by Martin Burke | Sep 28, 2020 | Everyday grammar
A student recently said to me ‘It was raining a lot, so I told my children that they don’t have to go outside’. ‘So’, I asked her, ‘did you give them a choice?’ ‘No!’, she insisted, ‘they wanted to go outside but I refused to let them go outside!’ That’s when I...
by Martin Burke | Sep 21, 2020 | This is how we say it
In conversations with my English language students I often hear them using the adjectives ‘much’ and ‘many’ in positive sentences. For example, ‘’I have many friends in this town’’, and ‘’I have much time with my family’’. Grammatically, there is nothing wrong with...
by Martin Burke | Sep 4, 2020 | English Idioms
I was dining with a French friend recently and, at the end of the meal, I picked up the bill and said, ‘Don’t worry, this is on me’. My friend, who had a good understanding of English, was somewhat confused by this (not the fact that I would offer to pay for the meal)...
by Martin Burke | Sep 1, 2020 | English Idioms
The other day my family and I called into an amazing vegan café called ‘The Ethos Brothers’, which was situated, somewhat unusually, in a largely disused trading estate in the Essex countryside. The food was excellent and the service superb. Not only was it all great...
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