Combining Nouns: Possessive S and Other Weirdness
In my ongoing mission to reduce PowerPoint text to a minimum, this blog looks at how English uses phrases like “Mary’s phone” to show that one noun “owns” another without the need for prepositions. These short cuts for combining nouns can be confusing for non-native...
The Odd English of Presentation Slides
If you’re a non-native speaker who has to use English for presentation slides, you might have noticed that it has too many words, right? All those prepositions and multi-word verbs fill up your slide fast, leaving less space for the vital images. Here are some of the...
Nearly Real
This blog was going to be about slides and bullet points, and I’ll attack that topic next, but when I read Montse’s article about adapting to teleworking, I couldn’t resist the chance to add my perspective as a teacher. Converting our classes to a remote format saved...
Adaptarse al cambio
Adaptarse al cambio supone cambiar de rutinas, tomar nuevas decisiones y renovarse; renovarse e innovar. Con la situación que ya conocemos muchos estudiantes han tenido que cursar sus estudios de manera únicamente online. Exámenes online, temario online, tutorías...
Inversions for Emphasis – Twist and Shout
When normal formal just isn’t enough to communicate your anger by email, you can really turn the screw by twisting the order of your sentences… In my last blog, https://secondlanguage.net/2021/06/01/cold-hard-grammar/ I set out my main formal English tools for email...
Cold, hard grammar
Do you know how to use the grammar to approach a company ir you aren’t not satisfied with their work? Here we tell you how you can do it! If a business contact has annoyed you and you want to show your displeasure in an email, it’s not enough to just throw...
La edad es solo un número, no una limitación.
La edad es solo un número y no debería condicionarnos en nuestro aprendizaje. Debemos trabajar nuestro músculo lingüístico todo lo que podamos y la edad no debe parecernos un obstáculo. Mente abierta Para comenzar a aprender un idioma o cualquier otra competencia de...Formal VS Friendly
The first thing to note about formal English in modern business is that it’s not nice. It’s not polite or charming, it’s a weapon that you use to defend yourself against an anonymous public or to intimidate acquaintances who incur your wrath. This means that, in an...