March 02 Greeting to Yanko!

Greeting to Yanko!

Hi there Yanko

Nice to hear from you and I hope we’ll have fun and of course, learn something through this month’s blog. I’m Trudi, your teacher and partner and this is my second blogging month. In case you haven’t read any posts from February, I’m British and living in Beijing, China.


So how are you today? How are you spending your weekend? I guess that you work as a system analyst from Monday to Friday and have the weekend free? It’s a shame that you lost a job opportunity because one of the requirements was to be fluent in English (please note the differences between my sentence and yours). Now that you are studying the language seriously, I hope that you can get a promotion or opportunity at work next time. I don’t know much about your profession (not professional because this is an adjective) so it would be useful if you explain more about what you do in later blogs.


You are right when you say that cultural differences exist not only between countries but also within them. As an example, there are many ethnic minority groups that live in China and their culture is different from the majority group which is Han Chinese. Also there are differences in accent, dialect and attitude between Chinese from the North and South of China. What cultural differences did you notice when you travelled to other countries?


Today, let’s look at an error in one of your sentences and correct it.’ I hope one day live abroad’ should read ‘I hope one day to live abroad. This is because of verb patterns; some verbs are followed by verb+–ing and some verbs are followed by to +infinitive. There is a short list of some common verb patterns for your reference:

Verb +ing
like
love
enjoy
prefer
hate
finish

look forward

Verb + to + infinitive

agree choose
decide expect
forget help
hope learn
need offer
refuse seem
want



I think I have a very stereotypical view of Brazilians’ personalities. When I think about people from Brazil (and considering the ones I’ve met), I imagine they are all very friendly, lively and passionate but hot-tempered too. Also, that they are extremely good dancers with great rhythm and lovers of music.To what extent does that stereotype apply to you Yanko?!

Hear from you soon

All the best

Trudi



Vocabulary

shame (n) pity

promotion (n) get a higher position at work

ethnic minority a group that has different national or cultural traditions from the majority of the population

dialect (n) regional variety of language

hot-tempered (adj) quick to get angry

stereotype (n) A conventional and oversimplified opinion or idea