“地道英语”：Scratch the surface 只触及事物表面，不够深入
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这部 BBC 的节目是在美国外的公众媒体支持的

Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.State Farm, Bloomington, Illinois.

Hello and welcome to Authentic Real English, where we explain expressions used by fluent English speakers so that you can use them too. I'm Feifei and I'm joined by Georgie. How are you?I'm very well, thank you, Feifei. How are you?Quite stressed, actually. I've got so many things on my to-do list and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface.That's a rubbish way to start the week.

Well, scratch the surface is the phrase we're looking at in this programme.What does it mean, Fei Fei?Well, let me paint a picture in your mind.Imagine you want to dig a deep hole in the ground.I arrive five minutes later, after you start.

See, you haven't made much progress and say, you've barely scratched the surface. What am I telling you?Well, in other words, I've only broken up the surface of the ground and I've still got a long way to go if I want to dig a deep hole.Right. Now, that's a very literal way of thinking about this phrase. We mostly use it metaphorically.

If you've only scratched the surface of a subject or a problem,you've dealt with it only in a very superficial way,without going into it deeply.That's right.Let's hear some more examples from our BBC Learning English colleagues.I'm supposed to clean the flat in time for a dinner party tonight.I've hardly scratched the surface.I've got loads to do.

你正在收听的是 BBC 英语教学的第一道英语节目刚刚我们一起学习了表达 scratch the surface 的用法

Scratch the surface 的字面意思是抓了表面,实际意思是只触及了一个事物的表面,人们往往用它来比喻仅仅完成或理解了事物的一小部分,不够深入。Yes, and if you want to exaggerate and express that you haven't made much progress at all, you can use the words barely or hardly.Like you said at the beginning, you've barely scratched the surface on all those tasks on your to-do list.

注意在使用这个表达的时候我们可以通过搭配表示程度的副词比如 badly 或者 heartly 来强调刚刚开头做一件事情或者只了解了某件事情的一小部分 OK, let's recapWe learned scratch the surfacewhich means to deal with a topic or problemonly in a superficial wayThanks for joining usBye, goodbye