Author: Sourov
-
English Bite — My Daughter Taught Me: Colours in English
function checkQ(n,a,el){var r=document.getElementById(“q”+n+”result”);if(el.value==a){r.style.color=”#38a169″;r.textContent=”✅ Correct!”;} else{r.style.color=”#e53e3e”;r.textContent=”❌ Try again!”;} r.style.display=”block”;} 🎨 My Daughter Taught Me: Colours in English Level: A1 · 5 minutes · Young Learners & Parents 💡 Today’s Idea We use colour words to describe the world around us.In English: red, blue, green, yellow, orange, purple, pink, white, black, brown. 📖 From My Experience My…
-
Four Languages in One Head: What Multilingualism Teaches You About English
CEFR C1-C2 · 5 min From my experience: Bengali at home. English at work. French with neighbours. Hindi when I dream. I didn’t plan to become multilingual — it happened because I moved, because I had to, because language follows necessity. What I discovered is that each new language does not replace the others. They…
-
Register and Style: The Four Englishes of One Working Day
CEFR C1-C2 · 5 min From my experience: As a restaurant manager in Sydney, I used four different Englishes in one shift. With kitchen staff: ‘Check if the lamb’s ready.’ With a VIP guest: ‘I understand the table wasn’t quite to your satisfaction this evening.’ With a supplier: ‘We’ll need that confirmed in writing by…
-
Mixed Conditionals: When the Past Changes the Present
CEFR C1-C2 · 5 min From my experience: If I had not left Bangladesh in 2005, I would not be sitting in Réunion writing this lesson right now. That single sentence mixes a past condition with a present result. It is not a rare or exotic structure — it is the most human of all…
-
Orwell’s Rules: Why Short Words Win in English
CEFR C1 · 5 min From my experience: I rewrote my professional biography four times. Each draft was shorter than the last. The fourth draft — eleven lines, no adjectives I couldn’t justify — was the one that landed me two callbacks in the same week. George Orwell wrote his six rules in 1946. Every…
-
Nominalisation: Why Formal English Loves Nouns
CEFR C1 · 5 min From my experience: Immigration paperwork taught me nominalisation before I knew the word for it. On every form: ‘the application’ (not ‘I applied’). ‘The investigation is ongoing’ (not ‘they are investigating’). ‘Upon the arrival of’ (not ‘when someone arrives’). Bureaucracy runs on nouns — and so does academic English. Once…
-
Inversion for Emphasis: Never Have I Felt So English
CEFR C1 · 5 min From my experience: The most dramatic sentence I ever said in English came without planning. I was explaining my career to someone at a conference in Réunion: ‘Never have I worked somewhere where I felt truly seen as a professional.’ I didn’t plan the inversion — it came from the…
-
Circumlocution: Talking Around the Words You Don’t Know
CEFR B2-C1 · 5 min From my experience: My first year of French in Paris, I didn’t know the word for ‘dishwasher’. So I said: ‘la machine qui lave les assiettes’ — the machine that washes the plates inside your kitchen. My colleague understood immediately and told me the word: lave-vaisselle. Circumlocution is not a…
-
Modal Perfects: The Grammar of Regret and Past Possibility
CEFR B2-C1 · 5 min From my experience: On a long flight from Paris to Réunion, I sat with nothing but my thoughts. ‘Could I have done anything differently?’ ‘Should I have stayed in Sydney?’ ‘Would things have been different if I had finished my accounting degree?’ Three modal perfects in two minutes of quiet…
-
Speaking Fluently: Fillers, Pausing, and Buying Time in English
CEFR B2 · 5 min From my experience: In my IELTS Speaking exam, the examiner asked: ‘What would you change about where you live?’ I had the answer — I needed two seconds to organise it. I said: ‘That’s a good question — well, I suppose if I’m honest…’ Those six words gave me exactly…