Business English - Daily Routine PDF

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USEFUL ENGLISH PHRASES TO DESCRIBE YOUR DAILY ROUTINE There are some key phrases that are useful to learn in English in order to explain your day to another person. Here is a typical day in a teacher’s life taken form the web. “I wake up at 6 o’clock. I get up at 6.50. I make a cup of tea and iron my clothes. I have a shower and get dressed. I usually wear jeans, a blouse, a jumper or cardigan and boots in the winter, or a skirt and blouse in the summer. I brush my hair, put on my make-up. I pack my bag with all my teaching materials. I then put on my coat and leave the house. I walk to the bus stop. I catch the bus at 8.15, and then I pay my fare and sit down. It takes about 45 minutes to get to my destination three miles away. I get off the bus and walk to the school where I teach English. I have to sign in and get the key. Class starts at 9.25 and ends at 11.25. I have lunch at 12. I eat a baguette or sandwich at the local café. I sometimes do some shopping before I walk back to school. I do some photocopying and go back to my classroom. I teach in the afternoon from 1 to 3pm. I then catch the bus back home and spend a couple of hours relaxing before I cook dinner. My son goes to work shortly after I come home. Sometimes he cooks dinner before I get home, and sometimes I cook. I like to eat rice or pasta with a sauce. I chop the onions, fry them and then mix them with garlic, tomatoes, carrots, spinach and chilies. I boil the rice and then add the sauce. After dinner I wash up, sweep the floor, and tidy up a bit. Then I make phone calls, mark my students’ work, do the laundry. Then I go on Facebook, or watch TV until about 10.30 when my son comes home. We catch up on our day, and at about 11 o’clock I go to bed.

Other days I get up early, go downstairs, put on my computer and teach online for three hours. Then I have a break, eat dinner with my son, have a walk or go shopping before returning to work and teaching again for another three hours. Working at home can be very convenient and I love being able to talk to people around the world. It is also nice working in a school and seeing people on a regular basis and working in a team. So I feel I have the best of both worlds.” So there you have a typical day. There are lots of different types of English constructions used in describing a day, including many phrasal verbs like: “tidy up”, “wash up”, and “get up”. There are also lots of sentences with supporting verbs such as: “I have lunch”, or “I get dressed”. See if you can describe your day using the same language forms.

SIMPLE WAYS TO GIVE ADVICE IN ENGLISH Giving advice in English might seem tricky at first. There are several ways to do it and each uses a slightly sentence structure. So, how do we choose which one to use? Find out with these five simple ways to give advice in English.

1. Use a modal verb There are two modal verbs we often use for giving advice: “should” and “ought to”. Both mean the same thing but work in slightly different ways. Let’s look at some examples. You should do more exercise. You shouldn’t drink so much beer. As you can see above, after “should” we use an infinitive without “to”. You ought to do more exercise. You ought not to drink so much beer. Unlike “should”, we always use “to” in “ought to” for giving advice.

2. Make it into a question To make advice less direct, we can use a question to make the person we are advising consider about the advice we are giving them. Why don’t you do some more exercise? How about doing some more exercise? With the question ‘Why don’t you…?’ we use an infinitive without ‘to’. When we use ‘How about…?’ to make a question, we use a gerund after it.

3. Put yourself in the person’s position If someone is asking for your advice, sometimes it’s useful to imagine yourself being in that person’s position. This is a good way to explain your advice, too. If I were you, I would do more exercise. Remember to use an infinitive after ‘would’ and not ‘to’. To make this negative, put ‘not’ after ‘would’.

4. Make a suggestion A suggestion or recommendation is another good way of giving advice that isn’t to direct. You can use the words ‘suggest’ or ‘recommend’ as in the example below. I would suggest doing more exercise. I would recommend doing more exercise.

Use ‘verb+ing’ after ‘suggest’ or ‘recommend’ to explain your advice to the listener. To make these negative, put ‘not’ before your ‘verb+ing’.

5. Advise in a stronger way Sometimes, you need to make your advice stronger to let the listener know that it’s really important. We can use the expression ‘you had better…’ to do this. You had better do more exercise before you start getting fat. You had better not drink so much beer or you will get fat. We use an infinitive after ‘better’ to explain our advice and add ‘not’ after ‘better’ to make the sentence negative. So, now you know how to give advice in English....