Get the recipe right for better English communication

What goes into your favourite chocolate cake?

Some flour, sugar and cocoa. Also, baking powder or baking soda and perhaps salt. Plus, eggs and butter or oil and milk, maybe some water.

While the ingredients and amounts differ between recipes, everything has to be mixed properly in order to produce a delicious cake.

And sometimes, the cake flops.

You taste it and realise you forgot the vanilla essence or rum or didn’t add enough cocoa powder. And the icing is lumpy or too soft.

Like any skill, getting the combination just right is crucial to enhancing performance.

For a successful tennis game, you need to be able to serve, hit a forehand and backhand, slice and lob the ball.

To play the guitar, one hand needs to get the fingering right and bar or not while the other has to strum or pick, all at the same time.

And for professional English?

All the ingredients, including listening, speaking, reading, writing, vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation plus the context and cultural aspects, need to come together.

How well you mix them determines the success of your communication.

Just like baking, tennis and the guitar: try, notice what’s wrong or missing and adjust.

Apply the traffic light test and ask for feedback to speed up progress.

Need help figuring out what’s not working in your English recipe? Check out EPRO Express.

Back to The Trunk