Einträge von doreen

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Understanding Business Idioms

Tricky as they may be, understanding idioms is an essential skill for anyone doing business in English, because they are commonly used throughout the business world. Now don’t think that after reading this blog post you’ll be able to understand and fluently use every English idiom under the sun – there are simply to many […]

How to say ’no’…without being rude!

One of your colleagues has just asked you to go out for drinks on Friday night after work. You’re already exhausted and want nothing more than to go home and have an early night. You are about to go on your lunch break when a colleague asks if you can help him fix a technical […]

How to learn English when you’re stuck at home

One thing people always tell you to do when learning a language is “go out and talk to people“! Now, this is not always easy under normal circumstances (where do I find the time and/or native speakers to talk to??), but the current Corona nightmare has made it virtually impossible to go out and mingle. […]

Typical German Mistakes

(scroll down for a short list of vocab from this post!) This week, we thought we’d spend some time on common mistakes that we often hear in our classroom – don’t feel bad, you’re definitely not the only one who makes them – hence the word COMMON! English and German are quite closely related, which […]

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(Not) Having things in common

Making small talk is always a dreaded topic for many language learners. Going up to (semi-)strangers and making conversation can be daunting in your native language, let alone in a foreign one. In a previous post, we’ve already given you some pointers on this topic. However, this time I thought we’d dig a little deeper […]

Confusing words (Part 1)

Recently, we’ve talked a lot about topics like language learning strategies, how to stick to your study plan, finding (and keeping) motivation, etc. Today I thought it was time for a post with some ‘proper’ language content, in this case: vocabulary! We’ll look at some confusing word pairs that even trick native speakers, simply because […]

On New Year’s Resolutions and how to achieve them

It’s that time of year again: we’ve all eaten (and drunk) a bit too much at Christmas, spent too much money on presents and our last trip to the gym was…well, a long time ago. December and all its festivities simply tend to get in the way of personal goals! Which is why January is […]

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…:)

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…! All over the world, Christmas is a time to exchange presents, be with family and loved ones, eat good food and have fun. It also means a lot of new English vocabulary, some of which is only used during this season. It’s important to know how to […]

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Tips & tricks for making small talk!

Whether you’re networking, meeting with a customer or simply talking to a colleague at your company’s Christmas party, being able to make small talk is a crucial skill to master – for your professional and personal life! However, we’re well aware that going up to strangers and engaging them in ‘casual’ conversation (even though it […]

How to get your brain to think faster in English

A question that I (and every other English trainer) often get is ‘’how can I learn to think faster in English? When I’m speaking, the words just don’t come to me fast enough!’’ If only we could just implant a chip in our brain or (maybe a bit less drastic…?) take a pill to help […]

How not to fall for false friends!

If you’re a native German speaker learning English, most of the time you should count yourself lucky: there is a lot of overlap between the German and English vocabulary, meaning that a lot of words are almost exactly the same in both languages. Lucky you, right? So why do I say ‘’most of the time’’? […]

English job interviews – a survival guide!

So you’ve applied for a new job and landed yourself an interview – fantastic, congratulations! For an hour or so you feel great, but then…panic strikes. How am I going to get through this?? Job interviews…we all have some sort of love-hate relationship with them, don’t we? After all, they may open the door to […]

A little progress each day adds up to big results

….is the quote which I posted on our Facebook page earlier this week and which gave me inspiration for this week’s blog post! I will be the first person to admit that learning a foreign language is a DAUNTING task. As a person who has studied several foreign languages I’ve been there, many times. Apart […]

Can watching TV in English really help me?

When it’s finally time to wind down after a long day at the office, you probably want nothing else than to sit yourself down on your couch with a [cup of tea / glass of wine / your drink of choice] and RELAX! Now, I understand that watching your favourite TV show or movie in […]

Ask politely, please!

Can I have Friday off? What’s wrong with this sentence? Technically (grammatically) speaking, nothing at all! However, if you were to ask your English-speaking boss this question, chances are you won’t get the day off! Why not? To a native English speaker, this request simply doesn’t sound very polite! English speakers are generally much less […]

To test or not to test…that is the question!

Some of you may be lucky enough to be learning English just for fun or personal development, without any pressure or deadline. However, one of the more common, less fun reasons for studying English is exam preparation: many companies, governments and universities require non-English speakers to sit an offical exam to establish their level of […]

“MAKE“ OR “DO“?

The verbs do and make can be confusing in English, especially for German learners as both verbs usually translate as machen. English uses both make and do for machen, so as a German speaker you’ll have to choose! For example, you can say: do an exercise. But you can’t say: do a cake*. The phrase […]

English pronunciation and how it makes your head explode!

If you’ve ever tried to get your head around English pronunciation rules, you know that it can be terribly frustrating! First of all, there are some very ‘’challenging’’ (some would say impossible!) sounds (the th sound, for example). Secondly, no other language in the world has more words spelled the same way yet pronounced differently, […]

Hard or hardly, what is the difference?

You may know the general rule in english, add “ly” to the end of an adjective to make an adverb, that is a word which describes how a verb or an action took place . Like quiet and quietly, slow and slowly. But hard and hardly are exceptions.