So guess what happened this morning? It struck me that I could do a lesson on how to express
your mind. How could you express what you're thinking and all your thoughts in many ways?
Not just by saying, I think we should do this. We've got better ways of expressing our mind
and our thoughts and I'm Michelle and I'm going to help you to express your mind.
So let's see the phrases that we have on the board. The first word we have is strike. When
something strikes you, it comes on to you, it comes in your mind but can we use the word
strike in a sentence? Yes, we can but not as it is. We would use the word struck. So
something struck. Like I said in the beginning of the lesson that it struck me that I can
do a lesson on expressing my mind. This means I had that idea that I could do a lesson on
expressing my mind. So you use struck by saying, struck me that, whatever you would like to
say. So earlier last week I have this niece of mine, whom I pick up from school every
day and one day I was actually very caught up and I could not, I knew that I wouldn't
be able to pick her up from school. So I asked my brother Dan. I thought I'd ask him to pick
her up but then it struck me that he is not the best person to get this job done because
he is always late and he's not a punctual guy. So then I asked my mother, I told her
please go and pick Shelley up from the school. So then it struck me means I had the idea
that I should not ask John to do this, Dan to do this sorry.
Now, let's look at the next phrase that I have and that is occurred. So we use this
phrase as occur to or occurred to. Now this is a phrasal verb because we have a verb and
we have a preposition, right? So you would see that it occurred to me the same way that
you say it struck me, which means that you had an idea. So I was inviting, I was throwing
this party last Saturday and it was my birthday party and I was inviting people and I was
thinking all this while that is someone that I'm missing on, someone I'm missing on. Then
suddenly it occurred to me, that I could invite Sophie as well. That's my very close friend
but I was just missing on her name because I had so many names to write on the list.
So it occurred to me means I suddenly had that idea, to have an idea suddenly
but that's not all with the word occurred. You can also use it negatively. When you cannot
think of something or when something does not come into your mind or you miss on an
idea, you can say, I did it did not occur to me. So I could also say, for example, let's
say, I forgot inviting Sophie. I could say, it didn't occur to me that I could invite
Sophie as well. So means, I could, I did not think of that idea, that I could have invited
my friend Sophie but that's not all. I have a situation for you. So what happened is,
I stay with my roommate and the other day she was not there and I had to leave the home
early. So I took the keys and I went and after a while I got a call when I was having a coffee
and she called me and she told me, hey where are the keys and then I was like I just didn't
remember that I had not kept the keys there and then she was like, you could have left
it under the mat and I said it didn't occur to me that I could have left it under the
mat. So I was pretty foolish there but yeah that's what happened. So I did not have the
idea which means it did not occur to me. So you can use it this way. It didn't occur to
me. Right, so something that I need you to be very careful about. When you're talking
in the positive sense you'd say it occurred to me with the ed right in the past tense
but when you're saying in the negative, we are already using did. So we would not use
the past tense with occur. We would use the present form and we'd say it didn't occur
to me rather than saying it didn't occurred to me which is grammatically wrong. But when
you use it positively you'd say, it occurred to me.
Now let's look at the third phrase that we have with us and that is crossing my mind.
So when something crosses your mind that's when you use this phrase. When you have an
idea that appears or occurs to you. It has a very similar meaning like strike or occur
but you can definitely use it in a very different way. So an idea that when something crosses
your mind. Okay, you could suddenly think of an idea. You know you've never thought
before but you think that okay now I think I can do this. So it's also a sudden idea
that appears to you. A sudden idea that appears to you. Right, so what happened is, remember
I was telling you about my story with my friend, Sophie whom I thought I would invite for the
party but right when it struck me that I should invite her for the party, it crossed my mind
suddenly that she might not want to come because the last time we spoke, we had an argument.
So I just, it crossed my mind that she might not want to come to my party.
Now the next one that we have with us is to spring to the mind. So spring is something
like this okay and it's very unexpected. You don't know when something springs up. It just
comes there like suddenly. So you could use this when you listen to a song. As for me
whenever I listen to Bryan Adams, there's only one song that springs up to my mind and
that is everything I do, I do it for you. That’s my favourite song. So spring to my
mind. It sprung to my mind or it springs to my mind. When you're talking in the present,
you'd say it springs to my mind, right. You can also use this phrase, crossed my mind
negatively, just like occurred to. You could also say, it didn't cross my mind. Like I
would say, it didn't occur to me that I could leave the keys under the mat. You could also
say, it didn't cross my mind that I could leave the keys under the mat.
Now the last one that we have is, flashes across my mind. So flashes, what do you think
you can have a flash of? It's a sudden flash, something that just like there's a flash in
front of your eyes and then you cannot see anything else. All you see is just a white
light and you can see nothing else. The same way when a thought or a memory flashes in
front of your eyes, you can only think about it and nothing else. So this one is used for
more negative experiences. Let's say that an accident, so whenever we think of an accident
that we've had in the past, the memories of the accident flash through our mind. So it's
usually used for negative experiences. So you could say that the memories of the accident
flashed across my mind or flashed through my mind, both would be correct.
Another way of expressing your ideas would be to say that it didn't come to my mind or
it came to my mind but that's a very regular usage. Instead of that, you can use all these
options that I've shared with you. Now we're going to quickly revise all the
options that we have learned to express your mind and the first one that we have is that
something struck you and you would write it in this form it struck me that and it's a
sudden idea that you thought of. The next one that we have is something occurred to
you. This also means that you had a quick and a sudden idea. It occurred to you to invite
so-and-so to your party. The third one that we have is something that crossed your mind.
An idea that crossed your mind while you were doing something else, you thought of something
else. So let's say that you were reading something and it crossed your mind that you left the
tea on the pan, in the pan it was continuously boiling. So you ran to turn off the heat.
The next one that we have is spring to the mind. So an idea that just sprang to your
mind and you can use it like I used it for my favourite song that whenever I think of
Bryan Adams, everything I do I do it for you springs to my mind and you could also use
it like for an actor, for your favourite movie, anything like that. The next one that we have
is any image that flashes through your mind, any bad memory that you've had or any negative
experience that you have had. You could use something that flashes through your memory
and makes you forget everything else and you suddenly feel very gloomy about your experience.
So I hope this lesson was fun for you and now you'd be able to express your mind to
the people around you and you'll have no fears because you have so much vocabulary to express
your mind. This is Michelle signing off. Thank you so much for staying with me in this, lesson
bye-bye.