Saturday, October 26, 2013

CRACK OPEN - Easy English Expression

Hello everyone. How are you today? What's the weather like in your country today? Is it hot? So if it's hot, just crack open the windows and it might help you.

Bài học hôm nay của chúng ta về một cụm động từ: "CRACK OPEN". Nó có nghĩa là nứt nẻ, rạn nứt ra, nhưng nó cũng có thể được dùng với ý nghĩa là: MỞ cái gì đó RA (chỉ hé mở một chút thôi). Để có thể ghi nhớ cụm động từ này, bạn có thể lấy ví dụ cho nó.

Hãy ghé thăm kênh YouTube bài học E-cubed của thầy Shane để có thể học thêm nhiều bài học thú vị:
http://www.youtube.com/user/DailyEasyEnglish

E-cubed 291: to crack open - nứt ra, mở ra
by Coach Shane

Transcript:
Hello everybody. Welcome back to E-cubed. Today we have a very useful phrasal verb: to CRACK open. So if you look in a dictionary, and you look up the word “crack”,a crack is gonna be like where the wall is broken, where something is broken, it’s starting to break. This is a picture of crack.


So, if we saw a wall which looks like that. We could say, “Oh my god, the wall is cracking open.” Or if there’s an earthquake, we could say, “The earth is cracking open.” However, we also use this expression to open something, especially just a little bit. For example, open a window - crack open a window. And another great example would be something electronics like a remote control. So it’s hard to open a remote control. But if you look on the side, you can see there’s this line. And if we take a knife, we could crack it open. We could crack it open and look inside. 

When I was a child, I love to crack open electronics like VCRs, and stereos, and radios. The problem was I could never put them back together, so I broke many things. And my dad was very angry every time I did that. To crack open, it’s a useful verb. Let’s listen to the dialog.

Who's smoking in there?
Me. 
Crack open the window, dirty man.
Sorry~


Yes. One of the worst places to smoke is in the bathroom because the smoke smells bad, and it combines with other smells ~ disgusting. That’s why I live alone. I can smoke in my bathroom every day with the window closed and the door closed. I open the door, and the air ~ ~ it’s really bad. Never come to my house. It’s not that bad. But seriously, if you’re smoking in a small space crack open the window. 

And another great example, if you’re driving, and your friend is next to you, and your stomach feels uncomfortable crack open the window and then * * * “Sorry!” (Continue driving). That was the true friend would do. So crack open a window. If it’s too hot, crack open a window. If it’s too cold, uncrack the window, close the window. Yeah, there’s no opposite, crack open the window, close the window. Got it? It’s a great expression. See you tomorrow.