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Have you ever entered a job interview and got asked “Tell me about yourself?”

And was this your reaction: Gulp! What do I say? There’s so much about me but where do I begin?!

This is why it’s so important to have your answers prepared in advance. You don’t need to memorise a script – this will make you sound stiff. Instead, you want to have a few points up your sleeve and elaborate from there.

Follow the steps below and practice by yourself or with a friend. You’ll want to sound natural and confident, so it pays to practice. You also want to keep your answer short — not more than two minutes. So time yourself when you practice. Any more than two minutes and your interviewer may lose interest.

Continue reading “How to answer “Tell me about yourself.””

Today I want to write about three types of tenses that many (even advanced students) struggle with.

Take a look at the following sentences and pay attention to the tenses:

1. Simple present tense: As I write this, it is 10:30 am.
2. Present continuous tense: It is raining here in Kuala Terengganu.
3. Present perfect continuous tense: It has been raining since this morning.

Continue reading “Grammar Lesson: Three types of tenses and how to use them”

After my post last week about the difference between “Please advise” and “Please advice”, we received a question from a student on how to sound polite in emails.

I’ve personally received emails where the sender sounded rude even when they didn’t mean to. I’ve also sent emails in a rush and only realised they sounded rude after hitting “send”!

This is something that we may struggle with because 1) English is our second language so we may tend to be more direct in writing, and 2) when we write, people can’t hear our tone of voice and may interpret straightforward language as rude or impolite.

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Do you use “Please advice” or “Please advise” in your emails? Well, the correct phrase is actually “Please advise”.

Some grammar experts say that “Please advise” must have an object after the phrase because advise is a transitive verb. But since it’s widely used in our emails, “Please advise” is grammatically accepted. Just take note that some may argue “Please advise” sounds impolite, so try to use it sparingly or check that the content of your email doesn’t come across rude or demanding.

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I hope you’re having a great Thursday morning. I recently came across a short video by Mel Robbins, a motivational speaker, talking about confidence. She says “Confidence is not a skill. Confidence is the willingness to try.”

Continue reading “Confidence is the willingness to try”

The subject of this post is “The words we say to ourselves” because so many of our students write to us saying they have low confidence in speaking English. And I know for a fact that low confidence has a lot to do with what we say to ourselves – whether out loud or in our heads.

Continue reading “The words we say to ourselves”