Formal, professional and academic English
Writing to a friend and writing to a client use different English: different greetings, vocabulary and sentence structure. Getting the register right is often what makes an email sound natural.
The lessons go from choosing formal or informal English at B2 to the careful, concise style of academic and professional writing at C1.
The essentials
- Informal: Hi Sam, Thanks for your message. Formal: Dear Mr Silva, Thank you for your email.
- Hedge claims to make them defensible: It would seem that…, This suggests that…, arguably.
- Nouns make writing concise and formal: The rapid growth of the city (instead of The city grew rapidly, and…).
- After recommend, suggest and it is essential that, formal English uses the base form: We recommend that she rest.
Every lesson on this topic
Each lesson has a full explanation, examples, common mistakes and practice questions.
B2 (English at B2)
- Hi Sam / Dear Mr Silva: formal and informal English: Choose the right register for emails and messages: greetings, closings, vocabulary and tone
C1 (English at C1)
- It would seem that…: hedging and stance: Make careful, defensible claims, and show how certain you are, in academic and professional English
- The rapid growth of…: nominalisation in academic and professional writing: Turn verbs and adjectives into nouns to write concisely and formally
- We recommend that she rest: the subjunctive: After recommend, suggest, insist, demand and it is essential that, use the base form (or should + base form)
Other topics
- Present perfect or past simple?
- Talking about the past: English past tenses
- English conditionals: first, second, third and mixed
- English modal verbs: must, have to, should and more
- Talking about the future in English
- The passive in English
- Reported speech and reporting verbs
- Relative clauses: who, which, that, whose
- Linking words: although, despite, however, whereas
- -ing or to? Verb patterns in English
- Emphasis in English: inversion and cleft sentences