IT DOESN'T DO MUCH FOR ME

It doesn't do much for me  or It doesn't do it for me  or similar expressions basically mean  It does not appeal (much) to me, I'm not impressed  or I find it a bit disappointing.
It can also be used to refer to a person that you do not find attractive.

Photocopies from 22nd March

Radio programme about Maeve Binchy   +   transcript 

DOUBLE WHAMMY

Double whammy a situation that is bad in two different ways; a situation in which two bad conditions exist at the same time or two bad things happen almost at the same time:

With the cold weather and the high cost of heating fuel, homeowners were hit with a double whammy this winter.

The high cost of health care and his lack of medical insurance was a double whammy.

Farmers have ​faced the ​double ​whammy of a ​rising ​dollar and ​falling ​agricultural ​prices.

Critics claim that the cuts in public spending coupled with a pay freeze is a double whammy which will affect low-paid workers badly.

Answer key to the text  COLLOCATION AND THE LEARNER: WADING INTO THE DEPTHS 

Finsbury Park

EATING CROW

to eat crow to display total humility, especially when shown to be wrong; to be shamed; to admit that one was wrong; to publicly admit you were wrong about something: 

• Well, it looks like I was wrong, and I'm going to have to eat crow.
• When it became clear that they had arrested the wrong person, the police had to eat crow.
• Mary talked to Joe as if he was an uneducated idiot, till she found out he was a college professor. That made her eat crow.

Eating crow is an American colloquial idiom, meaning humiliation by admitting wrongness or having been proven wrong after taking a strong position. Crow is presumably foul-tasting in the same way that being proven wrong might be emotionally hard to swallow.

Photocopies from 10th March

Photocopies from 8th March     + grammar activities

Test 

Radio programme about Maeve Binchy 

VIDEO: interview with Maeve Binchy 

TO CUT SOME SLACK

to cut some slack  to not judge sb as severely as you normally would because they are having problems at the present time:

     -Andrew's late again! 
     -Cut him some slack: his wife just had a baby. 
         

Photocopies from 3rd March

TOP-NOTCH

top-notch  adj   of the highest quality; excellent: a top-notch hotel  

Photocopies from 1st March