Business Idioms 15 Review

Woman's face in the rear view mirror of a car

Take a look back

Image Credit
Tessa Simpson via Unsplash

This lesson will look back on the previous four lessons. You will get a chance to remember and use idioms you have learned.

Introduction

Recall the language you learned in previous lessons. What was your favourite idiom from each lesson? Have you had a chance to use it?

Your teacher will help you to remember at least two idioms from each unit.

  • Competition
  • Failure
  • Success 
  • Progress
Practice

A. Real-world examples

For each short passage below, do the following: 

  • Read the passage and predict the idiom.
  • Listen to the audio, identify the idiom and compare it to your prediction.
  • Explain in your own words what it means.

Note: don't try to grasp the full context; just focus on the idiom being used.

  1. A speaker at Stanford University (California, U.S.) talks about entrepreneurship and beginning a technology company.
    "If you want to invent a new technology, then to ___________, you may have to have that expertise yourself."
     
  2. A politician talks about winning a compromise versus failing to compromise.
    "In every compromise, some people give, and other people give to get to where you need to be. And, if you post a question where there's opposite ends and no compromise, you put yourself in a ___________."
     
  3. An interviewer asks an artist about her work, and the balance of tough times and success.
    "At the end of the day, you're very hopeful. That's what I got from a lot of your work is, yea, everything's terrible, but there is ___________."
     
  4. An ex-diplomat talks about the toughest negotiation he was involved in.
    "In diplomacy, so, I worked with some pretty bad guys when I was in Serbia. To beat this guy, because I wanted not only to see him lose, but I also wanted the country to go in the direction of being oriented towards Europe. And so I got to ___________."
     
  5. Education advocate Geoffrey Canada describes how the Western education calendar fails poor children.
    "Look! If the science says―this is science, not me―that our poorest children ___________ in the summertime; you see where they are in June and say okay, they're there. You look at them in September, they've gone down."
     
  6. A professor at Bristol University (Bristol, U.K.) welcomes students and talks about finding success in school and in life. 
    "Fourthly, for some of you, life may not be always ___________ during your time with us."
     
  7. A conference speaker talks about a DNA research team.
    "But they have been doing some fantastic work, at least to ___________ to figure out what we would need to do if we were going to bring a mammoth back to life."
     
  8. In a panel discussion, an expert talks about competition in the art world, and why he helped create a generous subsidy.
    "It was created because there was a feeling that the marketplace should not be the only determinant of what is seen, of what art survives and what art gets presented. That this is not capitalist, ___________. That there's art that's worth doing that has to be subsidized."
     

B. Discussion 

Now, speak naturally about the following topics.

  1. Describe an industry that has fierce competition.
    • Which players in that industry are succeeding in making progress? 
    • Which players are failing to make progress? 
  2. Describe an emerging industry.
    • Which players in that industry are succeeding? 

    • What progress has been made?

    • What degree of competition is there?

    • Has anyone failed in that industry yet?