Are you ready to expand your vocabulary?

Let's go.

Vanessa: It's a fact, the more vocabulary you know, the more you can understand natural

English conversations.

So today I'd like to help you understand and use 15 advanced English expressions for daily

life.

These aren't phrases specifically for business, though of course you could use them in those

situations.

These aren't all slang expressions or expressions to make you sound really educated.

No, these are expressions for daily life.

They're ones that I use all the time and I hope that you'll be able to integrate into

your daily conversations as well.

All of the phrases that you're going to learn today are part of my monthly course, The Fearless

Fluency Club.

Some of these expressions I took from lessons in 2018, some are from lessons from 2019,

some are from 2020.

But today they are for you.

If you would like to learn 15 to 20 new expressions just like this every month, feel free to click

up here to learn more about my course, The Fearless Fluency Club.

Vanessa: During today's lesson, I challenge you to try to say all of the sample sentences

out loud with me.

This is going to help you get used to hearing your voice using the expressions and also

help your pronunciation muscles, help you have a chance to speak and also help you to

remember them, which is always a challenging thing with new vocabulary, right?

So make sure that you speak out loud today.

Try to repeat some of these sentences with me.

I have a feeling that some of these expressions are going to be new for you.

So let's get started with the first one.

Vanessa: A false sense of security, carrying mace gave me a false sense of security.

Can you guess what this means from the sentence?

Carrying mace, which is like pepper spray or a minor weapon, gave me a false sense of

security.

Well, I feel secure, I feel safe, but in reality, danger is near.

If I were in a really dangerous situation, carrying mace or pepper spray is probably

not going to help me too much.

It gave me a false sense of security.

Vanessa: His wife didn't argue with him about his drinking, but this was a false sense of

security.

She would blow up one day.

Blow up means get extremely angry.

This is a pretty common thing that happens in relationships unfortunately.

One person has a problem and the other person doesn't say anything about it, so that person

thinks, "Oh, maybe it's not a problem.

Maybe it's fine, maybe he or she doesn't care."

This is a false sense of security because probably the other person is building up some

strong feelings and will just explode in anger one day.

So make sure that you don't have this false sense of security.

All right, let's go to the next expression.

Vanessa: To bounce ideas off or to bounce ideas off of.

The word of here is just optional.

Let's look at a sample sentence and I want you to guess what you think it means.

It's a good idea to bounce ideas off of your coworkers.

When a ball bounces, it goes down and then it comes back up.

Well, when you bounce ideas off of a coworker, you're getting some feedback and opinions

from someone.

You're bouncing ideas off of someone.

In the sentence, you can just as naturally say it's a good idea to bounce ideas off your

coworkers or it's a good idea to bounce ideas off of your coworkers.

The word of is completely optional.

Both are correct.

A common question in business is, can I bounce some ideas off of you?

And this means that you have some ideas, you would like some feedback about it, especially

if the other person has more experience than you.

This is a really polite way to say, "Hey, can I ask you some questions and get some

feedback?"

You can just simply say, "Can I bounce some ideas off of you?"

Great.

Beautiful sentence.

Vanessa: The next expression is wise, but this is just a suffix.

That means that we put it at the end of another word.

Take a look at this sentence.

Safety-wise, my city is pretty safe, but education-wise, we could use some improvement.

You're introducing each category with the word safety, but then you're adding wise to

show I'm talking about this category.

Safety-wise.

My city is pretty safe, but education-wise, we could use some improvement.

It's not so good.

So on the topic of education we could use some improvement.

When my friends ask how old my students are.

Well there is quite a range of ages of people who learn online.

Vanessa: If you teach a class of adults about coding, like how to make software code, you

might say, "Well, age-wise," you're introducing this category with the suffix wise.

"Age-wise my students are around 40 years old."

Okay, cool.

Or, "Age-wise, my students are generally 18 to 25."

Okay.

They're probably right out of high school and they're learning a career path.

Age-wise.

This is a little bit tricky, a little bit advanced.

That's why I wanted to include this but you'll definitely see this and I use this in daily

conversation all the time.

When you want to talk about a category or talk about two different categories like safety-wise.

Well, education-wise.

We can use this for so many different things.

You can talk about kids, "How's your life?"

"Well, health-wise, I'm doing pretty fine, but kid-wise I am overwhelmed."

You can use this for any category.

Vanessa: "Are you hungry?"

"Food-wise, I feel great, but drink-wise, yeah, let's go get a drink."

Okay.

You can use this for so many different categories.

I hope to introduce this to you so that you'll start to hear this as you listen to natural

English conversations.

Let's go to the next one.

Vanessa: For the sake of.

This expression has two different meanings.

So let me give you one sample sentence.

A lot of people make art for the sake of making art.

What do you think this means?

We could also say a lot of people make art for the sake of it, and that's just replacing

making art.

What do you think that means?

We're talking about the purpose.

What is their purpose for making art?

Well, if they're making art for the sake of making art, it's not for the sake of making

money, for the sake of creative enhancement.

It's just because they like making art.

It's not for a school project.

It's not a requirement.

It's just for the purpose of making art.

Vanessa: Or we could just say for the sake of it.

"Why are you learning English?"

"Well, I don't need it for my job.

I don't travel that much.

I don't know many people from other countries.

I'm learning English for the sake of it, just because I want to."

The purpose is, well, just the purpose of learning, for the sake of learning English.

But there's a second meaning for this expression.

Let's take a look at this sentence, for the sake of the people who haven't read the book,

I'll give a quick summary.

For the sake of the people who haven't read the book.

If you are discussing a book with some friends, but other people in the room haven't read,

it well you could use this expression, for the sake of the people who haven't read the

book.

I'll give a quick summary.

This is what happened in the story.

Vanessa: In this situation we're using for the sake of someone to talk about in respect

for someone.

So to respect the people who haven't read the book, so that they aren't completely lost

in our conversation.

Well, here's a quick summary.

So you could say, "For the sake of those who have sacrificed a lot, we are going to have

a special dinner or a special celebration in respect for those people."

All right, so we've got two different ways to use this.

The purpose of something, "I'm learning English for the sake of my job."

I'm learning English for the sake of it, just because I like learning.

Or for the sake of someone to respect someone.

Let's go to the next expression.

Vanessa: Let alone.

When we think about the word alone, we think about someone who's not with other people,

but erase that idea from your mind.

Let's look at this sample sentence and try to guess what you think it means.

I've never been to China, let alone seen the Great Wall.

The Great Wall of China is a big tourist attraction and a really cool historical feature in China,

but in my sentence I said I've never been to China, let alone seeing the Great Wall.

Yeah, I've seen pictures and videos, but it's not the same as in real life.

What's an expression that we can substitute in this situation?

Vanessa: You could say, "I've never been to China.

Not to mention seeing the Great Wall."

Oh, here we have a big category, been to China, and then I'm getting a little bit more specific

and saying, seeing the Great Wall.

You might also substitute much less.

I've never been to China, much less seen the Great Wall.

So we've got a big category and then we're narrowing it.

If I've never done that big category, of course I haven't done that small category too.

Let's look at another example.

After the accident, he couldn't walk, let alone play soccer.

What's the big category here?

Walking.

Well, if you can't walk, you probably have a difficult time playing soccer.

So we could say after the accident he couldn't walk much less play soccer.

After the accident he couldn't walk, not to mention play soccer.

Vanessa: Of course, if he can't walk, he can't play soccer.

I'm sure there are some exceptions, but in this situation we're going to use let alone.

He couldn't walk, let alone play soccer.

We're getting more specific.

This is a wonderful advanced expression that you're definitely going to hear all the time

around you.

Now that you're aware of this expression, you're going to hear it a lot.

All right, let's go to the next one.

Vanessa: A whole 'nother something.

A whole 'nother level.

A whole 'nother thing.

A whole 'nother animal.

There's a lot of different ways that we can use this, but the main part that's used in

each of these expressions is a whole 'nother.

What is 'nother?

Well, let's look at a sample sentence and I want you to guess.

We've been dating for two years, but deciding to get married is a whole 'nother animal.

Am I getting married to an animal?

No.

We're not really talking about animals in this situation.

We can just substitute thing or level.

Getting married is a whole 'nother level.

What if I said getting married is another level?

Does that make a little bit more sense to you?

We've been dating for two years, but getting married is another level.

I'm not sure if I'm ready to commit.

That's more serious.

Well, this is pretty much what we're saying here except this is using, if you want to

get a little nerdy and grammatical, this is using something called tmesis, which is when

you insert one word into another word.

Vanessa: So look at this expression.

Do you see another and then the word whole splitting it?

Yep.

That's what's happening.

Here we have another, but the word whole has just cut into the middle of that word.

Another whole or a whole 'nother.

When I was thinking about this expression, I had no idea why this actually happened,

because we use this all the time in daily life, but if you really try to break down,

wait, 'nother?

'Nother is not a word.

Why do we say a whole 'nother?

I had to do a little bit of research about this, because it's so commonly used, but it's

not something that you would write in an essay.

It's not common grammar from a grammar textbook.

So I hope to introduce this to you so that you can hear it everywhere now and you can

use it yourself.

Let's take a look at another example.