Speaker 1: In the middle of recording this podcast, I realized that
the microphone wasn't plugged in a ya yay, so I
had to go back to the top and start again.
That's what happens with modern technology. Sometimes things go smoothly,
and sometimes well it's back to the drawing board. Let's
dive in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to another Happy English podcast, coming to you from
New York City. And here's your English teacher, Michael al Ry.
Speaker 1: Thank you John, and thanks everyone. It's Michael here from
Happy English and I help people speak English better. This
is Happy English Podcast, Episode eight oh nine. Let's start
from the top. Sometimes in life you need to redo
something completely, maybe because the first time you tried doing
it you were not successful. In this case, you can
start from scratch, or do something from scratch, which means
to begin doing something from the very beginning, without using
anything that you used the first time. Like the other day,
my computer crashed in the middle of doing my homework,
and since I didn't save the file, I had to
start from scratch. I had to go back to the
beginning and redo everything. Here's another example. Peter's friend Nestor
was trying hard to save money and then he found
out that his wife Phoebe lost it all in a
poker game. Now he has to start saving money again
from scratch, poor Nestor. By the way, you can also
make a dish, a meal, and so on from scratch,
which means to make that from the basic ingredients. You
know how they sell pancake mix in the store. You
put like two cups of the powder in a bowl
and add milk and you're good to go. But when
I was a kid, my mom made pancakes by mixing flour,
baking powder, salt, eggs, and milk. In other words, my
mom made pancakes from scratch. One of my friends told
me yesterday that her mom used to make soup stock
from scratch. I gotta be honest with you. I totally
prefer the old fashioned way of cooking from scratch then
the modern way of using processed and instant food. How
about you can you cook anything from scratch? Next up,
we have the phrase to go back to the drawing board.
This is another phrase we use to mean redo something
from the beginning. A drawing board is a kind of
wide desk that designers and architects use. They can start
new designs easily because the drawing board is big, wide
and tilted, and it can hold a large piece of paper.
So the drawing board is the place to start something.
With this image, we have the phrase go back to
the drawing board, which means to go back to the
beginning of a plan or project after it fails. Go
back to the drawing board is like saying you need
to rethink or redo something completely. Like the other day
in the office, I thought that our new marketing plan
was good, but the manager rejected. It looks like we
need to go back to the drawing board. In a
similar way, you can go back to square one, which
means to return to the beginning after a failure or setback.
But why do we say square one. Well, it seems
that before the Internet, there was television, and before that
there was radio, and in the days of radio, the
sports announcer would use a lot of descriptive language to
describe the game. Over the radio, the phrase square one
was used to describe the area of a soccer field
around the goal. If the ball went out of bounds,
the announcer would say that play would resume back to
square one, the goal area, which was the starting point
of play. These days, we use the phrase go back
to square one to mean that we need to start
something again from the beginning. Like I accidentally left the
cake in the oven too long and it burned, so
I had to go back to square one and bake
it again. When Jack tried to apply for a business loan,
he had to submit a lot of paperwork, but in
the end the bank rejected his application. Now he has
to go back to square one and try getting a
loan from a different bank. And finally we have the
phrase from the top. You can say things like take
it from the top, or let's start from the top,
or let's go back to the top. This idiom comes
from the entertainment world, specifically music and theater. The top
refers to the beginning of a song or the beginning
of a performance. Like when a band is in the
studio recording a song and they make a mistake in
the middle, the producer would stop the recording and tell
the band, let's go back to the top. In other words,
let's start the song again from the beginning. Keep in mind,
the best way to remember English like this and any
other word or phrase in English is to take that
word or phrase write it in a sentence that's true
for you or true in your world, and then memorize
your sentences and you know what. You can get more
practice using your English when you join my podcast Learner's
study group online. There you can make new friends, join
us for live group lessons every week where we practice
these podcast lessons together. Plus you get access to the pdf,
transcript and audio download for every Happy English podcast in
the past and in the future. On top of that,
each episode has exercises where you can practice this English
point with speaking and writing checked by me. To learn more,
just visit Myhappy English dot com and choose podcast lesson
eight oh nine. Remember, learning another language is not easy,
but it's not impossible, and I'm here to help you
on your journey.
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Happy English.