Business Idioms - 1000 Everyday Idioms in Business Ebook by Glenn Darraagh ***Funny Killer***

This book has been designed for intermediate and advanced learners of English who want to increase their understanding of everyday spoken English, especially as it is used in a business context. The book will help you learn 1,000 common idiomatic expressions, all of which are current, and all of which are known and used by native English speakers everywhere. It is suitable for both self-study and classroom work with a teacher. Many people in business think that a knowledge of idiomatic English is a kind of linguistic optional extra, adding color to the language but otherwise not strictly essential. This view, needless to say, is erroneous, for many idioms are as frequently used and as necessary as the most basic words. Indeed idioms are often composed of the most basic words, although these are grouped in metaphorical shorthand for more complex ideas: "You're pulling my leg", "He's cooking the books", "It's gone to the dogs", "There's more to this than meets the eye", and so on. Taken separately, each word is easily understood, but unless you understand the expression as a whole, you cannot hope to follow what is happening in meetings with your American and British counterparts, or in negotiations, or even at the dinner table. In circumstances like these, native English speakers will use idiomatic expressions as naturally and as often as you would use comparable idioms in Spanish.

Few English idioms can be translated word for word into Spanish, but some can, and others have near equivalents. Most, however, express cultural concepts that can only be paraphrased or approximated, and so must be learned by heart and in some sort of context. The purpose of this book is to provide you with appropriate contexts. The expressions are loosely grouped in short manageable units, each dealing with a particular theme and consisting of 25 idioms. Within the unit, each idiom is presented in a specific situation, the majority of the illustrative sentences having been adapted from authentic sources like the "Financial Times", "Fortune", "Business Week", and "Forbes". (Although the examples are drawn from sources worldwide, British spelling is used throughout the book for the sake of consistency.)

The second part of each unit consists of exercises, which not only test your comprehension and assimilation of this material but also add to your understanding by providing literal definitions of each idiom in English, as well as further short examples of how to use them. For the benefit of students working on their own, an answer key to the exercises can be found at the end of the book. An index of keywords is also provided to enable you to find any particular idiom quickly.

The English language contains many, many thousands of idioms, and many of these exist in variant forms. Such abundance is daunting, so in studying idioms it is important to have realistic goals. Initially you should aim for a passive knowledge, being able to recognize and understand a limited number of the most common expressions in context. Try reading the examples in this book with the Spanish translations hidden. When you can do that with full understanding, you are ready to start inventing examples of your own. This is the best way (and also the only way) to incorporate them in your active vocabulary. You will find that your listening comprehension and oral English improve dramatically as a result. Little by little you will find yourself using these idioms in conversation. At that point, you will start wondering how you ever managed to communicate without them.