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Phrase: Tricks of the Trade
Ever notice how you try to do something, but it seems impossible?
Then, a professional comes along and makes it look easy.
That’s because the pro knows the tricks of the trade – and you don’t.
Tricks of the trade are little tidbits of experienced people’s knowledge that others don’t have.
They’re acquired through experience.
BBQ season is coming up fast. That means good times and dirty BBQ grills.
Now, you could use a wire brush to clean a grill, but it makes a lot of mess.
What I recommend doing is this.
Get your grill nice and hot to burn off most of the mess.
Then, cut an onion in half.
Stick one of those long BBQ forks into the rounded end and rub the flat side on the hot grill.
There’s acid or something in the onion which will clean it for you.
Isn’t that clever?
Tricks of the trade are tidbits of knowledge experienced people have that others don’t.
You usually acquire them through experience and listening to others.
I taught as an ALT (Assistant Language Teacher) in a Japanese high school for six years.
Class sizes in Japan are large.
On average, there are forty students per class.
Needless to say, the students could get pretty restless, and things can get out of hand quickly.
I had two strategies to deal with unruly classes.
One was to speak in a hushed voice.
If I started whispering, the students would become interested in what I was trying to say.
My second trick of the trade was coming up with instant nicknames.
If a student were noisy, I’d give them an instant nickname such as negibosu for a tall boy with closely cropped hair or yakamashi chan for a boisterous girl.
Because students didn’t know who I was talking to, they would turn around, face the front of the class and stop talking.
They paid attention to see to whom I was referring.
I became the centre of attention and regained control of the classroom.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 6th-grade education (age 11).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 81.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.