Read along to practice your English and to learn the English phrases BREATHE NEW LIFE INTO and BREATHE A SIGH OF RELIEF:

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase, to breathe life into, or we also sometimes say, to breathe new life into. We use this phrase whenever someone or something makes a situation better. Here's a great example. Let's say they are fixing all of the roads in your town, but they're running out of money. If the government suddenly decides to give your town more money to fix the roads, that money would breathe new life into the project. When you think about a person, let's think about a party that's really, really boring, and if a person comes to that party who's really happy and excited, we would say that that person would breathe life into the party or they would breathe new life into the party. So, when you have the phrase, to breathe new life into something, it simply means that someone or something makes the situation better.

The second phrase I wanted to look at is, to breathe a sigh of relief. A sigh of relief sounds like this. And a sigh of relief is something that you do when you were worried about something and now you are no longer worried about it. Probably the best example I can give is from my own childhood. When I was a teenager, sometimes I would stay out late and my mom would actually stay up and wait for me to come home. And when I came home, I think my mom would breathe a sigh of relief. Basically, my mom would have been worried when I was out with my friends, and when I got home and she knew I was home and that I was safe, I'm pretty sure she would breathe a sigh of relief. So she would just sit there and probably go, "Oh, good, Bob's home." So anyways, to review, when you breathe new life into something or when you breathe life into something, it means that you make a situation better or something makes a situation better. And when you breathe a sigh of relief, it means that you were worried and now for some reason you are no longer worried and you can just breathe a sigh of relief and be happy again.

Hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video. This comment is from the video I did on what a class clown is, and this is from Qiu Park, and Qiu Park says "Every class has a class clown." And my response was, "You are right. I think every class I've ever been in as a student and every class I've ever taught as a teacher had a class clown in it." So I just want you to read that sentence again on the screen. That's a pretty complex English sentence, but it's a great model sentence for talking about the past. So again, I said, "I think every class I've ever been in as a student and every class I've ever taught as a teacher had a class clown in it." So anyways, I'm sure some of you are class clowns. I know in the comments on that video, some of you shared that you were class clowns, some of you shared that you weren't class clowns, but you certainly found class clowns funny.

Support the show

Learn the English Phrases TO BREATHE NEW LIFE INTO and TO BREATHE A SIGH OF RELIEF 04:09 Share

Bob's Short English Lessons

Shownotes Transcript

Learn the English Phrases TO BREATHE NEW LIFE INTO and TO BREATHE A SIGH OF RELIEF