About This Project

Expressive English

A beautiful post apeears on Instagram or Facebook and you want to leave a comment in English. You just don’t know which words to use. Have you ever had trouble finding expressive English words or sentences to use? You might be able to find some words that come together but nothing is as expressive as your native tongue.

If you look at the pictures here, what words come to mind. You might like a phrase like:

It conjures images of my hometown with the sweet scent of baked sweet potato.

How you can construct your sentence is up to you, what words do you know? How do your favourite authors describe the world around them? We don’t have to create language from scratch but can build on creations from others.

When I see a new world in English, I usually jump on vocab.com to see how it is used in context. I then use it in my writing. As a result, my confidence and range of sentence structures and vocaboulary grows. It’s also useful in both conversations and presentations.

Take the word conjure for example.

conjure

If your mum (mom – US) can magically conjure up the most delicious meals from the most random ingredients in the kitchen, she might just be the best cook in the neighbourhood.

In the example sentence above, ‘it conjures images…’ this creates a feeling in the reader that the scent of something cooking brings back memories or something from our hometown or childhood. It is like the memory comes from nowhere and connects with our memory and emotion. The process is explained quite succinctly here, where “Odors take a direct route to the limbic system, including the amygdala and the hippocampus, the regions related to emotion and memory.”

Does it work for my business communication skills?

This same process of creating and exploring new words and sentence structures works for journalling as it does for business. Even using the word conjure again.

It will take more ships, additional warehouses and an influx of truck drivers, none of which can be conjured quickly or cheaply.

Seattle TimesFeb 4, 2022

(taken from vocab.com usage examples – Business)

In this context, the word fits with the definition to bring into existence, as if by magic where more ships, additional warehouses and an influx of truck drivers can’t just appear with the click of a finger. They take time to be arranged, built or rerouted from other jobs. Depending on how many are required, it might also need careful planning.

So, when you want to use new words you’ve come across, give it a go and if you’d like to build more expressive English, get in touch.