Author: Sourov

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CEFR B2 · 5 min From my experience: At the Star Casino, I read sales reports every Monday morning. Volume, trends, percentage change. I was reading data in hospitality English years before I ever sat an exam. I said things like ‘Sales rose sharply in December and levelled off in January’ to my manager in…

IELTS Writing Task 2: How to Plan Your Essay in 5 Minutes

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CEFR B2 · 5 min From my experience: I took IELTS in 2026. The writing section did not test my vocabulary — it tested whether I could think in paragraphs under pressure. Once I drew a simple box on my paper with four sections, everything became clear: what I think, why I think it (point…

Hedging Language: Sound Confident Without Overclaiming

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CEFR B2 · 5 min From my experience: My first job application in France said: ‘I am an excellent communicator.’ The interviewer looked up and asked: ‘Excellent by whose standard?’ That was the day I understood that in professional and academic English, confidence sounds different from certainty. You hedge. ‘I believe my experience in cross-cultural…

Collocations: Words That Travel Together in English

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CEFR B2 · 5 min From my experience: In English, you do not ‘make’ homework — you ‘do’ it. You do not ‘do’ a mistake — you ‘make’ one. These are collocations: word partnerships that native speakers use automatically, without thinking. I learned mine slowly, by ear, working at The Ivy. Every menu description, every…

Discourse Markers: How to Sound Fluent, Not Just Correct

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CEFR B2 · 5 min From my experience: I failed my first formal English essay assignment in Australia. The ideas were there — solid, clear. But every paragraph started with ‘Also’ or ‘And’. My tutor wrote just two words in the margin: ‘Show logic.’ That was the day I understood what discourse markers actually do…

Reported Speech: What My Best Manager Actually Said

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CEFR B2 · 5 min From my experience: My best manager at Merivale never gave direct orders. He said things like: ‘I was wondering if you might have thought about checking the private dining room.’ Reported to a colleague later: ‘He suggested I check the private dining room.’ That gap — between what was said…

Passive Voice: How Restaurants Speak English

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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. ‘The wine is aged for twelve months in French oak.’ ‘The cork is extracted at the table.’ ‘The temperature is maintained at 16 degrees.’ In fine dining, the process…

Phrasal Verbs at Work: What Hospitality Really Taught Me

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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 figuring out what that meant. Run — take full responsibility, keep it moving, own it. Phrasal verbs are where English gets specific. ‘Run’, ‘set up’, ‘hand over’, ‘deal with’…

Polite English at Work: Requests, Offers and Suggestions That Land

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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 want to bring the bill?’ got one kind of response. The guests who said ‘Would you mind bringing the bill when you have a moment?’ got a different energy…

Second Conditional: The Life I Almost Lived

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