Spoken English (3)

Give me Five

(1) Summary: This post is about how to speak better English with regard to the common phrase ‘Give me five‘. You will learn that ‘Give five’ is absolutely not English as you can group verbs into two kinds, two funny kinds to be exact: Slim Verbs and Fat Verbs. With a sense of humor, this post attempts to explain ideas that are unconscious to westerners, native speakers of English.  

Why is ‘Take a seat’ polite?

(2) Summary: This post is about how to speak better English with regard to politeness. You will learn the reason why ‘take your time‘ is polite, with a little theory offered by me. I try to argue that it is polite because there is a mismatch between the verb (take) and the real action (sit).

Think twice when using ‘think’

(3) Summary: This post is about how to speak better English in an office setting with regard to the verb ‘think‘. If you use ‘I think’ all the time at a meeting, you will not be able to outshine others. Therefore, the post offers you a variety of verbs including ‘guess‘, ‘suppose‘, and ‘feel‘.

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Pic sources: Pic 1, Pic 2, Pic 3