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...
by Martin Burke | Jan 27, 2020 | Everyday grammar
When teaching recently, one of my students was talking about persuading English-speaking potential clients to start to use her company’s services. She said; “I will tell them that there are few advantages in using us…” In other words, she had suggested that there were...
by Martin Burke | Jan 26, 2020 | This is how we say it
I recently had an exchange of messages with one of my students, in which I said “I do hope that you get better soon.” She was unsure why I would use the auxiliary verb “do” in this sentence, because English learners are taught that we use “do” in the Present Simple...
by Martin Burke | Jan 16, 2020 | Everyday grammar
Learners of English are often confused about how to structure questions in English. It can seem like a complicated challenge at first. In the case of most other languages, you can ask a question by making a statement and raising the tone of the voice at the end of the...
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