Phrasal Verbs at Work: Put Off, Take On, Hand In
When I managed a team of fifteen at the Ivy, I learned more phrasal verbs in two months than in two years of study. "Hand in the stock report." "Don't put off the complaint." "We're…
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Narrative Tenses: Telling a Story in the Past
My first year in Sydney, 2005: I had been walking for three hours when I finally found a café that was hiring. I walked in. The manager looked up. That was my start in hospitality.…
Future Forms: Will, Going To, and Present Continuous
When my daughter was born, I thought: I will teach her everything I know. But Vanessa, more practical, said: I'm going to book her first check-up tomorrow. And our neighbour texted: We're coming round on…
Third Conditional: The Grammar of Regret
After the incident at work that cost me a role I had trained for, I spent weeks thinking in the third conditional: If I had known, I would have done it differently. If they had…
Second Conditional: Imagining a Different Life
People ask me: if you hadn't left Bangladesh, what would your life look like? I always pause. The second conditional is the grammar of that pause — imagining a different present by changing a past…
Reported Speech: What She Actually Said
At CDG airport, it was snowing. Vanessa had been waiting for four hours. She said: "I knew you would make it." Years later I still replay that sentence. In English, to tell someone else what…
Relative Clauses: Who, Which, That, Where
Réunion is the island where my daughter was born. The hospital where she arrived was small, clean, and impossibly calm. The nurse who handled the C-section had been working since 4 a.m. Relative clauses pack…
Articles: A, An, The — The Rules Nobody Tells You
"I want a water." I said this on my first week in Sydney. The waiter stared. Water is uncountable — you don't say a water unless you mean a bottle or a glass. Articles were…
The Passive Voice: When the Action Matters More Than the Actor
💬 From my own experience: In hotel incident reports, we always wrote 'The bottle was broken' rather than 'Tom broke the bottle.' That passive form is not evasion — it focuses attention on the event,…
Modal Verbs for Advice: Should, Ought To, Had Better
My first mentor at Merivale said: "You should taste before you pour. You had better know your list. And you ought to remember every regular." Three modal verbs, one shift. I learned all three that…
Present Perfect vs Past Simple: When Time Matters
When I arrived in Sydney in 2005, my English was, in my own words, horrible. A customer once asked me, "Have you ever worked in hospitality?" I said, "Yes, I worked." Wrong. I should have…
Writing a CV in English: Structure and Key Phrases (B2/C1)
🎙 From the classroom: I've written my CV in English, French, and Bengali. The English version is the hardest — not because of language, but because of culture. A British or Australian CV is concise,…
Small Talk at Work: Starting Conversations in English (B1)
🎙 From the classroom: Working at The Ivy in Sydney, I learned that small talk wasn't small. It built the relationship before the transaction. A guest who felt genuinely noticed would order a better bottle,…
Giving a Presentation in English: Structure and Signposting (B2)
🎙 From the classroom: I've given dozens of training briefings to hotel teams in Sydney — shift handovers, product launches, standards updates. The teams who remembered information were the ones who could anticipate the structure.…
Job Interview English: Tell Me About Yourself (B2)
🎙 From the classroom: I've been interviewed in English in Australia, and interviewed over fifty people for front-of-house positions in Sydney restaurants. The candidates who stood out didn't have the best CVs. They had the…
Email Writing: Four Formulas That Actually Work (B1)
🎙 From the classroom: Over eighteen years in hospitality, I wrote hundreds of emails to VIP guests, suppliers, and managers. The best emails I ever received — and sent — all had one thing in…
Numbers and Counting in the Kitchen (A1)
🎙 From the classroom: As a barista, I measured everything: 18 grams of coffee, 93 degrees, 28 seconds. Numbers are everywhere in cooking and every kitchen in the world. Using the kitchen as a context…
Daily Routines — What Do You Do Every Day? (A1/A2)
🎙 From the classroom: My morning in Réunion: wake up at 5am, drink coffee, look at the ocean, walk to the bakery. Every day, the same. Routines are where the Present Simple lives — and…
Body Parts in English — Head, Shoulders, Knees (A1)
🎙 From the classroom: Young learners learn body parts fastest when they move. Touch your head. Touch your shoulders. The old song works because kinesthetic memory is one of the strongest kinds of memory —…
Animals in English — A Safari Around La Réunion (A1)
🎙 From the classroom: Réunion Island has remarkable animals: giant petrel birds, green sea turtles, chameleons in the garden, sharks in the lagoon. My daughter learned 'turtle' before 'table'. Children learn the words that mean…