As Nelson Mandela once said - Live life as though nobody is watching, and express yourself as though everyone is listening.
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you just can't find the words to verbalize how you're feeling or how to describe the situation more exactly?
Not only do non-native English speakers find themselves stuck for words at the best of times, but Native English speakers also do.
Imagine you've reached your monthly objective and your colleague asks how you feel about it? What would you say? I'm happy! or glad?
Or how about using more exact words to describe how you feel?
Such as, I'm over-the-moon, ecstatic, overjoyed, or on cloud 9.
Or what if you come across a situation where it's quite the opposite?
Instead of saying that you're sad about the outcome, some great synonyms could be that you're feeling downhearted, dejected, discouraged, or devastated.
I find that many of my students use the term nervous quite a lot whereas in English there are a few different ways.
Stressed-out, edgy, panicked, uneasy or not in good form at all.
Our choice of words has an impact on our listeners and the message we transmit will vary greatly depending on the words we choose.
In order to diversify the way we communicate feelings and to make sure we're expressing our true emotions, we should expand on our vocabulary. Improving our vocabulary will help us attain higher levels of English fluency and confidence, linguistic creativity, flexibility, and playfulness.
The use of intensifiers.
Intensifiers
We use Intensifiers to make adjectives stronger such as very, really, extremely, amazingly, exceptionally, incredibly, particularly, remarkably, and unusually.
We mostly gravitate to very & really but how about changing the game a bit and implementing the following more often:
Unusually- She was unusually late this morning.
Particularly- We weren't particularly fond of the restructuring process.
Amazingly -The company has been amazingly creative in how it approaches sustainability.
Extremely- She is extremely smart.
Exceptionally- Her team is exceptionally talented.
Incredibly-It was incredibly rude of him to say that.
Remarkably-We work in remarkably sustainable environment.
Enough
When using enough as an intensifier with an adjective or with an adverb, it is placed after the adjective or the adverb to say that it was sufficient or insufficient (It's good enough/ it's not good enough)
or happily enough (we were sufficiently happy)
We are diverse enough to implement new ideas into our marketing strategy.
They didn't take on the new manager in the end. He wasn't open-minded enough.
Surprisingly enough, the product was a huge success.
Successfully enough, we had changed the game just before the pandemic hit us.
Fortunately enough, our business has a positive environmental impact.
What other adverb adjective intensifier phrases can you think of?
So now it's your turn, in the notes below give me a review of a recent experience you had or a summary of last month's performance using the above grammar and vocabulary.
I'll correct it for you after individually in the notes ☺
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