The English We Speak: Cut corners
Learning English Conversations
BBC
4.6 ⢠1.2K Ratings
đď¸ 10 March 2026
âąď¸ 3 minutes
đď¸ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
If you want to do a task perfectly, it's usually not a good idea to cut corners. Learn about this expression and how to use it in conversations with Feifei and Georgie.
TRANSCRIPT: âď¸ https://www.bbc.co.uk/learningenglish/english/features/the-english-we-speak_2026/ep-260309
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.7 | Thanks for listening to this episode. Have you heard our new podcast beating speaking anxiety? |
| 0:12.1 | It's all about how to fight your fears of speaking English. Maybe you're scared of making |
| 0:16.8 | mistakes, worried you won't understand people, or worried you can't be yourself when |
| 0:21.7 | speaking English. Each episode tackles a different fear with experts to help you improve |
| 0:27.2 | your speaking confidence. Search learning English conversations in your podcast app to find the |
| 0:32.7 | latest episodes. Hello and welcome to the English We Speak, where we're explain expressions used by fluent English |
| 0:40.9 | speakers so that you can use them too. I'm Faye Faye and I'm joined by Georgie. How are you? |
| 0:47.2 | I'm very well, thank you. Faye Faye, how are you? Well, I'm a bit annoyed. I had some decorators |
| 0:52.5 | paint the living room, but they're a bits missing and they've not done a great job tidying up either. |
| 0:58.1 | They really cut corners. |
| 0:59.6 | Ugh, that is so annoying. |
| 1:01.5 | But Fife, you've just used an interesting phrase, cut corners. |
| 1:05.4 | So why don't we learn that in this program? |
| 1:07.9 | Let's do it, Georgie. |
| 1:09.5 | Well, I think it would be useful to first think about |
| 1:12.7 | this phrase literally, don't you think? Yes, I agree. So let's imagine an athletics track. It's oval |
| 1:19.8 | shaped with multiple lanes. Now, if you're running in the outside lane, you run a longer distance, |
| 1:25.5 | don't you? That's right. So, after the start of a race, |
| 1:29.5 | runners usually want to cross to one of the inner lanes so that they can run the shorter distance |
| 1:35.0 | and make it easier. They take a shortcut. And the best place to do that is in the corner of the running |
| 1:41.5 | track. Exactly. So the runners are cutting corners to make things easier. |
... |
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