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Selecting What to Describe
I was sitting in a cramped, windowless exam hall last Tuesday, staring at a stack of scripts that all felt painfully familiar. One student, a bright professional who clearly knew her subject matter, had spent three pages meticulously listing every single data point on the chart as if she were reading a grocery list. She
Must, Might and Cannot for Deduction
I was sitting in my office last Tuesday, looking over a stack of practice essays, when I saw it again. It was the same hesitant, “safe” phrasing that I’ve been marking in red ink for nearly two decades. Most textbooks will give you a dry, endless list of definitions, but they fail to explain the
A Report With Findings and Recommendations
I’ve sat through enough marking sessions to know that most students approach the question of how to write a report with a heavy dose of unnecessary fluff. They think that if they use enough “academic-sounding” jargon or wrap their ideas in layers of complex, winding sentences, they’ll somehow impress the examiner. It’s a complete myth.
Idioms Worth Learning and Ones to Avoid
I remember sitting in a cramped exam hall ten years ago, watching a student—a brilliant, hardworking professional—stare at a reading passage with pure, unadulterated horror. He had understood every single word on the page, yet he couldn’t grasp the meaning of the text because he was trying to translate every phrase literally. That is the
Why Fast Speech Sounds Like One Word
I remember sitting in a cramped, overheated classroom in Johannesburg, watching a bright student stare at a listening transcript with pure, unadulterated frustration. He had every single word written down right in front of him, yet he couldn’t understand a single sentence the speaker had uttered. He wasn’t failing because of his vocabulary; he was
Words That Betray You
I remember sitting in a quiet exam hall ten years ago, watching a bright, capable student stare in absolute horror at his own essay. He had used the word “actually” when he meant “currently,” and in that one split second, his entire argument collapsed. It wasn’t a lack of vocabulary that failed him; it was
Wish and the Tense That Follows
I remember sitting in a cramped exam hall ten years ago, watching a brilliant student—a man who had worked in international business for decades—stare in silent horror at his own paper. He had understood the concept of regret perfectly, but he had stumbled on the mechanics of how to use wish and if only in
Working Out a Word Without a Dictionary
I can still see them clearly: rows of exhausted adults in my evening classes, eyes glazing over as they hit a single unfamiliar term in a reading passage. I remember one student, a brilliant engineer, who spent ten minutes paralyzed by a single word, his pen hovering uselessly over the paper while the clock ticked
Intonation and Politeness
I remember sitting in a cramped, windowless classroom last Tuesday, watching a brilliant student—a man with a Master’s degree in his own right—completely crumble during his speaking exam. He had the vocabulary, the grammar, and the perfect sentence structures, but he spoke with the melodic range of a flatline. It was devastating because he didn’t
A Personal Statement With Evidence
I remember sitting at my small kitchen table years ago, surrounded by a mountain of red ink and the weary faces of adult students who had failed their exams for the second time. They didn’t need more “inspiration” or flowery metaphors; they needed to know why their hard work wasn’t translating into points. Most of