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  • Hi. My name is Rebecca. In this lesson, we'll focus on six business English idioms.

  • Even though they are somewhat advanced, follow along with me because they are used quite

  • often. All right? Let's get started.

  • The first one: "You need to face the facts about the drop

  • in sales." So the idiom here is: "to face the facts".

  • So, "to face the facts" means to accept a difficult situation. To accept the

  • reality. Okay? Accept the truth, to deal with the truth. That's what it means to face the

  • facts. You're not going to say: "Face the facts", if you're talking about something

  • good. But here, you see there was a drop in sales; sales went down, so you need to face

  • the facts, means you have to accept the hard truth or the hard reality.

  • Next one: "Mr. Brown heads our team in NY."

  • So, the idiom here is: "to head the team". You'll see... Here we have "face", here we

  • have "head", and in fact, all of these, you'll have some part of the body as part of the

  • business idiom. It's just the way I chose them. All right, so, "to head the team" means

  • to... What do you think it means? To lead a group. All right? So, Mr. Brown is the manager,

  • or he's the leader, or the head of this team in New York. "To head a team", that's the idiom.

  • Next one: "The marketing dept. is footing the bill."

  • "The marketing department is footing the bill." Again, part of the body, the foot. All right?

  • "To foot a bill", "to foot the bill" means to take responsibility for payment. All right?

  • I know it doesn't always make sense, and that's why it's an idiom. Okay? The individual words

  • don't reveal the meaning to you. You have to understand the entire expression, and that

  • whole expression is called an idiom. So, "to foot the bill" means to take responsibility

  • for paying for something.

  • Next one: "Our HR manager" - our human resources manager

  • - "has an eye for selecting good people." The expression here: "to have an eye for".

  • I should say this. "To have an eye for something" means to have a talent for something, to have

  • the ability to notice something. All right? So, our human resources manager has the ability

  • to select good people. All right?

  • Next one: "Who shouldered the blame for this disaster?"

  • "Who shouldered the blame?" Expression: "to shoulder the blame". "To shoulder the blame"

  • means to take responsibility for something that went wrong, for a bad situation, for

  • a difficult situation. "To shoulder the blame." Again, you see a part of the body is mentioned

  • in each of these idioms. All right?

  • And the last one we have here is: "Jane was in over her head at work."

  • "Jane was in over her head". "To be in over your head" means to have too much responsibility,

  • to have... To have something which is too difficult for you. Maybe you took a course

  • in university and it was just way beyond your ability in mathematics or something else,

  • so you went in over your head; it was too hard for you, too difficult for you. Okay?

  • So: "Jane was in over her head at work." All right?

  • So, one of the things you need to do is you need to know what... How to complete these.

  • Right? How we complete them. So, for example, let's look at them. Try not to look up here.

  • So if I say: what's the expression or what's the idiom?

  • "To face the facts", "To head the team", "To shoulder the blame", "To foot the bill", "To

  • have an eye for" - all right, I already said that - and: "To be in over your head". All

  • right? Let's review what they mean.

  • So which one means that you have an ability to notice something? This one: "to have an

  • eye for something". Good.

  • Which one means that you take responsibility when something goes wrong or you took responsibility

  • because something went wrong? What did you do? You "shouldered the blame". Good. Okay?

  • Which one means to accept that something bad has happened or accept the hard truth? This

  • one: "to face the facts". Very good.

  • What does it mean when we say: "Someone is in over their head"? It means that they've

  • taken on something that's too difficult for them or they have too much of it. Okay?

  • Next one: which one means that you are paying for something? Here: "to foot the bill". Okay?

  • So play with them like that. Sometimes try to guess how they finish, sometimes try to

  • guess the meaning. And, best of all, try to write your own sentences using these business

  • idioms. All right?

  • If you'd like to do a quiz on this, please go to our website: www.engvid.com. All right?

  • There you can also watch lots and lots of other videos. We have more than 500 videos

  • at the moment. So you can improve your English in many ways. Actually, I'm wrong. It's not

  • 500. It's more than 600 videos. Okay? You could also subscribe to my YouTube channel

  • to watch lots of other videos to help you improve your English. All the best with your

  • English. Bye for now.

Hi. My name is Rebecca. In this lesson, we'll focus on six business English idioms.

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