Yet, when chatting with your coworkers or friends, ‘just’ is another choice. 

Recommending a person to your boss: 

Believe me.  I saw the CEO going out with the secretary.

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I have the same experience too.  Then my friend told me one thing: if Plan A doesn’t work, try Plan B. What is my Plan B?  Two words.

                                     
                                         Watch TV 

How to ‘watch’ TV

‘Hey, come on!  I’ve tried it before’.  Is that what you are saying?  It didn’t work for you.

Well how did you watch TV?  Yes, that’s a real question: how.  How to watch TV to learn English is a big question today as you can easily watch any TV on YouTube.

Way 1: Don’t just watch TV: Watch something you like.  

Why?  In this way, you learn English and most of all, you enjoy learning it.  So if you like detective stories, watch Mentalist.  Or if you like tennis, listen to what the commentators say.  For example, when tennis commentators talk about Nadal or Djokovic, they will use powerful adjectives with the adverb of ‘absolutely‘ like:

Way 2:  Don’t just watch TV: Re-watch the part that you like most.  

Well, don’t just watch TV.  Watch the same part again and again till you understand each and every word, including how to pronounce it and the grammar in it.  So, if there are words or expressions that you don’t understand check it up from a grammar book (or dictionary).

For example, you can learn how to use ‘duck‘ as a verb from watching Psych.  But first of all, do you know ‘duck’ can be used as a verb (if not, watch more TV.)

So what does ‘duck’ mean?  When a police officer wants to protect you from a war of guns, s/he will ask you to duck: lower your head or body very quickly.

Why it works: The sounds and images of TV help you remember English faster especially when you watch something you like.  In other words, you learn both the intonation and meaning at the same time.

How much do you know about English grammar?  Do you know that English grammar is sometimes like a hidden face behind a mask?

What does that mean?  It means there are lots of hidden rules (or inside secrets).  By ‘hidden rules’ I mean you can’t find them even if you read books on grammar.

(pic source)

Here are four for you.

1. Use ‘which’ to give comments 

Praising your coworker:

Mr Sale: I have just made the biggest sale this month.
You: Which is good news for our team.
                                   

Why:  You think ‘which’ is for making questions only.  Well, think again.  In English, ‘which’ also stands for the sentence your coworker has just said.

How to make it: After ‘which’ you may use ‘is‘ or ‘was‘.  Well, why?  (It is) because you comment on a single sentence.  For example:

You and your coworkers are gossiping about Mr Rude:

Coworker: Mr Rude was rude to the Creative Director at the opening part.
You: Which was a stupid thing to do.

2. Use ‘High / Low + Noun’ to talk about your products 

When talking to your customers:

We sell high-end video equipment.
Though we a a low-cost airline, we provide good service.

Other examples include:

a high-quality image
a high-yield investment
a low-risk deal

3. Use ‘what’ to introduce something big

At your presentation, when you come to some big points, you may say:

What we need is more money.

You can visualize the sentence by breaking it into three parts and you use ‘is’ after ‘What we need’.

Other examples include:

4. Use either a linking verb or an action verb

What is wrong with the following if you use it to start your presentation?

If you think there is nothing wrong, then think again.  There is a hidden rule in English, stating that you are not allowed to put a linking verb and an action verb together in a sentence.

But first of all, what is a linking verb?  They are verbs like:

And what are action verbs?  Common examples in business English are:

But why is putting them together a problem?  Look at the picture and you’ll see what problem it is:

The two kinds of verbs crash on the Road of English Sentence.

How to avoid the ‘verb’ crash: Make ‘present’ not much like a verb so that there is only a linking verb here.

Why are there inside secrets in English?

And before we are done, you may ask one ultimate question:

Well, that is a tough one.  There is a reason suggested by Noam Chomsky, a guru of English (or if you like, Linguistics).  He tells us that there are rules in grammar that native speakers of English are not conscious of. In other words, somehow they know there is something special about English sentences, but they don’t know how to say it clearly.

But again, why?  Why can’t they say it clearly?  Well, in a word, it is about the structure of our brains.

Mistake 1: Use ‘to+verb’ After Suggest

Now you are having a big meeting with the three big clients of your company, and it is just the right time for you to make a suggestion, and you do make one: I suggest to finish the project by this Friday.  Upon hearing that the Big Three feel disappointed and ……

What causes the mistake?  It is ‘logical’ to say ‘I suggest to finish it by this Friday.’  Yet, in English, ‘suggest’ is followed by a noun, so what you need to do is to change ‘finish’ to a noun.

How not to make it? Add ‘ing’ to ‘transform’ a verb into a noun.  I suggest finishing it by this Friday. Other verbs like ‘suggest’ include:

                                       consider   recruiting (graduates from the best universities)
                                       finish        presenting (a proposal) 

Mistake 2: Using a Comma to Separate Two Sentences

This one is about your reports or proposals.  It is less than professional to write:

At McCasual we sell quality clothing and textiles, we have a good reputation for casual wear.

What causes the mistake? Well, lots of reasons, one of which could be ‘SPE’.  What is ‘SPE’?  Supreme English?  No.  It is Smart Phone English.

How not to make it? A commas is weak, so weak that it cannot ‘hold‘ two sentences together. So simply use a full-stop to ‘stop’ the sentences.

Mistake 3: Forgetting to Add Something After Transitive Verbs 

What does that mean?  Read the dialogue from two spies.

Spy 1: Did you mail it yesterday?
Spy 2:  Yes, I mailed.

You understand every word from the dialogue, right?  Yet ‘I mailed‘ is not so ‘English’.

What causes the mistake?  It could be your mother tongue, especially if you are from Asia.

How not to make it?  To avoid making the mistake again, you must first work out what transitive verbs are, right?  A transitive verb is followed by something.  By something, I mean a noun or a pronoun, for example:

Do + it.  So you have to say ‘I mailed + it.   Other examples in business English include:

Mistake 4: Information & Advice Are Not Countable

At a meeting, have you ever said something like: I have lots of informations and advices to provide.

What causes the mistake?  In your culture you have a different way of thinking about ‘information’ and ‘advice’.  You can count them, but not in English.

How not to make it?  Some rules of grammar are ‘not logical’.  So you have to think about how to remember it.  What about ‘AI‘:

                                    Advice & Information

And what about if you really want to count them?  Add ‘a piece of‘ to make them become:

Boss, there is really a piece of information for you.
What is it?
I want to fire you.

The present perfect is a mixture, blending the past and the present.
You can use it to announce news of your organisations:

Sample sentence:

Our company has changed the world.

(pic source)



What is unclear past?  It means you have no idea when your company did it.




2. Use ‘could’ to indicate disapproval.

When something is not done, when you are angry with your co-workers, you can use ‘could’.  How? Read the sample sentence:

Mr. No-So-Hard-Working could have made more of an effort.

What does that mean?  It means Mr. No-So-Hard-Working could work harder, but he did not.

3. Use ‘will’ to make an offer.

It is a mistake to use ‘will’ whenever you want to talk about the future.  So how to use it?  One of the functions of will is: to make an offer.

Sample sentence:

 

4. Use 3 I(s) to warn your juniors.

Which three?  It is important  …

How to use it?  Do you have any juniors who are always late for work?  So the sentence sample goes like:

It is important to be punctual.

5. Use ‘verb + up’ to mean something positive:

There are more sample sentences for this one:

a. More and more

d. Making something new

c. Finishing something

However, in business English, there are (usually) three exceptions to this rule:

mix up, 
slip up, 
   or hold up 

With ‘up’, they don’t mean anything positive.  But on the contrary, they are all negative.

Sample sentences:

Don’t mix things up!

Ms. Careless has slipped up on the order. (slip up = make a mistake)

Workshop Not-So-Good has threatened to hold up the production.

1. To be polite, use past tenses:

• Talking to your customers: Did you have a visa card?
• Talking to your boss: I was wondering if I could talk to you.   

Why: Past tenses create a distance between you and the one you talk to.  Check out the distance between you and your customers from the diagram.  The longer the distance, the more polite you are.  

• How was the presentation? I think it went well.
• How quickly do your co-workers work?  The work extremely fast.
• Can I get a discount?  You get a discount if you order in bulk.  

This is one of the reasons why Westerners start a sentence with ‘it‘.

e.g. It is true that we have to follow our company’s policy.   

(‘It’ is nothing big in the sentence.)

(pic source)

3. Never write or say ‘There has / have two customers in the waiting room’.

The ‘original’ sentence goes like this: Two customers are in the waiting room.  So it is: 

There are two customers in the waiting room.      

So it is easy.