Orchid English Blog

Are You Lovin’ it? How to Use the Present Continuous

Posted on February 16, 2016

  By Emily Stallard   Something that learners of English often have difficulty with is when to use the present continuous, also called the present progress…


English phrases learned at school versus real life

Posted on February 9, 2016

When did you start learning English? What English phrases did you learn at school? I started learning Japanese at  university. A typical Japanese phrase for beginner…


Why Never to Say “I Don’t Speak English”

Posted on January 19, 2016

By Emily Stallard , Owner and Trainer at Orchid English We have all had experiences when someone says something to us in a language we are learning and we don’t understan…


British Understatement

Posted on January 6, 2016

As you become ‘quite good’ at English, you might have noticed a thing called British understatement. It’s inherent to British culture and can baffle us foreign…


Capitalisation Rules in Business English – Advanced

Posted on December 1, 2015

Hello again! We hope you have read the intermediate rules first from the blog post last week. If not, we recommend going back and reading that first. Here are some more ad…


Capitalisation Rules in Business English – Intermediate

Posted on November 26, 2015

Capitalisation (or capitalization, for those using American spelling) can take a bit of getting used to. Across different languages that use the Roman alphabet ther…


Six Quid or Sick Squid?

Posted on October 5, 2015

By Honami Matsutani, Guest Blogger For those learning the English language, the ability to tell jokes may seem a long way off. From one-liners you might find in Christm…


Coping with Plateaus in Language Learning

Posted on June 16, 2015

By Honami Matsutani, Guest Blogger Some years ago, one of my British friends (a Welsh man to be precise) had been living in Japan for many years and was going through a bad…


What is Conversational English?

Posted on April 13, 2015

By Honami Matsutani, Guest Blogger What is it? I have often wondered where the line should be drawn between so-called “conversational English” and it’s presumed oppo…


How Your Comfort Zone is Limiting Your Language Development

Posted on February 25, 2015

  By Emily Stallard, Owner at Orchid English   Recently I was speaking with a business contact and friend who is Japanese and who speaks excellent, see-if-y…


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