Passive Voice: How Restaurants Speak English
CEFR B2 · 5 min From my experience: As a sommelier at The Ivy, I lived inside the passive voice without knowing it had a name.…
ReadEverything, by pillar.
Phrasal Verbs at Work: What Hospitality Really Taught Me
CEFR B1-B2 · 5 min From my experience: The head chef at Uccello had one rule: ‘Run the kitchen. Don’t manage it.’ I spent three months…
ReadPolite English at Work: Requests, Offers and Suggestions That Land
CEFR B1-B2 · 5 min From my experience: I served thousands of guests at The Ivy and Establishment in Sydney. The guests who said ‘Do you…
ReadSecond Conditional: The Life I Almost Lived
CEFR B1-B2 · 5 min From my experience: Every immigrant has a sentence that begins ‘If I hadn’t left…’ Mine is: if I had stayed in…
ReadComparatives and Superlatives: Sydney vs Réunion
CEFR B1 · 5 min From my experience: People always ask me: ‘Which do you prefer — Sydney or Réunion?’ My honest answer is that they…
ReadFuture Plans: ‘Going To’ vs ‘Will’ — and Why the Difference Matters
CEFR B1 · 5 min From my experience: When Vanessa and I decided to move from Paris to Réunion, we had two kinds of sentences. ‘We’re…
Read‘I Used to Work Nights’: Past Habits That No Longer Exist
CEFR B1 · 5 min From my experience: I used to start every shift with a double espresso I pulled myself. I would stand at the…
ReadPast Simple for Stories: How I Tell My Sydney Years in English
CEFR B1 · 5 min From my experience: 2005 to 2017. Twelve years of Sydney. Every sentence about that chapter of my life starts with ‘I…
ReadPresent Perfect: The Tense That Connects Your Past to Right Now
CEFR B1 · 5 min From my experience: The first night I arrived in Réunion and looked up at the sky, I said out loud —…
ReadDirections in English: How I Got Lost in Paris and Found My Way Back
CEFR A2-B1 · 5 min From my experience: My first week in Paris in 2017, I got lost in the Métro every single day. Not because…
Read