PRACTICE YOUR ENGLISH

We all know the feeling of trying to find the right word sometimes. OK, maybe you have a word that ‘sort of fits’, but you know there’s probably a better word out there that more accurately means what you want to say.

Imagine you’re doing a presentation in English. You have a pie chart () on the screen. You’re using the pie chart to give more information about something, for example, different departments in your company.

'This pie chart says that...', you begin to say. But you realize that 'Says that...' isn’t really correct (pie charts don’t speak!). What other verb could you use instead of 'says that'?

Depict is a useful verb. This means 'to show or represent something, usually with pictures / images'.

'This pie chart depicts the profit areas for each department in our company.' = 'This pie chart shows the profit areas for each department in our company'

Check out the following video for some other useful verbs ‘to give more information’ about something in English.

At the end of the video, you’ll find a short quiz to test your knowledge of the new verbs.



Link to the video on YouTube

Guest post from Rob who is co-founder and co-director of Story & Birch English Language Vacations Ltd. based in Nova Scotia, Canada. Story & Birch is a family-run company which specializes in short-term homestay English training holidays. Rob is an experienced teacher having taught in Slovakia and Germany for seven years before returning to Canada. You can also find Story & Birch on Facebook.