You want to improve your English, or Business English, right? But, do the following happen to you? You have learned a lot of vocab, but somehow you can’t use them at your presentations or talk to friends who are westerners. Or, You have tried very hard remembering sentences in English, but when you talk, you still can’t get it right.
Why? There is, I would say, something missing. What is that ‘something’? Believe it or not, It has something to do with babies, and to be exact, Baby Verbs (e.g. is / am / are).
Do you still remember this? What does a baby do all the time? (Hey! What are you looking at? Never seen a baby taking a NAP! Just get back to your English.) Yes, babies take a nap (a small rest) all the time.
What do I mean? I mean you can take a nap to learn English. Take a NAP to learn English? Yes, take a NAP to learn English. And the NAP is something that is missing in your brain. You can use the NAP to speed up your process of learning English.
When you use a Baby Verb (e.g. is / am /are / was / were), just remember that they are followed by NAP. What is NAP? N stands for nouns; A stands for adjectives; and P stands for prepositions. A piece of cake?
Not really! Do you know that you can use ‘A’ at negotiation? How? The word 'firm' is an example. Firm is an ‘N’ (noun), right? But you can use it as an ‘A’. Upon negotiating with another company, you may make an offer by saying:
The offer is firm (for 7 working days).
The steps for making such a sentence are:
| Step 1 | Take the Baby Verb ‘is’ |
| Step 2 | Choose ‘A’ from NAP |
The ‘P’ Way. ‘P’ stands for prepositions (e.g. at, on), so you may make sentences like:
| The CEO |
is
| at the desk (In other grammar books, ‘at the desk’ is called adverbials, a horrible term, right?) |
‘At’ is the P in the sentence. Easy, right?
Yet, if you think teamwork is better than working alone, if you want to make your English more ‘powerful’, you have to focus on teamwork of prepositions. That is, prepositions come in different forms: one-word prepositions or more-than-one-word prepositions. The more-than-one-word prepositions are members of a team: a teamwork of prepositions. Now, meet a team of ‘P’: Between … And. With this team, you can get a lower price at negotiation. How, read the following case.
| Situation | Negotiating prices with another company |
 | Aim: To get a lower price |
Does this happen to you or your company? You get a quotation of prices from another company but find the prices too high. What would you say in response to such a quotation?Your prices are too high. This may be one way of doing it. But it sounds too direct, and not tactful enough, right?
What about employing the team of ‘between … and’? How? You may say to the company: There is a big difference between (your prices) and (those of other competitors). By using the team of ‘P’ (between … and), you are polite but tactful.
NAP is more powerful than you think. In the above you used it at negotiation. But you can also make questions with ‘A’ to challenge others at a meeting. Why do you want to challenge others? To make you stand tall at your office. (Stand tall is American slang: to be proud of yourself). How? Take ‘A’ and a question word (as you are asking a question), ‘why’.
| Situation | At a meeting |
| Aim |  To challenge others |
Why is this important (to our proposal)?
Can I sum up the steps? Sure.
| Step 1 | Take a question word ‘Why’ |
| Step 2 | Take a Baby Verb ‘is’ |
| Step 3 | Take an ‘A’ ‘important’ |
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This post is adapted from the book:
FeelGoodGrammar: How to Make Sentences in Business English
Picture source:
Pic 1: http://www.flickr.com/photos/skycaptaintwo/101798277/in/photostream/
Pic 2: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gavinjllewellyn/6052852063/sizes/q/in/photostream/
Pic 3: http://www.flickr.com/photos/belakangtabir/5990355480/in/photostream/
Pic 4: http://www.flickr.com/photos/clarkstonscamp/4855087885/
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