ROUND #4

On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar. 
—David Ogilvy

Indeed, headlines are arguably more important than the article itself… They need to be tricky, unique, creative, super-clickable, irresistible and even sexy:)  …. so as to grab people’s attention in just a few seconds. BUT, also for that reason, headlines are often rather difficult to understand for non-native speakers of English.

So, why not expand your vocabulary by scanning the headlines DAY by DAY?

Below you will find recent headlines taken from various newspapers, with terms and expressions well worth learning. Guess the meaning of the expressions marked in red and check your answers in the VocabList below. Enjoy!

CU tomorrow for the next round of headlines!

Euclid Tsakalotos sworn in as new Greek finance minister

Greece’s new finance minister expected to pursue debt relief

Tsipras gets cross-party backing before euro summit

Euro leaders expect Tsipras to make concessions

Greek referendum: fear and trepidation in Athens’ Beverly Hills

Eurozone’s poorer East takes hard line on Greece

VocabList

to be sworn in (from: to swear sb in) = to start a new official job, and promise (swear) to be loyal and honest

to pursue: (here) to try to achieve

debt relief: a situation in which you do not need to pay your debts anymore

cross-party backing: support from all parties

to make concessions: to give up part of your original goals/requests in order to reach agreement

trepidation: fear / worry about the future

to take hard line on sb: to deal with sb in a severe way (harder than previously)

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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