Weekly Blog

Spring has sprung and London is opening! After a long winter with many restrictions, you can now see and feel the excitement for the months ahead in the air. People start visiting parks, sitting in cafes and walking down the sunny high streets, sunglasses on, sipping their lattes. Slowly restrictions are being eased and more and more life seems to be returning to normal.

English is undeniably one of the world’s predominant forms of communication. Its reach extends over as much as +2 billion people globally. The success of English is indeed fascinating. It’s the world’s true Lingua Franca, in other words, it is used widely by speakers of other languages to communicate amongst themselves.

Languages are like living and breathing organisms, they are made to change and adapt. They don’t belong to the super smart scholars theorising and explaining them. They belong to the people out there speaking them, changing them to suit their contexts, manipulating, bending and experimenting with them. So it’s natural that due to rules of usage languages are constantly evolving.

When you are learning English, often the goal is to be able to have a conversation without the need to pause and interrupt because you don’t know the word or how to build a phrase. Naturally, the focus of many students learning English is to amass new vocabulary, learn grammar structures and have opportunities to speak as much as possible.

The flexibility of the English language and its potential to stretch, adapt and mutate knows no bounds. If you are learning English in London you may have noticed how easy a noun turns into a verb ‘google it’ or a verb into a noun ‘the take away from this meeting will be…’, on the streets only at first, then by rules of usage, those become official.

Group classes or private lessons? Many students ask themselves that question when they decide to look for an English school and embark on a English learning journey. Of course every student is different – some come to London to study in a English school for the language experience but also the vibe.

Hello welcome to TopUp Learning and welcome to your one minute lesson. Last week we looked at idioms to express happiness so this week we’re going to look at idioms to express sadness.

Thinking of learning English and questioning whether it is a difficult language to learn? Sure, English is a strange language that originated from many other languages and as a result has complicated relations with spelling and pronunciation – and all those exceptions to grammar rules! But what many people don’t really talk about is how much English speakers struggle to learn other languages.

So you’re thinking of learning English in London. First of all congratulations on this life changing decision. London is one of the most, if not THE most cosmopolitan and diverse city in the world. Nowadays having fluent English is an essential skill to have whether you need it for work or studying; if you want to travel or communicate with people from around the world.