casual expressions can add colors to our conversations. For example, if a student is rushing to do a review for the next day’s quiz, he may tell his tennis partner he has to “hit the book” rather than just saying “start studying”. Here, “Hit the book” is not only giving the meaning of “start studying” but the sense of “rush”. Furthermore, casual expressions help us communicate in an efficient manner. For instance, the thunderwolf hokey team won every game in the past three months. Instead of saying “Our team is lucky since we keep winning game after game”, we may just say “Our team is on a winning steak”. In addition, people prefer to talk by using simple words and expressions in place of literal or professional terminologies which mostly appear on the written paper. As British author Alan Alexander Milne said, it is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like What about lunch? However, casual expressions are difficult to be explained literally even though they consist of simple words only. For example, When we say “Peter is not Mary’s cup of tea”, we do not consider whether Peter is made of tea or not. Instead, we use the expression to describe “Peter is not a person Mary likes”. But for a foreigner, it is hard to catch this meaning just through word-by-word translating. In fact, more than one thousand of these simple-word-combinations are frequently used in ordinary speaking English. There is no doubt casual expressions can raise a barrier for an English learner to achieve speaking English in a native way.
(Composition Assignment #2)
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