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GMAT Tuesday: Must Know Idioms #18

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Put on your vocabulary hats! It’s time to learn more idioms. In this video we’ll look at the idiomatic phrases involving responsible, ranging, agreeing, and defined.

Transcript

Hello! Welcome to GMAT Tuesdays. You know how everyone says you can hold a shell up to your ear and hear the ocean? Well. If you have an empty five gallon jug, you can do the same thing. Hello, welcome to another addition of Must Know Idioms. This is number 18!

Holy smokes, we’ve been doing a lot of these. So many idioms in the English language to know. We’ve been covering idioms because they pop up in the sentence correction section of the GMAT. And you’ll get tested on some very specific idioms, so we’re trying to cover those in these videos.

Idiom #1 – Responsible in vs. Responsible for

So let’s dive right in. The first idiom we’re going to look at is responsible in or responsible for. So this is an idiomatic expression, and the correct usage is responsible for.

So if you were to have a sentence like parents are responsible for their children’s education, that would be correct. You wouldn’t want to say parents are responsible in their children’s education. That is completely wrong.

Idiom #2 – Defined that vs. Defined as

Next, defined. If you see the word defined, are you going to use defined that or defined as? Well, you’re not going to want to use that. You’re always going to say defined as.

So for example, the president defined his role as leader of the country. That’s pretty straightforward. You wouldn’t want to say the president defined that his role was the leader of the country, that’s wordy and not idiomatically correct, so defined as.

Idiom #3 – Agreeing to vs. Agreeing with

Next, this is a tricky one, agreeing to or agreeing with. Which one is correct? Hm, it’s a toughy, because they both can be correct. It’s going to depend on the sentence.

So agree to or agreeing to means that you are accepting, or the person is accepting a duty, or accepting some responsibility. For example, Evan is agreeing to lead a meet up every other Wednesday at a local restaurant. I’ve accepted the responsibility to lead a group.

If we’re using with, this is about agreeing with someone’s opinion. So, say that someone says something and you agree with them. You think their idea is good, and you hold the same opinion. So, for example, like Marcy said that it was a bad idea to spend all of that money on a trip. And I would say I am agreeing with Marcy, I don’t think we should spend that money on a trip, I think we should spend it on… or put it away in our savings.

So when you see the word agreeing it’s really gonna depend on the context of the sentence. Agreeing to means that that person is taking on responsibility, the duty. Agree with means sharing same opinion.

Idiom #4 – Ranges from vs. Ranges of

Okay, that was a toughie. All right, finally, we have the word range. And do we wanna say ranges dot, dot, dot from or ranges dot, dot, dot of? We want to use from. Get rid of “of” here.

So for example, you could say Jeremy’s repertoire on the guitar ranges from classical to jazz standards, for an example. So you’re gonna use ranges from dot dot dot to.

All right, those are the four idioms for this week. Hope you find those useful. If you have any questions or need any help, please, please leave comments down below. And if you have any ideas for potential GMAT Tuesday videos I’m always looking for something new to do so leave comments about that as well and then finally if you need more help head over to gmat.magoosh.com where there are even more people like me ready to help you to dominate the GMAT.

All right, be excellent to the universe

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