Over the past few weeks, we have received wonderful messages from our readers and listeners. These messages contain stories of happiness, sadness and everything in between.
A message we received was from Shahjahan.
In this week’s daily grammar, we will use parts of Shahjahan’s message to teach introductions, closing statements, and how to talk about family and upbringing.
A message from Shahjahan
Here is part of the message.
Hello everyone,
This is Shahjahan….We are five brothers and three sisters among them, I have completed a masters degree in management in 2002 from the National University of Bangladesh. …When I was a child, I had to face financial difficulties because my father was a poor/middle class farmer. My father had passed away in June 2021. Now I have to support my whole family.
Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to tell my life story.
Introduction
Shahjahan’s introduction says:
Hello everyone,
It’s Shahjahan….
We recommend replacing “Hi” with “Hello” or even “Hi”.
“Hello” is a friendly way to speak or write, but it’s informal and generally not used when writing to an unknown person for the first time.
We usually say “That’s + name” when talking on the phone or introducing someone else.
As this is a different situation, we recommend replacing this line with: “My name is Shahjahan”.
So the introduction could be:
Hello,
My name is Shahahan.
Family and education
Let’s listen to a few more lines from Shahjahan:
We are five brothers and three sisters among them, I graduated with a Masters in Management in 2002 from the National University of Bangladesh.
We recommend separating the sentence because it contains several ideas. It describes Shahjahan’s family as well as his studies. One way to make this information clearer is to discuss family in one sentence and education in another sentence. The sentence about family could use the structure “I have”, as in
I have four brothers and three sisters.
The following sentence could describe Shahjahan’s upbringing:
In 2002, I obtained a master’s degree in management from the National University of Bangladesh.
Shahjahan then gives a bit more information about his childhood:
When I was a child, I faced financial hardship as my father was a poor/middle class farmer. My father had passed away in June 2021. Now I have to support my whole family.
We recommend that you use the simple past tense verb form in these situations: “encountered financial difficulties” and “my father died”.
In the first example, you could use the simple past “I faced financial difficulties” because it was a regular and repeated event in the past. In the second example, you might say “my father passed away” because that was an event that happened at some point.
Additionally, we recommend simply using the term ‘poor’ instead of ‘poor/middle class’. Indeed, people generally associate financial difficulties with the term “poor”.
The last sentence uses the verb “to support”, but we recommend that you use the expression “to take care of”.
So Shahjahan’s sentence could be updated to something like this:
When I was a child, I had to face financial difficulties because my father was a poor farmer. My father died in June 2021. Now I take care of my whole family.
Shahjahan ended his post on a kind note:
Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to tell my life story.
We recommend replacing the word “to” with “for” and “give” with “give”.
The statement could be this:
Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to tell my life story.
Now, here’s Shajahan’s updated post with our recommendations:
Hello, my name is Shahjahan…I have four brothers and three sisters. In 2002, I graduated with a Masters in Management from the National University of Bangladesh…When I was a child, I faced financial difficulties because my father was a poor farmer. My father died in June 2021. Now I take care of my whole family.
Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity to tell my life story.
Final Thoughts
We wish Shahjahan continued success in his English studies and in his career.
We hope that all of our readers and listeners have taken something from our Feedback as well.
If you would like your writing to receive comments or suggestions, write us a short story (four to five sentences) about your life, studies, or interests. We will choose a text and give detailed suggestions in a future report.
I am John Russell.
John Russell wrote this lesson for VOA Learning English.
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words in this story
management – nm the act of managing: the conduct or supervision of something
informal – adj. suitable for ordinary, occasional or familiar use
career -not. a job or profession someone has been doing for a long time
Feedback – nm transmission of corrective information