Learning English: Twenglish, Tweets..and teeth!

After having two wisdom teeth taken out this week (did you hear my screams on Václavské náměstí on Monday?), today’s topic is everything teeth and Twitter! Below Get Into Twenglish presents a different way to learn English vocabulary.

A new way you can learn English and interact with the language, especially its vocabulary, is to use Twitter as your very own learning resource and search engine of authentic conversational English! If you don’t know Twitter, it’s a great example of living breathing natural English, in a written form but the register is very much spoken.

How does it work?

There’s a box on the Twitter home page where you can search for something or someone that interests you (eg your favourite film, celebrities such as Charlie Sheen and Kelly Brook and so on). Instead of searching for a particular person or thing, as English detectives we’re going to search for today’s Words of the Day: tooth and teeth.

How does this help with my English?

English is a lexically-rich language. When you type in a key word, it will give you a whole list of all the Tweets which have used this word or phrase from all over the planet!

After you click the search button, you then see is a whole collection of Tweets which include the key word(s) usually within a particular context AND the word or words which are associated with it. These are often called collocations.

Collocations are words which are commonly found next to each other or words which have a strong relationship with each other. For example, if I type in the word ‘homework’, it gives me the following examples:
– I still don’t do my homework!
– Yet I know one thing for sure: I’ll be up late tonight doing homework.

So from these two examples above we can see the verb ‘DO’ collocates with ‘homework’ [not ‘make’].

Collocations with ‘tooth’ and ‘teeth’

Here is a small sample of some expressions you can find on this week’s ‘tooth’ theme. Two questions for you:

• What collocations can you find below with ‘tooth’ and ‘teeth’?

• Can you guess their meaning?

@antiSerphres

We should have a way of telling people their breath stinks without hurting their feelings like: “Well I’m bored, let’s go brush our teeth“.

@npsilverarrow

The dentist has cleaned my teeth. Tara said I was very well behaved.

@Trace_Cook

well I have been working really hard! Should have been a dentist, it’s like pulling teeth here!

@Ducce67 Jeffrey Mitchell

You have 2 options when your wife asks you what you think about what she is wearing. 1) Lie thru your teeth 2) Run like the wind

@prsarahevans

Little boy in restaurant I was just in lost his tooth. Started screaming, “TOOTH FAIRY IS COMING!!!” Hilarious.

@GillyCraigie

She’s too long in the tooth to be so tediously, predictably “rebelious”. Are we talking about the designer, the clothes or her?

@thenameislee

Damn, I’m on a diet. I need to ignore my sweet tooth.

@malars

Wow, the #Magic have to fight tooth and nail to avoid getting swept by the #Kings ! This team is not championship caliber whatsoever …

@MsBlackBella

this wisdom tooth is ruining my life….

@NaeThyLeader

This little girl has one front tooth. Is that even possible? :-/

How did you go?

Here are the verbs which go with ‘teeth’ from the sample above:

brush, clean, pull | TEETH

Idioms
to lie through your teeth
be like pulling teeth

You can also ‘pull out’ a tooth. ‘To pull teeth’ is more literal, but when you use the phrase “it’s like pulling teeth” the meaning is idiomatic (more on this in the worksheet below).

With TOOTH you can add:

wisdom, front | tooth

Then there’s the Tooth Fairy 🙂

And also the more idiomatic:

to fight tooth and nail
(to have) a sweet tooth

Still not sure? Download this free worksheet here to practise! And keep your fingers crossed for me for my next visit to the dentist 🙂

Level: B2+
Title: It’s Like Pulling Teeth! (with answers)



nb If for some reason the link doesn’t work, try it here:
It’s like pulling teeth!

If you liked this post please share it with your friends, and even your frenemies ; )

Further reading
Get Into English Who learns most effectively: Pavel, Lucka or Simona?

David Sweetnam
Engage s.r.o.

Learn English in Prague with me:
david (at) engage.cz
Skype: engageprague
Twitter @GetIntoEnglish
Get Into English on Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/6hyzo37