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Hello again everyone. I hope you are all doing well during this difficult time of the coronavirus pandemic. I hope that we can all get through this stronger and more united than before.

Anyway, for today’s blog entry, I want to teach you an idiom I was recently explaining to some of my students: to get back on one’s feet. We use this expression when we want to talk about a person, or possibly a company, which has experienced a difficult situation financially: “to get back on one’s feet” is used to indicate the recovery from that bad situation. Let me give you some examples.

My friend just went bankrupt. I hope he gets back on his feet soon.

My sister helped me get back on my feet after I lost my job.

My company is losing a lot of money now. I don’t know if we’ll be able to get back on our feet or not.

In order to understand this expression, you can imagine a person who has fallen down. When they have gotten up and are standing on their feet again, we feel they have recovered.

As I mentioned before, we usually use this to talk about money or financial problems, but it’s possible to use it to talk about other problems, if they are serious ones. For example, you might use it to talk about a person who has been emotionally devastated by a divorce, or something like that.

During this difficult time, many people are being affected financially, so it is my hope that all those people are able to get back on their feet very soon!

… continue reading this entry.

Hello everyone!

This is my first blog entry for a very long time. I’ve been very busy working on another project which, I’m happy to report, is now finished! This project is a novel which is called A Murder in a Class by Itself. It’s a murder mystery set in an English school, called an eikaiwa in Japanese, in Tokyo. The story is about a Canadian man who is a former police detective who comes to Tokyo to work as an English teacher in an eikaiwa. While he is there, one of his students is murdered, and he is asked to investigate and find out who the killer is.

Because I’ve titled my novel A Murder in a Class by Itself, I want to teach the idiom, in a class by itself, in this blog entry. Basically, this idiom means for something or someone to be of the highest quality. In this case, the word “class” refers to a ranking of quality. For example:

This is the best restaurant in this city. It’s in a class by itself.

In my opinion, the paintings of Renoir are in a class by themselves. No other artist is as good as he was.

As you can see from my second example, we must change “itself” to “themselves” if the subject is plural. We must also change “itself” to “himself” or “herself” if we are talking about a person. For example:

As a science teacher, Mr. Johnson is in a class by himself. I’ve never had a better science teacher than him.

As far as I’m concerned, Sarah McLachlan is in a class by herself as a singer and musician.

So that’s my entry for today. Now that I’m finished my novel I’ll have more time to continue writing this blog.

In my novel’s title, this idiom has a double meaning because it can mean this murder is of the highest quality. However, it also has another meaning because the murder victim’s body is found in a classroom in the school in Tokyo.

If you’re interested in my novel, it’s available on any Amazon site worldwide. You can get it in ebook Kindle format or as a paperback. I think it would be of interest to anyone who wants to visit Japan, has ever thought about teaching English overseas, has ever studied English as a second language or anyone who just loves a good old-fashioned murder mystery.

This is my first blog entry for a while and this time I’d like to teach you another idiom: par for the course. We use this when we want to talk about something happening that we think is usual or typical for a certain situation. In other words, we expect this thing to happen in the situation because it’s happened many times before. Let me give you some examples using this idiom.

At my company, Bill got promoted instead of Mary. Unfortunately, that’s par for the course at my company; the women almost never get promoted.

Don’t expect Nancy to come to the party on time. Being late is par for the course with her.

Working until late at night is par for the course at my office.

Please note that we always put some form of the verb “be” in front of this idiom.

This expression comes from the sport of golf. In golf, “par” is the typical number of strokes it takes to complete one hole or one game. Therefore, the word “course” in this expression is referring to a golf course.

However, the meaning of “par for the course” has been expanded from referring to the typical number of strokes in a game of golf to mean a typical thing to be expected in a situation.

Today I’d like to write about the idiom, to put something “on the back burner”. We use this expression when we want to talk about postponing doing something. The postponement happens usually because we feel the activity is less important than other things we have to do, and therefore it can be delayed. The activity can also be delayed because we feel it’s not possible to do it at the moment. Here are some example sentences using this idiom.

This new project is really important, so I have to put my current project on the back burner for a little while.

My boss wants me to put my research for the ABC project on the back burner because he wants to focus on the XYZ project.

I don’t have much money, so I’m going to put buying a car on the back burner for now.

This expression is often used in business situations, but not always. We sometimes use it to talk about personal plans, such as in my third example.

This expression comes from the idea of cooking something on a stove. In many western countries we have four elements, or burners, on our stoves. The ones closest to us when we’re cooking are the front burners and the ones farthest away are the back burners. If we’re cooking something that is more important we usually use the front burners but if something is less important, or will take longer to cook, it’s often put on the back burner of the stove.

Today, I’d like to write about the idiom “turn over a new leaf”. We use this expression when we want to talk about a person making a major change in their lives as a way of improving themselves and becoming a better person. Here are some examples of how to use it in sentences.

I’ve treated my wife very badly in the past, and now I feel terrible about that. I promise that I’m going to turn over a new leaf.

Bill used to be one of the laziest employees at our company, but he’s turned over a new leaf recently. Now he works so hard!

You never exercise and eat too much junk food! You also smoke and drink too much. If you don’t turn over a new leaf, you’re going to get sick!

I thought this expression referred to a leaf on a tree, but apparently it does not. Instead, it refers to the pages of a book which are sometimes called leaves. Therefore, to “turn over a new leaf” means to turn to a new page in a book. I think the book represents our lives and when we turn the page or “turn over a new leaf” it means we are moving to a new and better place.