Episode 36 - Idioms: ABC's of Friendship

ESL in Ho Chi Minh City

I’m pretty sure any of us here whether a native speaker or English language learners have learnt the English alphabet. We have a variety of songs to teach ABC to children in general and adults in some cases. In order for learners to memorize the pronunciation of these letters, we, educators associate them with things around us. For example A is for apple, juicy and sweet; B is for books with new things to learn, it’s neat. These lyrics were written and the song was composed by Golden Books for nursery kids. Today we are learning how to make ABC of friendship. If you have a close friend or even a best friend and his/ her birthday is coming up, why not make something original to express your feelings? Anyway, we don’t need a special occasion to show how grateful we are to our friends or how wonderful they are. Why don’t you drop them a line or “26 lines” to let them know? I believe everyone can be creative if they are guided enough. Even if you are not a poet at birth, it’s the thought that counts. Do your best, and who knows, you may even be a poet and not even know it. How many letters are there in the English alphabet? I’m sure you will say 26. This is how you are going to do it. You write 26 letters down on a sheet of paper, double spaced. You need to think of any verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs or prepositions that start with the letter intended. Let’s take G for instance. An adjective that starts with G is good. A noun that begins with G is gift Give is a verb that commences with G. Then you have to make a sentence using the above words to talk about your friend, his/ her appearance, attitude, memories between you, your friendship, how lucky you are to have him/ her as a friend. A typical sentence will go like this G is for gift. You are a gift from God. G stands for give and take. You have given me more than taken from me. G represents good. You’re too good to be true. Then you repeat the process for the rest of the letters. Our examples: the answer to one’s prayers look on the bright side as cool as a cucumber down to earth open one’s eyes fair-weather friend have a heart of gold A trouble shared is a trouble halved have one’s best interest at heart take a joke one of a kind laugh at make one’s day call sb names one in a million pull my leg beyond question read me like a book a shoulder to cry on take the heat get under my skin in vain wish someone well of the year zoom out of