Sourov DEB

Author: Sourov

  • Intensifiers: Very, Really, Absolutely, Utterly

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    ⏱ 5 Minutes · B1 📖 From Experience One of the things I noticed moving from hospitality English to academic English is that ‘very tired’ felt wrong in writing. In speaking, it is fine. But the more precise you are — ‘utterly exhausted’ or ‘completely drained’ — the more professional you sound. Intensifiers matter. 📚…

  • Describing Graphs and Data: The Language of Numbers

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    ⏱ 5 Minutes · B2 📖 From Experience When I rebuilt my professional history from years of email records, I had to describe trends: ’email volume increased sharply in 2014′, ‘it declined steadily after 2018’, ‘it remained stable throughout’. The language of data is specific — and it is tested in every Cambridge exam from…

  • The Writing Process: Draft, Revise, Edit

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    ⏱ 5 Minutes · B1/B2 📖 From Experience When I started writing formally — appeals, job applications, eventually blog posts — I tried to write perfectly on the first attempt. I couldn’t. No one can. The best writers I know treat the first draft as thinking on paper. The real work is in the revision.…

  • Prepositions of Time: At, On, In — Get Them Right

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    ⏱ 5 Minutes · A2 📖 From Experience ‘I arrived in 2005.’ ‘I work on Sundays.’ ‘The restaurant opens at noon.’ These three prepositions — at, on, in — govern time expressions in English. Bengali doesn’t use prepositions the same way. French is different too. This is one of the first things every learner gets…

  • Conjunctions: Connect Your Ideas Clearly

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    ⏱ 5 Minutes · A2/B1 📖 From Experience My daughter is 18 months old. She already knows ‘no’ — but she doesn’t yet know ‘however’. That one word, ‘however’, is the difference between a child’s logic and an adult’s argument. Conjunctions are the joints of your ideas. Get them right and your writing becomes a…

  • The Language of Apology: Saying Sorry Professionally

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    Sourov

    ⏱ 5 Minutes · B1/B2 📖 From Experience In hospitality, apologies are currency. A well-timed, sincere apology saves a table. A badly phrased one makes it worse. I’ve said ‘I’m sorry, sir, that shouldn’t have happened’ a hundred times. But I’ve also heard ‘I’m sorry you feel that way’ — which is not an apology…

  • Prefixes and Suffixes: Build Your Vocabulary Fast

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    ⏱ 5 Minutes · B1/B2 📖 From Experience When I was working towards French C1, I noticed I could guess words I’d never seen by breaking them apart. The same works in English. If you know that un- means ‘not’ and -able means ‘can be done’, then unacceptable is not a new word — it…

  • Adverbs of Frequency: How Often Do You Do Things?

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    ⏱ 5 Minutes · A2 📖 From Experience When a French customer at the Ivy asked me how often I worked nights, I said ‘I work night always.’ The look on her face told me something was wrong. The correct order is: subject → adverb → verb. ‘I always work nights.’ A tiny shift that…

  • Collocations: The Words That Go Together

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    ⏱ 5 Minutes · B1/B2 📖 From Experience When I was working as a barista, I noticed that English speakers didn’t say ‘do a coffee’ — they said ‘make a coffee’. Not ‘take a decision’ but ‘make a decision’. Not ‘do progress’ but ‘make progress’. These fixed pairings are collocations, and knowing them is what…

  • Academic Discussion Language: Agreeing, Disagreeing, Hedging

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    ⏱ 5 Minutes · B2/C1 📖 From Experience At the immigration office in France, I once politely disagreed with an official — in French — and managed to change a decision. The key was not what I said but how I said it. ‘I understand your position, but I wonder if…’ Academic discussion language is…