While it’s okay to get attention and to do a research. Think about it, how much will
you impress your English teacher if you rather say ‘carry out a research and pay attention’?
Think about it. So if you want to impress your English teacher then stay tuned in this
lesson with me, my name is Michelle and in this lesson I’m gonna help you choose a
better verb for most of the nouns that you know. Right so, let’s do away with the boring
‘get’, ‘make’, ‘have’, and ‘start’ and let’s get on to the right of learning
better verbs.
So the first one that we have with us is to ‘do a crime’. Well you might be saying
it, okay, don’t worry. It’s not wrong English. It’s okay to do a crime, that’s
correct English. But a better verb for crime would be “to commit a crime” okay, rather
than ‘doing a crime’. So you would say, ‘to commit a crime’. Right, and if you
want to use it in a sentence you could say that, ‘John didn’t think he was committing
a crime when he hit Ricky on the head.’ Right? So this is how you can use it, okay?
It’s a much better combination of a noun and a verb and obviously you would know that
commit is a verb and crime is the noun. So this is how you can use a verb and a noun
combination to sound much more natural and much more interesting.
Let’s look at the next one, ‘say jokes’. Do you know someone who tells really poor
jokes? Okay, did you hear me carefully? Do you know someone who tells really poor jokes?
Did I say, ‘say jokes’? No, I said someone who ‘tells’ poor jokes. Okay so you do
not ‘say jokes’, you ‘tell jokes’. Or you ‘crack jokes’. So if you know someone
who tells really poor jokes, you could tell that person, ‘hey buddy, you crack really
poor jokes’. Or you tell really poor jokes, I think you should start to crack better jokes.
All right so another noun, okay? Noun that you can use with the verb ‘tell’ is ‘lies’.
Yes we often tell lies, we do not ‘say lies’, we ‘tell lies’. Of course we all do, now
don’t act so sincere and nice like you don’t tell any lies, so ‘tell lies’ or ‘tell
jokes’ or possibly ‘crack jokes’.
Great! Now let’s look at the next one that we have, and this is to ‘get courage’.
Okay, now this is not wrong, do not worry, its fine to get courage and be more courageous
and it’s awesome to be more courageous. But the point is here we are talking about
a better verb, isn’t it? So why don’t we say, ‘pluck up courage’ instead of
saying ‘get courage’? Doesn’t that sound more interesting? To ‘pluck up courage’,
okay? And if you want to use it in a sentence you could say, ‘Ross finally plucked up
the courage to ask her to marry him’. This means he got the courage to ask her to marry
him. So you are actually saying the same thing with a better verb and noun combination, all
right?
Okay so the next one that we have is, to ‘give attention’. I’m sure you are giving attention
to this lesson but it would much better if you ‘pay attention’ to me, okay? So you
‘pay attention’ and you also ‘give attention’ but it’s much better to ‘pay attention’
rather than ‘giving attention’. So ‘pay attention’. Yes, pay attention and jot down
everything that I’m telling you because these are some really good advice for you.
Okay so you could also say ‘pay attention’ another noun that you can use with ‘pay’
is ‘compliments’, you also pay compliments. It’s quite boring to ‘give compliments’,
it’s better to say, ‘paying compliments’. So you could say that, ‘she paid me a compliment
yesterday’, okay?
Now let’s look at the next one that we have, ‘caused protest’. Okay, to ‘cause protest’
means to lead to protest. Okay when there is a reason when something leads to a protest.
So what about food shortages? Do you think they lead to protest? Yes! So recently read
this headline where it was written that, ‘the food shortages in the city triggered protest’,
isn’t that awesome? Instead of saying caused protest the newspaper headline said the recent
food shortages have triggered protest, which means they have led to protests. Okay, so
we can say ‘triggered protest’ instead of saying ‘caused protest’.
Now let’s look at the next one, yes you can definitely ‘cause interest’ in something,
okay? But it’s better to say ‘generate interest’, all right? So if you want to
use it in a sentence you could say, ‘you need to think of new ideas to ‘generate
interest’ in your products’, all right? So ‘generate interest’. You could also
say ‘generate ideas’. You need to generate new ideas to get people more interested in
your lessons. Oops I hope that’s not true for me? I think I have enough new ideas for
you to keep interested.
Okay, let’s look at the next one that we have, to ‘get injuries’. Yeah we often
use to ‘get injuries’ but it’s much better to say, ‘sustain injuries’. Okay,
and if you want to talk about someone who got injured, you would say that, ‘Tom sustained
severe injuries in the accident’, okay? Which means to experience injuries or to get
injuries.
All right, now the next one that we have is to ‘keep a job’. Okay now ‘there are
some people, who are very bad at keeping a job’. But what does it mean to ‘keep a
job’? So to keep a job means to ‘get hold of a job’ or ‘to hold a job down’, which
means not to hop from one job to another. So there are so many people who cannot just
work in the same place for a very long time, they keep hopping from one job to another.
And if you want to tell them something you could say, ‘hold a job down’ instead of
saying ‘keep a job’. So you could say that, ‘you just cannot hold a job down’,
which means that you cannot work at the same place for a very long time period.
Great! Now we come to the next one which is to ‘start a conversation’. Okay we really
need to do away with starting something, okay? Let's stop ‘starting a conversation’ and
let's start ‘striking a conversation’ which is so much more interesting. So we can
say ‘strike a conversation’. And if you want to use it in a sentence you could say,
‘Anna struck a conversation with a girl at the restaurant’, okay? Which means that
she started a conversation but it's much better to strike a conversation rather than to say
start a conversation which is pretty boring and will surely not impress your English teacher.
Okay with that we moved to the last two. Okay now I want you to pay some attention okay
and listen to me carefully, all the combinations that we have used here are verb and noun combinations
okay which means that the verb comes first and the noun comes second like this one ‘strike’
which is a verb and ‘conversation’ which is a noun and this is true for all of these
okay you can check that for yourself. In the next two that we have ‘first comes the noun’
and ‘then comes the verb’. So these are different ways of combining verbs and nouns
together. So here comes the ‘noun + verb’. Okay so let's look at the first one, ‘fire
started’. Yes fire does start but fire also ‘breaks out’ which means that it starts.
So ‘broke out’ if you're talking in the past and ‘breaks out’ if you're talking
in the present and if you want to use it in a sentence you could say, ‘the fire broke
out in the middle of the city’. So here fire is the noun and broke out is the verb.
There's another thing which breaks out you might have heard in the news it's a war okay
a war often breaks out rather than starting. So you could say that a war broke out between
the two countries, all right?
Okay with that we come to the last one and that is a ‘gamble succeeded’. So gamble
is a huge, huge risk, okay? It's a game where you put all your money at stake in order to
win more money, okay? But in real life gamble means that when you invest something in order
to gain something, okay? So it's a huge risk sometimes you might lose all that you have
invested but in other cases you don't lose and you win something in return, something
even larger than what you have invested. In that case the gamble succeeds. Okay but there's
a better way of saying this instead of saying ‘gamble succeeded’ you can say, ‘gamble
paid off’. So my friend started a new business, all right? So when she started the business
I thought she was getting into a huge risk but ultimately the business succeeded and
I told her, ‘lady your gamble paid off’, which means that your risk was not a risk
you actually succeeded in it.
Awesome, so with this we come to an end is this lesson where we have learned awesome
‘verb and noun’ and ‘noun and verb’ combinations. Now you know which verb to choose.
So reap the benefit and win the praise of your fluent English. Come back for more lessons
with me this is Michelle signing off bye-bye.