Phrases & Expressions

To begin a job, task or project, used mainly in official language.

• Builders are expected to commence work on the new city library in early spring.
• Successful applicants will be expected to commence work at the beginning of September.

To go well together, with each one adding qualities that the other lacks.

• In a strong team, members' skills complement each other, so a weakness in one person is covered by another.
• Online lessons and classroom teaching can complement each other well if they are planned carefully.

Total support for someone that never weakens, even in difficult times.

• The new manager quickly earned the complete loyalty of her team by defending them in front of senior directors.
• The club rewards fans who have shown complete loyalty for many years.

Something so absorbing to read that you keep going until you reach the end.

• Her biography of the scientist is compulsive reading, even for people who know nothing about physics.
• The report on the bank's collapse made compulsive reading for investors and journalists alike.

To behave in the way that rules, customs or other people expect.

• Pupils at the academy are expected to conform to a strict dress code and clear rules of behaviour.
• Teenagers often feel pressure to conform to what their friends think is cool.

A person who does their job carefully and thoroughly and treats every duty as important.

• Employers value conscientious workers who check their work carefully and rarely need to be reminded about deadlines.
• She was such a conscientious worker that her manager trusted her with the company's most important clients.

To make the water that people use for drinking dirty or dangerous by adding harmful substances.

• Chemicals leaking from the factory contaminated the water supply, and hundreds of local residents fell ill.
• Farmers are being urged to use fewer pesticides, which can contaminate water supplies in rural areas.

To show results that are the opposite of, or do not agree with, earlier research.

• The new study contradicts previous findings that drinking coffee is harmful to the heart.
• If your results contradict previous findings, you should discuss possible reasons for the difference in your report.

To talk with someone, exchanging thoughts and information.

• Thanks to the exchange programme, students can converse with native speakers every single day.
• Elderly patients often feel less lonely when nurses find time to converse with them during long hospital stays.

To match something closely or be the equivalent of it.

• The figures in the final report do not correspond to those in the original survey, which worries the researchers.
• Each number on the map corresponds to a site of historical interest listed at the bottom of the page.