Do NOT Say “It’s Hard”!! | ADVANCED English Lesson

Oh my gosh, Marina. I woke up so early today, it was hard.

And then a really hard workout on my Peloton, and then a busy day, it was hard!

Oh, wow Rachel it does sound hard. You know what else is hard? Expanding your vocabulary.

True. But today we’re going to do just that. Marina and I are going to give you

21 expressions to use instead of, or in addition to, “it’s hard”.

One thing you can say if something is really hard is “it’s killing me.” You can use this

for something that is either physically hard or emotionally hard. For example, let’s say you

applied to a bunch of colleges and you’re waiting to hear where you were accepted. You could say,

The wait is killing me. Or, let’s say you’re in healthcare and your hospital is short-staffed.

That means there aren’t enough workers. So you’ve had to pick up some overnight

shifts. That’s very hard physically. You could say, this schedule is killing me.

This job is killing me man.

Let’s have Marina bring you number two. She’s from the Linguamarina channel.

She lives in the US, but was born abroad, and, as a person who learned English as a second language,

she knows exactly what challenges you’re facing on your English learning journey.

She makes videos about how to speak English fast and understand native speakers, vocabulary,

and life hacks on how to make the process of learning English fun. Check out her channel and

be sure to subscribe with notifications to both her channel and my channel if you haven’t already.

It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears. That means it was a very hard thing to do and it

required a lot of effort. It took Jack a lot of blood, sweat and tears to talk his three-year

old daughter into going into a dentist, oh this is the story of my life, my two-year old daughter

hates going to the doctors and it takes me blood, sweat and tears every time we have an appointment.

So basically it takes us a lot of time and effort to take her there to explain what

would be going on and also think of a treat that she’s going to get after the appointment.

I put my blood, sweat and tears into my coaching

A hiccup, bump in the road, a hurdle to jump. I’m grouping three together here because they

all came up in a conversation with a friend. It’s funny how, when you use one idiom, it’s sometimes

hard to give the literal meaning. I’ve found we often explain idioms with other idioms.

There was a minor hiccup with um, a situation with a badge where I was not allowed access?

What do you mean by hiccup?

Um, there was a situation which was not ideal, it was a bump in the road.

Bump in the road, now that’s also an idiom. Could you explain that?

It was really what I would call a hurdle that I had that

A hurdle!

There was a hiccup. Something didn’t go smoothly;

something wasn’t easily done. She was traveling for work, and she was expecting to have the

access she needed to get into the building. But it wasn’t that easy, she had to take extra steps.

A hiccup is something minor. It doesn’t make life really hard, just a little inconvenient.

A bump in the road is just like a hiccup, it’s a minor inconvenience. It’s not a huge deal,