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When you travel to native English speaking countries or areas, you will hear common phrases and terms, like “Thank you,” for example, in very different ways. Expressions like these are sometimes colloquial, meaning that they are most commonly only used in specific areas or by certain people. Hearing someone thanking you by saying “Greatly appreciated” …

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Oxygen is everywhere, and we cannot imagine life or survive without it. Yet, as omnipresent as it is on Earth, what fundamentally constitutes oxygen can leave the best of us gasping for air. Namely, is oxygen O2 or just O? Oxygen exists as two atoms in its stable molecular form and is written as O2 or …

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Homophones can make the English language incredibly confusing, where one word sounds the same, but you can spell them differently and mean something completely different. For example, what is the correct way to use “What are you up to” or “What are you up too”?  “What are you up to?” is the right way to …

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Mastering the English language has many facets, and getting your tenses right is one of the most fundamental. As with all languages, there are first rules to learn and then nuances and exceptions that we must consider. English tenses can be very challenging, especially when there are so many anomalies, like the difference between have …

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Spanish is one of the easier languages to learn, first, because it is phonetic — what you see is what you say — and because it doesn’t have as many exceptions to the rules as English does. There are some, but the rules within the Spanish language are much more straightforward, like the difference between …

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Both idioms and homophones are common occurrences in the English language. As “make do” is an idiom, and “do” and “due” are homophones, mixing up the two terms is not unheard of. Additionally, with the ever-changing nature of any language, English being no exception, more antiquated phrases occasionally spark debate on whether they are still …

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