Summary

The three sections of the second unit are divided into two sections: communication and grammar. Communication refers to the ways in which we express ourselves in common communicative situations. On the other hand, grammar refers to the set of rules that explain the correct sentence structures in the English language.

If you ever have to read anything in English, the most probable thing is that you need to read a technical manual. The most important thing when you read a manual or a specialized article is to pick up the most important information and disregard the rest. A way of doing so is to identify the key points in the text and use them to write a mind-map, which is a way of collecting the important information in a simplified and visual way.

Very similar to the techniques for reading a technical manual are the techniques for listening to a speech, but on this occasion you must use your listening skills rather than your reading skills. When you listen to a text, it is very important to distinguish the key information. In a speech there is usually a lot of extra information, more than in a written text, so you should learn to clearly identify the primary from the secondary information. To do so, you can take notes, which is similar to creating a mind-map, but in note-taking you generally write a list of sentences in a simplified way with the important points of the speech.

Both in reading and listening, you need to apply your skills for writing a summary. Writing a summary means precisely to distinguish between the basic information (that which is important) from the secondary information (that which is only used to round up a text or speech). Examples of secondary information are sentences to clarify a point, to emphasize the message, to add extra information, to give examples or illustrations, etc. All these should not be included in a summary because they are not the key points. For example, here is a sentence: London, which is the capital of England, is one of the biggest cities in Europe together with Paris and Berlin, for example. Here is the summary: London is one of the biggest cities in Europe.

Another important aspect is translating a text. You may need to translate a text to make it clearer for you, but in general you translate a text to allow people who don’t speak the language to understand it. We can distinguish between direct translation (from the foreign language to your mother tongue) and inverse translation (from your mother tongue to the foreign language). Nowadays, translating a text is very quick and easy, because the automatic translators do most of the work for you, but it is necessary to review and correct the translation generated because the translators are not perfect and sometimes they make mistakes. For this reason, it is always necessary to check the translation and correct any possible errors. This activity is also very helpful to improve your reading and writing skills.

The writing skills are probably the easiest to practise because you can do it on your own and you have plenty of time for checking the text and correcting possible mistakes. To write a good text in English, first of all you must think about the objective of the text (to explain facts, to give opinions, to persuade people, etc.) because each objective requires the use of specific words and expressions. Next, you must think what you want to say (for this, it is a good idea to write down notes with the main ideas). Finally, you can start writing the text. You must pay attention to the use of the right words, sentence structures and aspects such as organization of the text, spelling, etc.

When you write in English, the most probable thing is that you need to write an email or a letter. Emails are the most widely used form of written communication nowadays. When you write an email, it is very important to think about the person that you are writing to and decide whether you should write your email in formal or informal English. For example, to a friend you could start by saying: Hi, Laura, but you cannot say so if you are writing a business mail to an unkown person. In this case, you can say Dear Sir/Madam (if you don’t know the person’s name) or Dear Mrs Smith (if you know the person’s name). On the other hand, letters tend to be formal (you generally write an email to a friend). As they are sent in paper format, there are more conventions for writing letters, as for example, the position of the sender and the receiver’s address or the date.

To write a comprehensible, coherent text, you must be aware of some aspects that are very important in the writing skills. These are connectors, spelling and punctuation. Connectors are the words that link the ideas together. They can express things like additional ideas (and, moreover), contrasting ideas (but, however, although), consequence (therefore, for this reason), time sequence (first, next, finally), etc. Spelling refers to the way in which we write the words, including the use of capital letters, which in English is sometimes different from Catalan or Spanish (for example: in English these words are always spelt in capital letters: Spanish, I or Monday). Finally, punctuation refers to the use of certain signs like commas (,) full stops (.) or question marks (?) to add some extra information to the message.

Reading is another important skill in English. You need to develop that skill to read emails, letters, manuals, articles or books in English. As in all the skills, you need a lot of practice to understand a written text. Reading is much easier than speaking because it is a passive skill. You only need to have some vocabulary and understand the basic sentence structures to understand a text.

Speaking about the weather is very common in English. In fact, the weather is the favourite topic of conversation when you want to initiate a conversation with someone. Moreover, if you work in the agricultural sector, the weather is a very important factor to take into account in your job, so you should be prepared to speak about it. The most important thing to speak about the weather is to know the basic vocabulary, like rain, snow, fog, etc. and use it in the correct way: it’s raining, there’s fog, etc. It is also very common to make predictions about the weather. For this, you should learn the use of the future form with will, which is used to make predictions, such as: it will be fine tomorrow, but there will be clouds in the evening.

Also related to the future, expressing wishes is a common communicative situation. To express your wishes, you can use a variety of words and expressions, such as: I would like to have a coffee, I wish it were fine, If only we had money or I want to stay at home. Note that we use the past tense of the verb with I wish… and If only…, although we are referring to future wishes. But we can also speak about past wishes, that is, things that didn’t happen and we wanted them to happen. For example, we can say: I would have liked to be with you yesterday or I wish it had rained last night. In both cases, we use the verb tense called, the past perfect (would have liked, had rained).

As for grammar, the imperative form of the verb is that which is used to give orders and instructions. The imperative is the same as the base form of the verb: go, come, write, say, etc. The implicit subject of the imperative is always the second person singular or plural you, but we never say the subject. Here is a sentence in the imperative form: Go out to the garden. In this example, we are giving an instruction. If it were an order we would write it with an exclamation mark (!): Go out to the garden!. In speech, we distinguish between an instruction and an order with the tone of voice. To express the negative form, we just add don’t in front of the verb: Don’t go out to the garden.

To express the present, there are two verb tenses in English: the present simple and the present continuous. The present simple is mostly used to express habitual actions, things that are repeated on a regular basis. The main characteristic of this tense is that in the third person singular, the verb adds an -s (for example: he works, she plays, etc.). To express the negative and interrogative forms of the present simple, we must use the auxiliary verb forms don’t and doesn’t (in the third person singular; we add the -s to the auxiliary verb). For example: he doesn’ work, we don’t play. There are certain adverbials of time associated to the present simple, all of them expressing habitual or repeated actions: always, sometimes, never, everyday, every week, etc.

On the other hand, the present continuous is a complex form that is composed of the verb to be (in present) + the -ing form (for example: he is working). Unlike the present simple, the present continuous expresses an action that is taking place at the moment of speaking or temporarily in the present. This is why the adverbials associated to this verb tense are: now, in this moment, etc. Here is an example of the use of the present continuous (Look! It’s raining!). In the following sentence, you can see the contrast between the present simple and the present continuous: I usually live on my own, but these days I’m living at my parents’ house).

To speak about the past, there are three verb tenses: the past simple, the past continuous and the present perfect. The past simple is used to speak about finished actions in a specific moment in the past, like yesterday, five minutes ago, last night, etc. The most important thing about the past simple is that many verbs have irregular forms in the past, so we must learn a verb together with its past simple form. All the regular verbs in the past simple end in -ed (work > worked); the irregular verbs have a different word (go > went). In the negative and interrogative, we add the form didn’t in front of the verb.

The past continuous is similar in use to the present continuous, but in the past. It indicates something that was happening at a specific moment in the past. As the present simple, it is a complex form composed of to be (in past) + the -ing form. Here is a sentence contrasting the past simple and the past continuous: While he was working in the fields, I drove to the village.

Finally, the present perfect also refers to the past, but in this case the action is still taking place in the present, as when we say: I have worked in the farm for three years or I have worked here since 2019. As you can see, we form the present perfect with to have (in present simple) + the past participle. As the past simple, the past participle also has irregular forms. The regular forms end in -ed (I have worked), but the irregular verbs have a different word (I have gone). The present perfect can also express a finished action, but unlike the past simple, we don’t say when the action happened. In this case, the sentence usually includes words like: never, yet, ever, just, etc. For example: I have never been in Ireland, have you ever met Mr Smith?, he has just gone out.

To speak about the future, the English language doesn’t have a specific verb tense. We generally use the modal verb will and the expression be going to. We use the future with will to make future predictions and to say what we think will happen, as, for example, I think it will rain tomorrow. We can also use will to make promises (Don’t worry; I’ll help you with your English) or to make requests (Will you open the door for me please?). Will is also used in the conditional sentences of the first type (If you work hard, the land will give its fruit).

On the other hand, the future with be going to is used when the future action has been planned and decided. For example, when we say: Next year, I’m going to spend my holidays at home. This means that you have decided to spend the holidays at home and that this is your decision. This form is also used to speak about an event in the near future that we know will happen because of present evidence. For example: There dark clouds. It’s going to rain. The best way of distinguishing between the forms with will and be going to is to think about the intentionality of the action: if the future event is intentional, we use be going to; if it is not, we use will.