Communicative Goal: Describing Lying
Context: President Nixon
Part 1, Speaking: Review
and discuss the following idioms, providing your own examples.
1. to lie through one’s teeth: to blatantly
lie (nonseparable, informal, highly negative)
Example: The pickpocketer lied through
his teeth when we caught him red-handed.
2. to live a lie: to pretend to be someone / something
that one is not (nonseparable, informal, negative)
Example: Many homosexuals in conservative
societies live a lie.
3. to be economical with the truth: to be
slightly misleading (nonseparable, formal, positive)
Example: Most attorneys are economical
with the truth.
4. to pull a fast one: to lie in the sense of “cheat”
(nonseparable, informal, negative)
Example: The con artist almost pulled
a fast one on her.
5. to take in: to lie in the sense of “trick” (separable,
formal, slightly negative)
Example: Defense attorneys often take
in juries.
Part 2, Reading: Complete the passage below with the
appropriately conjugated idioms.
U.S. president Richard Nixon is, perhaps,
the one American politician most reviled for his deceptiveness, so much so that
it earned him the epithet “Tricky Dick,” popular caricatures of him commonly
depicting him in the act of nervously lying and __________ the gullible.
Although most politicians can __________ to
some degree, Nixon was accused of __________ to the American public by denying
any involvement in the notorious Watergate scandal, infamously claiming during
a news conference “I’m not a crook.”
He almost __________ on voters, but with
the House of Representatives poised to impeach him, Nixon decided to resign
from the presidency of the United States in 1974 instead of continuing __________.
© James Doyle, 2013
English Class:
Are you interested in learning more idioms? Take this great class!
http://www.mylanguagesolutions.com/#!advanced-integrated-english-skills-workshop/c12pt
Are you interested in learning more idioms? Take this great class!
http://www.mylanguagesolutions.com/#!advanced-integrated-english-skills-workshop/c12pt
Answers:
The answers to this exercise are available at the following link:
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