"kiss up" = "suck up" = "apple polish" = "brown nose" (informal) = "kiss ass" (informal)

All these expressions refer to sycophantic/flattering behavior used to make someone do something for you.The behavior is often insincere.

John is always kissing up TO the boss. He "is bucking for a promotion".

Jane is always brown-nosing. That is why she "gets straight A's" in her classes.

He is always kissing the teacher's ass!

NOTE: present progressive form + always is used to indicate the speaker is complaining about the behavior.

MEMORABLE FACT:the "ass kissing" metaphor is where the "brown nose" term comes from.

Stop sucking up to the teacher!

I never saw so much apple polishing until I enrolled in Harvard Business School!  (polish = clean (i.e. clean the apple that you will give to the teacher)

Hello Rebecca,

Here are some quick comments to help you in your learning.

Does any body --> ANYBODY have some time to help me correct my homework?

Overall, people in that 5 --> those four countries spent more money for food, housing and transportation than health care and clothing. (<-- GOOD: KEY POINT - NOTE THE GENERAL TREND OF THE DATA FIRST) It is clear from the chart that the AmericanS had the highest percentage of expenditure for housing whereas THE United Kingdom paid the least money for health care.
In termS of housing, the United Stage’s proportion of spending was about 26% of total expenditure in 2009. The United Kingdom and Japan followed , with 24% and 22%, respectively. <-- good language! Canada had the lowest housing share at 21%. Similarly, Japanese paid more concern TO on food and spent --> dedicated (better than "spent... on expenditure") about 23% expenditure on it. The United Kingdom had the second highest share at 20%, while Canada and United State with --> had 15% and 14%, respectively. However, the Canada’s spending for transportation was highest (20%) between 5 --> among the four countries. The United State and the United Kingdom had THE next highest transportation shares, 17% and 15%, respectively. Japan had the lowest at 10%.
In ON the other hand, the expenditure for health care and clothing was lowest (less than 10%) in all 5 countries. In United State, 7% was the percentage of spending for health care, versus 4% in Canada and Japan. The lowest proportion of spending was United Kingdom. Expenditure for clothing was less than 5% in Canada and United Kingdom, and accountED for 4% in United State and Japan.

4. Use your own linguistic and ethnic appeal! In the street, a Russian cannot be distinguished from any other American walking around, but if you tell someone you are Russian, tons of people will want to learn more about you. A Russian accent has a coolness to it in North America as well, so people overhearing you speak English will attract their attention too, and if you are smiling and approachable, you will soon have multiple conversation partners at any social gathering!

So, to answer your question, lazy students can learn very fast! If you arrive in America with a low-intermediate level of English, you can become upper-intermediate in three months, if you take the advice above!

Good luck and happy learning!

2. Try to find one local friend who you genuinely like being around, and work on building a close relationship! Just one is enough! Having someone who is almost always nearby, who you are absolutely comfortable with, and with whom you want to communicate about everything that happens in your daily life is the absolute best way to become fluent. If they can't understand you, they will correct you! And you might find a "bff" or "soul-mate" that way too. Good places to meet such a person are places you yourself like going to, e.g. the gym, the park, the local pub (not nightclub! Too loud to speak in and too untrustworthy), the library, etc. I moved to China for a study term a long time ago and met a Chinese woman on the plane who was also a linguist. We spent all our time together, eating out, watching Chinese movies, meeting friends, etc., and three months later I was able to have full conversations in Mandarin while most of my classmates could barely say their name and where they were from.

3. Approach interesting people! Take the initiative! If you see a musician playing some good music in the street, hang out and shoot the breeze. If you see someone reading a book while you are waiting together for the bus, ask about the book and why they are reading it! If you are genuinely interested in people, they will enjoy talking to you. And it is better for your to choose who you spend time talking to, instead of having strangers approach you for conversation. Especially for a woman, the latter option can be dangerous!

Language is a physical skill based on habit formation, like learning to play a musical instrument or driving a car with a standard transmission. You learn to speak by speaking, and receiving corrections along the way. I have a Cambridge diploma in language teaching, and one of the key points I learned getting it was this: "Fluency (speaking without focus on grammar) leads to accuracy (focus on correct grammar), and not the other way around." Being drilled again and again on grammar forms or minor pronunciation points in a carefully controlled context (like many teachers do) rarely leads to learners being able to speak fluently. But being in REAL COMMUNICATIVE SITUATIONS leads to correction of your mistakes--because errors lead to the inability to communicate, and it becomes like a game to overcome the barriers.

From personal experience, I can offer these four key tips to help speed up your language learning in an effective lazy way:

1. Join Meetup groups in your city, and try to meet locals who share your interests. That way the conversation will be inherently interesting to you and you don't need to pretend to be interested just to get language practice. (http://www.meetup.com/)   

(Continued in the next message...)

Hello Elena!

I am a language teacher with a degree in linguistics, so I can say with certainty that in language study, "laziness" can actually help students achieve great levels of fluency. Many "lazy" people who socialize more are able to learn languages relatively rapidly while "hard-working" ones focused on book learning often remain unable to communicate.

I remember a story an old linguistics professor told me of two acquaintances who went to Germany to learn German. One was a "straight A student" who always did well on paper tests and had already studied two semesters of German in university, and the other had no German experience and had always been perceived as a "slacker" who rarely "hit the books". They were put in separate homestay situations in different cities and agreed to meet again in three months to see who had progressed the most. The result when they met was the "bookworm", who spent eight hours a day in the library and read many German classics in the original language, was barely able to hold a conversation, while the other--who had been going out and mingling with locals every night and rarely studied--was quite fluent. He also reported actually ENJOYING the learning process, whereas the other student was miserable and discouraged. (continud in the next message)

Here is the list I usually give to my students taking my university courses:

GOOD ENGLISH SHORT BOOKS
Animal Farm OR 1984 by George Orwell

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Johnny Got his Gun by Dalton Trumbo

Fahrenheit 451 OR The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Lord of the Flies by William Golding

GOOD FOREIGN BOOKS TO READ IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
The Stranger by Albert Camus

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges (short stories)
Candide by Voltaire

Happy reading!

张三婶：行了，行了，别吵了！污七八糟的像什么话！你听我一五一十告诉你。那女人十分漂亮，打扮得五颜六色的。真是个数一数二的美女！说话很客气！有点低三下四的！看样子好像有什么十万火急的事儿，很快就跑走了。她可真是一个丢三落四的人，忘了她的手提包！
Mrs. Zhang: OK, quiet down! What’s this trash talking! Let me tell you in detail..
That woman was very beautiful! She was dressed up colorfully. Really a class A beauty! And very polite! Always bowing and scraping! She looked like she had some urgent matter, and ran away. She is a really forgetful kind of girl. She forgot her handbag.

李四：我看看那个包。哎呀妈呀，八成是我那个狡猾的前妻，又来要钱了！她三天两头地来。小张，您千万不要告诉她我回来了！她不懂，我们已经是一了百了，一刀两断的！她老是不管三七二十一来破坏我的新婚！啊!这世界上的女人真是五花八门！
Mr. Li: Let me see. Probably it is my no good ex-wife, come for more money! She comes all the time. Mrs. Zhang, definitely don’t tell her I’ve come back! She doesn’t understand, we are finished, completely separated! She no matter what wants to destroy my new marriage! Ah, there really are all kinds of women of this world!

张三婶：李先生，您要是早告诉我，我会三下五除二地告诉她您搬家了。可是，不怕一万，就怕万一！万一她来的时候正好碰见您，再闹出事来，让您现在的老婆知道了，那可怎么办？
Mrs. Zhang: Mr. Li, If you had told me before, I would have immediately told her that you have moved. But, you should expect the unexpected! She might run across you in the street and make a scene, then what will you do?