Effort

Make effort

If you want to get good grades, you'd better start make more of an effort. As it is, you'll be lucky to scrape a pass.

Require effort

Learning a language as a child seems to involve no effort at all, but learning it as an adult requires a lot of time and effort.

Reward effort

Following record sales over the Christmas period, the staff were rewarded for their efforts with a New Year bonus of £300.

Save effort

I'd tackle the problem now if I were you. It'll only take a couple of hours and it'll save you a lot of time and effort in the long run.

Go into effort

 A lot of effort has gone into making this event a success. I'd like to thank all of those who were involved.

Expend effort

After expending all that effort on training to be a doctor, she decided that she wanted to do something else. What a terrible waste of time!

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My father is making a huge effort to stop smoking.

> Good for him! Tell him I'm also making a determined effort to kick the habit! I haven't had a cigarette for a week!

It's not an easy book to read but it's extremely interesting. It's well worth putting in the extra effort to understand it.

Jon can be so irritating. He made a feeble effort to help me with the dishes. I think he dried one plate and then went round telling people he had done the dishes!

Some people can lose weight virtually overnight, but for most people, dieting requires a supreme effort of will.

 Now, for many of our guests this will be their first time abroad, so let's all make a concerted effort to make our Russian colleagues welcome.

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If we fail, it won't be for want of effort.

This company has invested a great deal of time and effort in setting up training schemes.

 

He passed his exams with the minimum of effort. He's obviously very bright.

 I know it's a long climb to the top of the hill, but the view from the top is well worth the effort.

Everybody on our social committee has put in a great deal of effort to make the weekend a success.

We've started a massive advertising campaign in an effort to recruit more blood donors.

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 The  fund-raising efforts of local people have resulted in over €10,000 being raised for cancer research in the past year.

Relief efforts in the Congo are being hampered by the on-going civil war.

People started to wear yellow badges to show their support for the war effort.

The only prize I won at school was one for effort. At least I tried! And that's more important than coming first!

A lot of grammar study is a waste of time and effort. Collocation is much more useful.

 

Notes

• Note the use of the quantifiers every and no in the following common expressions:

Every effort is being made to rectify the problem.

We will spare no effort to find out who did this.

• 'In an effort to' means 'in order to'

We've reduced our workforce in an effort to cut costs.

• If something is a 'real effort', it is very difficult:

Dad's very weak now. It's a real effort just to talk.