the Blog
Notice or Notify?
Today while teaching online I was helping a student with an email. He had written something like, "If you cannot make this appointment, please notice me." Oops. This is a COMMON mistake many native speakers of Chinese make when writing or speaking English. Can you...
SAT Essay: “The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.”
At the suggestion of an excellent student, and friend, I recently bought the "SAT Writing Workbook" and its companion guide for math, from Kaplan. In Practice Test A on p. 187, it gives this writing prompt: Consider carefully the following statement(s) and...
Juice Up your Writing: Use nouns as VERBS
Looking for ways to beef up your writing? Take a good look at the VERBS you employ. Verbs are to writing what jet fuel is to airplanes. One helpful way to boost your verb power is to take words that are usually nouns, but use them as verbs. Here are a few examples: 1....
A Great Hook!
What's a hook? Just as a physical hook lets you catch and keep a fish, a written hook helps you catch and "keep" a reader. Research shows the average reader will read something for about 5-6 SECONDS before deciding to drop it or keep reading. So, it's essential to...
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