Learn Why English Is Truly the World’s Language
The English language is incredibly diverse, and incredibly expressive— it seems like it has a word for almost anything. It’s also quite complicated! If you’ve ever wondered about why the English language looks the way it does, the answer starts in the British Isles— a place with a complex history of invasion and colonization, combined with a willingness to accept words from other languages. This incredible history makes for a cool and diverse language, but also explains the confusing spellings and pronunciation we deal with here in the 21st century.
Cross Cultural Training: Learn the Basics
We live in an increasingly diverse world. That applies to the companies we work for as well! Since the Covid-19 outbreak, companies have been shifting their focus to hiring remote workers, which has increased the number of multi-cultural teams at many companies. This increase to multi-cultural teams has also increased the demand for cross cultural training— because quite simply, multi-cultural teams often struggle to get along!
Why Do Companies Favor Extroverts?
Let’s start this blog with a confession: I am an introvert. Now that I’m a full-time remote professional, it’s safe to say that nothing motivated me to leave the office forever more than having to work in a start-up. Working in a start-up may sound fun to a lot of people, but in my experience, when start-ups say “our culture is fun and awesome,” they tend to mean “fun and awesome for extroverts.”
Business English Toolbox: How to Pronounce “-ed”
If you listen carefully to a native speaker say a word like “worked,” you might notice something strange. It doesn’t sound like they say the “ed” at the end of the word at all— it sounds more like a “t” sound that’s just hanging on the end of the word. The confusion continues when you hear them say “cleaned” and notice that the “ed” sounds like a “d.”
Texture Adjectives Stay Crunchy, Even In Milk!
One of my favorite parts of my job is running Verbalize Now’s weekly conversation club. We talk about an incredibly wide array of topics, which helps my students discover concepts and vocabulary that they may not have heard before. An interesting thing happened in this week’s meeting— I found out that lots of advanced English students have never been taught common texture adjectives.
Dear Leader: Ditch Autocratic Leadership!
If there’s one thing the current situation in Ukraine can teach us, it’s that when one person has all the power, things can go wrong very quickly. However, you don’t need to be a head of state to be an autocrat, or to suffer under one.
Prove Them Wrong: How to Win Arguments
These days, it seems like everybody has an argument for or against something. The art of debate, which is thousands of years old, was a major part of the robust democracy fostered by the ancient Greeks. These days, understanding the art of debating is more important than ever, especially when you’re studying business English in […]
Does “Saudade” Have an English Translation?
I’ve only been in Brazil for four months, and I don’t speak much Portuguese (yet.) However, there’s one word I learned pretty quickly, and it’s “saudade.” Brazilians love this word— just listen to Brazilian music and you’ll hear it turn up all the time.
