(Photo: NeONBRAND/Unsplash | Text: David/ArtisanEnglish.jp)
YouTube / iTunes / Spotify / Radio Public / Pocket Casts / Google Podcasts / Breaker / Overcast
Listen to ArtisanEnglish.jp posts & lesson intros here.
Idiom: Off the bat
Right off the bat, let me say that if a person wants to be a great English teacher, they must love the English language.
In my opinion, it is essential to have a love of the ABCs of English (Australian, British, Canadian) and, naturally, American English too.
Not only the standard versions of the different types of English but also the vernacular as well.
We live in an increasingly global world, even though good old Trumpy is trying to change that.
This means that not only should a teacher know the vocabulary, idioms, phrases, expressions etc., from one form of English, but others as well.
English is such a beautiful language because it mixes different cultures, countries and customs.
The idiom off the bat, for example, originates in America and means immediately.
In baseball, first, you have to hit the ball, then you run.
You can’t begin to run before you hit the ball.
The ball needs to bounce off the bat.
Then you can run.
Pausing to see where the ball goes is simply a waste of time, so you run as soon as the ball is off the bat.
The wonderful thing is that you understand the idiom whether you play baseball or not if you speak English.
The Kiwis, Brits, Aussies, or Canucks all get it.
No teacher will know every single English expression right off the bat upon graduation from university, no matter what they study.
As the years go by and their career matures, they accumulate knowledge.
The same goes for English language students.
Attaining a high score on TOEIC doesn’t mean right off the bat you know everything, but you have a solid base on which to accumulate more knowledge.
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 68.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.