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Making and taking telephone calls in your second language can be a daunting task, especially when a call catches you by surprise. We’ve all been there; stammering, searching for words, awkward silences, and even opting to write an email just to avoid all of the above.

Mastering the art of presenting takes time and practice. Nobody is born with natural presentation skills and even the best orators, such as Cicero, Martin Luther King, Steve Jobs, and Barack Obama, had many years of practice before they became excellent public speakers.

Idioms are phrases used as a form of expression which appear natural to a language, person or group of people. They are not easily explained using grammar rules and cannot be easily understood by defining the individual words (e.g. when we say it’s raining cats and dogs, there will be...

Are you learning Dutch? Do you find yourself confused or amused in the Netherlands or Belgium? Are you trying to puzzle it out by communicating with other expats who know a thing or two about hagelslag? Have no fear, it’s not just you! Dutch is even stranger than you thought....

English has many genuinely confusing words in its vocabulary, but the words discussed in this post are unfortunately not part of them. The difference between these commonly confused words is relatively straightforward, yet they are commonly mixed up with one another, especially online. When do we use your instead of...

The British and the Americans clearly speak the same language, even though there is enough variation to create different versions of the language with slightly different characteristics. Are the British and the Americans really ‘divided by a common language’? How different are these two, really? N.B.: For the record, the...

If you’ve ever negotiated your way out of a tricky situation or took part in a business transaction, you’ve probably employed a certain level of tact as a means of achieving your objective.

As a Language Partners trainer specialising in legal English, my usual assignments consist of being sent to large city law firms, often to refresh the English of their trainee lawyers and to introduce them to the particular (and sometimes peculiar) vocabulary of the world of law. So imagine my surprise...

Small words. The Dutch language is riddled with them and often they can be omitted without drastically changing the meaning of the sentence, in which they occur. It makes you wonder then, whether we really need these words; personally I think we do. In this blog I will look at...

Many business English students are currently preparing for their exams. What’s all the fuss about? In a nutshell, Cambridge Assessment English is an organization dedicated to providing examinations and qualifications for students and teachers of English. They have been operating since 1913 and, presently, over 5 million people take a Cambridge English...