Rock Your English! newsletter

Dahlink!

How are you on this lovely Monday? Ready to start a fine, fine week ahead? I sure am – it’s chock full of goodness and I truly love Mondays! On my last assessment, my students at the Rockacademie evaluated me and one of them wrote “It’s amazing how happy you are on Monday mornings!”. Here’s my secret. My Monday morning lessons are kind of just…like…this.

Mark your calendars…..

Because on June 25^th it’s…..WEBSDAY!  Yes, yes, y’all! I’ll be doing a brand new webinar on the difference between formal and informal English – one of the biggest communication problems people seem to have when writing and talking in English! In many languages, you have a formal and an informal way of saying ‘you’. But not in English!  So many people struggle with how to express formality in English when we only have  one form – ‘you’. How do you dress your language up to meet the demands of a formal situation? How do you get more variety in your vocabulary to cope with social situations? If you always say the same thing in the same way, no matter who you’re with, then you risk coming across as rude or too direct (trust me). My webinar will help you stop this from happening – here’s a short video about it!

What’s up in Buffiland

I’ve been working on the new Racoon album (tears and goosebumps galore!), coaching new talent, preparing for exams/auditions/graduation for waaaaaaay too many students, and resting up my knee after a yoga injury last week. Looking forward to running again very soon!

Your questions – answered!  

“Buffi, why is ‘To where are you going?’ wrong?” – from S, during a lesson.

Well, S, I’m glad you asked! If a question has a ‘question word’ in it (like ‘who’, ‘when’, ‘why’, ‘how much’, etc) we normally don’t start those types of questions with a preposition (in, on, at, etc). The preposition would be used in the answer. We would say “Where are you going?” and the answer would be “To school/work/my goat sanctuary, etc…” . We also would not say “At what time does the party start?” – that’s something I hear far too often. It should be “When/What time does the party start?” and the answer would be “It starts at….”. Hope that helps!

Sweet goodbyes

Off I go, my dear, only to reappear on your lovely screen (it looks so sparkly clean!) in a few short days. Can’t wait to see you then! Until we are reunited, I send you an airplane ticket to somewhere far, far away, and you feel really sad because you have to leave someone you love, but then you get on the airplane and look who’s right there with an empty seat waiting for you…in my head!

See you next week!

Wit lof from buffi x