English Vocabulary - School Slang

Hey, guys. I'm Alex. Thanks for clicking, and welcome to this lesson on school slang.

So in this lesson, I'm going to teach you five common slang expressions or words that

have to do with school. And since many of you are university students, high school students,

if you've ever been a student, this could be useful to you, especially if you end up

going to an English-speaking university. Okay? So I have five sentences, and I have circled

five of the slang expressions for you. So the first one says, "Our grammar teacher gave

us a pop quiz today." Now, the word "pop," when you think of "pop," you think of little

explosions. So a pop quiz is something that you don't expect. So a pop quiz is basically

a surprise test, right? A test you did not know was coming, you did not expect. So this

is a surprise test. Okay? So if your teacher ever gives you a pop quiz, you have to be...

It's almost impossible to be prepared 100%, but if you've been paying attention and listening

in class, it should be okay.

Okay, the second expression related to school here is "straight A's." So if you look at

the context of this sentence, "I got straight A's on my report card," what do you think

it means? Well, to understand "straight A's," you have to know that in many English-speaking

countries, Western countries, grades, scoring, marking is based on an alphabetic system.

So an "A" is a very, very good grade, and an "F" is a failure, right? "F." If you've

watched The Simpsons, Bart Simpson gets an "F" sometimes, a lot of the time, except that

episode where he got a "C+" and he was really happy. So, "straight A's," right? "Straight

A's on my report card" means I got perfect grades, okay? Perfect scores. Perfect grades.

Okay, the next sentence we have is, "I had to cram for my biology exam this morning."

Now, when you think of the word "cram," think of getting information and just pushing it

into your brain. So you have, let's say, three hours before your exam, okay? And you didn't

study yesterday, and you should have studied yesterday, but now you only have three hours,

you don't know anything, you're worried, so you have to get a lot of information into

your brain in a short amount of time. So this is cramming, okay? So if you cram for an exam,

it means that you are studying and trying to get a lot of information, memorize a lot

of information in a very short amount of time, okay? "I had to," again, "memorize a lot of

information." I'm just going to put "info" in a short time, okay?

The next expression we have is "killed" or "to kill a test," "kill an exam." So Joanna

said she killed her test. Now, does this mean she got a knife or her pen and just killed

her test? It's a piece of paper, it's not a living thing, it's impossible, right? If

you kill a test, it means that you do very, very well, okay? That you just murdered it,

you killed it, you had no problems with it, okay? So if you kill a test, kill an exam,

you do extremely well. So Joanna said she killed her test, she did extremely well. She

did very well, right? Like maybe 95% or 100%, she killed it.

This is the opposite. So, "I'm afraid, I'm scared of bombing my history exam." Now, you

think of the word "bomb," okay? This is not similar to "kill" where you kill a test. This

is like you explode because you did so badly on the test. So if I bombed the test, I did

very, very badly. It's like I'm dropping bombs on my piece of paper and nothing is making

any sense, okay? "I'm afraid of bombing my history exam." Bombing is failing or doing

very badly on. Or doing very badly on. So if I say, "I bombed my test. I bombed my exam.

I failed it. I did very, very badly on it."

Okay, guys. So just as a review, a pop quiz is a surprise test. Straight A's, perfect

grades. To cram for a test means to study a lot of information in a short amount of

time. To kill a test is to just kill it and get perfect grades or very, very close to

perfect on the test, to do very well on it. And again, the opposite is that you can say,

"A test killed me." If the test kills you, that means that the test was really difficult

and you didn't do very well. And finally, if you bomb a test or an exam, it means you

fail or do extremely poorly on it.

Okay, guys. To test your understanding of these slang expressions, check out the quiz

on www.engvid.com. Take care.