They come in clusters

Soft fruit, like grapes and blackcurrants. Flowers, like lilac. Trees, shrubs and smaller plants in a well-kept English country garden. Stars, galaxies and multiverses, something that few of us ever have a chance to inspect. Music comes in clusters, when a mad composer hits several keys of the piano with the palm of his hand to produce a mass of sound. Clubbers, when seized by hunger they flock to Bar Italia at five in the morning.
But for language learners and teachers more important are the mind-blowing facts, continually delivered these days through corpus linguistics – a language can be seen a universe of word clusters. These are 2 to 6-word units that we repeatedly stumble across in speech and writing. Clusters evidently escape simple grammar categorization and often pull down the barrier created between vocabulary and grammar. When naturally retrieved from memory, they define the boundaries of the speaker’s fluency.
The beauty of commonest English clusters is that they can be listed as ever changing charts, and like songs, are instantly recognizable.
A selection of spoken English clusters, ranging between 2 and 5 words: you know; I mean; sort of; and then; if you; you can; a lot of; you know what; I think it’s; a couple of; and it was; I thought it was; I don’t know if; I was going to; have a look at; you don’t have to; in the middle of; you know what I mean; the end of the day; this that and the other; to be honest with you; and all that sort of; an hour and a half; it’s a bit of a;

Star cluster

Weird words

If you say that someone is blustering, you mean that they are speaking aggressively or proudly but without authority, often because they are angry or offended.

Bluster as a noun is a loud, aggressive, or indignant talk with little effect.

‘That’s lunacy’ he blustred.
She was still blustering, but there was panic in her eyes.
You threaten and bluster, but won’t carry it through.
Their speeches contained a measure of bluster.

Weird words

A gizmo is a device or machine which performs a particular task, usually in a new and efficient way. Gizmo is a placeholder name for any small technological item. People often use gizmo to refer to a device or machine when they do not know what it is really called.

1. The gizmo merges new ways to make and receive calls, listen to music, watch videos, surf the Internet and perform other functions on the go.
2. Gizmo fever is getting out of hand.

Will this little gizmo save us from the greedy hands of “tepsa”?

More timely idioms

People talk about a bad apple spoiling the barrel or a rotten apple spoiling the barrel when they are talking particularly about the bad influence which the person has. It’s an opportunity for them to make clear that they are not going to tolerate a bad apple spoiling the barrel in the US Senate.

The big time means fame and success. When someone becomes famous and successful, you can say they hit the big time. Sinclair now looks ready for a crack at the big time.

Electoral idioms

If someone tells you to read their lips, they are telling you to believe and trust what they are saying.
Bush won the White House in 1988 thanks, in large part, to his now infamous pledge ‘read my lips: no new taxes’.

If you say that someone pays lip service or gives lip service to an idea, you are being critical of them because they appear to be in favour of it, but are not doing anything to support it. You can also just talk about lip service.
All the talk about nation-building is pure lip service, because people who are selfish will never join with others to build the nation and preserve the good welfare of others.

vote
values

Weird words

1. The word evangelist comes from the Koine Greek word “euangelion” via Latin “Evangelium”, as used in the canonic titles of the four Gospels, and thus The Evangelists are the authors of the four Gospels – traditionally known as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (also known as the Four Evangelists).

2. The term is also used in a non-religious sense to describe an individual who takes up a cause and convinces others to it. Guy Kawasaki, an author and venture capitalist, describes Evangelists as individuals who promote a particular product. At Apple Computer, he was part of a team of Apple evangelists that convinced programmers to develop software on the Macintosh Platform. In “The Human Fabric”, Bijoy Goswami describes the “Evangelist” as one of three core energies in people and society.

More often than once in a while such missionaries cross teachers’ paths too. Those are EFL evangelists, employed by major publishing houses (with deep pockets). Without their efforts any new coursebook would most likely be a flop, and sales of titles already on offer would dwindle faster then ever. Before the moment you get an invitation to a workshop in your mail, they will have packed their equipment, fresh teaching ideas, gadgets, and tons of freebies, to follow yet another itinerary across the country to promote a revamped edition of a ‘hugely successful X series’. 100% new!

technology evangelists

Weird words

1. rock in small particles or other material worn or broken away from a mass, as by the action of water or glacial ice.

2. any disintegrated material; debris.

In biology, detritus is non-living particulate organic material (as opposed to dissolved organic material). It typically includes the bodies of dead organisms, fragments of organisms or faecal material, and is normally colonised by communities of micro-organisms which act to decompose (or remineralize) the material. The term is used to refer to organic fragments intermixed with soil on the land, but more commonly refers to material found suspended in water.

There’s more to this word, however. Some contemporary users, brimming with creative ideas, readily extended the meaning into a metaphor for self-recycling culture. Read their rebellious manifesto.