Any Xpress learner is a reflective learner - from a dozen to a score

Here you may well find plentiful of expressions you will deal with in your next productive activity. 

The process can be explained both in the straightforward sense of 'from step one to step six' and in the metaphoric sense of ‘wholemeal approach’. The latter is in fact more appropriate than the former. 

A rule of thumb yet effective trick to expand your active vocabulary while learning is:

a) picking up the right stuff.  

b) What a new significance this expression takes on when thinking of the practical ways for activating your passive collocations and  new grammar patterns and use vocabulary like a native.  

c) Reading aloud confidently, explaining the content, the context of the words not in  shy way  (you read the chapter, didn't you?). So now learn around a dozen words or so faster as you make a bit of a joke out of it. 

There is a goodly number of ideas on helping activate vocabulary in class – have a great time with words!

Did you write a handful of expressions? now  revise some syntax aspects or quite a few vocabulary laden sentences.  Guess you learned at least several handfuls or without no doubt in double digits, I may indeed  be I wrong by a small margin.... Hope you don't respond with the same finger-down-throat ‘I’m going to be sick’ gesture.

• We did this in last year class with 3 pages from HUMOUR RULES.

Here, a score (20) of  our selected expression ---  K E Y   

This heading can be read both in the straightforward sense of …. and in the graffiti sense of ‘….’ The latter is in fact more appropriate, 

·         it permeates every aspect … naturally crop up in different contexts throughout   … so pervasive  …    an awful lot of guff talked about

·         while there may indeed be something … always an undercurrent of humour.

·         We can barely manage to say ‘hello’ without somehow contriving to make a bit of a joke out of it, 

·         at least some degree of banter, teasing, irony, understatement, humorous self-deprecation, mockery or just silliness. … we cannot switch it off.

 

A_ THE IMPORTANCE OF NOT BEING EARNEST RULE

• ·         an underlying rule in all conversation  … probably more acutely sensitive than any other nation to the distinction between ‘serious’ and ‘solemn’, between ‘sincerity’ and ‘earnestness’. 

• ·         crucial to any kind of understanding. I cannot emphasize this strongly enough … not able to grasp these subtle but vital differences, …  your behavioural ‘grammar’ will be full of glaring errors. 

• ·         solemnity is prohibited; earnestness is strictly forbidden; self-importance are outlawed.

• ·         (At least, I hope I am right about this )

• ·         the kind of hand-on-heart, gushing earnestness and pompous, Bible-thumping solemnity

• ·         smugly detached amusement, wondering how the cheering crowds can possibly be so credulous as to fall for this sort of nonsense.

• ·         politicians bring themselves to utter such shamefully earnest platitudes, in such ludicrously solemn tones? ...     the earnestness makes us wince.

• ·         gushy, tearful acceptance speeches … respond with the same finger-down-throat ‘I’m going to be sick’ gesture.

• ·         who dares to break these unwritten rules is dismissed as a ‘luvvie’. 

• ·          And Americans, although among the easiest to scoff at, are by no means the only targets of our cynical censure.

• ·         who can spot the slightest hint of self-importance at twenty paces,

            A1_ The ‘Oh, Come Off It!’ Rule

• ·         The sharp-eyed English public …. with scornful cries of ‘Oh, come off it!’  …  prefer sniping, pinpricking and grumbling from the …

• ·         sceptical spirit, choosing the ‘lesser of two evils’, rather than with any shining-eyed, fervent conviction … would be greeted with the customary ‘Oh, come off it!’

• ·          Among the young and others susceptible to linguistic fads and fashions, … the latest slang as being ‘up themselves’,

• ·         these may in turn have been superseded by new expressions, … values are deep-rooted, and will remain unchanged.