The Australian parliament is proposing to ban children under 16 from accessing social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok.
I seriously doubt it’s achivable. We’ve all seen how the land lies here; how the entire population from the old to the young, from men to women, bury their heads in TikTok whenever they have a few seconds to spare. People are vegetating on their TikTok screen when they work, walk and drive, when they talk, eat, or do their business in the toilet. Can such grued-to-DNA addiction be rid of? Dollars to doughnuts the Australian policians’ ambition will most likely prove a wild-goose chase.
I am an outlier on this score, though. Removing apps like TikTok is the first thing I do whenever I have bought myself a new Android phone.
这是重点中学或雅思托福培训班教的吗？ 用这么多成语/idioms?
这些idioms大部分我都没遇到过，只知道wild goose chase。但查了之后，你的使用好像都不是很准确？ 比如Dollars to doughnuts后面好像不应该接most likely。比如wild goose chase好像是指追寻某东西，但不能用来指chasing a goal，好像是指追寻某件具体的事物？ how the land lies, on this score 也许你的用法是正确的，但我感觉和词典的例句用法不完全一样。
Indeed. It should’ve been “achievable”. The post was written in a hurry without proofreading as I was listening to the BBC Global News at the same time.
Believe me, these are all very common ones. When I wrote it, they just came up naturally.
You are right, “dollars to doughnuts” and “most likely” is a bit of a tautology. My sloppiness.
I posted it because I realised how big a gap there is between WeChat Translate and other Translation services out there. I hope the WeChat staff will soon learn about this. Or someone kind enough to forward this discussion to them; that’d be even better.
very common的idioms不一定会出现在中国的英语教材上。很可能绝大部分very common的idioms都没有出现在中国的英语教材上。
牛津高阶学习词典，mw高阶，剑桥高阶，柯林斯COBUILD和朗文当代都没有收录这个idiom。wm和朗文收录了同样的两个idiom，我认识其中的一个。
“dollars to doughnuts”不是和"most likely"重复，是冲突。前者指确信，柯林斯网站上的解释是 said to show that you are certain that something will happen， 而 most likely虽然接近certain，但仍然明显不同。
It really doesn’t matter if they are found in English textbooks, the least of it Chinese ones. But which idiom(s) are you referring to anyway, pray?
I am being corrected every single day in my English-only WeChat group by my English friends, so you don’t have to worry about saving my blushes. I can be very thick-skinned when it comes to discussions about improving my English.
“Dollars to doughnuts” is often heard in Hollywood movies and TV dramas, occasionally in the BBC Podcast programme. I didn’t look into its etymology, but judging from the popularity of the snack in America, I’m willing to hazard a guess that the phrase is more of an American expression than it’s British. If what we hear from the British drama Downton Abbey (Season 4) is anything to go by:
Fred (the footman in the Grantham family): … a pound to a penny he’s got some trick up his sleeve.
Also, please take a look at the screensnap. The expression is found at least in 3 idiom dictionaries.
I have no idea what they teach at those English Centres aiming at Tofel or ITELS because I have never been there myself. My English is mostly self-taught, and I pick fun expressions from my everyday learning of the language. So far the main course on my listening diet is the BBC Global News Podcast. Give it several months and you’ll realise that the English language is a far wider ocean than what one can learn from textbooks.
But which idiom(s) are you referring to anyway, pray?
I can be very thick-skinned when it comes to discussions about improving my English.