Walk the talk

My phrasal verb for today is walk the talk, which means to do what you say, or to have coherence between your speech and your actions. We use this a lot in business. We think it's important for people and companies to walk the talk. What do you think?

Call her! Ask her!

One of the most difficult things in English is when to use "to" and when not to use it. With call and ask, for example, we don't put "to" between the verb and the object. We say "I'll call her," not I'll call to her. The same is true for ask. "Let's ask him if he knows the answer." Also, with things like a company, the concept is the same. "She called the restaurant and made a reservation."

Comments? Questions? Suggestions?

Some of my favorite people have said that they would like to post a comment here but it's difficult or impossible because they don't have a blogger or Google account. I'm sorry about that and I don't have a solution to the problem. You could create a gmail account in order to post your comments on blogs (this is what I did in the past), or you could send me an email at coultonv@yahoo.com with your comment or idea. I would love to hear from you! Especially because you may have a question or an idea for a post that would be interesting. Whether you decide to comment, email, or not, thank you so much for visiting thinking in English!

Figure out

My phrasal verb for the week is figure out. It means to understand something or someone, or find the answer to a question or problem after thinking carefully. For example, "I've known Bob for a long time, but I can't figure him out." This means that I've tried, but I don't understand Bob. For example, "We have to figure out how to do the project with half the money." This means that we have to solve this problem.

Looking at the examples above, you can see that when we have a person or thing, we can put this in the middle, between figure and out. If we have a question word, like how, what or why, we put it after. For example, "I can't figure out what the problem is with my phone."

Saying thank you

When someone says "thank you," you have two basic, polite options. You can say "you're welcome," or, if you want to thank the other person, you can say "thank you." We don't say "thanks to you," even though this seems right because it's a direct translation from Spanish or Catalan. The trick is to put some emphasis on "you."

Some people in the US and the UK will say "no problem" instead of "you're welcome." This is very informal, so you would use it with your friends, etc.

If you want to make your thank you a little stronger, you can say "thanks a lot," or more formally, "thank you very much."

Doable or not?

My word for this week is doable. This is one of those real words that might not appear in your dictionary, but we use it all the time to talk about what is possible. If something is doable, it means that we can do it. This is an informal word, and a very useful one when you're talking about plans and ideas. For exmple, "I love the concept, but is it really doable?"

How should my English sound?

Sometimes, people worry about how they should sound in English, and whether it would be better to speak with a British accent, or to sound like an American. This is a good question, but it might relate more to being able to understand different speakers, than to how you should try to sound. As a teacher, sometimes I run into trouble with English resources because the guide to pronunciation is British. It's important to pronounce English correctly, but what does that mean, when Scottish people speak in a completely different way from New Yorkers? I think the most important thing is to speak as clearly as you can, in order to communicate. Communicating is more important than sounding like this person or that person, or trying to speak as a native speaker.
Here's a short video from Misterduncan on this topic. If you like it, you can find a number of other videos from him on YouTube, where he appears as duncaninchina.

Talking about the weather

When we talk about the weather, we often use "it."

For example:
"It was raining when we left, but now it's sunny."
"It's too windy to go for a walk, so let's stay home and watch a video."

This is the most colloquial way to say how the weather is. To talk about the present moment using a verb, we say "it's raining." To talk about general conditions, we can use the simple present, "it rains a lot in Indonesia." When we make a prediction, we can say, "I think it's going to rain" or "they say it's going to rain tomorrow."

Here's a link to more vocabulary for speaking about the weather: http://www.englishclub.com/speaking/weather.htm.

P.S. The image here is a painting titled "Extreme Weather Warning" by Jim Bergerman and John Avignon, available at www.factoryfresh.net

Well, actually...

Actually is an adverb that we use the same way as "in fact." It's a way to correct information.

"So, you're the new receptionist, right?"
"Well, actually I'm the new CEO."

Or:

"We thought he was really ill, but actually he just wanted to stay home and play video games."

In both cases, you could substitute "in fact."

Fear and being afraid

Fear is a noun. We usually use the adjective afraid to talk about the feeling that fear creates. In Spanish we say tengo miedo, but in English we usually say I'm afraid. As in, I'm afraid of spiders.

Some people have a lot of fears (spiders, snakes, tall buildings, elevators, flying, etc.) and others only have a few. I think most people are afraid of something.

The other day one of my students was saying that she was afraid to post a comment here because she might make a mistake. This didn't surprise me because many people (including me) don't want to make mistakes and feel embarrassed. But the truth is that I make mistakes every day and nothing terrible happens. Sometimes people correct me, sometimes not. As a foreigner living here, mistakes are 100% guaranteed! I appreciate the generosity of people who help me to learn, even if I feel embarrassed in the moment.

People who take risks, even small ones, really inspire me. Maybe they're afraid, but they continue anyway, and this is the important part.

Here's a video of people talking about their greatest fears. Some of the people are easy to understand and some are almost impossible!



As always, it would be interesting to hear your thoughts about this.