Summary

The three sections of the third unit are divided into two sections: communication and grammar. Communication refers to how we express ourselves in common communicative situations, like making requests and suggestions, giving advice or expressing opinions. 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 speak in English, either at work or during the holidays, the most probable thing is that you need to make a request. To make a request means to ask another person to do something for you. When you ask something, you must be aware of the context and choose the most appropriate language style, formal or informal. You can make a request in many different ways depending on the degree of politeness that is required in each situation. For example you can say: Give me a room! (which is actually an order) or ‘Would you mind giving me a room?’, which is the most polite way of making a request. The safest thing is to choose a neutral form like: Will you give me a room please?

Sometimes you may also need to make a suggestion. You can make a suggestion when you and other people need to solve a problem together, for example. A suggestion means telling what you think could be done to solve a problem. There are different ways of making a suggestion. For example, we can say: ‘Let’s buy goats!’ or ‘I suggest buying goats’. Both forms are correct. We can choose one or the other to add variety if we have to make several suggestions. As you can see, each form has its own sentence structure. Sometimes we can make an invitation rather than a suggestion. Suggestions and invitations are very similar, but we have to use different phrases for one or the other. For example, to make an invitation we can say: ‘Would you like a glass of wine?’ (the commonest form) or ‘I invite you to a glass of wine.’

Also similar to making suggestions is giving advice. We usually give advice to help other people do something. For example, we can give advice about the type of cattle we need to buy for a farm, to study an English course online or to go to a job interview. As usual, we can give advice in different ways, so we can say, for example: ‘you should buy goats’, ‘I advise you to buy goats’ or ‘if I were you, I would buy goats’. All these forms are equally correct. You can use them to avoid repeating the same sentence structure all the time and make your advice more lively.

In our conversations in English, we will most probably need to express opinions about a variety of topics. We can express our opinions and, of course, we can also agree or disagree with other people’s opinions. As usual, there are different ways of expressing opinions. For example, we can say: ‘I think summer is better than winter’ or ‘in my opinion, summer is better than winter’. Both are correct. In this particular case it is very important that we use a word or phrase to show that we are expressing an opinion and not stating a fact. If you say: summer is better than winter, the other person may interpret this as a truth, not as an opinion, and get a wrong impression of you.

When we speak, we sometimes add a short question at the end of a statement to make sure that the other person has understood what we mean, or to ask the other person if he agrees or disagrees with our words. These questions are called question tags. They also exist in Catalan and Spanish, when we say Cat. ‘oi que sí?’ or Sp. ‘¿no es verdad?’. In English, the question tag is different depending on the statement to which it is attached. For example, if the statement is positive, the question tag is negative, and viceversa. In the question tags, we only use auxiliary or modal verbs, and the subject is always the corresponding subject pronoun. Here are some examples: ‘Laura is Welsh, isn’t she?’, ‘Laura isn’t English, is she?’, ‘Laura can’t speak Spanish, can she?, ‘Laura can speak English, can’t she?’.

In writing in English, but also when speaking, a Catalan/Spanish person tends to make some language errors because of the interference of the person’s mother tongue. This usually happens because there are some words in English that are the same or very similar to Catalan/Spanish words, but the meanings are different. These words are called false friends. A typical example is the word actually. This word is similar to Cat. actualment or Sp. actualmente, but in English actually does not mean the same thing as in Catalan/Spanish. In English, actually means in fact (Cat. ‘de fet’, Sp. ‘de hecho’). In English, actualment is nowadays. False friends generate many mistakes, so it is important to know at least thecommonest ones.

You probably have a job and are satisfied with it. However, things are so uncertain nowadays that the situation can change radically. Who knows if one day you will need to look for a job in another country? Or you may just want to open up your horizon and try a new experience. In any case, you will need to initiate the work searching process. The first step in this process is writing your CV. There are very different formats for writing CVs. There are many different CV template to choose from and you only need to add your data. Whatever the format, however, you should know the basic information that must be included in a CV and how to express that information, especially when dealing with diplomas and degrees corresponding to the Spanish school system.

Accompanying the CV, you must usually write a cover letter in which you introduce yourself, explain your interest in the job and summarize the most important information in your CV. Cover letters are formal documents usually printed on paper. They must follow the layout of all the business formal letters, that is, it must contain the sender’s and receiver’s addresses, the date, and the necessary elements in formal letters, they all occupying their own place on the page. The languagof cover letters must be formal, too. Nowadays, it is common to write an application email to which you attach a document with the CV. In email we don’t have to worry about the layout, but we must follow all the conventions of the formal language.

The last stage in the job seeking process is the job interview. If you have gone through the first stage successfully, the employers will call you to talk to you and decide on your aptitude for the job. The interview may take place personally or on line. A job interview requires some preparation. To be successful, you must consider some aspects as the clothes to wear, your body posture and other non-verbal elements. If the interview is in English, you must also use your best speaking skills to express yourself clearly and accurately. When applying for a job in another country, a good knowledge of English is very important.

As for grammar, the modals are very special verbs in English. The main modal verbs are: can, could, must, should, may, might, will and would. These verbs do not have a meaning of their own, like the lexical verbs, as for example: work, play, rain, etc. The modal verbs need another verb to make sense. What they do is to bring a certain meaning to the verb. For example, if we say: he works, we only say what he does; if we say, he must work, we say that he has the obligation of working. So must is used to indicate an obligation. The other modal verbs all add their own meaning to a verb. The modal verbs are also different from the other verbs in that they do not add -s to the 3rd person singular of the present simple. They also form the negative and interrogative sentences as the auxiliary verbs do.

To compare things or people, we use a type of sentence called comparative or superlative sentence. A comparative sentence compares two things (or people), whereas a superlative sentence compares one thing (or person) to all the other things (or people) of the same kind. For example, we would use a comparative sentence to compare Paris and Rome, and a superlative sentence to compare Paris to all the other cities in Europe. The comparative and superlative sentences all have an adjective or an adverb, which sometimes take a special form. This happens with one-syllable words or two-syllable words ending in -y. In this case, the adjective or the adverb end in -er or the -est. In all the other cases, we add the words more or the most before the adjective or the adverb. Some adjectives or adverbs have irregular comparative and superlative forms, like the adjective good and the adverbs well, whose irregular forms are better and the best.

Another important type of sentence is the relative sentence. This is a complex sentence composed of a main clause and a subordinate relative clause. What the relative clause does is to define or add some more information about a noun that has been mentioned in the main clause, called the antecedent. An example of relative clause is: A farmer is a person who manages a farm and cultivates the land. The main clause is: A farmer is a person; the relative clause is: ’…who manages a farm and cultivates the land’. All the relative sentences must begin with a relative pronoun (who). The pronoun must refer to a noun in the main clause (in our example: person). Except for that, all the relative pronouns are the same as the interrogative pronouns (who, whom, whose, which, what, how, where, when, why).

Finally, the conditional sentences are also very important. This is a type of complex sentence composed of a main clause and a subordinate conditional clause. In the conditional sentences, we say what happens if the condition expressed in the conditional clause becomes true. There are four types of conditional sentences called: zero conditional, first conditional, second conditional and third conditional. The two most important types are the first and the second conditionals. There is a difference in the verb tenses of both types, but there’s also an important difference in meaning: in the first conditional, we say the condition is real and that is is very likely that it becomes true; in the second conditional, we think that the condition is unreal, hypothetical or very difficult that becomes true. An example of the first conditional is: if it rains, I will be happy; an example of the second conditional is: if it rained, I would be happy. The conditional clauses are very often introduced by the word if.