[159] To Make a Fool of Yourself

To Make a Fool of Yourself

 

 

Hey guys, I am still on about collocations. In today’s episode you will learn more useful phrases using the word MAKE. Plus more expressions! Enjoy :)

Episodes mentioned

[158] Speak Like A Native Speaker (Collocations Revisited)
[015] Learn English with Collocations (And Speak Like a Native Speaker)

 

Transcript

Hey amigos y amigas, you are listening to the English Made Simple show, this is episode 1-5-9, number one hundred and fifty nine, numero ciento cincuenta y nueve.

Hey there guys and girls and welcome to the English Made Simple show, my name is Milena from www.englishmadesimple.net.

I trust you’ve been behaving well. You’ve been good, eating healthy, not like me. You know, for the past 7 days I’ve been eating sweets every day. I’ve been visiting new cafes and restaurants and tasting this delicious food here in Adelaide. And I noticed something.

There are a lot of Italian restaurants here. A lot of Italian cafés. They are owned by Italians. And I’ve been feasting on Italian desserts like the tiramisu and cannoli’s, mmm yum. That’s my new fetish at the moment. My new drug, cannolli! It’s weird because I haven’t been eating them in Melbourne. There is a large Italian community living in Melbourne and yet, I didn’t even go and eat those desserts there. Bizarre!

So enough about desserts because all I wanna do now is just have a cannoli.

If you are not from Italy or don’t know what a cannoli is, I will share a photo of it on Facebook and Instagram so you can check it out there. It’s delicious.

I am yet to find a cannoli made with Nutella.

So guys, let me jump straight into today’s episode. Enough about cannolis and Italian desserts. I’ve touched on collocations in the last episode. For the new listeners joining us today, welcome first of all – let me quickly explain what collocations are.

When the native speakers speak English they use collocations and phrasal verbs to form sentences.

Collocations are two words that when you put them together they sound natural to the native speaker. Like for example, we say ‘make a decision’ and we don’t say ‘do a decision’. ‘Make a decision’ phrase sounds more natural to the native English speaker.

If you want to learn more about collocations please go back to episode number 158 and episode number 15 to learn more about collocations.

Alright, so having said this, in today’s episode I would like to share more collocations that you will find useful, something you can start using today, so please pay special attention to the phrases and examples in this episode.

By the way, ‘pay attention’ is also a collocation.
Poner atención in Spanish.

I am going to share 7 more collocations, and this is in addition to the ones I shared in the last episode. There could be less or more, because I don’t know, maybe I didn’t count them properly.

So let me start with the first phrase for today.

If you’ve been listening to me for a while now, you would’ve noticed how I often make a fool of myself. I laugh at myself a lot. I am a bit ironic, sarcastic and cynical. And I do it publicly. I have no shame. Haha like when I was referring to Adelaide as Adelaide. I sounded silly but I had no shame at all doing it. I was happy doing it.

So I made a fool of myself.

Adelaide is a city in Australia for those of you who are wondering what I am on about.

Right, so to make a fool of yourself is a phrase that native speakers use. Instead of saying to someone, stop embarrassing yourself you can say: Stop making a fool of yourself”

Like my husband tells me: Milena stop making a fool of yourself. So I say to him, Ok fine. I will stop for a little bit. I can’t promise anything. I am just gonna keep doing it.

The next collocation that I would like to share with you is

Make an effort

And according to Weon Inteligente or the Online Dictionary – he is back, to make an effort is to do something even though you don’t feel like doing or you don’t want to do it, or you find it difficult and you just don’t want to do it.

Basically, to make an effort means to try really hard to do something.

Like for example, I’ll make an effort to do the dishes tonight.

I don’t feel like doing it, but I will try. I will make an effort to do the dishes.

Or

In order to learn to speak fluent English, it’s a good idea to make an effort to speak more with native or non-native speakers. You can achieve this by attending various Meetup Groups. You can meet some people through meetup groups. Remember, you can speak English with either native or non-native speakers. You just have to make an effort to talk to them. Who knows you might make new friends? Another collocation, make friends – we learnt in the last episode.

Cool bananas, does this make sense so far?

To make sense is a collocation too.

Can you see now, how often we use collocations when we speak in English? Can you see how useful this is? Same as those terrible phrasal verbs, we must learn those as well…we just have to learn them.

Knowing collocations and phrasal verbs is what will make you sound more natural when speaking English.

Now I want you to make a promise to me that you will be learning about collocations and phrasal verbs and then I want you to keep that promise and actually do it, not just say that you will be learning about collocations but actually do it too.

Ok that was a geeky example.

Because the next collocation that I am about to share with you is:

To make a promise and then keep a promise.

Here we are using the word MAKE and KEEP to form a collocations.

Make a promise and keep a promise – two useful phrases.

When I make a promise, I keep it.

When I make a promise to myself, I usually keep it.

The opposite of keeping a promise is to break a promise.

Let me give you a simple example of somebody who makes a promise and then breaks it. Politicians.

Politicians make promises before elections, but do they keep their promises after the election? I don’t think so. Most of them break their promises.

So that was a simple example of politicians making and breaking promises.

Ok, I hope you are following me so far. I know there is a lot to take in at the moment.

I’ve got 2 more collocations using the word MAKE that I would like to share with you today.

One of them is to make a profit.

I am always curious to know if there are any small business owners listening to the EMS show. I have a lot of vocabulary and phrases to help small business owners if they ever needed to speak English for work.

To make a profit in business – what does it mean?

It means to be profitable.

When you make a profit in business you are able to cover all of your expenses, payroll and taxes, and then make a profit in the end.

You can use the profit to invest back into your business so you can grow your business.

By the way, payroll is a term used to describe payment of salaries to employees. People who work for you, they are called employees. So you would have employees on the payroll so you can pay them. But let’s not get sidetracked here we can cover more later on about this type of vocabulary used when running a small business… later on, in future episodes.

Great, that was an odd example, but I thought to share it with you because it could be relevant to someone listening, to a small business owner who is listening to the show. Could be relevant to them.

Do you need more information on collocations?

You can make an inquiry on my website to learn more about collocations.

To make an inquiry is also a collocation. Which just means to contact someone. This is equivalent to Consultar in Spanish.

Wow, if I had a dollar for every time I used the word MAKE today, haha I would be rich.

And now I have a task for you. Call it homework if you will.

Here is your homework.

Don’t stop listening, keep listening!

I wonder how many collocations you could find for me. Next time you watch Netflix for example, watch movies or listen to some native speakers on the radio or on the TV, listen carefully to see if you can spot any collocations using the word MAKE. See how they use the word MAKE when they speak.

It’s a listening exercise for you. Try it, see what you come up with.

I will be doing another episode on collocations, stay tuned. Learning collocations will help you go from intermediate to advanced English, I am referring to the level of spoken English. So it’s gonna help you become more advanced in Speaking.

Ok so listen up muchachos y muchachas, I am planning something special in a couple of weeks, I will be doing an interview with a psychologist from Brazil, her name is Nathi and she is passionate about helping immigrant women adapt in their new home and enjoy their life overseas. Stay tuned for that episode it will be coming soon. An interview with Nathi Eustaquio from Brazil.

Cool, I am looking forward to this! It will be awesome, feeling a bit lonely at times, it’s just me and the microphone…for the past 2 years. So I am going to have company soon. Keep listening amigos y amigas!

Hey guys, thanks for joining me today. Jump on my website www.englishmadesimple.net to read the transcript to today’s episode. You’ve been jamming with Milena from English Made Simple I bid you a farewell and I leave you in peace. Until next week. Hasta la proxima!