Idioms

[OrY249]

Hi guys,

I have bought your self-study toolkit and i have two questions regarding the idioms chapter in the sentence correction strategy guide:

1. Do you recommend to learn (that is to memorize) the correct idioms as well as the wrong ones?

2. What should i learn from the list actually? I mean i would like to memorize the idioms but i don't understand what exactly should i memorize from the examples. Should i learn the specific "role", that is part of speech, of each words in the examples? Unfortunately i do not understand what should i memorize from the examples:

lets take the word ABILITY for example. Correct usage: I value my ABILITY TO SING. Wrong usage: I value the ABILITY FOR me TO SING. What should i learn from these examples? Should i conclude that the word "ALLOW" always take the construction of ABILITY + INFINITIVE and that the construction ABILITY + FOR + X + INFINITIVE are always wrong? In other words, should i focus on the "naked" part of speech in the examples (infinitive, prepositions, verbing, verbed, etc) in order to learn the right and the wrong patterns? If the answer is positive, i don't understand what should i learn from this one - BOTH....AND. Correct usage: She was interested BOTH in plants AND in animals; She was interested in BOTH plants AND animals. In both examples you capitalized the same two words - both and and - so it's not clear what should i learn from that (It seems that the "in" supposed to be capitalized as well). Or what about the word CAN. Correct usage: The manager CAN RUN the plant; The plant CAN CAUSE damage. What should i learn from that? sorry for the bunch of examples. I just tried to express the problem and to make my question as clear as possible (and i'm not native, so my English isn't perfect ) Those are just three examples from the book but i face the same question/problem with many others.

Thanks in advance!

[StaceyKoprince]

Your English is very good.

The book contains both a main idioms chapter, which contains the most common idioms, and an appendix of (hundreds of) other idioms.

Idioms are special (and frustrating) in that they don't follow more broadly applicable "rules". They are literally just meant to be memorized as they are, in the structure shown. So yes, for example, ABILITY is always paired with TO DO (something) where the TO DO is the infinitive form of a verb. Don't say ABILITY FOR DOING (something) or ABILITY FOR someone TO DO something—those are both always wrong.

The capitalized words are the words that "go together"—for instance, you always say BOTH x AND y. You don't say BOTH x TO y or BOTH x FROM y.

Now, from a test strategy standpoint: It is rare that you are forced to rely on an idiom to decide. Usually, the answer choices will also have other, non-idiom issues that you can use. So, if you are not a native speaker, then it's usually easier to study those other things because there are literally thousands of idioms in any language.

It is a good idea to memorize the correct idioms in the main chapter, because they are very common in the language—we have narrowed down that list for you and it's good even for general writing / communication outside of the GMAT.

Do not, though, memorize all of the idioms in the appendix (there are way too many, and these are only a subset of the thousands of idioms in the language!). Instead, treat the appendix as a reference: If you make a mistake and the solution said that thing was an idiom, and you are really annoyed and want to know more about the correct form, look to see whether the idiom is listed in the appendix so that you can learn the correct form. But, mostly, just try to avoid having to decide based on idioms in the first place (unless you really know that idiom).

If you see an idiom (or anything else!) on the test that you don't know how to handle, ignore it. Look for something else. When you've dealt with everything that you know how to deal with, choose an answer from among the remaining answers and move on.

[OrY249]

Thank you very much Stacey. Appreciate you in-depth answer

So just one more question in this regard: What's the point in learning bunch of correct idioms if there is a bunch of other - less familiar - idioms that it is impossible (almost) to learn? lets assume that i have learned all the correct idioms in the Manhattan strategy guide. Even than i'll not be able to eliminate choices on idioms grounds (even if one of the idiom i'm familiar with will appear) because i'm not familiar with all the idioms in the world. in other words, even if i'm familiar with certain amount of idioms, and even if some of them will appear on the screen, i will not be able to pick the answer/s that use/s the "correct" idioms, because there is a lot of other correct idioms that i'm not familiar with. So maybe it's worth to learn just the wrong versions?

[StaceyKoprince]

There are an infinite number of ways that you could have wrong versions, though. It's like: if the correct answer is 3, then there are an infinite number of numbers that are incorrect.

In general, you can't learn absolutely every last possible thing for every possible subject area on this test, right? So think of idioms as just an extension of this idea: I'm going to learn the stuff that's most likely to be tested. I'm not going to worry about stuff that is not very likely to be tested. Sure, if I get something wrong, I might be curious sometimes and look up the right way—but then I'm still going to decide sometimes that I'm not going to bother to learn the right way because it will be too much effort for too little chance of payoff. Low ROI, basically—business decision!

For idioms, that means knowing the stuff in the main chapter but not really worrying about the stuff in the appendix, unless you see one that's driving you crazy and you do want to look that specific one up.