Summary

The three sections of the first unit are divided into communication contents and grammar contents. Throughout the unit, you will learn and practice different communication and grammar topics which you will surely need to use both in your daily life and in your working life.

To speak English correctly you need a lot of practice and improve your skill little by little, but to do so it is very important to have some knowledge of the English pronunciation. The English pronunciation is rather difficult for a Spanish speaker because there is a great difference between the way we say a word and the way we spell that word. In fact, the sounds of English are not difficult to pronounce. The most difficult thing is to know how to pronounce a written word correctly. The best way of learning pronunciation is by imitation.

But speaking in English is not all about pronouncing correctly. We must also consider stress, which is the greater force with which we pronounce a syllable within a word or a word within a sentence. There is a natural stress in the English words (for example, in two-syllable nouns the stress is on the first syllable). In sentences, we tend to stress the content words, which are the most important words to transmit the meaning (verbs, nouns and adjectives), but we can use sentence stress to emphasize other words (like, pronouns and prepositions) and change the meaning. Finally, intonation is another important aspect in the speaking skill. Intonation is the way in which the voice rises and falls when we speak. This allows us to distinguish a statement from a question, for example.

The English language is not the same in all the world. There are many different varieties of English, often within the same country. British, American, Australian and Irish people all speak English, but there are differences in the way they speak, especially in the vocabulary, the pronunciation and the intonation, but sometimes there are also differences in the spelling and the grammar. The course is designed in the Standard British English, but nowadays American English is very important and it is more and more important to have some knowledge of American EnCursivaglish.

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.

Apart from the different varieties of English, another important difference is between formal and informal English. It is important because each social situation requires a specific language style. For example, in a formal meeting with unkown people or in a cover letter applying for a job you will need to use the formal language. When you talk or write to friends, relatives and colleagues, you will need to use the informal language.In your social life, you will yourself in some basic communicative situations, like greeting other people, that is, to use certain words and expressions when you meet someone or when you leave another person, or like introducing yourself or one person to another, which means to say who a person. Another common situation is a telephone conversation. When you speak on the telephone you have to use your listening and speaking skills as well as a certain number of words and expressions that are commonly used when speaking on the telephone.

From what we have said so far, it is obvious that the oral communication is very important in English. The oral communication includes the listening and the speaking skills, which you can acquire only after a lot of practice. For this, it is necessary to find opportunities of listening and speaking in English as much as you can. Speaking about dates is a very basic communicative situation. We must be careful when reading a date because there is a difference in the way that the British and the Americans write the dates. For example, the 10th of March 2021 would be ‘3/10/2021’ in British English, but an American would write: ‘10/3/2021’. Telling the time is also a very basic skill. In English, we use the words o’clock, a quarter past, half past and a quarter to as well as the multiples of five with the prepositions past and to. So we say the time like this: 2:00 (two oclock), 2:10 (ten past two), 2:15 (a quarter past two), 2:30 (half past two), 2:40 (twenty to three), 2:45 (a quarter to three).

As for grammar, the personal pronouns are basic words that refer to nouns. They are mostly used to avoid repetitions. According to their function in the sentence, we can distinguish between subject pronouns (I, you, he, she, it, we, they) and object pronouns (me, you him, her, it, us, them). The pronoun you is used to refer to the second person in singular and in plural. Quantifiers are used to express an quantity. They can express a great quantity (a lot of, much, many), a small quantity (few, little) or an indeterminate quantity (some). The quantifiers no and any refer to a zero-quantity. Their use also depends on the type of sentence (negative or interrogative) and on the type of noun they accompany or refer to (countable or uncountable).

To express possession in English we can use possessive adjectives, which are placed before a noun. The possessive adjectives are: my, your, his, her, its, our, their. We can also use possessive pronouns, which always refer to a noun. They are: mine, yours, his, hers, ours, theirs. Apart from possessive adjectives and pronouns, we can also use the form called the Saxon Genitive (or possessive ‘s), which is used to express possession with personal nouns, as for example, in Jonh’s house, where John’s is the Saxon Genitive. Three very important verbs in English are to be, to have and to do. These are called auxiliary verbs because they are used to form the verb tenses of the lexical verbs, which are the verbs that have their own meaning. With the auxiliary verbs we can form the continuous tenses, as in: he is working, the perfect tenses, as in: he has worked and the passive voice, as in: it is used.

The sentences that ask a question are called interrogative sentences. In English, the questions are formed by inverting the order subject/verb in the auxiliary and modal verbs, as in: Are you there? or Can you see?, but with lexical verbs we use the auxiliary verbs do/does (in the present) and did (in the past), as in: Do you like it? Does he like it? or Did he like it?. We can distinguish two types of questions: yes/no questions and wh-questions. The yes/no questions are those whose anwser is yes or no. The wh-questions start with a question word, like: who, where, why, etc. All the English questions have a question mark (?) at the end. On the other hand, the negative sentences are formed by adding the word not to the auxiliary and modal verbs, as in: he is not or he must not. With lexical verbs, we add not to the auxiliary do/does (in present) and did (in the past), as in: I don’t work, he doesn’t work and she didn’t work.

An important form of the verb in English is the passive voice, which is used instead of the active voice when the subject is unkown or it is not important. In the passive sentences, the subject is not the person or thing that does the action of the verb, but it is the person or thing that receives the action (this function is done by the direct object in the active sentences). The person or thiong that does the action in the passive voice is called the agent and it is introduced with the preposition by. The passive voice of t, as in he verb is formed with the auxiliaty verb to be (conjugated in the right form) + the past participle of the verb, as in All the work is done by John, where All the work is the subject, is done is the verb in the passive voice and by John is the agent.

When we speak, we sometimes want to make sure that the other person understands what we mean, or we just want them to confirm our words. To do this, we add a small question to our statement. This question is called question tag. To add a question tag, we say the auxiliary verb and the corresponding subject pronoun, but the question tag must be the opposite of the statement. For example, if the statement is positive, the verb in the question tag is negative; if the statement is negative, the verb in the question tag is positive. Here is an example of a question tag with an auxiliary verb: English is easy, isn’t it?. Here is an example with a lexical verb: You speak English, don’t you?.

To say when an action happens, we generally use a preposition of time. The most important prespositions of time are: in, on and at. There are some general rules to know which prepositions go with a noun, but the best thing is to learn the preposition + noun as a unit, as for example: in the morning, on Monday, at night. Other prepositions of time are: before, after, for and since. On the other hand, the prepositions of place are used to indicate the position or the movement towards a place. There is usually a lot of confusion between the prepositions in, on and at. As in the case of the prepositions of time, the best thing is to learn the unit preposition + noun, as for example: in the garden, on the wall, at home, to the mountains. Other prepositions of place are: in front of, behind, opposite, under and next to.