Language awareness – Page 2 – Luiz Otávio Barros

Congratulate ON or Congratulate FOR?

August 10, 2025January 3, 2022 by Luiz Otávio

Some dictionaries suggest congratulate on only, while others include examples with both congratulate on and congratulate for. What does corpus data suggest? Watch the video and find out. Follow me on instagram for more: @luiz.otavio.barros

Classroom language: 10 things you might be saying wrong

August 10, 2025May 8, 2013 by Luiz Otávio

If you’re a non-native speaker of English and you’ve recently embarked on a teaching career, chances are that you might be making one or two classroom language mistakes you’re not even remotely aware of. After all, as an advanced student, you were probably never corrected in class if you said something like “open your books on page 20″ because, well, you never had to say it in the first place.

12 words you might be mispronouncing

August 10, 2025April 25, 2013 by Luiz Otávio

You will probably find this post useful if:
1. You’re a teacher of English.
2. English is not your native language.
3. You have recently made the transition from advanced student to teacher.
4. You suspect that you might still make a few pronunciation mistakes, which never get corrected.

Subject / verb agreement mistakes: 7 things to bear in mind.

August 10, 2025March 14, 2013 by Luiz Otávio

First things first: What is subject / verb agreement?

It’s a grammatical rule that states that the verb must agree in number with its subject. In English, present tense verbs change to show agreement in the third person singular form by adding an S (or ES). Seems fairly straightforward, doesn’t it? So how could it be that students of all levels, nationalities and age groups seem to get this wrong far more often than would seem reasonable?