英语单词大师：Sprinkling a Few Prepositions

 AA: I'm Avi Arditti and this week on Wordmaster: more about business communication. We talked a couple of weeks ago about the value of a firm handshake and how it's okay to just say your name and "nice to meet you" when you're introducing yourself. Today, English teacher Nina Weinstein is back to talk about some ways to sound less formal in casual¹ conversation.

NINA WEINSTEIN: "Generally speaking, whenever we have the chance to use a two-word verb, that is kind of an instant way to sound more informal and more natural."AA: "Why don't you give a couple of examples."NINA WEINSTEIN: "'Please stand'; 'please stand up.' 'I'm going to call my friend'; 'I'm going to call up my friend.' 'I'd like to set up a meeting' rather than 'I'd like to arrange a meeting.'"AA: "So 'set up' instead of 'arrange,' 'stand up' instead of just 'stand.' Adding those prepositions² kind of [softens] them a little bit."NINA WEINSTEIN: "Right, it makes it more informal."AA: "Do you have a couple more examples?"NINA WEINSTEIN: "'Get together': 'Let's get together for a meeting this weekend' rather than 'Let's, um ... "AA: "Let's meet this weekend."NINA WEINSTEIN: "Meet, exactly, exactly. And we said, 'let's set up a meeting.' 'I'm tied up next week.'"AA: "As opposed to -- "NINA WEINSTEIN: "Busy."AA: "Yes."NINA WEINSTEIN: "Busy. We have many, many ways to say 'I'm busy': 'I have a lot on my plate,' 'I have a million things to do,' 'I have a ton of paperwork.' So all of these very colorful idioms sound more like a native speaker, more informal and more natural."AA: "Although actually, just going back to the word 'busy' for a second, I mean that doesn't sound too bad if you say 'I'm busy next week.' You could say 'I'm tied up,' but ... "NINA WEINSTEIN: "You can say 'I'm busy' but if that's the only way you can say it, it gets kind of stale³ and it makes your vocabulary sound as if it's pretty limited. So I always tell my students to rotate⁴ among a couple of idioms for these common situations like 'I'm busy.' We can say 'I'm swamped,' 'I have a ton of things to do,' 'I'm buried in paperwork.' So there are a lot of really interesting ways to say that, and because it's such a common situation, we want to know at least a couple of those."AA: "Without, I suppose, sounding too out there in terms of tossing⁵ around these expressions."NINA WEINSTEIN: "Well, these are very common ones and these are ones that other people will use as well. For instance⁶, 'I'm tied up' -- that's much different than 'I'm busy.' There's a connotation that I cannot change whatever it is I'm doing. So if you call a company and you ask for Mister⁷ Jones and they say 'I'm sorry, he's tied up in a meeting,' the connotation of that is that you cannot interrupt him. So you wouldn't say, 'Well, could you please tell him I'm on the line?' You wouldn't say that because 'tied up' tells you that you cannot interrupt him, so it's the appropriate one to use. We don't want to just say 'I'm busy' because then it doesn't give the whole story."AA: So we've talked about handshakes and sounding more natural. But as English teacher Nina Weinstein points out, there's something else traditionally important when talking to Americans -- that is, making eye contact.

CUT 2: WEINSTEIN/ARDITTI :25NINA WEINSTEIN: "In some cultures it's not considered polite to look in the person's eyes when they're talking to you. But in our culture, if you don't make eye contact and look at their eyes when they're talking, the speaker might feel that you're bored or you're not listening. And so this is really important. Or, in business, they might not feel like you're telling the truth."AA: "If you're looking away."NINA WEINSTEIN: "If you're looking away. Exactly."AA: Nina Weinstein comes to us from the VOA bureau⁸ in Los Angeles. She has an English-teaching business and writes books that you can find online through Amazon and other sites. You can find her previous Wordmaster segments⁹, including her advice about shaking hands, at our Web site, voanews.com/wordmaster. And that's all for this week. Our e-mail address is [email protected]. I'm Avi Arditti.

MUSIC: "Shake Hands With Your Uncle Max"/Allan Sherman

1 casual   

adj.漠不关心，冷漠的；随便的，非正式的；偶然的，碰巧的

参考例句：

• He earns a living by casual labour.他靠做临时工为生。
• The guests wore casual clothes.客人们穿着便服。

2 prepositions   

n.介词( preposition的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• She lays a lot of emphasis on the usage of prepositions. 她把重点放在介词的使用上。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Prepositions and conjunctions are particles. 介词和连词是小品词。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 stale   

adj.因陈旧而乏味的，过时的；没有新意的

参考例句：

• The room smelled musty and stale.这个房间闻起来有股发霉的陈味儿。
• The bread is too stale to eat.面包太陈不能吃了。

4 rotate   

v.（使）旋转，转动；使轮流

参考例句：

• The doctor asked the patient to rotate his eyes.医生叫病人转动一下眼球。
• You can rotate the wheel with your hand.你可以用手转动轮子。

5 tossing   

v.（轻轻或漫不经心地）扔( toss的现在分词 )；（使）摇荡；摇匀；（为…）掷硬币决定

参考例句：

• Poor Joan has been tossing around all night with that fever. 可怜的琼因发烧而一整夜辗转不能入睡。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The two boys agreed to decide the matter by tossing a coin. 这两个孩子同意用掷硬币的方法来决定这件事。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

6 instance   

n.例，例证，实例

参考例句：

• Can you quote me a recent instance?你能给我举一个最近的例子吗？
• He's a greedy boy,yesterday,for instance,he ate all our biscuits!他是个贪吃的孩子――比如，他昨天把我们的饼干都吃了！

7 mister   

n.(略作Mr.全称很少用于书面)先生

参考例句：

• Mister Smith is my good friend.史密斯先生是我的好朋友。
• He styled himself " Mister Clean ".他自称是“清廉先生”。

8 bureau   

n.提供或收集消息的机构；局，司，处；署

参考例句：

• The weather bureau makes daily reports on weather conditions.气象局每天报告天气状况。
• The Tourist Bureau arranged everything for our journey to Rome.旅游局已为我们去罗马旅行准备了一切。

9 segments   

部分( segment的名词复数 )； 瓣； [计算机]（字符等的）分段； [动物学]节片

参考例句：

• He is eating oranges in segments. 他正在一瓣瓣地吃橘子。
• Gene cloning provides a means of purifying and propagating specific DNA segments. 基因克隆化提供了一种纯化和扩增特定DNA片段的方法。