Time has come for us to take a step further. After 8 issues of a newsletter, When life gives you lemons becomes a blog. Every week we will be looking at some English content to check some new vocabulary and expressions.

What’s new

We are now in Phase 2, this means we can finally get our of our households a little more than we used to. During this lockdown, we had to change our habits and get used to spaces in a new way. Probably even the biggest houses were prisons, guess what happened in tiny apartments. So here it is, the subheading of when life gives you lemons (WLGYL) is make space. Make space literally means ‘to make some space available.’ During this lockdown I have been constantly looking for space – it was never enough. And now we are in phase 2 AKA ‘meet but stay apart’: put space between you and other people. When I could finally meet with my closest relatives (the famous ‘congiunti’) I couldn’t help noticing how it was not so different from before, we were just the same people taking more space.

I believe the time we have spent in our households has allowed us to grow space around ourselves and made feel how we need more space: we are worth space, we need room to show who we really are, room to grow. It is not always easy to make room for yourself, even more when it comes to using it to improve your skills.

So, here is the deal: I want you to have your space to grow. I want to give you space. Yes, you, reader. This is your space, and we will talk about what you like. I want you to send me videos and articles in English to discuss together, and for me to post and comment. Or maybe you want to comment them. I’ll be glad to have it either way. For example, today’s content was sent to me by a reader of the newsletter and hopefully also of the blog. Here we go.

The Word Collector

Two days ago, Michelle and Barack Obama posted a video of a book the read, The Word Collector by Peter H. Reynolds.

This book is actually meant for kids, but it is full of interesting words and expressions if you are learning or improving your English. It helps you also with pronounciation, as Michelle and Barack speak slowly and clearly and .

Let’s see what interesting examples and expressions you can find:

• the more …. the more …
• a superlative: the ….. est

• a word that means ‘really beautiful’

• a verb that means ‘to fall accidentally’ like on a banana peel

• a word that is written quite like in Italian but is pronounced in a very different way
• a verb to say that something is mixed in a confused way

Did you find them?

And you? What do you collect?

Leave a comment to say what words and expressions you have found.