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Hi everyone, it’s Caroline here and I teach English on Italki. Today I am going to be talking about business idioms or idioms you might hear in your office or in your workplace.

A student asked me a really good question the other day. He asked me whether because I’m a native English speaker, do I know every single idiom. And the answer is, no.

Idioms are phrases or expressions that come from a particular place, or a particular age group. So idioms are different in The UK to idioms in The United States. I have chosen five business idioms to talk to you about today and you may hear them in an office in The UK or in The States, so hopefully they will be super useful for you.

Idiom number one is, the big picture. Imagine you go into a meeting and your boss says to you, you’ve lost sight of the big picture. What does that mean? That means that you are thinking too much about the small details of the project and you are so interested in those little details that you don’t remember what it is you’re trying to achieve. So always keep sight of the big picture.

The second idiom is to go the extra mile. Now, imagine you’re in an interview and the interviewer says to you that they are looking for someone who always goes the extra mile. What does that mean, does it mean they want you to run around the office every day? No. It means that they want you to do more than just what is in the job description. They want you to go that little bit further and to take on extra responsibilities. That is, going the extra mile.

The third idiom is a win win situation. A win win situation means everybody gains something. A really good example of this is these videos that I’m making for Italki. Italki gains some content for their website, some lessons for their learners and I have a platform where students can see me and book lessons with me. It’s a win win, Italki wins and Caroline wins.

The forth idiom is word of mouth. So an example of this is, think about how you found out about Italki. Did you find Italki by searching on google or did you find Italki because one of your friends recommended it to you? Recommendations from friends are word of mouth. It can be positive or it can be negative. If your company gets bad word of mouth it is going to be a very difficult time for your company, because people really listen to the opinions of their friends.

The fifth and final business idiom is to touch base. My manager used to say this to me a lot. To touch base means to have a very quick and short meeting about a project or something you are working on. It might only be five minutes of your time, but in that time you will check that your understanding of the project is the same as your managers understanding of the project. So I have a challenge for you.

In your next lesson, I want you to ask your teacher if you can touch base about what you have learnt in your lessons so far. This could be five minutes at the end of the lesson, where you review all of the different subjects that you have been studying. You’re touching base about the things you have covered so far.

Thank you so much for watching this video. Don’t forget to subscribe to Italki by clicking, somewhere… and you can take a lesson with me by clicking on my teacher profile in the description box. Have a good day everyone. Bye.

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