Phil's English Lessons

I'd like to share with you my favorite Christmas Carole, "O Holy Night". I may not have the greatest voice but I think I heard a phrase “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord.” Oh holy night! The stars are brightly shining, It is the night of our dear Saviour's birth. Long lay the world in sin and error pining, Till He appear'd and the soul felt its worth. A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices, For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn. Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angels' voices! Oh night divine, Oh night when Christ was born; Oh night divine, Oh night, Oh night Divine.

My Hands Are Tied Welcome to Phil’s English, your free source of explanation of idioms used by native English speakers. This episode is brought to you by my premium English language podcast, “Idioms of Business and Technology”. This is more than just idioms but also includes tutorials and explanations of business and technology concepts. For example, what’s a supply chain? What is the difference between price and cost? What’s scalability? Reliability? Flexibility? Maintainability? So if you’re a regular listener to this podcast, I’m sure you’ll also benefit from this more focused podcast on English used in the business world or technology settings. I’m running a Christmas special. Only $1.99 per month, $9.99 simiannually, or only $15.99 per year. That’s only 30 cents per week! Go to http://premiumenglish.podbean.com/premium-signup to sign up. The idiom for this episode is “my hands are tied.” To understand it, put yourself in this situation. Suppose you work in a big organization and you fi

If you have not heard the English language idiom "road warrior" before let me explain. A road warrior is a person who travels extensively and usually this means business travel. I believe I met the definition of a road warrior in 2007. I made six trips to China; probably 16 or more trips to Raleigh, North Carolina; 2 trips to California; two trips to Atlanta; and one trip to Seattle. This kind of working lifestyle is particularly common among marketing professionals that sell expensive products and services to major corporations, executives with oversight of many different geographic locations, or any many kinds of management or technology consultants. Being a road warrior has its positive and negative aspects. • On the positive side, just being one usually implies that your employer has a lot of trust in your abilities. This usually translates into more responsibility and higher compensation. Hotels, car rental companies, and airlines all treat you as their favorite customer. It is common to get a

Hi and welcome to Phil's English podcast where I try to help you understand English better. In particular, I hope to help you understand the idioms native speakers commonly use. Today's new idiom is "You've got to roll with the punches." The meaning of this idiom is to accept minor setbacks and continue towards your goal. It means to minimize the pain of adverse actions by an opponent or by a competitor. You must continue competing. You must try to win next time. I believe the origin comes from the sport of boxing in which one fighter rolls his head away from his opponent's punch to minimize the damage of the impact. How would you use this idiom in the business world? For example, after a salesman has lost a big sale, a co-worker might say to him "That's just the way it is in this cut-throat business. You have to roll with the punches!" This is a way of telling his co-worker to forget about losing that sale and to go out and just keep trying to win more business. I hope you have enjoyed this idiom

I got this question in an email from one of my new friends in China who says she is not a Christian but has been attending church and feels at peace there. "I really got puzzled when I faced the two things "Anglo-Catholic"&"Catholic "&"Christian".Would you do me a favor to differentiate them ,or give me some advice about how to distinguish them?" Only about one week earlier, I had a young Chinese woman ask me "Do you think Catholics worship the same God?" I deduced from these two questions that there are a lot of questions about the various churches and denominations in the minds of the Chinese who are just now taking a look at the Christian faith. Here is my feeble attempt to explain: Christian - All those who believe Jesus is God's Son and that Jesus paid the price for our sin by dying on the cross for us. There are two major types of Christians; Catholics and Protestants. Catholics are Christians organized as the Roman Catholic Church. These Christians generally accept the authority of the Pope