As the crow flies.

The idiom ‘as the crow flies’ means the most direct distance between two locations. It assumes that if you travel from one location to the other, there are no buildings obstructing your journey.

‘How far is it from London to Edinburgh as the crow flies?‘

I’m not sure why they use crow instead of other birds, perhaps it just sounds better.

Moving the goalposts.

In English, we have many idiomatic phrases associated with sports. ‘To move the goalposts’ means to make reaching an objective more difficult for someone by deliberately changing the criteria.

‘ On Monday, my boss said that I’d get a bonus if I increased sales by twenty percent this week. Today he said I wouldn’t get my bonus unless I increased sales by thirty percent. I hate it when somebody moves the goalposts‘.

Red sky…

We have a saying (a proverb) in English that goes ‘Red sky at night, shepherds’ delight, red sky in the morning, shepherds’ warning’.

This means if you see a red sky in the evening, the next day the weather will be fine. If you see a red sky in the morning, the weather that day will not be so pleasant. It’s quite an old saying and it’s probably not scientifically correct.

Animal Idioms

Often in English, we use animal idioms to describe a person or a situation. This may be comparing a person’s actions with that of a particular animal or the animal’s behaviour. For example, describing someone who is irritable or angry, you might say, ‘He’s like a bear with a sore head’. If you can visualise how the bear would behave in that situation, you can have an idea of how the person is behaving.

Another example may be, ‘Don’t mention that subject to her. It’s like showing a red rag to a bull‘.

If we want to save money for a special occasion, we say we’re ‘saving money for a rainy day’. Sometimes, if someone wants to save money or keep something without others knowing, we say they ‘squirrel it away’. In this case, ‘squirrel’ is being used as a verb.

Vocabulary building

In the ‘Use of English’ section of the Cambridge First, Advanced and Proficiency exams, one of the tests involves ‘word building’.

I always advise my English language students to develop and extend the vocabulary they record in their notebooks. This could be by making extensive notes, or drawing diagrams such as a ‘word web’.

So, if they learn a new noun, I advise them to find any other parts of speech relating to that noun (e.g. verbs, positive and negative forms of the relevant adjectives, adverbs etc.).

I also advise my students to read as many English language texts as they can so they increase their familiarisation of vocabulary and can start to identify ‘root’ words.