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Idiom: Go off on a tangent
Frequently, at ArtisanEnglish.jp, students and I go off on a tangent.
This does not mean that we take a trip together; it means that we talk about something unrelated to the matter at hand.
Go off on a tangent means to begin talking about something that is not related to the original topic of your conversation.
For example, the topic for discussion may be Japanese toilets, but somehow we go off on a tangent and start talking about Japanese washing machines instead.
Although the conversation may be interesting, we have gone off on a tangent and are not talking about the task at hand.
Don’t get me wrong.
This is perfectly fine.
A private language lesson should be centred on the student’s wants and needs.
If a student wants to talk about washing machines, I can do that.
Perhaps they’re a washing machine salesperson, or maybe they’re in the market for a washing machine.
Learning is never wasted, and there’s more than one way to use any word that we learn.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 69.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.
